Her Spite: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Forgotten Elites Book 2)

by Eden Beck

  Amongst other things I need to apologize for.

  “Your sister does not seem very happy,” Sterling remarks to Warren as the four of us sit around the lunch table together and try not to glance in Bridget’s general direction.

  Warren rolls his eyes. “My sister is never truly happy.”

  “Well he’s right,” Chase chimes in. “She definitely seems even more put-off than usual.”

  “That’s probably because of me,” I say. “I’ve been avoiding her, even in our room. I think she’s starting to suspect that something is up.”

  “And by something,” Warren says with a raised brow. “Do you mean that she knows you’re—uh, with the three of us?”

  “What does that even mean?” Sterling asks.

  For some reason, Sterling seems a bit more on edge about the fact that I have been getting close with each of them. I can see what Chase meant about preferring to share a room with Warren over Sterling. Sterling definitely doesn’t seem like the type that likes to share much.

  “How do you not know what that means?” Chase asks him.

  I’m the one to blush and glance away, even before Sterling does.

  This is the first time we’ve openly talked about it with all four of us together here. Aside from my single kiss with Chase and Sterling, Warren is the only one I’ve really made a habit of it with.

  But from the way Chase is looking at me now, and even the way Sterling’s shoulders hunch up from some invisible cold, I wonder if I’m not the only one wondering why that is as of late.

  I know I should be careful, guard myself and all that—but I can’t seem to do that lately. Not with these three.

  “Forget it,” Sterling says, shaking his head.

  Sterling seems more stressed than usual, and not just because of Bridget or me.

  “You know,” Warren teases, “if it bothers you that Aubrey is with Chase and me, you could always go be with my sister. You know how much she still has the hots for you.”

  Sterling stands up from the table abruptly. Everyone knows that Warren is just joking, but Sterling doesn’t seem to be taking it in jest today. He shoves his chair against the table and walks off. Bridget tries to smile sweetly at him as he walks by her table, but he just ignores her and keeps right on walking. Not even three seconds after he has left the lunchroom, I can see Bridget excuse herself from her friends at the table and follow him out.

  “It makes my skin crawl how she follows him around like a creepy stalker,” I say, with literal goosebumps on my skin.

  But it’s more than that. As much as I like Sterling, I don’t trust him.

  Not with girls. Not with me. And certainly not with the way each glance from him makes my heart skip just one too many beats.

  “Who, Bridget?” Warren asks as he slides his hand under the table to place it on my thigh, any worries vanishing as I become completely unable to focus on anything else.

  I like that.

  It takes a couple minutes of Warren staring at me for me to finally formulate actual words to come out of my mouth.

  “Yeah, your sister uses literally every chance she can get to try and cozy up to Sterling, even though he has made it painfully obvious to her that he isn’t interested,” I answer.

  “Please don’t tell me that you’re jealous,” Warren says with a sigh.

  “No, I’m not jealous of Bridget.” I slide my hand beneath the table too and wrap my fingers around his. “I just think it’s pathetic and annoying.”

  But come on, anyone with ears would know that’s a lie. I am jealous. Extremely jealous.

  “It is pathetic and annoying,” Warren agrees, and I know he’s not just talking about Bridget. “But trust me when I say that it’s easiest to just let my sister do what she’s going to do without trying to interfere. She hates interference.”

  “Obviously,” I say, remembering all the times last semester that Bridget made me suffer.

  “If you ask me,” Chase interjects. “It’s Sterling who is being the truly pathetic and annoying one here. I mean, he has two girls that are into him and yet somehow he still finds a way to be moody?”

  Chase’s remark might have been delivered a bit crassly, but the point is still there.

  Sterling is acting much more on-edge than normal. I guess he isn’t as comfortable with the fact that I kissed the other two guys too, not that his reaction is surprising to me.

  It’s understandable, I guess. I forget, sometimes, that Warren’s hold over the other two is only so much—at least when Sterling I concerned. I know in the end Warren will get what Warren wants, but that doesn’t mean Sterling won’t fight him every step of the way.

  It’s a thought that doesn’t exactly sit easy with me.

  I don’t want Sterling to fight. Not when he’s fighting whether or not he can be with me the way I’d like him to be.

  This was supposed to be easier. But like all things, it’s turning out to be more complicated than I’d hoped.

  Either way, there are only a few more days left until the gala. I need to focus on passing my exams so that I can get the hell out of here and into a real college instead of this stupid reform school.

  And away from them; from Warren, from Chase, from Sterling.

  It’s a thought that makes my drive to get out of Ridgecrest dwindle just a little bit each passing day … until I remember they’re going to the gala too.

  They’ll get out of here early if they can, so why shouldn’t … wouldn’t I do the same?

  But even though I have these very important things to work out—or maybe especially because I have so much on my mind—I want to make sure that I have time with each of the boys alone. It’s when we’re alone that I can get a little more intimate with each of them. I need to sort out my feelings for them, and what better way to do that than some incognito make out sessions.

  I mean, better to kill two birds with one stone, am I right?

  Chapter Eighteen

  “God, can we just stay in here and do this all day long?” Sterling asks when he pulls his lips just far enough from mine to be able to talk.

  We’re inside one of the empty classrooms that doesn’t get used anymore. I think it’s essentially just a storage room for old textbooks at this point. Being one of the smaller rooms there aren’t any windows, and the coolest part about it is that you can lock the door from inside which has made it the perfect place to sneak away for a couple of hours.

  There’s something about Sterling that makes me feel so inexplicably, irrevocably alive. I know it’s probably because he’s like the male version of the manic pixie dream girl—someone who I know could at any moment just flit out of my life and leave me forever changed.

  Because try as I might to keep my distance from him, that’s a bit hard to do when his lips are pressed to mine.

  “Remind me how you knew this place existed?” I ask, if for no other reason than to force my mind to clear a little bit.

  I can feel my eyebrow lifting in curiosity as I genuinely wonder how Sterling just happened to know the location of an abandoned classroom on campus that you can lock from inside. It doesn’t really seem like the kind of place that you would know about without having been here before, and I can’t think of any other reason why you would be in a room like this unless you were trying to hide something … or from someone.

  “If you tell me that you brought Bridget in her to make out before, I am going to completely gag,” I say with a small frown even thinking about it.

  “No,” he chuckles. “I have never brought Bridget here. In fact, she and I have never made out before. Not really. Not in the way that counts.”

  “Really?” I guess I am more surprised by that than I expected to be. “She acts like you two used to have something between you.”

  Something like an unplanned pregnancy.

  “Nope, nothing. Unless you count her infatuation with me that seems to know no bounds.”

  I lean into him and press a bit further. It’s we
ird that it bothers me to think about him and Bridget together. It’s not like we’re even officially dating or anything. Not with the pressure of the gala looming over all of us—well, all of us who were even invited.

  I never thought I’d be so worried about the prospect of getting out of here before. Especially not when the students who aren’t coming, students like my friends Alaska and Clark, would give anything to have a chance like this.

  A chance to get out of Ridgecrest and be allowed to move on from this place where someone is breathing down your neck at any given moment.

  “So, you don’t like her then?” I ask.

  There’s a playful glint in his eyes that lets me know he enjoys the thought that I might be jealous over him kissing another woman.

  “No,” he says with a smile. “Not even a little.”

  I want to stay in this room all day and do nothing but stay wrapped in his arms kissing him. Well, maybe a little more than just that, but we don’t get the chance to even do that for long before there’s a knock at the door which makes us both jump.

  “Who could that be?” I whisper. “There aren’t any classes in here.”

  At least, I’m pretty sure of that.

  Flashbacks of last term run through my head, and then further back, to the reason I ended up here at Ridgecrest in the first place. It feels like the lump rising in my throat is going to suffocate me.

  Or would, if Sterling’s hand didn’t come up to give me a gentle squeeze on the middle of my arm.

  “It’s going to be fine,” he hisses at me, levelling me with a stare that makes a blush rise in my cheeks. “If it was a janitor or school staff, they would have a key and just open it.”

  But that doesn’t necessarily make me feel any better.

  That means someone knows that we’re in here.

  “Come on guys,” Chase says in a low voice against the door. “I know you’re in there and you better come out now. Bridget is looking for Aubrey and she looks like she’s on a war path.”

  Chase. It’s just Chase.

  I don’t remember the last time relief flooded through me like this. “Next time,” I hiss back at Sterling, “we’re going to your room. Any more of this and I’m going to have a stroke from anxiety.”

  I sigh, rolling my eyes in annoyance over Bridget and start to slide out from Sterling’s arms, but he pulls me back into him.

  “Can’t you just ignore her?” he asks. “Can’t we just stay in here until our next classes start?”

  “Afraid not,” I say. “Have you forgotten that I have to share a room with her? If she’s mad enough that Chase came to find us, then that means I need to go see what she wants. Trust me when I say it will be ten times worse if I don’t.”

  “Ugh.” Sterling moans as he lets me go and straightens up beside me. “Bridget is a major pain in my ass.”

  I giggle and we both go to open the door.

  Fortunately, since Chase is on the other side of it, he can also serve as a look-out and tell us when the coast is clear. The three of us are able to slink right back into the normal, crowded flow of student traffic in the hallways as we walk together and chat casually like it’s just a normal commute to class.

  “There you are!” Bridget screeches from down one of the corridors. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Sterling and Chase both shoot me a look.

  Damn, she’s getting a bit too brazen. Maybe I need to up my game with her a bit.

  It would be a lot easier to sneak around if she was at least a little afraid of me again.

  The three of us all stop walking when she reaches us. Bridget stands in front of me with one hand on her hip and the other haphazardly holding her stack of books—most of which look like they haven’t even been cracked open yet.

  She looks every bit the part of pissed-off mean girl.

  She eyes Sterling from head to toe. Half of her looks like she is musing about how hot he looks today in his school uniform. The other half of her looks very miffed that he’s standing as close to me as he is. Sterling doesn’t even look at her, which infuriates her even more, and the smirk that is on Chase’s face certainly isn’t helping matters at all.

  “What is it, Bridget?” I ask.

  “You didn’t return my top,” she scowls at me.

  “What top?”

  “The burnt orange one that I let you borrow the other day. I need it and you never gave it back to me.”

  “Burnt orange?” Chase asks. “Did you light the shirt on fire or something?”

  “Ha ha,” Bridget says as she rolls her eyes dramatically at him. “You’re so funny, Chase. I suppose you’re trying to impress your new girlfriend, huh?”

  I can feel Sterling noticeably prickle next to me at Bridget’s insinuation that I am Chase’s girlfriend. Bridget notices it too, and her look changes to get even more upset.

  “God,” she says as she lifts her hand from her hip and waves it around in the air as if she is trying to swat a swarm of flies away. “I was kidding. As if anyone would ever want to date Aubrey.”

  She looks back over at Sterling and stares at him for a minute uncomfortably until he finally looks at her. Then she turns back to me and carries on about the shirt again.

  “Look, I didn’t borrow your shirt,” I say. “The only clothes I have been wearing are the ones that you gave me.”

  “Liar,” she says.

  Except that I’m not lying. Why would I need to steal her clothes when she already gave me a bigger wardrobe of designer clothes than I have ever owned in my entire life?

  I narrow my eyes at her and give her another, more careful once over. This is some kind of power play, but I don’t know why. Is she trying to tell me she’s not afraid anymore?

  It just serves to reinforce what I was thinking before.

  Time to start pushing back again.

  But not, it seems, before Bridget does a little of her own first.

  “Watch out boys,” she says as she pushes past us, knocking me on the shoulder as she goes. “She’ll steal your stuff if you’re not careful.”

  I shake my head and huff at her retreating figure.

  “She is so obnoxious,” I say under my breath after she leaves.

  “Don’t let her get to you,” Sterling says. “She feeds off the controversy and drama that she creates. Trust me when I say that ignoring her is always the best choice.”

  “I don’t know about that. It doesn’t seem to go over too well when you ignore her.”

  Sterling shrugs. “What else am I supposed to do?”

  I don’t have anything to tell him, because I keep asking myself the same question.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Love is such a strange concept.

  When you think about it, it’s so closely related to other really strong emotions like fear, and hate, and maybe even the idea of survival. I wonder if the guys were ever put into a position where they had to choose just one, whether they would choose love or something else entirely.

  I wonder which one I would choose.

  I also wonder if any of us really knows what love is. Normally I don’t really think about stuff like this so deeply, but it still truly perplexes me how quickly I went from hating Sterling, Chase, and Warren—to not. All of a sudden, I now find myself thinking about all three of them constantly and wanting to be with them all the time.

  And I think that maybe the strangest part about all of it, is how I see them as being completely different people than I initially thought that they were.

  Well, maybe not all of them. Warren is still an asshole.

  He’s just … also more than that.

  Last semester, I would have staked my life on having the three guys all pegged as conceited, cruel, conniving jerks that were all too happy to bully anyone that inconvenienced them in even the smallest way. I thought that Chase was just some brainless jock that followed Warren and Sterling around like a puppy—despite the fact that I knew even then that he’s probably smarter than th
e rest of us combined.

  But now I know that he has a reason for being under Warren’s thumb, and that he actually works a lot harder at school and on his scholarship than I had ever thought to give him credit for.

  Sterling isn’t as cold or as much of a “bad boy” as I had thought him to be. He’s just trying his best to keep a wall around him to prevent him from getting hurt again—from what little I can only piece together of what he’s told me.

  And then there’s Warren. I thought he was the worst of the bunch—and he is, I suppose, still. He’s just a lot easier to handle when he isn’t working alongside his sister to make my life a personal hell.

  Last term it always seemed like he was trying to get out of doing his classwork or his volunteer shifts, and that he and his sister were always scheming something that was bound to be trouble. But it turns out that he was just simply trying to keep a family secret that was imposed on him and catch up with his schoolwork while working against a learning disability.

  Who wouldn’t lash out in his situation?

  I couldn’t have been more wrong when I misjudged them all.

  “This is nice,” Warren says as I lie in his arms in his dorm room. “Like really nice.”

  I smile in agreement. Lying in bed with him, kissing, and cuddling while the afternoon sun spills in through the dorm room window is very nice.

  With a little help from the other guys, we were able to sneak me into his shared dorm and pay off the resident advisor on the floor to make sure that no one came into his room. Again—it must be nice to have enough money to literally buy whatever and whomever you want. I imagine that Warren must feel a bit like a king sometimes, just being able to order people around.

  I also wonder if that feeling is worth it.

  I mean, at some point I would imagine that changes who you are a bit. My family may have always had some money, like we were never destitute, but I was never allowed to be in complete control of anything. My parents had kept what we had—including me—on a tight leash, making sure that they saw every expense I made and every dollar I earned.