by Logan Fox
Hateful Bully (Bad Bullies Book Two)
A Dark Step Brother Bully Romance
Logan Fox
Copyright © 2020 by Logan Fox
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Disclaimer
Please note that this book was previously published as Wicked Sins.
Hateful Lover is a full-length standalone romance novel. No cliffhanger. Angst, plenty of steam, and HEA guaranteed.
This book is for mature readers only as it contains scenes some may find triggering.
Bad Boy Lovers is a series of full-length standalone romances that can be read in any order.
Hateful Bully Playlist
What A Wonderful World ~ Soap&Skin
Easy ~ Son Lux
My Little Sin ~ Love, Ecstasy and Terror
Chapel Of Love ~ The Dixie Cups
Deep End ~ Ruelle
Body Rush ~ Karma Fields
Need to Change ~ Landon Tewers
Scary World ~ Night Club
Me & Maxine ~ King 810
Check out my Hateful Bully Playlist!
Prologue
Candy
“He’s looking this way,” my best friend, Haley, murmurs without appearing to take her eyes from her smartphone. Of course, with her thick, fake lashes, it’s easy enough for her to scan the lunchroom, and not a single student will be able to say she was looking at them. She makes an excellent spy.
“Just looking?”
“Yeah, but with that…smarmy fucking look on his face.”
“That’s his default setting.” I sit back in my seat and push away my plate. I love lunch—the food here is all fresh, and some of it I plucked from the gardens myself…but what little appetite I have is suddenly gone.
No, not suddenly.
I’ve known for the past week that Josiah Bale had something up his immaculately tailored sleeve…and that’s the kind of knowledge that makes a girl lose five pounds without really wanting to.
My gaze moves over the lunch room’s interior. Happy Mountain Youth Center—far-flung boarding school for rich, troubled kids—looks like the inside of a vacation spot. In fact, I suspect that’s exactly what it was before the new owners came along and transformed it into a prison. Most of the walls, floors, and ceilings are wood. Thick Aztec-patterned rugs absorb scuff marks from the ranch’s heavy furniture and the feet that drag reluctantly through each day.
“Going over to the dark side again?” Haley asks, nonchalant as she hunts idly through her salad with a fork.
“I never left.” I push away my own salad and lean forward in a rush, gripping my hands like I’m praying, and stare at Haley so hard that she actually looks up from her phone. “How am I supposed to survive this?”
Haley rolls her eyes. “You get on your knees and thank your lucky stars you aren’t in juvie.”
I snort and sit back. “At least I wouldn’t have to put up with him in juvie.”
She shrugs and goes back to one of probably twenty different conversations on three different social media platforms she’s having. Me? I struggle to type out a message on my damn phone. I couldn’t bear the thought of trying to have a conversation on one, never mind several. And social media? Count me out.
“He’s coming,” she announces quietly in a sing-song voice.
Panic squeezes my heart, which makes it start pounding in my chest. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Wish I was.” Haley presses something on her phone, blacking out the screen. She’s been here eleven months already, so her privileges extend to owning a phone, talking to anyone she wants to, and seeing her parents once a week. Sometimes, they even take her to go see a movie in town. If she wasn’t part of my Happy Mountain family, I wouldn’t even be able to talk to her. But the Center seems to think she’s having a good influence on me, so they were happy to buddy us up together.
In an instant, she’s on her feet. “I’m full anyway,” she says, popping an olive in her mouth as she grabs up her tray and shoves her phone into her school blazer. “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
The rest of our table of six glances up curiously, but the other girls know better than to stick their noses where they don’t belong. We get lunchtimes to ourselves except for a supervisor.
I scan the room. He doesn’t appear to be present.
So that’s why Josiah thought he could risk coming over to me.
He’s not even supposed to be looking in my direction, never mind speaking to me. Not that the rules have ever stopped him before.
When I first arrived at Happy Mountain Youth Center and was introduced to my new family, they assigned Hayley to give me a tour of the ranch. I’m not sure why, but she took a liking to me after that.
Could have been because I offered to pay her to look the other way so I could steal a horse and get the fuck out of Dodge.
Relief floods me as I abandon my tray and shoot to my feet.
I won’t lie—Josiah scares the living shit out of me. I do my best not to show it, but he’s been tormenting me for the entire two months we’ve been in this hellhole. There’s only so much bullying a girl can take before it all gets to be too much. Where I used to stand up to him, maybe even laugh off his funnier pranks, now I scatter the moment he looks like he’s come up with some new way to humiliate me.
Unlike Haley, I’ve never been blessed with chameleon eyes or the reflexes of a feline-ninja mutant. Instead of picking up my tray like a normal prehensile Homo sapien, I fumble it and send my half-eaten lunch to the floor. I’m still busy picking limp lettuce leaves from the rug when a pair of dress shoes enters my view.
Uniforms are one of the formalities this place insists on. Doesn’t matter that we’re practically living on a farm; we still have to dress up in full school gear every weekday.
I recognize those shoes. There’s only one person I know who can manage to make size thirteen shoes look hot. I peek up at my stepbrother.
Josiah watches me for a moment as if waiting for me to greet him. Instead, I scowl at him. Yes, I know I shouldn’t poke the fucking tiger, especially when he’s standing less than two feet away from me, but I hate the fact that I’d been on my knees in front of him like a commoner while he loomed over me like a goddamn king.
His black eyes narrow before his face turns to stone.
I can’t believe I used to think he was as handsome as his father.
“I like you down there, on your knees,” he says in his low rumble of a voice.
I scramble to my feet, but I’m not fast enough.
Josiah catches hold of my ponytail and wrenches back my head. I know everyone in the lunchroom is watching, but he couldn’t give a fuck about that. He seems to take some sick pleasure in humiliating me in public.
“Hey, let her go!” Haley yells, her voice moving closer.
“Two months,” Josiah says without blinking. “Two months of my life I’ve sacrificed for you.”
His cologne hits my nose, an intense musky scent
I always thought too sophisticated for him. With it arrives a slew of nightmarish memories I truly wish I could forget.
“Leave me alone,” I snap as I tear myself free.
If he hadn’t released my hair, I’d still be pressed up against him, but I like to think that I had something to do with my escape.
I’m halfway to the dining room exit when he yells out, “Pointless to run, darling. It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”
My already hot face catches fire. I’m tempted—only for a second—to turn back. I already know he’ll be punished for coming to talk to me—there’s no need for me to end up facing the corner for the rest of the day too.
I hurry for the exit like my life depends on it, and plead to any deities who happen to be watching over this shit-fest of a life that he doesn’t follow.
Perhaps someone’s on my side because I make it to the hallway unchallenged.
When I risk a peek over my shoulder, Josiah’s standing in the middle of the lunchroom, staring after me.
He could be a statue, but statues don’t have a capacity for hate. Then again, no one can hate like my stepbrother.
He’s got it down to a fine art.
Josiah
I stare at Candy’s whisking ponytail as she stalks from the lunchroom, the sensation of those silky strands still thrilling against my skin. Her BFF glares at me before they disappear into the hallway.
Fuck.
A hand claps over my shoulder. A normal person would have jolted, but I’d heard Sylvester coming. He walks like he holds a personal grudge against the floor.
I should know—I got my PH. D in grudges a while ago.
“Got something juicy planned for her, don’t ya?” Sylvester comes to stand next to me, crossing his arms over his chest and letting out a sigh. “I’m sure it’s fucking brilliant.”
I decline to answer. He’d be too disappointed if I told him the truth.
“Josiah.”
My eyes slide shut at the sound of Brian’s voice. He’s today’s lunch-time supervisor, but he’d left the room for a smoke break when I decided to speak to Candy. Some other kid must have gone running to tell him what just happened. Something that kid—whoever they are—will regret.
“Yes?” I ask, turning as Brian comes closer. He’s got ten years on me but looks twice that with his prematurely gray hair and sun-damaged skin. He was one of Happy Mountain’s earliest students, apparently. He did so well, he decided to stay. Now he’s our lodge’s den dad. His wife, Angela, is our den mother. We’re supposed to treat them like we would our parents, but I don’t think they quite understand the relationship I have with my father.
Brian’s nothing like him. That’s the only reason I show him a touch of respect.
“Sorry,” I say, not meaning it. “It won’t happen again.”
Brian purses his lips, his head tilting to the side. “We spoke about this,” he says quietly.
Sylvester moves away, and Brian’s hand comes to rest on my shoulder. “You know what I have to do, right?”
Briefly, I consider staring him down. He’d back off—he has before—but that would just land me in more shit. I nod at Brian, and he nods at me, squeezing my shoulder before releasing me. “Well, off you go.”
“I could use some study time—” I start.
“No can do, son.” Brian waves at one of the unoccupied corners in the lunchroom. “You know the rules.”
I’m surprised he can’t hear me grinding my teeth as I lurch away from him, grab a nearby chair, and drag it to the corner. I twist it around to face the wall and slump into it, crossing my arms and letting my mind wander as a stare at a knot in the wood.
Thankfully, lunch is almost over. But that means the air is wreathed with the combined smell of everyone’s lunch, the sweat that lingers on almost everyone this time of day out here where it’s close to a hundred by noon, and the faintest hint of horse shit floating in from the nearby stables.
What did I expect her to do? I’ve trained her to avoid me, to fear me. No mouse would pause long enough to see if the cat had reconsidered eating it.
Fuck, I miss Maple Ridge. I even miss football practice.
More than anything, I miss Emma.
I love her deeply, even when I resent her for having it so easy. I make sure to keep in contact with her, even now, here.
But our last conversation had been different. She’d been different. Maybe she was missing me. Maybe that massive house felt less like a home when I wasn’t there.
No, I’m imagining things again. Emma’s fine.
I should be concentrating on Candy.
That bitch is the reason I’m in this hell hole.
Candy took everything from me—my friends, my family, my budding football career.
I’ve never felt the need for revenge or vengeance till the day I met her. Now my thoughts are tinted red with rage. I make it my mission these days to turn her life into a living hell.
I won’t stop until she begs me for mercy.
And when that day comes, I won’t take her hand and help her up.
Not again.
Part One
Then
It’s impossible to have a proper sense of good and evil when the people you look up to most can’t even get it right.
Some people say we were lucky to lead the lives we did—we never went hungry; we always had a roof over our heads. Others, the ones who understand that survival is more than just a full belly and a dry bed, believe us when we say we were cursed.
Then you get the people who judge us. Who say morality is bred into the bone, and we both knew we’d be going to Hell.
That’s bullshit.
Good and evil don’t exist in a vacuum.
No one is born wicked. Immorality springs from the environment like spores. It doesn’t discriminate; it touches everyone.
In the right condition, those spores develop into mold. That mold spreads like cancer, and it’s just as difficult to eradicate.
Once it takes hold…sin contaminates everything.
Chapter One
Josiah
In a lull between conversation, the scrape of cutlery against crockery fills Bale Manor’s dining room. My new stepmother, Diana, cooked up a storm tonight—roast chicken, baked potatoes, and a Greek salad with Ciabatta in case anyone was still hungry.
“And you, munchkin?”
I look up at the sound of Diana’s voice. She sets her fork down, chewing as she turns her attention to my little sister. Emma’s head stays bowed—as it always does—but her movements become a little more erratic.
“Hmm, honey? Did you have a good day?”
Emma gives her a lopsided shrug. My sister’s eyes find mine but then dart away. She manages a slow nod and then makes a grab for one of the roast potatoes on her plate.
Diana grabs her wrist. “Use your fork,” she says.
I glare at my father, jaw bunching, but he’s watching the exchange like the proudest parent this side of the fucking equator.
Emma tries to pull her hand away, but my little sister’s never been a rebel like me. When one small tug doesn’t make Diana let go, Emma hangs her head even lower and tries to pick up her fork again.
“Why can’t you just let her eat?” I ask in a low voice. I grab my glass of wine and toss it down.
Father’s never been one to withhold things. He reckons, if we’re going to do it anyway, then we might as well do it as a family. He only lets us have one glass at the dinner table during the week, and on weekends, we get an extra beer after.
Candy thinks he’s God’s gift to bitches. At the moment, she’s fixated on Diana trying to coerce Emma into using a fork, watching the exchange under lowered lashes as she eats, but usually, her focus is reserved entirely for her new stepfather.
“So, Candace, are you up for a rematch?”
Yup, there it is. In an instant, Candy’s own mother could have burst into flame, and she wouldn’t have noticed—her big blue eyes are glued to my
father. Instead of answering immediately, she takes a hasty sip of her wine. Hers is red; she thinks it makes her seem more grown-up than she is.
That’s Candy’s thing.
I guess it’s because she’s petite, small-breasted, narrow-shouldered. From what I gather, she couldn’t be more than two years younger than me, but where I inherited my father’s tall, broad-shouldered build and dark hair, she takes after her mother. When mother and daughter are in the same room, it becomes obvious that Diana Furey isn’t a natural blond. Candy’s blue eyes pop against her dark hair, but Diana’s same baby blues look watery paired with her platinum-dyed blond hair.
That’s not the only thing Diana’s faking. Unless Candy’s still developing—which I doubt—Diana’s D cups were made in China.
My father seems blind to the fact that he’s dating a fake. Just as Candy’s apparently too stupid to realize that my father is an asshole.
Having sipped theatrically at her drink, Candy gives my father a nonchalant shrug. “I don’t know, Wayne,” she says, “Can you handle another beating?”
I’m grinding my teeth and shove a piece of dry chicken into my mouth, so at least I’m not wasting energy.
Someone’s looking at me.
I glance up. Emma’s peeking at me. I smile at her and then move my gaze to her plate. She widens her eyes at me and shakes her head a little.
No.
I look up, making it clear that I’m first staring at my father, then at Diana, before meeting Emma’s eyes again.
She takes after my real mom. Bonnie had fair hair, dark eyes, and the most infectious smile I’d ever seen.
No one’s looking.
Emma takes turns looking at everyone around the table, and then back at me. She bites her lip, ducks her head, and pops a potato into her mouth.