The Elites Of Weis-Jameson Prep Academy: The Complete Series (A High School Enemies To Lovers Bully Romance Box Set)

by Rebel Hart

“I’m going to go now,” I sob softly, my forehead collapsing against the frame. “I know you don’t believe me and I’m sorry for that. But I’m going to fix this. I swear to you nothing happened with Malcolm, and I’m going to find some way to prove it to you.” Still nothing. “Okay?” I try asking hopelessly. I don’t know how long I linger outside the door before finally forcing myself to walk away. But Emmett never budges. Things are completely fucked up beyond repair.

  Chapter Nineteen

  BOOK 2

  I stop myself from calling a cab as I walk along the dark sidewalks in Emmett’s neighborhood. I can’t stand the thought of making small talk with a stranger right now, and I think the awkward silence would be even worse.

  I ignore a few worried texts from my mom, not even beginning to know how to respond. It’s almost two in the morning now, and she’s furious. I can’t even begin to think of any decent excuses for why I didn’t come home four hours ago when I said I would. Then the phone rings. I try to ignore it, but another one quickly comes through.

  “Ophelia!?” her voice calls out across the line in a panic when I reluctantly answer.

  “Mom,” I sniffle, not knowing what to say.

  “Are you okay? Where are you!”

  “Could you come get me?” I ask hesitantly. I don’t want to, but I don’t have any other choice. Although it would serve me right to walk the entire way back to my house in the cold. “I left my car at school.”

  Without pausing, she tells me she’ll put Brendan on the phone to get directions to where I am. They don’t ask any questions. All I hear is the shuffle of her gathering her things in the background.

  Once I hang up, I know I can’t just stand here and wait. I feel too awful to stay in one place, but I also don’t want to wander too far from the spot I directed her to. So, instead I pace back and forth along the same couple of blocks over and over until her car finally slows down beside me.

  I burst into tears the moment I get in her car and can barely hear her persistent questioning over my sobs. There are a million things I wish I could tell her, but it’s all untrue. I wish I could say I had been drinking or smoking, that I was being irresponsible and having fun. But what actually happened is too heavy to even begin to explain.

  “I don’t know what is going on with you lately!” She finally snaps into tears. “I keep trying to give you space and let you figure things out on your own. But you won’t tell me anything! How can I help you?”

  “You can’t!” I scream. “That’s the whole problem! You can’t possibly help me!”

  “How do you know if you don’t try?” she pushes. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Ophelia. I know things about the world. Probably more than you think. I work in a hospital! I see all kinds of things. Not to mention what I’ve been through myself. Please…Just talk to me.”

  I shake my head and look out the window through my tears. “Tell me about you and my dad,” I murmur, needing to say it for myself, but I hope she doesn’t hear.

  “What?” she demands. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I can’t talk about it right now,” I finally sob. “Tomorrow, maybe.”

  She forces herself to stop hounding me and drives. Once we’re home, she rushes out of the car to wrap me in a long hug the moment I step foot onto the ground from the passenger’s side. Her embrace sends me right back into an eruption of tears. Only one other time have I been so grateful to see our house standing there just a few feet away, and that was when I was finally coming home from the police station after everything happened with Emmett and our fathers.

  She doesn’t ask me any more questions as we go in, and instead leaves me be to retreat to my room. I toss and turn in my sleep, dreaming of Emmett’s t-shirt. The way it feels over his hard chest as I cling to it with my fingers. The way it smells like his cologne, sweat, and the salt of his skin. The warmth of him that rests beneath it. I want to bury my face in his shirt again. I don’t want that to be gone forever.

  Eventually my dreams fade into a deep sleep. So deep that I sleep through my alarms the next morning.

  I catch Brendan in the kitchen when I finally wake up and pull myself together. He drives me to school on his way to work, also not prodding about what happened the night before. I can only assume my mom asked him not to until I was ready to talk about it.

  I stop outside the front doors of WJ Prep, feeling that same familiar sense of foreboding as I apprehensively make myself push forward with a deep breath, clutching my bag to my side. I walk into a familiar scene. I’ve already missed first period, but regretfully caught the rush in between classes. Everyone stares and snickers as I pass. They’ve all seen the doctored photo of Malcolm and me. I don’t know if this is better or worse than the time a nude picture of me was printed onto hundreds of flyers and spread around the school.

  I keep my head high despite the strange, pitying looks that I have grown used to. The whispers of my name that put me on high alert. I’ve done this walk before. At least this time I know what the offense is. Everyone thinks I’ve fucked Malcolm, and no one knows what to do about it. The hierarchy of things is completely thrown. Before the Elites were taken down, an offense like this would have made me instantly blacklisted. But Emmett hasn’t commanded his old position of power since he came back, and now no one knows how to feel.

  As I approach my locker, I don’t notice the strange gleaming substance smeared across its surface until it’s too late. I pull my sticky hand back from the lock and realize the whole thing is slathered in lubricant.

  “A girl like you fucking two guys at once could use a little lube,” some random kid jeers as he pushes past, shoving me straight into the sticky surface.

  I almost chase after and pounce on him, but my focus turns to getting this stuff washed off of me. I head for the bathroom, laughing to myself as I realize something like this doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it would have before. I guess the joke’s on them. It seems someone took it into their own hands to decide how to handle the news about Malcolm and me. Even without the Elites commanding everyone, it’s still the nature of high schoolers to bully or be bullied. And I guess my crazy life has given everyone more than enough ammunition.

  Straightening my back, I hold my head high and breeze past everyone. They’re not the ones I’m worried about. I only have eyes for two people. Emmett, in hopes that I can somehow convince him of the truth, or Malcolm, so that he can help me fix this.

  But the day carries on without any sign of either one of them. I don’t see Emmett in the halls or in any of his classes, and Malcolm isn’t in his hiding spot come lunchtime. By my last class, I am crawling in my skin. I had hoped I could have fixed things at some point during school, but it quickly becomes obvious I have no hope of doing so until I can get out of here.

  With the ring of the last bell, I fly through the double doors and decide I have to skip practice. As much as I would love to run right now, I can’t focus on anything until I have found some way of making things right. I pull out my phone and call Malcolm.

  “Why hello, beautiful,” he says as he answers. I am amazed by how quickly his kind voice has flipped. Now it just sounds creepy and gross to me.

  “I need to talk to you,” I huff urgently as I walk to my car. “Are you at home?”

  “Yeah…” He yawns. “I played hooky today. I was pretty worn out from last night.”

  “I’m coming over,” I insist, hanging up before he has a chance to respond.

  It feels good to reunite with my own car again, restore some sense of control. My music blares as I swerve around corners, relishing in the acceleration. It makes me feel like I am doing something. I am taking action, even though the situation with Emmett feels completely hopeless. I speed away from school towards Malcolm’s, losing all sense of how fast I’m going until the flashing blue lights appear behind me just a few miles from his house.

  “Shit,” I mutter as I pull over to the side of the road. I’ve never been pulled over before. In fact,
the only contact I’ve ever had with the police was when I gave my statement about Thomas Jameson’s claimed suicide.

  “License and registration, please,” the officer says as I roll down my window with shaking hands. I nervously mumble something as I dig through my bag to collect everything. “Do you have any idea how fast you were going?”

  “I’m so sorry.” I blush. “I’m…I’m late for meeting a friend and I…I just lost track of my speed, I guess,” I offer anxiously as I hand him my information.

  “‘Ophelia Lopez’,” he reads off my license. “I know you. You’re Theodore Nickelson’s girl, aren’t you?”

  My hand grips and twists the steering wheel, wishing more than anything that wasn’t how people knew me. I am not his girl. I’m my mom’s girl. Brendan’s girl. Theo can’t claim any part of me beyond the role of sperm donor and recent life-ruiner.

  “That’s my biological father, yes,” I answer with a tight smile.

  “Ah.” He grimaces. “You heard anything from him lately?”

  “No,” I lie. “Why?”

  His eyes cut into me as he leans over my window. His stare is questioning, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll crack and say more, but I keep my lips clenched tight. Finally, the corners of his mouth turn up in an insincere smile. “Alright, well…this all looks in order,” he says, to my surprise, without even returning to his car to look up my information. “I’ll let you off with a warning. Just be sure to drive slower, okay?”

  “Yes, of course, Officer,” I promise urgently, ready to get the hell away from him. “Thank you.”

  I am shaking by the time he walks back to his car and watches me drive off. I am on high alert, driving as slowly and carefully as possible, hoping he won’t come after me again.

  Great—now on top of everything else, the police seem to still be convinced that I have ties to my father. I worry that sooner or later, it will come out that I met with him recently, making me look guilty of something because I lied about it. I knew that little meeting would come back to bite me in the ass. I should just run and tell the police everything I know about him, but of course I can’t without telling them that Emmett struck a deal to have his father murdered. Also, if the police could be trusted, then this whole ordeal with Bernadette wouldn’t be so complicated.

  I have no way of knowing if I can make things right with Emmett. I won’t know until after I talk to Malcolm, but I obviously can’t get there any faster than this. And without him, the only thing I can think to do is call my father and come clean about the cops questioning me about him. I don’t know what he can do to fix it, but if I can’t be honest, then he at least needs to tell me what lie I’m supposed to tell.

  My mind slowly comes back to the task at hand as I pull up to Malcolm’s, surging with adrenaline.

  “I knew you’d change your mind.” He smiles arrogantly as he opens his front door before I even have a chance to knock. “You probably ran to Emmett and saw he was still with Vivian, right? I told you they were fucking.”

  I breeze past him through the door without stopping. “Have you seen that photo?” I ask impatiently. “Do you know who did this?”

  “What photo?” He’s playing dumb, but I know he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “Did you come back to finish what we started?”

  “This!” I bark as I shove my phone in his face, the disgusting fake pic pulled up on the screen.

  “It’s a great photo.” He smirks as he lifts his arms into a casual stretch.

  “You know damn well nothing happened between us, Malcolm,” I thunder. “Who took this? Did you have someone do this?”

  “Obviously I had nothing to do with it…I was busy.” He laughs, and I want to slap him in the face.

  “Look, I know you’re upset that I didn’t mess around with you,” my tone turns calmer, wanting to reason with him. “But I know you’re a decent guy,” I lie, feeling nothing of the sort anymore. “You have to help me fix this. Emmett saw this and thinks it’s real.”

  “Oh, it’s real,” he replies boldly.

  “Why are you acting this way?” I whine in distress. “I thought you were different…I thought you were better than this. You know this is doctored. It’s fake. Somebody is trying to tear Emmett and me apart!”

  Suddenly, a toilet flushes from the back of the room. “Who’s here?” I glare at him, but he doesn’t answer. I’m surprised to see Lily appear from behind the bathroom door.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I gape, flailing my phone in her direction. “Did you do this?”

  “No, but I wish I had,” she snickers, before plopping down on the couch.

  “Since when are you two friends?” I admonish with a furrowed brow, shaking my head in confusion. “Is this why you were hanging out with me the whole time, Malcolm? Are you just working with Vivian and Lily to ruin my life?”

  “No one has to work to do that, Ophelia,” Lily answers coldly. “There’s not much of a life to ruin to begin with…and the pathetic mess you do have…You do more than enough to fuck it up on your own.”

  “Why is everyone in this town so fucked up!?” I shriek, flying into a mad pace around the room, feeling like I’m wasting my time talking to these idiots. They’re both lounging around looking bored and snide, and it’s becoming more and more obvious that I’m getting nowhere. “Lily, I know you’re angry with me right now,” I try to plead, “but we were friends once. Surely some part of you feels bad about how you’ve been acting. Please, help me.”

  She shrugs. “You’re beyond help. You cheated on Emmett, and you got caught. The end.”

  “I did not!” I cry back. “Malcolm and I were watching a movie. He made a pass at me. I fought him off and then ran away. The end. That’s it. That’s all that happened, and I don’t know where the hell this picture came from!”

  “That’s not how I remember it,” Malcolm adds snidely.

  “So, you did this, then,” I conclude. “You’re the one who made this and sent it to Emmett!”

  “You sound like a crazy person, Ophelia,” Lily taunts. “Are you back on drugs?” She laughs.

  I pace around Malcolm’s house, looking back and forth between the couch and the front windows. I compare it to the photo and can see that someone clearly had to have been watching from outside the window. They must have snapped the picture when Malcolm forced his way on top of me, and then edited it in Photoshop afterwards.

  This whole thing was planned. Someone had to have been waiting out there for him to make his move just so they could get the picture, and once they had it, they worked fast. Fast enough for it to have already been sent out by the time I made it back over to Emmett’s.

  I’m convinced that Lily had to have been the one to take it. Why else would she be hanging around here right now, acting just as delusional as Malcolm? I want to interrogate them some more, but it’s obvious neither of them is going to own up to anything. But I am determined not to leave here until I have some sort of proof or explanation for Emmett.

  My eyes dart across Malcolm’s expensive equipment, and it hits me. He has to have security measures in place to protect all of this stuff. All rich people spend just as much money on protecting their things as they do on the things themselves.

  “Security cameras!” I shout. “You have cameras outside?” I grasp desperately at this last straw.

  “What are you talking about?” he grumbles in annoyance.

  “The footage would show who took the picture,” I insist. The two of them don’t move. I know it’s hopeless. They’re probably behind the photo, even if I can’t figure out why. Maybe Malcolm was just mad that I refuted his advance and decided to get revenge. Maybe he thought that once Emmett was out of the picture, I’d come running back to him. But I’m half-tempted to try and get a hold of the footage anyway. Just as I am inching towards the door to see if there are cameras, my phone rings. I hope it’s Emmett calling. Maybe he’s ready to listen to me. But it’s a number I don’t recognize.r />
  “Excuse me. I have to take this,” I explain as I step outside, but I know it’s pointless. They could care less if I’m here right now or not. They’ve already had their fun, and at this point I’m just a source of entertainment. They’re enjoying watching me go mad as I try to figure all of this out.

  I step out into the backyard of the main house, which happens to be Malcolm’s front yard, and answer the call.

  “Ophelia, it’s me. Granger.”

  “Coach Granger,” I answer apologetically. “Sorry I missed practice today…I…I wasn’t feeling well and…”

  “Are you alone right now?” he cuts me off.

  “Sort of,” I answer lightly, looking through the window to make sure Lily and Malcolm are still in sight on the couch. I quickly realize he’s not calling to yell at me about practice. “Coach, what’s wrong?”

  “Where are you right now?” he snaps back urgently.

  “Everything’s a mess,” I groan, not knowing where to begin. Where I am right now doesn’t feel as a simple question as it should be, but I try to get myself together. “I’m at Malcolm Henderson’s,” I say finally.

  “Does he know you’re talking to me?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I reply, the concern in my voice growing at the panic in his. “I stepped outside to take your call.”

  “I don’t have much time to explain,” he huffs. “I’m on my way there. But you have to be careful, Ophelia. Malcolm’s dangerous.”

  My heart pounds. An asshole definitely, but it hadn’t occurred to me that Malcolm could be more dangerous than refusing to take no for an answer. But Coach Granger doesn’t sound like he’s playing around, not even a little bit.

  “What do you mean?” I question with caution, keeping my eyes glued on them through the window. “Lily is here, too.”

  “Don’t trust either of them,” he orders. I already didn’t trust them, but it’s becoming obvious that something much bigger than I realized is going on. “The reason I was away those few weeks…” he explains slowly, clearing his throat. “My son died.”