by Bella King
For a moment, I saw fear in her eyes too, but it was quickly replaced with a glassed over indifference to her own fate. Megan couldn’t stand to be anything but the leader of Palm Valley Academy. She wouldn’t be able to live down accusations of responsibility for Anna’s death, but now she didn’t have to.
Police officers came into the locker room seconds later, shouting so loudly that I couldn’t make out their words, and waving their guns around. I got to my knees, placing my hands on top of my head as I watched them put Molly in handcuffs after taking her gun.
It was all over. Megan would be dead, but I had no idea what would come of Bradly. Would he live through this? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I was safe, still conscious despite the poison I had ingested, and probably would be healthy enough to make Molly that dress for Prom. She deserved it after all this.
Chapter 29
Good things come to those who fight for them.
Bradly and I slipped through the sliver and gold beaded curtain that hung from the doorway as the music blared in the auditorium at Palm Valley Academy. Dancing was fun, but we had other things that we wanted to do.
I had always wanted to make love at school when nobody was around to see, but Bradly and I hadn’t gotten the chance until now. Molly was too distracted with her new boyfriend, Andrew, to care what we were up to, so we took our chance and left them to enjoy themselves while we did a little enjoying of our own.
I was really happy for Molly. She had grown more confident after Megan’s demise, strutting her stuff around the school with such confidence that she began to draw eyes from many of the jocks. She took her pick and was dancing with Andrew while wearing the perfect Prom dress that I had designed for her. It was delightful.
I had also managed to make myself one, something blue and white with tasteful silk ribbons thrown in as accents. Even Bradly, a football player whose life consisted of tackling people and fucking me roughly every chance he could get, though it was a tastefully done dress.
Many of the girls at Prom also liked it, complimenting me and asking where I got it. I walked away with a lot of phone numbers and requests to make them dresses too. It looked like my fashion business was already underway, and I hadn’t even graduated yet.
Bradly took my hand, leading me through the halls into the janitor’s closet where we had had a very important conversation months before. I remembered it well, but this time the mood was much lighter. There was no longer anything to worry about once Megan tragically took her own life.
I never wanted it to end that way. As guilty of a person as she was, I thought that justice should come in a more fitting way. Maybe a few years in prison would have straightened her out, but there would be none of that. She was gone now.
Jeffery, on the other hand, got a hefty sentence. It turned out that he was her lover, nearly ten years older and a total creep. I was glad to see him behind bars. Everything about that man creeped me out. I didn’t have any sympathy for him.
Bradly was a tough guy throughout the ordeal. He lived through the poisoning, spending a few days in the hospital until his symptoms cleared up. It’s hard to kill three hundred pounds of pure muscle. Men like Bradly were a special kind.
Once things had calmed down, I took the time to get to know Bradly as the school went into total meltdown mode. Nobody knew what to do with themselves, and rumors were flying all over about how I had killed Megan. As badass as that made me seem, it wasn’t the truth, and I was quick to dispel such rumors. Reputation is important, after all.
I had Bradly take me out on dates, spend the weekends up in the hills with me, and go fishing occasionally, so that we could get some time alone. It was all amazing, and I couldn’t have chosen a better man. Honestly, I always thought he was a total hunk, but now he was my hunk. I had to appreciate that.
Bradly was quick to ask me to the Prom. I didn’t have to convince him or even suggest it. After two weeks of dating he was jumping over himself to ask me, and of course I said yes. We wouldn’t be where we were now if I hadn’t.
“Shh, don’t make too much noise,” Bradly warned as he removed my dress and fondled my breasts.
Every touch of his hands sent the strongest chills through my body, reminding me of what he was capable of. The pleasure was going to be delightfully strong, and all I had to do was lean into his hot skin and enjoy the ride.
“I can’t help myself,” I said, moaning loudly as he pinched and pulled my erect nipples.
“I might have to cover your mouth then,” he said, a spark of deviousness dancing in his eye.
“You just go right ahead,” I replied, lifting up the hem of my dress and showing him that I had no panties underneath.
His eyes nearly popped out of his handsome head. He slipped a hand between my open legs and began massaging my clit immediately. I erupted into a series of moans and sighs of pleasure until he covered my mouth, muffling the rising noise so that nobody would catch us doing the dirty in the school janitor’s closet.
As he rubbed my clit, I looked him in his sparkling eyes, sinking into the pleasure and getting lost in his soul. He was the perfect man for me, and I think he knew that. Neither of us had been able to have this much fun with anyone else.
I reached up suddenly, pulling Bradly’s hand away from my mouth.
He backed off immediately, thinking he had done something wrong. He looked up at me with worry in his eyes, but I smiled at him, calming his fear.
“I just wanted to tell you something before we make love,” I said, starting to grow red in the face. I was awfully nervous about this, despite having rehearsed it a thousand times in my head.
“What is it?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.
I almost died inside from his cuteness. It eased my anxiety enough for me to tell him what I had wanted to say for so long.
“Bradly, I love you.” I waited for the words to hit him, observing his facial expression closely. I was so scared that it was too soon to admit it, but I couldn’t hold back any longer.
Bradly’s strong face broke out into the biggest smile I had ever seen from him, displaying his dazzling white teeth and the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. “Ava,” he said, placing a hand on my waist and pulling me back in. “I love you too.”
The End.
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More by Bella King
Edge of Hate: A Dark High School Bully Romance
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but it comes down to mail sorting or dropping out. The choice is on your shoulders,” my father said at the dinner table as he set my plate down in front of me.
I groaned. “I don’t want to work there. There has to be another option.”
He shook his head of salt and pepper hair, circling around to the other end of the table and sitting down across from me. “Nobody else is going to pay you enough to keep going to Granite Hills Academy.”
I clenched my teeth and picked at hardened skin where the sides of my fingernails met my fingers. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down.
My father tilted his head, his brown eyes taking on the same sympathetic shape as mine did when he spoke. “It won’t be forever, but I know you’re trying to get that scholarship. They just don’t pay me what they used to. You know how things have been.”
Damn right, I knew, and I hated my father’s employer for screwing him over. Instead of a promotion last year, he received a hefty pay cut. It wasn’t because they couldn’t pay him more or that he was a poor employee. It was because they chose to bring on a bunch of underqualified workers and load them full of tasks that were better suited for professionals. They started cutting salaries to afford the switch.
I was convinced that was a surefire way to tank a business, but my father didn’t have many options in this town. It was a wealthy place, but it was small. The community was tiny, and the job opportunities were tinier. You took what you could get, or
you left.
I regretted ever going to Granite Hills in the first place. My father had been so excited that he could finally send me to a better school, moving away from my hometown, where my mother had passed a few years before.
I had mixed feelings about leaving home, under the impression that we were leaving my mother behind, but she was already gone. My therapist had made it clear that we weren’t doing the wrong thing, and that it would help us heal, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. Those people are always telling you shit, but who have they lost? How would they know? I have trouble trusting anyone who hadn’t walked in my shoes, and my shoes were awfully rare.
Leaving the spirit of my mother behind helped my father. I could see it in his eyes, but that didn’t make it easier for me. I coped differently, and I felt lonely without her. I used to visit her grave after school every day, rain or shine, and sit there to tell her about my day. Now, I had nobody to tell. My father wasn’t exactly the best listener, and he also wasn’t a woman. There are some things that you can’t explain to a man.
You can’t tell a man about Atlas Montgomery, for example. Everyone thinks that Atlas is a charming young man with a bright future ahead of him playing football. He’s the team captain for the Granite Boulders, but I couldn’t give two fucks if he picked flowers after school and gave them to old ladies in the retirement home. He was a toxic person, and as two-faced as they come.
I had dealt with Atlas plenty of times in the past, but I never let him get the better of me. I took after my mother, always fighting hard and drawing hard lines in the sand that nobody dared cross. The problem was, Atlas enjoyed crossing lines. Fuck, he lived for it. Whenever he saw the opportunity to test his power, he took it. That’s how we crossed paths the first time.
When I first came to Granite Hills, I had high hopes that leaving everything behind and starting fresh would be the best thing I could do, but as I settled into my new life, I found that things weren’t as they seemed on the surface. Granite Hills wasn’t the nice wealthy neighborhood that it was depicted as, and the boys that went to the private academy weren’t the prim and proper young men they were supposed to be. They were snakes, and Atlas was the king cobra.
I took a bite of my food, barely tasting the well-seasoned vegetables that my father had prepared. He was a good cook, but I wasn’t in the mood for food tonight. I didn’t like to eat when I was upset, but I didn’t want my father to think his food was bad, so I shoveled it down to my knotted stomach’s dismay.
I swallowed and grabbed my cloth napkin from my lap, dabbing my pink lips with it and looking across the table. “I don’t have a problem with sorting mail. It’s Atlas I’m upset about.”
“Atlas?” my father asked, looking amused. “His father owns the business.”
“And he works there,” I said, my voice dry with resentment.
“That would make sense, yes,” he said, nodding along as though nothing were wrong with that.
“Dad, he’s a jerk,” I said, placing a flat palm on the table just a little too hard.
I received a frown from my father. “Be nice, Virginia. I’m sure you can get along with him. You probably won’t even see him.”
“I’m not the one that needs to get along. He is,” I said, poking a steamed carrot with my fork.
My father sighed. “You’re going to have to deal with it until you graduate. Work hard, get good grades, and you can go to Granite Hills University with no issue.”
“I’m getting that scholarship,” I said, popping a carrot into my mouth and rolling it around.
“That’s my girl,” my father responded, his tired face turning back to a smile.
Damn right, I was getting that scholarship and getting the hell out of this place. I didn’t work my ass off for the past three years only for some dickhead like Atlas to ruin things for me. I had a future ahead of me, and that couldn’t be changed by Atlas. He may have been cruel to me, but he wasn’t stronger than I was. He hadn’t been through the same pain I had been through. That shit changes you.
My father couldn’t understand why I had so much trouble with Atlas, but I didn’t expect him to. I had to suck it up and work at H & H so that I could make up the difference from my father’s pay cut and stay in school long enough to get a scholarship to pay for college. It was a tight game, but I played to win.
I scarfed down the remained of my food before my father was even halfway through with his.
“You must like that, huh? You want me to get you some more?” My father asked, perking up as I got out of my seat.
Cute, but I wasn’t actually hungry. “No, thank you,” I said, giving him a sympathetic look. “It was really good though.” At least I didn’t have to lie about that part.
My father smiled and nodded. “I know you like carrots.”
That was true. I probably only liked them because they were one of the sweeter vegetables you could get a hold of, and I was a total sugar nut. I didn’t like anything without a decent helping of sugar in it, and that included vegetables. I took my coffee with so much sugar that you would have thought it was syrup if you took a sip.
I was under the firm belief that my sugar consumption was the only thing that kept me from losing too much weight when my mother had died. I used it as a coping mechanism, getting a nice dopamine hit every time I overdid the sugar. I understood the science behind the addiction, but I didn’t have the strength to stop it right now. At least I didn’t cut myself anymore.
I smiled at my father one last time before heading up to my bedroom. It was an attempt to show him that I wasn’t that upset about having to work for the Montgomery family at H & H because I didn’t want him to blame himself. It was hard enough for him to admit that he couldn’t pay for my school on his own anymore. I wasn’t trying to put more pressure on him, so I sucked it up and kept the fumes inside.
CONTINUE READING HERE…
Hate Lover: A Dark High School Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked, nearly jumping out of my skin when I saw Apollo standing in the pristine white hallway of Winterlake Prep.
His thick arms were crossed, and a mean smirk marred his otherwise handsome face. He was older now than when I last saw him, around 19 years old and still as wicked as they came. His white cotton shirt was unbuttoned so low that I could see the littering of tattoos and symbols inked into his skin for eternity. His serpent green eyes danced in amusement at my surprise.
Apollo had been expelled from Winterlake last year under accusations of tampering with his grades to stay on the football team, but he, of course, denied any wrongdoing. He was never known to own up to his bad behavior, instead, letting evil things slip through the cracks of an otherwise morally sound mind.
Men like him walked the line between deplorable and irresistibly charming, with each side unable to exist without the other. Apollo was the perfect yin and yang, dancing gleefully on the thin line between good and evil. A little nudge would be all it took for him to fall off to either side, but he quite liked the middle. He thrived in grey areas.
Surprise didn’t even begin to cover how I felt upon seeing him standing in the school hallway. When you were expelled from Winterlake, there was no going back. You weren’t allowed on the grounds, much less in the damn building.
Apollo watched my face as my thoughts quickly brought me to the most unfortunate conclusion I could imagine. He was back.
“Did you miss me?” Apollo asked, uncrossing his arms and stepping forward.
I could smell the deep masculine cologne that he used, woody and dark. Somehow, it was relaxing and aggravating at the same time.
“I most certainly did not miss you,” I said, putting my hands on my wide hips. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Daddy has money,” Apollo answered, slowly moving the tip of his tongue over his lips.
“Your dad paid off the school to let you back?” I asked, shaking my head.
“I wasn’t talking
about my father. I was referring to myself,” he replied, raising his eyebrows a few times for effect.
“You’re disgusting,” I said, scrunching up my nose. “Did they really let you back in?” I asked, not fully believing that the school would be that sleazy as to accept bribes from a simple jock like Apollo.
“I’m standing right here,” he answered with his arms stretched wide. “Larger than life, sweetheart. I can do anything I want.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said, shooting daggers through my eyes. I tried to look threatening, but I doubted that it would work against him. Normally, guys backed down when I got feisty. Apollo? He fucking lived for it.
“Sweetheart? Are you not sweet?” Apollo asked, leaving his position against the locker and walking a circle around me. “I seem to remember you begging for my cock just weeks before I left.”
I took a deep breath, trying not to crack under pressure. “I was drunk,” I said through tightly clenched teeth. My shoulders came up defensively as he walked behind me.
“Off a single glass of wine?” He mused, shaking his head. “Come on, sweetheart. You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I told you not to call me that,” I said. “I’m not your sweetheart.”
Apollo finished his circle around me and stopped to stand inches away from my face. “Alright, Georgia. That still doesn’t explain why you were so desperate to have your pretty red lips wrapped around my throbbing cock, now does it?”
I could see the reflection of my face in his large pupils. I was pissed off, and he reveled in my anger. My copper hair hung straight to my shoulders, moving like silk, no frizz, no mess. That’s how I kept it, and no amount of harassment from Apollo would change that. I needed to remain cool.
I relaxed the cramped muscles in my face, pouting out my lips just enough to appear in control of my emotions again. Apollo played a hard game, but I was used to it by now. I hadn’t forgotten how to fight back just because he had been gone for a year.