Breaking the Bully

by Kane, Jessa

  Breaking the Bully

  Jessa Kane

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Allie

  I’ve always loved storms.

  The entire sky marbled in blacks and grays and fuchsia, streaking with white light. Storms remind us that no matter what is happening down on solid ground, Mother Nature could put a stop to it in a split second, if she chose. That scares some people, but it comforts me—the thought of the weather swiping her arm across the earth like a chessboard, knocking all the game pieces to the floor. Setting me free. Making it possible for me to run far away from this place.

  Tonight is a special storm.

  I lie out in the center of the field on the rippling grass, my fingers stretched up toward the sky, electricity dancing up and down my limbs. The white nightgown I’m wearing billows around me, making me visible from the house. Normally a risk, but I know my father is currently distracted by a work emergency. I couldn’t take the time to change into black clothing or I might have missed this moment. When the clouds snap and break overhead, showering the earth with bullets of rain.

  Moisture lands on my eyelids, cheeks and chin. My body.

  It rolls down my arms in rivulets and takes away the sting of digging fingertips, the rap of a wooden spoon, the snap of a leather belt. It renews me. And I stare up at the sky in wonder and gratitude, begging it to take me with her.

  “What are you doing?”

  The voice is so resonant, so deep and rasping, for a moment, I think God is talking to me from the clouds. But that can’t be. If God was talking to me, he wouldn’t be asking questions. He already knows the answers.

  Cautiously, I sit up and look around, pushing my short, brown hair out of my eyes. I peer through the darkness, the storm teeming around me. And when a bolt of lightning smears across the horizon, that’s when I see him.

  Moore Dunnegan.

  My breath catches and I cross my arms over my breasts, knowing the soaked material isn’t keeping me remotely modest. What is he doing here? At night, no less.

  I go to school with Moore. We’re both sophomores at Perryville High School. Although, I’ve always thought Moore Dunnegan is just an adult pretending to be sixteen. How in the world could we be the same age? He’s six foot two, perpetually needs to shave and has maturity, knowledge of life in his eyes that boys my age simply don’t possess. We have all six classes together and he sits through them like a statue, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. And sunglasses aren’t even allowed! But the teachers seem too apprehensive about asking Moore to remove them.

  It’s easy to see why.

  He’s intimidating.

  Tall, dark and angry.

  Handsome in a cold, carved-from- stone kind of way that makes the other girls nervous, makes them skitter away when he walks down the hallways.

  Not me, though. I’ve always loved storms.

  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve stared at him from behind my locker door, breath trapped in my lungs, wondering what he’s looking at behind his sunglasses. Which, for once, he isn’t wearing right now.

  And he’s looking straight at me with a fearsome scowl.

  “I said, what are you doing?” Moore stomps toward me through the field, gripping me by the elbow and pulling me to my feet. “This isn’t a safe place to be during a storm like this. Get inside.”

  “Inside is no safer.” Why would I say that? Why? My first time actually conversing with this boy and I tell him my deepest secret?

  His eyes narrow at me.

  Sensing he’s going to question my statement, I hurry to qualify it. “I mean, a storm like this could take the roof off a house, couldn’t it?”

  That loosens a little bit of the tension in his broad shoulders. “And yet…” He searches my face. “You don’t seem scared like you should be.”

  I get the sense we’re not only talking about the storm.

  Maybe it’s the fact that we’re standing in the volatile environment I love so much that makes me brave. Makes me look up into his stony face while wearing a soaked nightgown and speak to this mysterious boy. “I am a little scared of storms, but they’re so beautiful and wild, I can’t look away.” I lick some of the rain from my lips, noticing his eyes dip to catch the action. “What are you scared of?”

  His chest rises and plummets. “The way you stare at me in the halls.”

  Inwardly, I wince.

  He knows. He’s seen me.

  I haven’t been as discreet as I thought I was. “Oh,” I say, pressing palms to my heating cheeks. “I didn’t mean to…to…” I trail off when his words actually sink in, my hands dropping back to my sides. “Why does it scare you?”

  “Hell if I know,” he says on a rushed exhale, looking up at the sky, raindrops landing on his face and cascading down his corded neck. “Maybe…when you’re looking, it makes me want to…”

  “Break?” I whisper. “Like those thunderheads?”

  He looks back down at me, wrestling with something. Maybe a desire to come closer. But he does it anyway, his jaw flexing like it might snap. He lifts up a hand, brushing the very tip of his fingers down my cheekbone. “Yeah,” he rasps, rain wetting his lips. “Just…boom.”

  Thunder punctuates his statement—and I can’t breathe.

  I’ve always wanted to be drawn up into the storm. This is it. It’s happening. I’m caught in the electricity, its unruly nature. Moore’s black hair whips around his head, his golden brown eyes penetrating, snapping with something I’m only on the cusp of understanding. Is it…lust?

  “Yeah…” His fingers move down my jaw, traveling slowly over the hollow of my throat to tease the collar of my nightgown. “You scare me, all right. But I can’t seem to stop…wanting, either. Wanting you to look at me. Wanting you…period. It’s why I sit behind you in all your classes, Allie. You don’t know that?”

  My knees start to tremble.

  I’ve always wondered how we end up in the same classes every single semester. He’s arranged for it to happen? He…likes me? That much?

  Don’t act like it doesn’t go both ways.

  Don’t act like…

  As if I haven’t lain in this very field after school, when no one is at home, and touched myself in private places while thinking of Moore Dunnegan, my heels making trenches in the soft earth, my cries scattering the crows.

  I must be doing a terrible job of keeping that secret to myself because Moore’s breath begins to grow shallow. “Allie. Baby.” He drops his forehead to mine, his fingers flicking open the top two buttons of my nightgown. “Please,” he groans. “Let me.”

  My head is spinning. “Let you what?”

  “Have you. Finally.” Another two buttons slip free, his hand sliding inside to knead my bare breast, making me gasp. “Goddammit. It’s not safe out here or I’d lay you down right here in this field. But I need you safe.” His thumb strums my nipple, setting off an ache low in my belly. “I need to be on top of you, Allie. I need in.”

  Sex.

  Of course he’s talking about sex.

  People our age are having it. The pressure to join them is real and constant.

  But I don’t feel pressure right now. I only feel urgency.

  Want so deep that it churns like the heavens overhead. It has existed between us all along, hasn’t it? Not one-sided. A yearning pull between two people, orbiting each other in the earthly, incongruous setting of school.

  “I can’t bring you inside,” I whisper. “I can’t.”

  If you
think this field isn’t safe, I want to tell him, you have no idea what lurks inside the four walls of my big, expensive, perfect-seeming home.

  Moore opens his mouth to say something, but my name is shouted in the distance. From inside the house. With glittering eyes, Moore takes his hand out of my nightgown, covers my chest and steps back from me slightly, though it obviously pains him to do so. And a second later, the back door of my house opens, revealing my father, his wiry frame backlit by the interior.

  “Allie!”

  I start to tremble, the deep, invisible kind of trembling that grinds my back teeth together and unleashes nausea into my stomach. I try to speak, but I can’t.

  “Allie,” my father says again—and he’s closer this time. “What are you doing out here in this storm?” There’s a tight smile in his voice. Of course there is. We have company. He never reveals his monstrous nature in front of other people. “Did you come out here to retrieve the handyman?”

  I do a double take, noticing the strain forming around the corners of Moore’s mouth. “Handyman?”

  “Yes.” My father chuckles, coming forward to clap a hand down on Moore’s tense shoulder. “He’s here to repair a leak in the attic. Came highly recommended.”

  Moore can’t look at me now, his gaze cast over my shoulder. Hollow.

  A minute ago, we were equals. But my father’s words have called into focus one very important thing. With Moore’s hands on me, I’d forgotten that I’m very rich and he’s very poor. It just didn’t matter. To me, it still doesn’t. But the economic divide between us is broadening by the second. I’ve experienced this my whole life. People whispering when they pass me on the sidewalk in town. She lives in the big house on Perry Hill. They have no idea it’s a prison.

  “Why don’t you get to it?” My father suggests to Moore, his tone brittle. “Allie has to study. She’s going places, unlike some of us.”

  I throw my gaze down to the ground, humiliation burning up my spine. My father is an expert at belittling people and he’s just done it to Moore. Suggesting that, unlike me, he isn’t going places. That he’ll live on the poor side of town forever while I go off to a university. I want to say something to make it better, to defend Moore, but I know I’ll only be making it worse on myself later. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to offer Moore an apology. At school. I’ll talk to him then.

  “Yes, sir,” Moore responds stiffly, turning on a booted heel and stalking toward the house. Behind his back, my father reaches over and digs his thumb into my bicep until I double over, releasing a silent scream. He lets go a moment before Moore glances back over his shoulder, eyes hooded, and my expression is serene. Because I know better. I know better than to let anyone see the pain.

  As soon as we’re in the house, I run up the stairs to my room and lock the door, leaning back against it. Listening to Moore’s boots creak back and forth in the attic. More than anything, I want to go up there. Feel his hands on me again. Cherishing hands, instead of hateful ones. I ache for that. For him.

  But an hour later, Moore leaves and that’s when I face the reckoning.

  My father kicks in my door, splintering the lock, and I know it’s going to be worse than usual. “If I ever see you talking to that boy again, so help me God, I will strangle you unconscious.” His face is mottled red, spittle bursting from his lips. “I will whip you until you can’t stand up and then I’ll ruin him, too. I’ll make his life even harder in this town. You know I can do it. I can have him cast off that filthy land and no one will ever hire him again. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “No,” he sneers, mocking me. “Never look at him again. Do you hear me? My daughter does not associate with penniless dirt.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “See that you keep that promise. Or you’ll both pay the price.”

  And I pay a good deal of it that night, for those stolen hours under the storm.

  The next day at school, I don’t look at Moore in the hallway. I don’t pause in the doorway of our classes, absorbing the sight of him waiting in the desk behind me. I simply keep my head down and try not to show the bruises. On my body and my heart. I never could have predicted he would hate me for it.

  Chapter One

  Moore

  Two years later

  I walk past Allie in the hallway and slam my fist against the locker to her left, making her jump. I hate the way it makes me feel. Shame and frustration and resentment have been like acid inside of me, eroding my bones every second of the last two years. Ever since that night in the field when she tricked me into thinking she felt the same. Maybe she did. Until her father reminded her that I’m nothing but a poor handyman.

  Yeah, she remembered pretty quickly that she’s better than me.

  Better than everyone, the rich, stuck-up brat.

  What’s worse is that she fucking ruined me in those dreamlike moments in the field behind her house. She brought me to my knees. Made me reveal myself in ways I never imagined doing for anyone. And now? Now she’s left me lonely and sick to my stomach and fuck-starved for two years. Obsessed with her, unable to let her go and loathing her for it. Because she won’t even look at me anymore. I’m nothing but the dirt beneath her pink Mary Janes.

  Two years ago, I decided that if she was going to make my life hell by ignoring me after what we shared, then I could return the favor. So I do. I demand she acknowledge me by bullying her. That’s the only term for it. I’m her bully and I hate that—I fucking hate it—but so be it. It’s true what they say about misery loving company. Because I’m miserable without her and she’s coming with me.

  My jaw is thisclose to shattering as I watch Allie calmly collect the books from her locker and hurry toward our next class. On top of being a bully, I’m also a glutton for punishment, because I still maneuver us into having the same six classes every year. My aunt works in the front office and she feels bad for me, on account of my parents abandoning me when I was still in middle school, leaving me in the trailer alone. Not bad enough to invite me to live with her family, but bad enough that she slips me Allie’s schedule every semester so I can match it to mine.

  Before I follow her, I stop at her locker, sliding something in between the slatted opening, and continue on my way. When I walk into class behind her a moment later, I slow to a stop in the doorway at the sight of one of the basketball players kneeling down to speak with Allie where she sits at her desk. Coaxing a smile out of her. I don’t know the kid well, but he lives on the rich side of town. Close to Allie, although no one has as much money as her father. If this kid is asking her out, she’d probably say yes.

  If I let it get that far, which I won’t.

  I never do.

  She’s mine.

  Even if she never looks at me or speaks to me again, she’s mine.

  Even if I’ve been a horrible asshole to her for two years and she pales every time I pull into the parking lot on my motorcycle, she is mine.

  Feeling choked, I stride down the aisle toward my usual seat, directly behind Allie, and slam my textbook down onto the desk, shooting Allie’s shoulders up to her perfect, little ears. Startled, the basketball player looks up at me, backing away so quickly, he knocks into a desk across the aisle. “H-hey, Moore. What’s up?”

  He’s not the first to try and make a move on Allie.

  He knew this was coming, it’s there in his darting eyes. Yet he tried anyway.

  Because she’s worth the risk of an ass kicking. She’s worth a lifetime of them.

  “Do you have a class this period?” I ask him.

  The guy nods, adjusting the straps of his backpack. “Yeah…”

  My smile is murderous. “Well get the fuck to it, then.”

  He almost trips over himself to get out of the classroom and I resume my daily routine. Staring at the back of Allie’s head, tracing the curve of her shoulders, my cock getting hard over her expensive lavender scent. “So that’s what you like.�
� I say, leaning forward to speak an inch from the back of her neck. “You like them with spiffy crew cuts and letterman jackets. Prospects for college. A trust fund. Don’t you? A spoiled rich girl like you needs someone who can keep her in the lap of luxury. I bet you’d introduce him to daddy, wouldn’t you?”

  She doesn’t respond. She never does.

  Her eyes stay resolutely on the front of the class where the teacher has started writing today’s lesson outline on the board. My fingers dig into my palms, a trapped bellow creating pressure on the inside of my throat.

  Talk to me.

  Look at me.

  “Too bad, Allie. I’ll scare every single one of those limp dicks off. You’re going to sit alone in your house on prom night crying into your designer sheets like a baby. And I’m going to laugh.”

  The only sign that she hears me at all is the quickening rise and fall of her shoulders. Even that small display that I’ve upset her is agonizing, floods me with self-loathing, but I can never stop. She ripped out my fucking heart and I can’t deal with the consequences of that alone. I can’t let her go. I’ll never let her go.

  My hands shake with the need to settle on her shoulders, to stop the trembling I caused. From there, I’d slide my fingers up into the soft, brown hair that reaches the middle of her graceful neck. I don’t have a lot of money, most of the cash I earn as a handyman goes to food and renting my plot of land, but I’d give every last cent for her to turn and lock those aquamarine eyes on me, just one last time. Sometimes when I jerk off, all it takes is fantasizing about Allie looking at me, giving me her attention again, and I lose it. One stroke. Maybe two. Done.

  What the hell am I going to do when she’s in college next year?

  Even my aunt, the school guidance counselor, doesn’t know where Allie plans to attend. The uncertainty has me shaken. I need to know where she’ll be so I can start looking for work in the same town. If she thinks college is going to keep me away, she’s wrong. I won’t have the benefit of sitting behind her in class, but I’ll find ways in nonetheless. I have to. I can’t breathe without having her close. And I can’t breathe with her close. It’s a strange condition, this obsession, but she’s an addiction I’m never giving up.