The Living: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Thorns of Rosewood Book 3)

by Cassie James

  “I mean, if we’re summarizing,” I try to joke, but her glare sobers me immediately. “I started having doubts.”

  “About the guys?”

  “No,” I admit. “About me.”

  “Oh, Piper.” Her face fills with sympathy I don’t deserve.

  “Sometimes it’s so easy to forget that I’m not a real person.” She looks like she’s getting ready to protest, but I shake my head to stop her. I don’t need empty pleasantries right now. The truth is what it is. I go on to tell her all about the perfect storm of events that turned me so self-conscious in the first place. And all about how worried I was that I would only disappoint The Thorns in the long run.

  “Piper…” Her voice is soft, and she eyes me with a hint of pity that makes my stomach twist uncomfortably. Ugh. I don’t even want her pity. I want her to tell me I’m stupid like the guys did and then just fucking move on from this—put it behind us so I never have to remember how much I almost fucked myself over.

  “I know.” There’s nothing she can say right now that I don’t already know. “Jude, of all people, called me out on my bullshit and made me work it out with all of them. We’re good now. Really.”

  “At least now I know those asshats have their heads on straight, but… Piper, you have to realize that you’re more human than you’ve ever been, right?”

  “It doesn’t matter how human I seem to be, I’ll still never actually be one. And if I can’t make it through one fucking event without feeling like an outsider and a fake, how am I ever going to make it through life?”

  “Piper, you’re not hearing me,” she says as she shakes me a little. I push her hand away and sink against the back of the sofa. Why does no one ever think I know what I’m feeling? I learned emotions a long fucking time ago. “You can’t base the validity of your existence on the back of one freaking experience. You’re so much more than that. You’ve gone beyond learning how to be human, beyond leaning on the memories of a dead girl to lead you through your daily life. You are your own person, Piper—one that a lot of us really fucking love. You are so much more than an object that Stan Hyde created, more human than the dead girl they built you to replace. I hope you realize that someday soon because the rest of us already have.”

  My lips press into a thin line as I swallow around the painful lump building in my throat. Macie seems to realize the tenuous control that I have over my emotions in that moment, so she wraps me in a quick hug before jumping up and scurrying back toward the changing room. She disappears behind the curtain a second time, and I swipe angrily at the few tears that are spilling over my carefully constructed dam.

  I sniffle and wipe the tears away as her arm pops out from behind the curtain with a red dress hanging from her hands. “I picked this one out for you. You can try it on if you want, but I already know you’re going to want it—it’s going to look insane on you.” I don’t immediately get up, surprised as fuck that she’d actually been looking for anything for me this time around. She shakes it impatiently, and a watery laugh pushes through my lips at the realization that she’d probably picked it out for herself but felt bad for making me cry like a fucking baby out here.

  “Piper, come get the goddamn dress,” she commands, sounding so much like Jude that I think maybe I need to stop letting them spend so much time together at lunch. I laugh as I stand up and take the dress from her. The second I do, she pops her head out and fixes me with a serious stare. “Which one of the guys are you going with, anyway?”

  “All of them—why would you even ask?”

  “Do they know that?” I cock my head to the side as I consider the question. We hadn’t actually discussed prom plans, but I never seriously considered only going with one of them—and after everything, after all the shit we’ve waded through the past few months, surely they don’t think I’m going to choose between them.

  “It’ll be fine, Mace.”

  22

  Tyler

  I’m not sure how we always seem to end up back in the theater at Jude’s house, not when so much weird shit had gone down in this very room. But it’s Saturday night, we’re all gathered here again, and there’s a movie playing that none of us are really paying any attention to. Piper’s sitting off to the side, doing something on her phone that makes her laugh lightly. The sound is almost enough to distract me from the idiocy on display between Brennan and Jude, but only almost. There might not be anything in the world that actually manages to distract me from them when they’re like this.

  They’re arguing, and their voices are soft for maybe the first fucking time in history. Brennan glances toward Piper out of the corner of his eye, and I heave a deep sigh. After all this time, I really thought we were past all this, the weird should we and what ifs. But we’re here again, just a few feet away from our girl, trying—and failing—to hammer out the details for prom the same way we’ve been doing all week.

  “Okay, but what I’m saying is that we get dinner together—maybe see if Macie and her dude want to meet us at the restaurant. One of us picks her up for dinner, another drives her to prom, and the last drives her to the beach house. That way it’s fair, and we’re all getting equal time with her.”

  I don’t bother pointing out to Brennan that the drive to the beach house would easily be double to the drive to whatever restaurant we end up going to or even to Vibiana, where prom’s being held. He’s too caught up in his argument with Jude to see reason, so I sit back and let them argue it out.

  “Except it’s fucking stupid that we would all drive out to the beach house separately,” Jude argues. The same fucking argument he’s been making all week. “And then what do we do at prom, just pass her around the dance floor like some kind of prom date merry-go-round? Yeah, that’s not going to raise any eyebrows. Use your fucking brain, Brennan.”

  “So then tell me what you think we should do because I’m all out of ideas.” Brennan’s face darkens as Jude’s jaw ticks. I lean forward slightly in my recliner, ready to jump up if for whatever reason this bullshit comes to blows. The obvious answer is right in front of their faces, but they’re both so far in their own heads that neither of them can see it.

  “Why don’t we just all go together? We pick her up, we go to dinner, and we all ride out to Malibu. We do it as a group, and everyone’s happy,” I finally suggest what I’ve been thinking all week. Their heads both swivel in my direction. Brennan raises his eyebrows but shrugs, it doesn’t seem like a problem for him. Jude is another story. I don’t think he’s intentionally being an asshole, but you can honestly never fucking tell with him.

  “That’s not how things are done.” I can’t help but notice, though, Jude doesn’t sound quite as confident as he usually does. He stares at me like I’ve got two fucking heads or something.

  It’s not like Jude gives a damn about tradition, or at least he never has before. Hell, he was the first one to throw tradition out the window when he readily accepted the unusual relationship arrangement Piper wanted. Appearances, though? That does matter to him, more to him than the rest of us combined, even. We might be the elite of Rosewood, the rich kids of Los Angeles, but he’s the one that’s going to be high-profile the second he steps out of the protection of our prep school walls. If anyone has something to worry about, something that might actually fuck with their future, it’s an on-the-rise young actor.

  Goddamn him. I’ve been best friends with Jude practically our whole lives, so of course I want to be supportive and shit about all of his ambition. But I sure as hell don’t want that getting in the way of the rest of us living our lives. I know the last thing Piper is going to want is to be forced into picking one date between the three of us. If we try to give her that ultimatum, there’s a good chance she’ll bail out completely. Or worse, go mental on us again.

  I glance in Piper’s direction, but her eyes are still on her phone. I really think we need to figure this shit out before she’s forced to get involved.

  “Jude, is whatever concern
you’ve got really more important than Piper?” I think her head might be slightly more inclined in our direction than it was before, but I can’t be completely sure.

  “Fuck off, Hamilton. That’s not what this is and you know it.”

  He’s seething, but he’s the one right now that’s not seeing things clearly. I’m starting to think that he’s forgotten how much reputation means to him. How important it always was to him to be at the top of Rosewood’s social ladder. How he’s been planning our big senior prom after-party since we were freshman, knowing he’d never let anyone else take that honor away from him. Just because he’s gotten a little distracted by things with Piper doesn’t mean he’s not still that same person with the same kind of expectations. I need him to see that—and then I need him to give it up.

  “Is it not?” I lean back in my seat again, wanting to seem non-threatening because I’m really not up for things turning violent at this point.

  Jude leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees as he stares me down, eyes sliding from me to Brennan and then back again. If he expected agreement from Brennan, he doesn’t get it. Instead, Brennan fixes him with own hard stare before saying, “Man, I fucking get it. This is a weird situation, and it’s never been done before, but when the hell has that ever stopped us? Tyler’s right—we should just all go together.”

  “Jude, seriously, what good comes from making Piper choose?” I ask. He drops his head into his hands with a groan, and some of the tension I didn’t realize I’d been carrying in my shoulders magically dissipates. I never thought I’d see Alton second-guessing himself, and man is the sight fucking weird.

  “Are you guys done pretending I’m not here? Because I can hear every word, in case you didn’t notice.”

  I jerk around to see Piper pushing herself out of her seat and shoving her phone in her pocket, either finished with whatever it was that was distracting her from our stupid argument or just annoyed enough to finally say something to us about it. Brennan looks sheepish, which is about fucking right, and Jude’s shoulders tense before he glances up at her from between his fingers. She stops to stand in front of us, dropping her hands on her hips as she looks down at us. She’s not angry, but she’s definitely fucking annoyed.

  I’m on the verge of muttering an apology, of letting her know that this is fucking stupid and she never should have had to listen to it in the first place, but her eyes are on Jude, and my stomach fucking drops. Because what if I’m wrong, and she really does only want to go with one of us? Jackie definitely won’t be expecting all three of us to show up for her, and Piper’s been trying not to rock the boat. Is she about to tell us she only wants to go with Jude?

  She offers me a warm smile, like she can sense my self-doubt from where she’s standing over us, and my gut settles. It’s a stupid goddamn moment of a self-doubt, one that shouldn’t have even reared it ugly head to begin with. I know her better than that—old Piper might’ve gone to prom with Jude for appearances sake, but that’s not who’s standing in front of me. The girl that’s standing in front of me is her own person, a living, breathing iteration of everything the old Piper Hawthorne could never have hoped to be.

  “I want us to go together, just like Tyler said.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And I know to her, it probably is. It should’ve been to every single one of us, too. The entire foundation of our relationships with her has been based on the fact that she outright refused to choose any one of us over the other—there was literally no reason that any of us should have expected anything different out of something as simple as who was taking her to prom. Fucking yeah, all of us are. Duh

  Piper continues, “I know it’s probably not what other people will expect us to do, but since when have we ever worried about that? Because I happen to remember all of you coming down pretty hard on me when I was the one worrying about what other people thought.”

  We all sit in silence with that reminder for a moment. She’s absolutely fucking right. I look over at Jude just as he raises his head to look at her.

  “What about Jackie?” he asks. “Surely she’s not going to be all sunshine and rainbows if she finds out you’re going to prom with all three of us.”

  Piper purses her lips. “I could tell her we’re all just going as friends?”

  Brennan finally butts back into the conversation here, laughing wryly as he asks, “Do you really think that’s going to work with her, Pi? Maybe you should tell her you just didn’t get asked.”

  She scoffs. “How’s that any better? Do you think Jackie Hawthorne is really going to accept that her perfect, darling daughter didn’t get asked to prom? She’d fucking crucify me over that. No, there’s got to be something else we can do.”

  “Tyler can pick you up,” Jude suggest out of nowhere. Well there’s a fucking plot twist. He makes a sour face as he glares at the rest of us. “Stop looking at me like that. I had a moment, it’s over, move the fuck on, okay?” Piper brings her hand to her mouth, barely stifling a laugh, but she does somehow manage to hold it together when he shoots her another glare.

  He’s completely matter-of-fact as he continues, “We have to appease Jackie, otherwise we run the risk of her not wanting Piper to be out with us for the post-prom party and that is not a risk we’re going to take.” He’s fully taken back command per usual now, so I lean back and let him, now that I know we’re all back on the same page. “Tyler can pick you up and then everyone can meet here. If you want pictures or whatever, we can do them out back. We’ll ride to dinner together, we show up to prom and knock Rosewood on it’s ass, and then we leave early enough to get to Malibu to make sure everything’s ready in time.”

  “Sounds good to me. Does anyone have a problem with any of that?” Piper looks around but none of us says a fucking word, and the smile she gives us is absolutely brilliant. This was the right choice. And just like that, everything’s fine, and I’m left reeling over why in the hell there was ever any question about it in the first place. One thing is for sure, this thing between us and Piper only ever gets easier to navigate the more we work at it. That’s how I know it’s fucking worth it.

  23

  Piper

  Jackie’s somewhat bearable the first few days of the week leading up to prom, surprising me with how little she fights me over things like how I want to wear my hair or the pair of strappy red Jimmy Choos I choose to pair with my dress. It’s even disconcerting, but nice, when she tells me she thinks I made a good shoe choice.

  Unsurprisingly, it all comes to a head Saturday afternoon when I start actually getting ready for prom. She hovers, unwilling to accept my insistence that I don’t need a ride to my salon appointments. She puts her foot down about taking me anyway. She sits by my side the whole day, even getting her own manicure as she chats aimlessly to me about shit that I just don’t care about.

  I’m grateful, at least, that Macie was understanding, albeit super fucking annoyed, about crazy pants Jackie rearing her ugly head today. Mace ended up switching her own appointments around so we wouldn’t run into each other and set Jackie off.

  By the time we’re at the salon and my hair’s being pinned into an intricately braided chignon knotted behind my ear, she’s grating on my last fucking nerve. “Are you sure that’s how you want to wear your hair? Maybe something a little higher up on your head would look better.”

  I shoot her a glare through the mirror, fed up with her sudden opinion when a few days ago she’d agreed that the hairstyle was classy and elegant. I knew that was too good to be true. But it’s too fucking late now anyway—there has to be half a pack of bobby pins hidden in the mass of my hair, keeping it perfectly in place as the stylist twitters around us, thankfully ignoring my overbearing mother for now.

  I want to scream at her, to ask her what she’s even doing here. Piper Hawthorne is not the kind of girl who hangs out with her mother on prom day. Not the original, and not me, either.

  I bite back all the things I actua
lly want to say as the stylist gives me one final spray down with a medium hold hairspray. “Mom, it’s fine. We said this style would go with the style of my dress, remember?”

  “Of course I remember.” She turns her nose up at me as she eyes my hairstyle like it’s a fucking rattlesnake about to strike at her. “But I took a second look at your dress this morning and decided it would look much better put higher up.”

  “Mom, it’s too late for that, my hair’s done.” I gesture to my hair, even though she’s already looking right at it. “I don’t have time to get it redone. I still have to get my makeup done and get home in time to get dressed, and it’s already four. Tyler’s picking me up at six, I can’t be late.”

  A scowl crosses her face at the mention of Tyler’s name, but she lets it slide away quickly before turning on her heel and stomping toward the front of the salon. I heave an exhausted sigh and rub my temples as the stylist sneaks back over, peeking toward Jackie’s retreating form. God, yeah, I get it—I wish I could just walk away from her, too.

  We head home after my makeup is done. Jackie’s silent the entire drive, a pinched look on her thin-lipped face. I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve all this extra attention today, but I really wish she would cut it the fuck out. This is supposed to be a good day, and she’s ruining it.

  “Do you need help with your dress?” she asks as we pull into the drive. I shake my head hard. What I need is to get away from her, get ready as fast as fucking possible and see if I can convince Tyler to pick me up earlier than six. I can’t deal with this any longer—she’s stressing me out, and I’m losing my damn mind. She barely has the car in park in the garage before I’m throwing the door open. “I’ll be downstairs with Dad if you need anything.”