I was going to be her first…
That thought alone was enough to send me over the edge, making me groan and burst. Cum spilled from my cock and all over my stomach, but I couldn't stop. I had so much more to give her. As rope after rope of cum landed on my skin, I finally calmed down enough to catch a breath.
I heaved a sigh before grabbing some tissues from the box by my bed. It took me a moment to compose myself, still breathing heavily from the orgasm that had rocked me to my very core. There was a knock on the door, and it made me scramble to finish. Pulling up my pants and hastily lying back down on the bed with a textbook, I then called out, "Come in."
The door opened, and my mother appeared in the doorframe, eyes filled with worry. "Am I interrupting?"
"No, it's fine." I pretended to mark the spot where I'd supposedly left off with my studying. "Anything you need my help with?"
"I just..." She left the sentence unfinished, and I looked up into her face where a worried expression marked her skin. "I just wanted to ask what happened to my vase?"
My heart started beating much too fast as I remembered Friday night and how Tinsley had broken my mom's vase. Of course, I couldn't tell her the truth. She'd freak out if she knew Tinsley had been in our house. I needed to keep that secret.
"Oh, I'm sorry." I winced. "I meant to tell you, I dropped it over the weekend. I meant to get you some flowers, but instead, I ruined the vase."
"It's okay," she muttered, hesitating before coming closer to the bed.
My heart strummed a heavy cadence in my chest, and I hoped she wouldn't notice what I'd just been doing. But she seemed oblivious to anything other than the stress that plagued her every thought.
"I'm worried about you," she muttered. "Going to school with that girl. It can't be good for you."
"Mom, I barely have any contact with her. We don't even talk." It was worrying how easily I could lie to her about it and what I was willing to do to keep Tinsley in my life.
"I just don't want her getting ideas." Her voice was heavy with emotion. "You're a handsome boy, Crispin. I saw the way she looked at you on set."
"Ideas about what?"
"About going out with you," she answered plainly. "It would kill me if you two…" She didn't need to finish the sentence. It was obvious what she was going to say.
"Well, you don't have to worry about that," I found myself saying. "It's not going to be a problem."
"How so?" Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Did something happen?"
"I—" Whatever I said next would change the course of my life, and not just that—my relationship with Tinsley depended on my next words. "I'm dating somebody."
"Oh," she said. "It’s not Tinsley, is it?"
"No." I forced the words from lips. "I'm dating Estella Hawthorne."
Chapter Eight
Tinsley
The news was all over the school. We had our new it couple. The whispers had spread all over campus before either of them had even stepped inside the building. By the time Estella and I met up for lunch, her cheeks were flushed with excitement, and I hated myself for the near-blinding jealousy I felt around her.
“He hasn’t officially asked me to be his girlfriend,” she confessed in the cafeteria, picking at her three bean salad. “So, I don’t know if it’s just a rumor. Maybe there is some truth to it, but I can’t know for sure until I talk to Crispin.” Letting go of the fork and allowing it clatter to the table, she twisted her hands in her lap. “God, why am I so nervous? I never get like this when it comes to boys.”
She wasn’t lying. Stells always kept a cool head around the opposite sex, and seeing her this worried about the outcome of her non-existent relationship with Crispin drove me insane. I wanted to scream at her. Slap her. I wanted to cry at the unfairness of it all. Instead, I kept my butt glued to the chair opposite her, listlessly eating from a bag of Lay’s chips that sure as hell was not part of my planned diet. Good luck losing those extra three pounds from Lindsay’s Home for Troubled Girls.
“I’m sure he’ll clear it up with you today,” Inca chirped, oblivious to the battle raging inside me as she looked at me for support.
I managed a meager smile, hating myself, hating my best friend, and most of all, hating the bully that had picked her over me. “He’ll be here any minute, Estella. He’ll come talk to you, right?”
“I hope so.” My best friend kept darting glances to the entrance into the cafeteria, a flush blooming on her cheeks when she didn’t find Crispin standing there. “God, it feels like he’s freaking making this hard on me on purpose.”
Ya think? I swallowed my reply, gnawing on my thumb while we waited for the inevitable. And ten excruciating minutes later, there he was, standing in the front of the cafeteria flanked by the Earnshaw boys, eyes searching the crowd until they settled on mine.
I waited, my heart pounding in my chest, to see whether he’d acknowledge me. His pained gaze bore into mine, and I felt so much for him then I thought it would all come out of me like a freaking alien bursting through my chest. God damn it, if he didn’t admit there was something here, he was crazy. The tension was fucking killing me.
Crispin’s eyes moved from mine, the strain instantly dissipating as he looked at Estella. I watched them both, feeling my stomach tighten into knots as I they interacted. Jealousy twisted at my heart like a hand grabbed the muscle and squeezed so tightly I could barely breathe. Fuck this. Fuck him for ignoring whatever there was left between us. Fuck him for picking her.
Because I already knew, without a doubt, that it was going to happen. And it was going to freaking kill me to watch them together.
Crispin approached our table, never taking his eyes off Estella. And why would he? She looked like a freaking glossy magazine spread. I couldn’t compare to that. Never could, never would.
"Hey." His voice was easy, carefree as he slid onto the bench next to me. The Earnshaws stayed close by, the boy who'd pushed me a few days prior smirking at me. "Busy?"
"No," Estella chirped, clearing her throat to get rid of the squeak in her voice. "What's up, Crispin?"
"Just wanted to make this official." He grinned. He looked so devastatingly handsome that it tore me up. The jealousy was almost unbearable. “You know, I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors.”
“Rumors?” Stells’ voice was innocent, not betraying her true feelings. So that was how she was going to play it, huh? Innocent until proven guilty. “What about?”
Crispin laughed out loud, running his long fingers through the mop of his dark brown hair. “You want me to spell it out for you, Stells? I’m sure you can guess what I’m getting at.”
She smirked, waiting for him to continue. And the fact that she was pushing him to say all those things out loud only served to drive me wilder. I didn’t want to hear him say it. On an impulse, I got up, but when I tried to walk away, that boy Natan blocked my path.
“Going somewhere, pretty?” he asked, winking at me.
“Ugh, how about no,” I muttered in reply, motioning for him to get lost. “Come on, I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Sit down.” Crispin’s voice boomed through the space, rendering me speechless like I was a puppet, and he had all those strings in his hands.
I sat back down, keeping my gaze glued to the table. I couldn’t bear to look up as Crispin spoke up again. “Let’s not beat around the bush, Stells. I want to be with you. You wanna be my girl?”
“As in…” Estella encouraged him.
I wanted to hiss at her. Tear her fucking extensions out. I fought back the urge to start screaming and focused on the imperfection in the marble table instead of on the scream trying to fight its way out of my throat.
“You want to be boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“What is this, third grade?” Natan laughed out loud, nudging his brother, Milo, who had his nose stuck in a book. His brother waved his hand dismissively, using his finger to track the sentence he read. They were an odd pair. “Get this ove
r with, Dalton; we have other shit to do.”
“Yeah.” Crispin loosened the tie around his throat. I could feel him glancing at me, but I didn’t look up. Why the hell was he doing this in front of me? It was like he was trying to fucking hurt me. “So, what do you say, baby? Be mine?”
“Yes!” Estella clapped her hands together.
I closed my eyes as tightly as I possibly could, praying they wouldn’t kiss in front of me. I had no idea how I’d live through that, and I was thankful when Crispin got up, not acknowledging her excitement in the slightest.
“I’ll pick you up after school,” he told Estella.
My heart beat in time with his words, one beat for every one of those treacherous words, one beat for every stab of betrayal I felt right in my back.
“Take you someplace nice. Would you like that?”
“Very much,” Estella cooed.
“Good. I’ll see you then, baby. Come on, guys.”
God, how I hated that he called her that now.
Milo followed him, never looking up from his book. I used the moment to inspect him further. He was just as handsome—if not even more—than his jock brother. But while Natan was a jokester, a fucking prick, Milo seemed more like a sleeper agent. I had no doubt he could be just as vicious as his younger brother if he set his mind to it. While I stared, he closed his book and glanced at me, offering me a reassuring smile. What the fuck was that for? I didn’t need nerd boy’s pity.
The moment they left the cafeteria, the space exploded with whispers, and Estella could barely hold in her excitement. She hugged Inca, her feet hammering the floor with excitement while I sulked in the corner. I needed to get the hell out of here.
“Hey, congrats. I need to use the ladies’ room; I’ll talk to you tonight?” I said to Estella, but she was so preoccupied whispering to her cheerleader friends, she barely noticed.
She grinned at me and waved goodbye, and I picked up my tote bag and left the cafeteria, seething with unjustified anger and hating myself for being a bad friend.
Walking down the hallway, I chewed on my bottom lip, and my mind swam with too many feelings to count. Jealousy ate away at me, reminding me that I was most definitely not over Crispin Dalton. Just as I was about to admit defeat on my self-inflicted journey of getting over him, I slammed into another body.
"Fuck!"
Two strong hands came to rest on my forearms, firmly holding me in place, and I looked up at the boy I'd met at Crispin's party.
"Dollface," he said with a smirk. "Causing trouble?"
"You know it." I sighed. "Actually, trouble seems to follow me wherever I go."
"I don't doubt it. Hey, want to split a joint behind the bleachers in the back?"
I had to pick my jaw up from the floor to hiss, "Are you crazy? In a place like this? You'll get caught faster than you can say high-as-a-kite."
"High-as-a-kite," he said, digging in the pocket of his leather jacket and pulling out a thick joint.
My eyes widened at the sight of it, nervously scanning the hallway before looking back at him.
"See, nothing happened. Now are you coming or what?"
"It’s all part of the high school experience, huh?" I followed him down the hallway and out onto the football field behind the school. We found a quiet spot beneath the bleachers, and he lit up the joint, taking a long drag while I drank him in.
"Gonna have to charge you admission if you keep staring like that," Finn told me.
"Sorry. You just... you know. Really don't look like you belong here."
He gave me the once over, saying, "And you fit in so perfectly?"
"I didn't say that. Maybe that's why we're drawn together. Two misfits in a pod."
"Whatever you say, dollface." He passed me the joint, and I picked it up clumsily, holding it with two fingers. "You've never done this before, have you?"
"I so have." I took a long drag, filling my lungs with smoke and something so putrid I choked and coughed while trying not to die. "Jesus, that's... um, strong."
“I can teach you.”
“Like how?”
He took the joint away from me, dragged a long breath, and blew it in my face. Right away, I started gagging on the smoke.
“Amateur.” He took another drag. "So, what's got your panties in a bunch today, kid?"
"You're younger than me," I reminded him.
"So you've done your research."
"Just that you're a sophomore."
"Why do you care?"
I shifted my weight from one foot to another. "Just doing a background check. To the outside eye, you seem quite murder-y."
"Murder-y?" he laughed, blowing smoke in my face. "Behold the inventor of words."
"Behold," I nodded.
"So where's that smile gone?" he insisted. "Come on, dollface. Who else you gonna tell but me?"
I sighed; the guy had a point. "My best friend just started dating the boy I like."
"Ouch." He grimaced. "What are you going to do?"
"Nothing." I shrugged miserably. "What is there to do? All I can do is hate myself for not acting on it sooner when I still had the chance."
"You've got such a defeatist attitude, dollface."
"Defeatist? Try realistic. What would you do? Spend a lifetime lusting after him? Been there, done that."
He gave me a doubtful look, barely able to hide his smile as he told me, "You're what, seventeen?"
"Almost eighteen."
"That is not a lifetime."
"And sixteen is?"
"I'm wiser than you."
"I can tell," I snorted. "You're an old soul, Finn."
He flinched when I said his name, making me cock my head to the side and wonder why he hadn't liked it. I was about to ask about it, but he switched the topic almost instantly, as if he were trying to distract me from his own discomfort.
"So, I have an idea for you."
"What idea?"
"Well, let's say I've found myself in a very similar predicament to yours. Capisce?"
"You're in love with Crispin?" I gasped, clutching my proverbial pearls. "Are we going to be sister wives?"
"Tone down the sarcasm. But there is someone I like, and she's a bit off limits for me, just like Crispin is for you." Hearing him say it out loud like that stung and made me realize the chances of me actually ending up with Crispin were slim to none. Finn kept speaking while I pouted. "And you know what they say, there's nothing like a lil' ol' jealousy to get the other person's attention."
I narrowed my eyes at him, asking, "So what exactly are you proposing here?"
"I'm proposing a date." He grinned at me. He was definitely cute, if I were into the James Dean rebel-type.
"Between?"
"You and me, of course," he said as if it actually made sense. "Let me take you to a party, one where both my girl and your guy will be. We'll pretend we're dating, get them nice and jealous, fake a little kiss, cop a little feel, and bam, donezo."
"As if I'm going to let you feel me up in front of Crispin!"
"We'll see," he grinned wickedly, waggling his eyebrows.
"Well, it might work. I could be persuaded to do it. But only under one condition."
"What's that?"
I gave him a wicked smile of my own, sweetly saying, "I want to know who the girl is."
"No." He shook his head, his lips forming a thin line. "I'm not telling you."
"Why?"
"Because it's none of your business."
"Rude," I huffed. "I'm pretty sure it's Estella, anyway."
"Are you?"
"Totes."
"We'll see." We stared at each other until he finally stubbed out the joint. His eyes were glassy, and I hoped mine weren't as tell-tale as his. "So, find us a party to go to together. And make sure your whole little gang is there."
"Why is everyone into Estella?" I groaned. "What's so special about her?"
He gave me a meaningful look, making me groan out loud.
"Oka
y, fine, so she's perfect and beautiful with a hot body and loads of money. And she has a husky puppy."
"Aww!"
"Shut up," I muttered but gave him a smile nonetheless. "Fine, I'll find a party for us to go to. No funny business while we're there though, okay?"
He pulled his backpack higher on his shoulder, waving me off with his hand. "Anyone ever tell you what an old lady you are, Tinsley Sullivan?"
"Anyone ever call you a rebel without a cause?"
His mood shifted, and he muttered, "I do have a cause."
Okay, Mister Mysterious. I just nodded, watching him grab my phone from my pocket and type in his number.
"Call me to arrange it," he suggested. "And make sure everyone is there, and I mean everyone."
"Sir, yes, sir."
"Now I do like it when you call me that."
"Boy..." I rolled my eyes. "Bye!"
He stuck out his middle finger at me, and I repeated the gesture, but as I made my way to my next class, I found myself grinning from ear to ear. Maybe Finn's plan was exactly what we both needed. Maybe this was what would bring Crispin back, and make him choose me over Estella.
Except he’d already made his choice, hadn’t he?
I shut up the voice in my head, plastering a polite smile on my face for the teacher, and briskly finding my seat.
Chapter Nine
Tinsley
The bell rang. Another class, over. Thank fucking fuck.
I got up, putting my things away, when professor Fitzpatrick, a tall, lanky woman with grey hair and glasses, called out, "Miss Sullivan, will you please stay for a few minutes?"
I groaned inwardly but nodded to her without saying a word. I knew what this was about. Because this was my first real class, my first time at school, I'd had to take some tests to ensure my knowledge of every subject was up to par with the rest of the students. I'd excelled at everything but chemistry which Professor Fitzpatrick taught. I'd never quite understood the subject, but I'd managed to get by in my private sessions with a tutor. High school was a whole different ballgame though, and my knowledge of chemistry here was subpar compared to the other students. I put my things away and approached the teacher's desk. The whole time, I felt a pair of eyes burning me from behind. Crispin was in my class, too. I’d felt him staring at me throughout the lesson from his seat in the back.
Boys That Tease: A Bully Romance (Lords Of Wildwood Book 1) Page 11