Not My Prince: A Dark Bully High School Romance

by L V Chase

  Damn you, Cin. I slam my door shut extra hard, drawing a few looks. I sense someone approaching from behind.

  "Grayson. I've been looking for you."

  I glance over my shoulder. It's Aurora. "Not in the mood for your shit."

  "I heard you had a thing with one of the new girls," she says. "With Cin."

  I whirl around. Aurora has that smug smile she uses when she thinks she's won. I don't even know what the fuck she's so happy about. This has nothing to do with her.

  "I told you. I'm not in the mood." I brush past her, nearly knocking her over.

  Aurora stumbles out of my way, but I don't give her a second glance. She calls out to me, though.

  "I know what Cin wants!"

  I'm five steps past her. I stop. Aurora's always trying to make me play her games. This is another one of her games, although I don't know what her angle is. Maybe just to be annoying. God knows she's good at that.

  I don't turn around. "So? The fuck do I care?"

  I take half a step, but Aurora rushes forward and grabs me by the elbow. "I know what she really wants," she says. "Like deep inside, what keeps her going. Don't you want to know?"

  Aurora thinks she's a psychologist now. I'd laugh, but I can't stand her needy attitude. She's always trying to figure out what I want, trying to figure out how to get on my good side, like it's all a big game. Maybe it is a game, but she sure as hell doesn't know how to play, because all she does is come off as weak and desperate. The opposite of Cin, really. They both piss me off in their own ways.

  Maybe it's because Dad's made it clear that he doesn't give a damn about Aurora, so she's latching onto me as the next best thing. She's like a cat bringing dead birds to its owner. She's trying to do something, but she just ends up making a mess.

  Exactly like right now. Someone told her that I'm interested in Cin, which I'm not. It's insulting, that Aurora thinks I'm chasing some bitch off the streets. I decide to humor her, though.

  I turn around. "Alright. You know her deepest desire? Her secret dream?"

  "Yeah, I do." Aurora nods with a big smile, but the smile's not pretty. It's a bitchy smile, the type she makes when she's screwing someone over. That's when I realize it's about her, not me. I have no idea why, but Aurora wants to make Cin suffer. She probably thinks that telling me this will kill two birds with one stone. Get on my good side and end up fucking over Cin. This, I've got to hear.

  "Spit it out, then. Don't waste my time."

  "She wants to be famous as an artist. She wants people to recognize her art."

  Art? She’s got a scholarship, after all. Maybe that'll be useful, although I'm not sure how.

  Aurora standing an arm's length away from me, looking slightly upward like she's expecting a reward. I don't say anything, and her smug smile falters.

  I tilt my head to the side at a lazy angle. "That's it? That's your fucking deep, dark secret?"

  "I thought, I thought—"

  "Have you got anything else? Anything that's actually worth knowing?"

  Aurora's mouth opens and shuts once. "No—"

  "You know where she is now?"

  "She was in the dining hall before, but..." Aurora bites her lip. She looks down. "She left. I don't know where she went."

  "Fucking useless." I turn and leave without waiting for her reply.

  I'm heading towards math class, but I do a U-turn in the hallway, backtracking to head in a different direction. I wanted to get Cin out of my head before, but Aurora's made me curious. A girl like her? She's got to have something to hide. Something that I can use as leverage.

  The others, Eric—they'd be happy emptying their dicks inside a hole. Not me. I want to really get inside Cin, everywhere, make her squirm. I'd like that, watching her twist and writhe, face hot and flushed. Finding out what bothers her, then keep bothering her until she can't take it anymore. Make her really pay.

  I reach the glass-paned double doors that lead to the school library. A small bronze plaque above the entrance has the words "Gift of Henry McCulloch" engraved on it.

  The McCullochs. If Dad's network is the city's foundation, the final authority behind anyone in power, the McCullochs are the dirty shit-stained sewers that sprawl beneath it all. Henry McCulloch, the same one on the plaque, runs a group of trashy tabloids that's managed to pile up an impressive kill count of politicians and personalities its canceled. They've got dirt on everyone, even supposedly Dad, although Dad's hardly talks about them except to point out how filthy they are.

  They're sewer rats. Disgusting and impossible to root out, but dangerous enough to bring a city to its knees with a bad case of the plague. Henry McCulloch has a mixed past. Some military. Government. He's protected.

  I make my way through the carpeted floor to the front desk. A stick-thin girl with black-framed glasses in a black dress, only a couple years older than me, sits with her head buried in a paperback. She's got frizzy reddish hair tied up into a ponytail, and she's snacking on a bag of popcorn. When I get closer, I can make out a shirtless guy with his arms behind his head on the cover of her book.

  Who reads that shit?

  "Ally," I say.

  The librarian, Ally McCulloch, ignores me as she tosses another piece of popcorn into her mouth. She's something of a black sheep in her family, but she's still a McCulloch. If there's dirt on anyone at school, she's got it. She runs Peer Review, a gossip site that'll publish anything and everything.

  I walk up to her desk and push the photo frame, pile of books, pens, and other clutter out of the way. I sit on the side of the desk, facing her at an angle.

  "Ally," I repeat. "Need to talk."

  Ally doesn't react to me at all.

  I breathe in and out slowly to calm myself before I do something really stupid. Ally might look like a mousy little nothing, but she's the only one that even I don't dare piss of. At least not too much. Still, I won't just sit here and let her do whatever she wants.

  She reaches forward to turn the page, but I yank the book out of her hands.

  "Ally!"

  Ally looks at the closed book in my hands, annoyed. "Great, now I've lost my place. Just when things were heating up." She finally looks up at me. "What the hell, Grayson?"

  "I want info." I wave the book at her. "Give me what I want, and you can go back to your stories."

  Ally's eyes narrow. "Who's this about?"

  I hesitate. Even telling her that is saying something about me, giving her a little bit of gossip that she can trade away. But I don't care what some sniveling bitches talk about behind my back.

  "Cin. One of the scholarship girls."

  "You mean Cinnamon Reeves." Ally leans back in her chair and crosses the pale legs sticking out from under her dress.

  "Yeah."

  "And what's in it for me?"

  "My undying love." I let my eyes wander down and back up her skinny frame, lingering on her slim thighs, before meeting her eyes again.

  Ally smirks. "I can tell when you're lying. It's my superpower."

  It's true, like everything else she says. She's got a nose for who's lying and who's not. She never lies herself, which is why her word could bring almost anyone down. Almost, because if it came to downright war between us and the McCullochs, I know we'd win.

  "Then, tell me if I'm lying when I say we can do this the hard way, or the really fucking hard way."

  I scoot over, pushing more clutter out of the way, so that I'm sitting in the middle of the desk facing her, my legs on either side of her. I pull her chair close to me so that her face is less than foot from my crotch.

  Ally raises an eyebrow, then pushes her chair backwards. "You're not lying, but you're not that stupid, either."

  "See, that's what I like about you. You know how to keep things respectful even when you're being a bitch."

  Ally frowns and crosses her arms. "I really don't see myself helping you now."

  It doesn't matter if I rile her up. I've got what she wants. I've got what eve
ryone wants. She can't say no, just like the others.

  "Aurora. I'll tell you all about Aurora."

  Her face perks up instantly, the frown replaced with a small smile. She leans forward, her arms on the sides of her chairs now.

  "Aurora? Really? You'd sell out your own sister?" But Ally already knows the answer to that.

  "My half-sister." I beckon for her to come closer.

  She slides her chair forward. Her head is nestled between my thighs, just like earlier. Except this time, she's licking her lips. I lean over and whisper in her ear what only me and Dad know so far.

  When I'm done talking, Ally pulls away with a bright smile. "So, you want to know about Cinnamon."

  "Cin."

  "Right." Ally closes her eyes briefly, then opens them again. "She likes art."

  I hold my breath, trusting her to be more useful than Aurora.

  Ally continues. "She spends a lot of time in the art room during lunch with one of the other art kids. Jay Winters."

  The name's vaguely familiar. He's a loner, a nobody. I haven't spoken a single word before with him, barely crossed his path. It's something, though. If she's thinks this Jay is her friends...no, she's not allowed to have friends. She brought this on herself.

  I nod to Ally, part approval, part challenge. This is better than what Aurora gave me, but it's nothing worth what I traded. "What else?"

  "Oh, not much." Ally tosses her hair, then looks to the side as she twirls her ponytail around her finger.

  I'm losing my patience. I lean forward, my face growing colder. Ally's not stubborn like Cin. Ally's senses the change and immediately starts talking again.

  "Your Cin ran away from home once. Her mom got into a nasty accident—drunk driving, I believe. Nearly died." Ally's smiling.

  It takes me a second to realize what Ally's trying to say. "Her mom almost died because of her?"

  Ally shrugs. "Seems like it. I imagine there's a lot of finger-pointing, a load of guilt. In any case, it's a sore point."

  Yeah, it was worth it, coming here. I look Ally in the eyes. She's enjoying this. She loves fucking over people, hoarding their secrets, trading them away one by one. I can see it in the way she comes alive, her words flowing a little faster, her voice pitched a little higher, her eyes wide and eager.

  It's power. She has power, and she damn well knows it. In some ways, we're not too different. I check her over again. I wonder what things would have been like if she wasn't a skinny nerd. I could respect someone like her. There's one thing she was wrong about, though.

  "She's not my Cin," I say.

  Ally blinks. "Oh?"

  "You said she's my Cin. She's not. She'll wish she was, though."

  "That's between you and her." Ally sticks out her hand. The deal's over, and her interest's fading. "My book?"

  "Sure." I've kept her book in my hand the whole time with one finger holding her place. I flip it back open and hand it over.

  Ally snatches the book from me and looks at the page, then back at me. "You saved my spot."

  I give her a mock bow, then hop off the desk. "You're welcome."

  Ally rubs her eyes with the back of her hand, then looks at me again as if she's seeing me for the first time. "You know, if you weren't all..." She waves her hand vaguely. "Who knows, right?"

  "Yeah, and if you weren't you."

  "Fuck you, Grayson."

  "Same to you."

  Ally laughs, then goes back to her book.

  I leave the library. When I check the time, there's still ten minutes left for lunch hour. On an impulse, I swing by the art room. The door's propped open, and when I stick my head inside, I spot a brunette with blonde-tinged hair sitting on a tall metal stool by a wooden work bench. Her back's to me, but I know that it's Cin. It has to be.

  Across from her, on the other side of the work bench, is a guy with somewhat long blond hair. He's dressed in a white long sleeve shirt with a black tee over it, black jeans, and black boots. One of those arts fuckers. It has to be Jay, the guy Ally mentioned.

  They haven't noticed me yet, so I wait for a few seconds in the doorway. The only sounds are a slight crunch as Cin bites into her sandwich. There's an empty blue plastic tray to Jay's side. It looks like he's done eating, and he just spends the entire time hugging his backpack, his chin rested on top, as he uses his phone. He has small white buds in his ears.

  I'm done watching. I walk into the room and help myself to a stool. I place it right next to Cin and take seat.

  Cin's eyes widen in shock at seeing me. She scowls and glares at me, but when I just grin without saying anything, she cautiously begins eating her sandwich. After a few bites, she starts eating faster, wolfing it down like I'm going to steal it.

  "Slow down, girl. I know you like it fast, but damn." I reach for her half-empty bottle of water. I unscrew the small white cap and offer it to her. "Here, drink."

  Jay's watching me with one eye, but when I glance at him, he turns his attention back to his phone.

  "Don't touch my stuff." Cin grabs the water out of my hand, violently, spilling a few drops onto the floor. She takes a quick gulp and places it to her far left, out of my reach. She puts her sandwich down on her tray before turning to me again.

  "What do you want, Grayson?"

  "Nothing," I say. "I'm just enjoying the quiet. Like you two were doing."

  "Well, it's not quiet anymore. Look, can you please leave us alone?" Cin clenches her hands into fists.

  "Why? This a private event?" I bang on the table so that Jay looks up. I point to my ears, and Jay pulls out his earbuds. "You and her on a date or something? Am I interrupting?"

  Jay glances over at Cin. "Nah, but she—"

  "You know, I heard something interesting about you." I'm facing Cin, making it clear that I don't give a damn what else Jay has to say. "Something about your mom."

  Cin doesn't even say anything. She stands up and starts cleaning up. I grab her by her right forearm. She jerks when I touch her.

  "You'll want to hear this." I say.

  "Let go of me," she says in a low voice, her best attempt at sounding intimidating. It's kind of cute, really.

  I raise both hands up. "Alright. But you sit here and listen." I tap her stool.

  "No, I'm not staying. I'm leaving." She gives Jay an apologetic shrug.

  I pick up the stool and slam it back onto floor, sending a loud metallic ringing throughout the room.

  "Don't fucking look at him! Sit your ass down."

  A flash of fear crosses her face. Then, she's scowling again. Cin sits down in the end, though.

  This isn't me, making a loud scene for no reason and brute forcing people into what I want. But something about that little look she gave Jay just now, the way she treats him nicely, made me furious.

  I calm myself. "Listen, I just want to tell you want I've heard. You know, so that you can get ahead of the rumors."

  "Rumors?" There's a hint of panic in Cin's voice. So, it's true, what Ally told me. Or maybe there's even more to find out.

  I check on Jay. His earbuds are still out, and while he's staring at his phones, his eyes are dead still. I've got his full attention. Good.

  "Yeah, the rumor that you ran away from your mom and broke her heart. She nearly killed herself driving drunk. All because of you." I shake my head. "Damn. What's that like? Almost killing your own mom?"

  Cin's face drains of color. She looks at Jay, who's staring at her openly now. He quickly looks back at his phone.

  "What..." Cin shakes her head. "Who told you that?"

  All the bluster's gone like that. Her voice trembles slightly, and she keeps looking back at Jay. It's painfully obvious that she doesn't want anyone else to know her little secret.

  Yeah, that mousy McCulloch’s for real. I don't say anything to Cin and let her stew a little longer.

  Cin finally turns to me, her eyes caught between anger and pain. "What do you want? Can you please just leave me alone?"

  Final
ly. We're making progress. I smile. "You know what I want."

  My eyes lock with hers. The fiery green eyes are gone. They're soft and fragile, pleading. There's something else there, too. I could be wrong, but there's confusion, or is it hunger? I had meant to give her a good eye-fucking, taking in her delicious body to make her feel like a cheap whore, but I can't break away from those vulnerable green eyes. It's the surprising softness that kills me.

  "What you want," Cin echoes.

  "Yeah, you know what I'm talking about."

  "And then you'll leave me alone?" The words rush out, like she's afraid they'll get stuck if she goes any slower.

  "Maybe. Depends. See, the next time I tell you to do something, you better do it. And no half-hearted faking. With enthusiasm."

  Neither of us says anything. We hold each other's gazes for another minute before Cin finally lowers her head.

  "Tell me what to do, then," Cin says in a quiet, wavering voice. "Let's get it over with."

  Is she trembling from nerves or excitement? I can't tell. This is going better than I had hoped, but my guts are twisting around inside me, and I don't know why. I wanted to make her pay, but something about this seems too easy. I need to stretch it out, make her sweat, keep this going.

  "Get it over with?" I reply.

  I reach forward to touch her chin lightly with my hand. She doesn't flinch away, so I lift her head up by the chin so that we’re looking right at each other.

  "No, Cin. We're just getting started." I laugh. "You just be ready the next time I tell you to do something.

  I let go of her and leave. I'm soon long gone from the art room, but I can't escape the memory of me holding her chin up, her gazing up at me. I'm winning, aren't I? So why can't I still get her out of my head?

  12

  Cin

  Ollie’s lecturing, but my mind is elsewhere, replaying my encounter with Grayson, then going back to memories of my mother’s crash, then looping back to Grayson, then back again.