The Replacement: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Thorns of Rosewood Book 1)

by Cassie James

  “Enough.”

  No one is more surprised than me as Jude steps forward from the crowd. He’s been watching this whole thing unfold with calculating eyes, so I brace myself for whatever blow he’s about to deliver. I don’t know why else he would have interrupted Chelsey, except to keep her from getting to do all his dirty work.

  His face is a raging storm as he takes two big steps forward to close the distance between us. I try—and definitely fail—to hide my flinch when he grabs me by the wrist. His eyebrows knit even further down, as if my reaction only pisses him off more. I’m bracing myself for pain, so I’m not at all prepared when he lopes a gentle arm around my shoulder and tugs me close to him.

  “Move,” he commands the crowd, dragging me forward and right into the thick of it.

  I catch sight of Tyler and Brennan as we pass them, both of them frowning at Jude as he carts me away to god knows where. It’s obvious that whatever’s going on, neither of them is in on it—but neither of them is stepping up on my behalf, either.

  Jude, though…

  He unceremoniously drags me into the school, through the school, and then back out again, this time into the front parking lot. I look around, a little panicked that we’re the only ones out here. What the hell is he planning to do to me that he doesn’t want an audience?

  I try to pull away from him, but he holds me tighter, grumbling words into my hair that I can’t hear. He sounds fucking livid, but nothing about his body language says his anger is aimed at me, which only adds to my confusion.

  “Get in,” he tells me suddenly, shoving me away from him.

  I bump his car hard enough I sort of bounce off it, wincing as I try to steady myself. It takes me a second to realize what he just said, and when I do, I gape at him. He’s staring at me blankly, genuinely waiting for me to get in his car. He must be crazy if he thinks I’m going to do that. I hold my ground, staring back and hoping against all reason that he’ll get bored and just leave me the fuck alone. I don’t want to walk into whatever trap he’s trying to set for me.

  “Get in the fucking car, Piper,” he growls.

  I want to argue. I’m ready to say almost anything to get out of being alone in the car with him. But then I think—really think—about what he just did. He pulled me out of the eye of the storm. He could have left me back there to fend for myself, the way the others did, but instead he played the hero. Not at all a natural role for him.

  But that’s actually not the biggest revelation here. No, it’s that he just called me Piper. Not 2.0. Not Silicunt. Not Robocunt. Not it or that thing. Just Piper.

  I get in the fucking car.

  He doesn’t talk to me and he doesn’t try to touch me. I wrap my arms around my middle, that familiar habit of mine, and lean against the glass of the passenger side window as the streets blur into one another. Before I know it, he’s pulling into my driveway. I glance over at him, but he’s studiously ignoring me as he pumps the breaks and jerks the gearshift into park.

  “Get out.” He still doesn’t look at me.

  “But—”

  “Out.” His tone leaves no room for arguing, and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I open the door, pausing half in and half out of his car.

  For just one quick second, his eyes meet mine, and there’s a guilt in them that I never could have predicted. The sight of it nearly bowls me over. He’s not going to talk about it, I’m certain of that, so there’s not much I can say. I settle for a quiet, “thank you,” and get the hell out of there before he can change his mind and do something to fuck me over again, instead.

  It feels like the hounds of hell are nipping at my heels as I race into the house, praying silently that my parents’ long work days don’t end up cut short today for any reason. I need the peace and quiet of an empty house. And I need to be alone, because the only person I need to worry about comforting right now is me.

  26

  Piper

  Days go by while I don’t leave my room for anything. I ignore my phone like my life depends on it, and by Wednesday night, it’s finally dead. It lies discarded on the floor until after one trip around the room to stretch my legs, I give it a solid kick, sending it spinning across the floor and disappearing somewhere under the bed.

  Mom’s furious that I refuse to leave my room on Thanksgiving. Dad’s got my back, though, telling her there’s no point making me suffer through her tofurkey dinner when I’ve never cared much for it anyway. In all the months I’ve been here, it’s the first time I think he and I actually really get each other. Mom throws a fit, claiming that we’ve ganged up on her, but eventually lets it go and stops badgering us both about it.

  By Friday morning, though, she’s thoroughly fed up with my shit. I’m well into my seventh hour of binging Gossip Girl—seriously considering just packing it all up and hitchhiking to New York where no one needs to know I’m doing a really shitty job of replacing a dead girl—when she storms into my room.

  “We’re going to Malibu.”

  I don’t bother tearing my eyes away from the screen, too caught up in Chuck Bass to pay her any attention. That suave asshole reminds me so much of Jude that I almost can’t stand it, but damn if I can’t stop watching.

  Bright light floods the room and I don’t bother to hide the way I glare at Jackie as she stands arms-crossed in the doorway, having turned on the overhead light even though I clearly don’t want it on.

  “I’d rather not, thanks,” I tell her dismissively.

  “Quite frankly,” she starts, her nostrils flaring as she struggles to control her ragged breathing. I fight the urge to roll my eyes and instead roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling instead. “I don’t really give a damn what you want, Piper. I get a phone call that you’re missing from school in the middle of the day, you don’t answer your phone even though it’s the one rule we gave you, and then you lock yourself in your room for days. Not to mention you skipping our family holiday, which happened to be very important to me.”

  “It’s not like I need to eat,” I answer petulantly as I fold my hands on my stomach.

  Food tastes like sand in my mouth anymore, and as there are no actual benefits in the action for me, I decided to quit pretending. Jackie might not like it, but the time’s come for her to fully accept the daughter she has now. The one that she paid for. The plastic girl that can’t make friends. The Silicunt that let herself be used by three different guys in a matter of weeks.

  Maybe if I’m lucky, Jackie will just leave my ass in Malibu with Stan. After all, he doesn’t have any expectations for the kind of girl the new Piper Hawthorne is supposed to be. My eyes flutter closed at the thought, and I struggle around the lump in my throat. I’m so tired. Of pretending. Of crying. Of not being enough.

  “Have you forgotten our agreement that you’re not to argue with me?”

  I scoff. How could I ever? Halloween is a night that will forever be etched in memory. Life might not have been perfect before that party, but everything certainly went straight to shit after.

  “You may not be willing to talk to me Piper, and that’s fine.” Nothing about the way she says it actually makes it sound like it’s fine. “But you’re going to talk to someone. Seeing as Stan is probably the most familiar with your… inner workings, that’s where we’re going. So get up right now or I will drag you out of this bed myself.”

  Even though I’d rather wallow in bed for the rest of my life watching shitty, entitled teenagers on tv instead of real life, I pull myself from my bed and head toward my closet. “I’ll be down in ten minutes,” I say, not bothering to face her as I say it. Because despite everything, it guts me that I’ve failed her as badly as I have.

  The drive to Malibu is silent beyond the music playing softly in the car around us. My head rests against the window, staring at the landscape flashing by, because I can’t stand the look in Jackie’s eyes every time she looks at me. It’s like she’s disappointed in me, and it makes me wonder if she’s so
mehow gotten her hands on a copy of the e-mail Brennan sent out to the entire student body.

  I brush the possibility away as soon as I think it. There’s no way I’d ever hear the fucking end of it had Jackie read what Brennan shared with the world. She definitely wouldn’t have stopped to consider how the whole thing might affect me. She would have rushed straight to worrying that I’d betrayed the memory of her precious Piper.

  Stan is solemn when we show up at the house, Jackie shuffling me inside like she’s scared I’ll flee. “Piper.” He nods to me, the only greeting I get as he carefully watches the way I shy away from Jackie’s touch.

  Our trio moves toward the room where all of my upkeep has been done so far. I go to my spot on the bed out of habit, though I’m still not exactly sure why we’re here. Stan moves around the room, going through all the familiar motions of booting up his computer and dragging the stand on wheels closer to me.

  “Let’s see what’s going on, yeah?” he says once he’s got everything sorted.

  He touches the cord he usually attaches to the minuscule port that’s hidden in the hair at the nape of my neck, and my eyes shoot in Jackie’s direction. Stan is perceptive, noticing the glance and shifting in between the two of us.

  “Jackie,” he starts casually, “you didn’t tell me why you decided to bring Piper in earlier than we’d scheduled.”

  Her words and quick and harsh. “There’s something wrong with her.” I force back the gasp that tries to claw its way toward the surface. I know we haven’t been getting along, but to hear her be so callous is jarring, nonetheless.

  Stan purses his lips as he studies me. “How so?” he asks her without turning around. I can tell that he’s looking more closely now, trying to see what flaw she might be talking about. My stomach churns, knowing he won’t find any evidence of my shortcomings on the outside. The wrong she’s talking about is inside of me—the very essence of my being. She thinks there’s something wrong with me because I’m not her daughter.

  “She just up and disappears from school on Tuesday, and she’s been sulking in her room ever since. She refused to come down for Thanksgiving dinner, Stan!”

  “Well, she’s a teenager, Jackie.” I fight back a snort of laughter. It’s inappropriate, given the gravity of the situation, but it’s such a simple answer. She’s a teenager. He’s wrong and right all at once. I might have the emotional instability of a teenager, but I’m also so much more than that.

  The seriousness of the conversation hits me when he continues. “You asked me for your daughter, and that is what I’ve given you.”

  “That thing is not my daughter!” Jackie cries, her voice shrill and shaking. The sting I would have felt over those words if she’d said them weeks ago is long gone. Jackie and I finally seem to be on the same page.

  Stan draws himself up to his full height, looking for the first time like the founder of a Fortune 500 company that he is. He might only run R&D now, but he still looks every bit the CEO he once was. He looks like a force to be reckoned with next to Jackie with her wild eyes and death-grip on the chair she’s sitting in.

  “Jackie,” he says her name gently, despite his new stance. Like he still thinks he can reason with her, but I have some serious doubts that it’s even a possibility at this point.

  “This thing is not Piper. She abandoned her friends. She won’t go to the parties. We’ve only had her for a few months, and she’s dragging our family name through the mud. People talk, Stan. She’s slept with three boys—and everyone knows.” She says the last part like it’s the worst part. As if being a little slutty doesn’t matter so long as no one finds out. I guess I was wrong about her not knowing about Brennan’s email leak. “You promised me my daughter, but that is not what you’ve given me. This nervous, unsociable thing here is not my daughter, Stan.”

  “Now, Jackie,” Stan says, and if he’s shocked by what she’s said to him, you can’t hear it in his voice. “I told you from the beginning that she would need to relearn Piper’s behaviors, that the technology wasn’t perfect—”

  Jackie’s tone is ice cold as she says, “Reset her.”

  My heart ricochets painfully in my chest. I must have misheard her. There’s no way in hell she actually just told my creator to reset me like I’m nothing more than a desktop fucking computer. They can’t just do that. They can’t erase me and just get a do-over because she didn’t like the results the first time around.

  But something about the way Stan’s voice splutters around the word, “What?” makes me question everything all over again.

  “We have to start over,” she says vehemently, and my stomach is twisting, and I feel what I think might be nausea for the first time ever. “I have to be able to try again. You told us there was the option for a hard reboot in case something went wrong. Well, something is terribly wrong with your machine. She is not my daughter, and I want you to reset her, Stan.”

  “Jackie, what you’re asking me to do isn’t ethical.” He spares a glance in my direction, but the look in his eyes brings me no comfort. I wrap my arms around my middle, scooting back along the bed as if that slight bit of difference might be what saves me right now.

  “I don’t give a damn. You promised me my daughter and I want her!” Jackie’s face has gone downright murderous as she jumps to her feet, swinging wildly with her arms to punctuate her words.

  To his credit, Stan stands his ground. He doesn’t so much as flinch as her arms come within inches of hitting him. “She’s a sentient being. Her own person with free will and an increasingly strong command of her emotions. Resetting her at this point would be akin to killing her.”

  “Then kill her!” The words make me recoil, but she doesn’t even seem to notice anymore. “I will not settle for anything less than my daughter. And you’re going to give her to me.”

  “I understand this is a very sensitive situation, but I have to refuse. I can’t in good conscience do what you’re asking of me.” Stan shakes his head at her, still acting like she’s capable of seeing reason anymore. As if she isn’t already too far gone from reality to be reached.

  I’m a fucking failure. She would rather kill me than keep me.

  “Let me remind you, Stanley Hyde,” her tone is steel, and even from halfway across the room, the fury on her face causes me to flinch. “This little experiment of yours? Bad publicity this early on could easily kill the whole project. What do you think investors will say when I tell them this was all a colossal waste of their time? That you can’t do what you promised me—and them?”

  I see the exact moment Stan realizes he’s losing the battle, his whole body seeming to shrink in on itself. I’m plagued by immobilizing terror as he turns his head over his shoulder to stare at me. Our eyes lock for one long, uncomfortable moment, and I feel like everything’s tilting sideways when he starts to turn my way. Jackie’s words are already like a knife to my chest, but there’s something even more painful about seeing Stan consider what she’s asking.

  “Your experiment, your company, your reputation. Will you really put all of that at risk for one unruly set of gears and wires?” She gestures to me. Is it any fucking wonder that Piper grew up to be so cruel? Of all the names I’ve been called these last few months, an unruly set of gears and wires is by far the worst, made only more so because of the person saying them. The person meant to love and be bonded to me. The person I was literally made for. Her voice is final as she says, “I will not hesitate to ruin you. Do it. Now.”

  “Mom,” I say like a plea, my voice breaking as she jerks away to avoid looking at me. If I’d only realized that things had gotten quite this bad between us I could have done… something. I was only doing the best I could with what I’d been given. Why can’t she see that?

  Stan’s eyes stay on me as he reaches out for the familiar cable, the one that controls everything. That one that now controls whether I live or die. I suck in a shuddering gasp as I shake my head wildly from side to side, even as he stretches the
cable towards me.

  “Stan, please, please don’t do this. I’ll do better. I can be her Piper. I’ll try harder. I swear I’ll get it right. I’ve only just started living. Please don’t—”