by V. Darling
“That’s okay, baby. You don’t need to move a muscle in order for me to get my dick wet.”
“You’re disgusting.” I turn and stalk away.
He rushes me and shoves me up against the hood of a parked car. I scream. Justin’s meaty fist clamps around my mouth, cutting off my cries. I bite down hard, but he doesn’t budge.
A maniacal laugh bubbles out of him. The joy in that sound sends chills down my spine. “You think you can hurt me, slut? You can bite as hard as you like, princess, but I like pain. I’m accustomed to it after the last four years putting up with you Royals.”
He slides his erection against my ass. I scream behind his hand, but no one is coming to help me. I flail under his weight, but that just pushes him harder against me. His hands lift my cheer uniform, pulling my panties into the seam of my ass and yanking hard.
“Damn, I wish I could take my time, savor your sweet screams, but since you wouldn’t fuck me like we planned, I don’t have that luxury. I’ll just settle for making you bleed instead.”
I thrash against him, bucking my hips to try and unseat him. It doesn’t work. It seems to only excite him more. His fat fingers slip into my panties and I squirm away from his touch, but his body holds me in place.
“I’m gonna enjoy fucking the shit out of Scarsdale’s queen. You’re gonna be all used up, you little cock tease, and who’s going to want you then? No one. Not Nav or Lev—none of your friends will stick around. It’ll just be you and me.”
I scream, but the sound is swallowed by his hand. Thick, hot tears stream down my face and the feel of his fingers inside my panties and the smell of his hand against my mouth force bile to rise in my stomach. I retch.
“Fuck!” He yanks his hand free of my mouth, and I get one good lungful of air before screaming bloody murder. Then I jerk my leg back and attempt to kick him in the balls. I miss. “You stupid bitch.”
“Scout!” Lev shouts. Footsteps echo across the lot. I can’t see through my tears—not that I could anyway with Justin’s hand shoving my head against the hood of the car. I scream again, and kick out against his shins, connecting with flesh and bone. He grunts and steps back and I run. I don’t make it more than ten steps, because I collide with a solid wall of high-school footballer packing twenty pounds of padding.
Lev grabs my arm, preventing me from falling, and then his gaze settles on Justin, and I’m jostled aside as Lev charges toward him. Justin doesn’t even have time to turn tail and run before Lev does what a linebacker is supposed to and crashes into him, taking him down to the hard blacktop. He straddles Justin, and pounds fist after fist into the boy’s face.
“Did you touch my girl, you fucking piece of shit?”
Justin just laughs. Despite having the crap beaten out of him. “She wanted it. You saw the tapes; you fucked her. You know she’s a filthy fucking whore—”
Lev’s fist slams into Justin’s face, cutting off the vicious words coming from his mouth. I can’t breathe. I can’t stop him. All I can do is sink to my knees and sob. I shake and I tremble, and I cry. I’m not capable of anything else.
Lev is like an angry god, beating Justin’s face over and over. He’s going to kill the boy, and I don’t care. I want his blood. I want him to pay. I want to erase the last ten minutes of my life—hell, I want to erase my life completely. Popularity, prestige, and the way this school worships false idols are not worth this. Nothing is worth this.
With one last punch, Lev grunts and gets to his feet. He staggers toward me and wraps me in his arms. Justin’s blood sullies his hands, and my uniform, and I want to crawl out of my skin. My mind doesn’t tell me to run because it’s fractured, broken.
I’m broken.
“I’m not gonna ask if you’re okay.” Lev’s chest heaves as he holds me, and I can’t tell if I’m the one shaking, or if he is. “I know you’re not. I’m not. But I need you to tell me if you need to go to the hospital?”
I shake my head.
“Cub.” He holds me at arm’s length. The anguish and fear in his eyes turns my stomach. In all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen Lev afraid of anything, Until now. “Did he ... did he force himself inside you?”
Tears roll over my cheeks and I choke on the cry I’m trying to hold back. “No.”
He kisses my head and draws me in again. “Come on. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“I-I don’t think I can r-r-ride your bike right now.” I stutter through my shock. “I’d p-probably fall off.”
“We’ll take Saint’s car.”
My teeth chatter so hard I worry they might shatter. “He-he-he’ll kill y-you.”
“He’ll be fine. I’ll text him when we get there.”
“N-no hospital.”
He shoots me a look, but I just stare at him, and for the first time I show him just how vulnerable I am. He nods.
“P-p-promise?”
“No hospitals.”
He leads me to the passenger side of Saint’s black McLaren and opens the door. I grab the handle for support but nearly stumble when it glides up in the air instead of out to the side. Saint and his fucking toys.
Lev helps me into the car and comes around the side, flipping down the visor and catching the keys as they fall into his hands. He turns the ignition and revs the engine, then peels out of the space. When we come to Justin lying prone in the middle of the road, Lev breaks so hard the tires screech. Justin moves, lifting his head slightly from the pavement. Lev revs the engine several times and bumps forward, and Justin scrambles to all fours and scurries out of the way.
I don’t look at the boy who tried to rape me as we drive past, and I wish to God that Lev hadn’t stopped for him.
The silence between us is deafening as he races through the empty streets of Scarsdale. “Last time I’m gonna ask if you want me to take you to the hospital, Cub? I won’t force you, but I think you should get checked out.”
I shake my head. I don’t want to go to the hospital. I don’t want to be around anyone right now and have to face dozens of questions. I just want a shower and I want my bed.
“Your parents are still away, right?”
I nod and Lev pulls into my drive.
“Don’t tell Saint.”
“Cub—”
“Promise me?” I whisper, staring out the windshield at the house. “He’ll kill Justin.”
“Yeah, well. I’m seriously entertaining the idea of going back to kill him myself.” He turns off the engine. It ticks as it cools down against the chilly air. I can’t move. He doesn’t move, and as I stare up at the brilliant white façade of the mansion, I break apart. I dissolve into tears and regret and agony. I’ve never felt so fragile, so breakable, so broken.
Lev doesn’t say anything. What is there to say? I played with fire, and I didn’t just get burned. I was incinerated.
My reputation is in tatters. Everyone knows. Nav knows, and a guy who I thought was nothing, dirt beneath my feet—less than that—someone I thought was no threat at all was the one to ruin me. In more ways than one. I think about his hands inside my panties, on me, and I shudder.
Unruly, unladylike sobs leave my chest and I don’t care. He touched me against my will, and it could have been so much worse. I was pinned beneath him, his erection at my back and his hands touching my body in a way that only Lev and Nav have.
I’m sullied.
I’m ruined.
The queen has fallen, taken off the board by a pawn, and now she’s nothing. Less than nothing.
I’m just another stupid girl so blinded by power, by love, that I forgot to harden my heart. I forgot that to love is to be ruined, and now there’s no way to come back from it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lev
Scout doesn’t flinch when I pull her from the car and carry her into the house. I don’t even know if she’s aware of her surroundings, but she certainly isn’t here with me. She’s broken.
I climb the stairs to her room, but I don’t
set her on the bed. Instead, I walk straight into the bathroom and run the shower, helping her under the spray. I want to scrub clean every fucking fingerprint from her body, douse her in bleach to strip away every place he touched my girl. I want to go back to the fucking school, back to that moment, and beat his motherfucking head in.
The only thing keeping me here, keeping me from turning into a fucking savage, is that Cub needs me right now, and unless she sends me away, I’m staying by her side. The team will know I’m missing. Coach will be pissed—Saint, too, because I stole his car—but none of that matters. The devil himself couldn’t drag me away right now. Even if it means I have to come clean with my brother.
Scout’s legs are shaking so hard that she can’t stand without me propping her up, so I undress and climb into the shower with her. As her naked body is pressed against mine, it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve done this. Long before they were having sex, Scout and my brother would spent hours holed up in our tub. They’ve spent so many nights together that seeing her cuddled into his side through our adjoining bathroom became the new norm. I quash the anger that rises in my belly, its bitter aftertaste poisoning me, right to my core.
From head to toe, I wash her with expensive body wash that makes her smell like roses. Ordinarily, this would be my ultimate fantasy, but nothing about this situation is remotely sexual. Scout grabs my hand as she sobs and glides it between her legs. I yank away as if I’ve been burned.
“I don’t want him to be the last man to have touched me.”
I press my lips against her hair. “He won’t be, but Cub, you’re not thinking straight.”
“My mind has never been clearer. You don’t want me now. Is that it? I’m sullied goods—just like Justin said. You don’t want to touch me.”
She tries to push past me. I grab her shoulders and spin her so her back is up against the wall, her arms held firmly against the tiles by my hands.
“I will never stop wanting you,” I hiss. “Do you hear me, Cub? Never. I may be an asshole, but I’m not dumb enough to think this is something you actually want right now.”
“Shall I go and see Nav then? Maybe he can give me what I need.”
I growl, low and menacing, and I know she regrets her words because tears pool in her eyes and her face crumples. I pull her into me, wrap my arms around her as tightly as possible, and kiss the top of her head as her body heaves with sobs.
“Cub, I’ve made a fucking mess of everything in my life, but I won’t fuck this up. I’ve wanted you for too long to ruin it with a quick fuck in the shower to erase the memory of that sick cunt’s hands on your body. When I fuck you, when I touch you again, it will be because you beg me to, because you want me to, because you need me to. But it sure as hell won’t be after something as traumatic as assault.”
“I’m ruined, Lev. Everyone knows. He and Charleigh made a tape, and sent out a blast to the whole school.”
“What?” I stare down at her as the as the water beats down on me. “Cub, what are you saying?”
“They filmed us having sex in your kitchen, in the guidance counsellor’s office, in the park the night of Justin’s party. Everyone saw. Everyone knows ...”
Fuck!
Scout sobs, loud, raw, gut-wrenching sounds that force my heart into my throat and I think about all of the ways I could have—should have—killed Justin Hearst.
I JOLT AWAKE. SCOUT stirs in my arms and rolls over and I rub my eyes with my free hand. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. I think a part of me was waiting for Saint to come home and tear me a new one for taking his baby without permission. Oh, and accidently making a sex tape with his sister that was blasted all over Scarsdale High. I figured when he came home, he’d be angry at me, but he could stay with Scout while I went to find Nav.
I yawn and shift onto my back, careful not to wake Cub. Rustling fabric makes me turn my head. Nav is sitting in the armchair not three feet from us. A near empty bottle of Jack dangles from his fingers. I sit, and realize I’m stark fucking naked and am not covered by Scout’s lavender duvet. I’m not covered by anything at all, and my twin brother is watching me with the promise of murder in his eyes.
“Hello, brother,” he slurs, and the bottle falls from his hands to the plush carpet with a thud.
“What are you doing here?” I grab one of Scout’s twenty silk cushions to cover my junk.
“That’s my line.” He laughs and pitches forward in the chair. His breath turns my stomach. How is he sitting upright at all with the liquor he’s so obviously consumed—unless of course he’s started using that shit as cologne now? “Or it might have been my line, if you weren’t fucking my girlfriend.”
I swallow. Not because I feel guilty for taking back what’s mine, but because once upon a time Nav was my whole world. He was the other half of me, before Scout Taylor ever moved in next door. And now? Now he’s a stranger, a person with whom I shared a womb and DNA, but there’s no love lost between us. At least I can stop pretending Scout is anything but mine.
“Let me get dressed and we’ll take this outside.”
“Why bother?” he says, clearly unfazed that he might wake Scout. “She’s already fucked us both. Why not just make a party of it?”
I get to my feet. Naked or not, I will fuck up his face if he doesn’t shut up. Cub doesn’t need this shit.
“You know I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to talk to the two of you first, but then I saw the video. I couldn’t not watch. I couldn’t look away. And do you know what I realized, brother?” He says the word as if it’s poison in his mouth. “I realized that all of the hate between the two of you was likely not hate at all. It was love. I was just too fucking stupid to see it.
“Know what else I realized?” His eyes drift over my shoulder. I glance behind me. Scout is awake, leaning against the bedhead with her covers pulled up around her neck. Her eyes are puffy and tears stream down her face. “I realized you’d lied to me. You’d been lying to me and to yourself for years. You let me think I was the one to take your virginity when really, my brother got there first. From the looks of the video, he got there before me, and has been there many times since. What kind of slut tricks a man that way?”
I surge forward, barreling into my brother and slamming him up against the wall. An ornate mirror cracks behind us and shatters on the floor. I lay into my twin, pounding my fist into his gut as he laughs like a fucking maniac. Scout screams. Somewhere in the back of my mind I register her bedroom door opening and Saint, King, and River pile in and tear me away from Nav. It takes the three of them to pull me off him and in the end, King alone wrestles me to the door because he’s so much bigger than I am, but not before I swing a few times and connect with his jaw. He pushes me out of the room and gets all up in my face.
“Get the fuck away from me!” I shove at King’s chest.
“No can do, brother. He’s not the enemy here.”
“He just called my girl a whore.”
“Three hours ago, he thought she was his girl. Cut the guy a little slack.” He arches a brow. Fucking asshole. Always so fucking calm.
“Eat my goddamn dick, King.”
Saint moves through the door with a beaten and bloodied Nav leaning on his shoulder. They stop to glare at me, and I want to knock them both out, but King shoves a hand against my chest—he doesn’t even seem at all fazed by my nudity.
Saint ushers my brother toward the stairs.
“Did you know she was assaulted and almost raped tonight?” I call after them.
Saint stops walking and turns so abruptly that Nav loses his footing and almost topples down the stairs, but he clutches the banister until his knuckles turn white.
“Who?” Saint demands.
I clear my throat and meet my friend’s eyes. “Justin Hearst. Right after he sent out the video on blast, he followed her into the parking lot.”
Scout is at the door now, glaring daggers at me. “I didn’t want him to k
now. You promised me you wouldn’t tell.”
“Peaches?” Saint’s eyes brim with tears as his long legs eat the space between him and his sister. “Are you okay? Did he—”
She shakes her head, and I’m not sure which question she’s answering. Saint wraps her in his arms, and she breaks down all over again. Envy rips through my gut, not because he’s hugging her, but because he’s perhaps the only person in the world who can make her feel better, because he can take away her pain better than I can, and because I’ve never been more aware of my shortcomings as a boyfriend, a brother, and a human being in general as I am right now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lev
Saint brought my clothes and the rest of my shit home with him from the locker room, so—dressed in the jeans and Henley I wore to the game—I lie with Scout as she tries to drift off to sleep, and the others wait downstairs. Saint sits in the chair beside her bed. Cub’s eyes close and her breathing deepens. I glance at her hand, held tight in her brother’s. He glares at me.
“I told you this would happen. I warned you what would happen to her when the entire school found out,” he whispers.
“I know.”
“They kicked her off the squad. Nova grabbed Scout’s things from her locker. Did you know she was being blackmailed?”
“The fuck?” I demand, too loudly.
Saint lets go of his sister’s hand and gently pulls the covers up to her chin. He tilts his head toward the door, but I’m already there, itching to get out of this room and go break some faces.
I stalk across the threshold and Saint follows me, quietly closing the door behind him.
“Talk. Now.”
“I only had time to look at a few of the pages. It’s some fucked up blackmail bullshit. There have to be at least ten. Each with a more disturbing line about what they knew, what they planned to do to her. It seems someone’s been gunning for Peaches a long time.”
“I’m gonna kill that bastard.”
“We don’t know it was him, but it’s a good guess given what he tried to do. When the fuck did this happen? How did this happen?” He lowers his voice and twists his mouth into a sneer. I’ve never seen Saint so angry. “How far did he get?”
