A Bite at the Cherry: A High School Vampire Bully Romance (Blackburn Academy Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  The world slowly returned to focus as my bed shifted under me. As awareness returned, I realized that it wasn’t a mattress that moved, but a massive chest. I fought my eyes open and craned my neck to see that not only had I fallen asleep mid-studying, but I’d also managed to climb halfway onto Justin, who was still fast asleep.

  Heat flared in my cheeks as I noticed that I’d thrown my leg over his waist in my sleep too. That was freaking embarrassing. The guy was out cold, and my sleep-self had decided that it was a great time to climb on top of him. Bailey left the bed sometime in our nap, and I heard her chewing on her bone in the living room. The fact that we were alone without my dog made this situation all the more intimate.

  I began to crawl away when Justin’s hand reached up and wrapped around my waist. “Wait,” he whispered. “January.”

  I froze, suddenly fully awake and very aware of every inch of me that touched him.

  Carefully, he rolled us until he was on top of me. He put his hands to either side of my head and stared down at me, eyes still a little sleepy.

  I gave him a challenging look, completely knowing what he was up to. “You’re not going to distract me from studying, Justin Roberts.”

  He leaned in, his lips hovering just above mine. “Do you want to bet?”

  Damn. I shouldn’t kiss this boy. At least in part, his kiss would be an attempt to manipulate me. I wasn’t stupid. Our chemistry might be off the charts, but Justin and I could never make a functional relationship out of what we had. I wasn’t going to be his secret vampire . . . whatever. But, at this moment, while his lips hovered over mine, none of that mattered. I’d wanted this kiss, dreamed of this kiss, and fantasized about it against all of my better judgment. Why couldn’t we, just this once?

  I wrapped my legs around his waist and lifted my hands to his flushed cheeks. “I’m not agreeing to anything.”

  His mouth twisted. “If you were, I’d think someone body snatched you.”

  “You’re one to talk, Mr. Indecisive —” I cut off as his soft lips pressed into mine. The moment his lips touched me, it was like a switch flicked on in my brain. I sucked and licked and pushed up against his mouth. When his tongue plunged between my lips, I caressed it with mine. My whole body warmed as I savored his mouth. Thirst for blood had nothing on this. My hunger for Justin’s kiss was insatiable. I wanted to kiss him for a year now, and part of me had hoped that this would cure me of my longing. This was going to do the opposite.

  Even knowing that I needed to focus on studying, I didn’t whisper a word of complaint as he grabbed me and rolled me back on top of him. His hands went to the hem of my shirt, and I broke our kiss so he could pull it off of me.

  Immediately, I closed the distance and kissed him again. His hands caressed down my sides, trailing paths of tingling warmth, and I never wanted to stop kissing. But, of course, my phone alarm blared out. I ignored it through several beeps, then broke away and swiped the phone off the bed.

  I pressed snooze and threw the phone down.

  When I turned back, Justin’s golden eyes sparkled with mischief. His hands traced up my sides again. “Do you really want to go study now?”

  “No, but I’m going to.” I blew out a breath, reached up, and tied my blond hair into a knot on the top of my head. Putting my hands to either side of his head, I leaned down. “Justin, can I be honest and blunt with you?”

  “I thought we already only did honest and blunt with each other.”

  That was funny. I always considered him evasive and enigmatic.

  “I don’t know if you can tell . . .” I paused as nervousness flooded through me, “I don’t know if you can tell, Justin, but I have feelings for you. I have for a while. Please don’t use them against me because you don’t want me at your school.”

  A smile spread wide across his face, and his eyes heated as they met mine. “That’s not what’s happening here.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s not?”

  “Nope. Well, I’m not beyond hoping that you’ll forget about studying and stay here with me. But I wouldn’t kiss you purely for the purpose of distracting you.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “Kissing means something to me. Touching means something. So, when I kiss and touch you, it means something. It’s not a tool to bend you to my will.” His hands stretched up and went behind his head, and then his dark brows lifted. “You want to forget about studying and go for a drive?” He lifted his chin and arched his neck. His golden eyes smoldered when they met mine.

  I laughed, leaned in, and kissed his neck gently before climbing off. “I’m starting to think that you like it more than I do.” Crawling to the other side of the bed, I gathered the textbooks and stacked them to the side. “Can you pass me my shirt?”

  Justin grabbed my shirt and stuffed it under his back before giving me a challenging look. It kind of shocked me, because I’d never seen the guy be so outright playful. Teasing, yes. But he was acting almost silly. Silly was a word I’d have never associated with this boy in a thousand years, but I liked it.

  “I do have other shirts.” I crawled back toward him anyway. Giving him a quick kiss, I pulled it out from under him.

  “So, how about you describe this wealth of feelings you have for me?” Justin said as he continued to sprawl across my bed.

  Oh, no. It had taken enough out of me just to admit that I had feelings at all, and I still wasn’t sure that it had been the wise thing to do. I was not about to wax poetic for the guy.

  “Did I say wealth?” I asked as I pulled my shirt back on. “I don’t think I said anything about wealth.”

  From outside, I heard a muffled yell, “Justin!”

  A few other voices joined that one, calling for the boy who was still sprawled across my bed. The smile drained from his face as if someone literally pulled the plug out of his happiness. He rolled up out of my bed and wiped his hands down his face. “Fuck.”

  “You hate it?” I leaned against the wall, watching him. He didn’t need to answer for me to know that he absolutely detested the constant partying. When his face lifted from his hands, it was like a completely different Justin had materialized in my bedroom. This Justin wasn’t playful. This Justin didn’t smile unless it was a sneer. This Justin wasn’t welcome in my bedroom.

  “Probably best you go before my grandmother gets here,” I whispered.

  “Yeah.” That’s all he said, and then he walked out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I woke with a massive headache the next morning, and as Bailey and I jogged toward midtown, my every footfall shot pain into my temples. About halfway there, the only reason I was still moving was that Bailey began straight up walking me, and I wasn’t complaining. Zack and Lucas had drilled me on half of the calculus book, explaining math theorem until my eyes could no longer see straight and the librarian shooed us out the door.

  Laughter, music, and voices echoed from the party at the pool house when the Baldwin brothers had dropped me off, but, thankfully, I’d found my nana deeply asleep upstairs.

  Even in the late hours of the night, sleep had been hard to come by. What kept me awake hadn’t really been the party last night, even though it had continued to rage on until the early hours of the morning. What bothered me was the transformation that Justin had undergone from the sweet, sexy boy whose kisses I’d never wanted to end to the cold, cruel jerk I’d caught a glimpse of in the parking lot on the day I arrived.

  My guess was Justin had transformed into the asshole the Bad Boys Club nicknamed Satan.

  As we entered Midtown Park, Bailey and I slowed our jog to a walk as pain seared into my sides. Damn, I was out of shape. The day was still in the seventies, but my whole body felt like it was on fire as we headed through the park toward where Susie and Richard sat together. Susie sat on the top level of a picnic bench, leaning forward, deep in conversation with Richard. They huddled together, their attention locked on one another, so Bailey and I hung back. We headed to a dog a
nd human water fountain and drank our fill of lukewarm water before stopping at a nearby picnic table. I laid down on the bench, regaining my breath, as Bailey rolled around in the dirt beside me and nudged my hand with her muzzle until I started petting her.

  I owed the members of the Bad Boys Club dearly for this, whether or not I got into Blackburn. They might be doing it as a favor for Lucas, but this group was sacrificing a week of summer to help me out, and they didn’t even know me. For whatever reason, Lucas stuck his neck out for me after knowing me a day. It all felt unbelievable, and I really had to find the chance to pay them all back.

  The bench shifted, and I looked up to see Susie climbing on top of the table. The rising sun sent rays around the silhouette of her voluminous curly hair. “You look like an angel with the light behind you like that.”

  “Aw. I love angels. I actually have them all over my dorm room, and I bought huge feather wings for Halloween before deciding they were way too special to wear out, so I hung them over my bed.” Susie giggled, but her mirth dropped away, and she bit her lip. “Anyway, enough about me. Unfortunately, Richard had to go home. He’s too tired to help today.”

  “Is he okay? Does he need any help?” I peeked back, seeing that Richard had already wheeled over to a car parked in a handicapped space near the park. He pulled a cane from his trunk and stood from his wheelchair before folding it down. Then he maneuvered the chair into his trunk.

  “He doesn’t want help right now. I already offered. Richard also told me to give you his apologies for canceling,” Susie said, grabbing back my attention. “You okay with switching to the interview for the Character Trial?”

  I took a second to extend Bailey’s lead all the way out and wrap her leash around the bench seat. Then, I sat up and climbed onto the table across from Susie. “Sure. Is it like a job interview?”

  The rising sun made it hard to read Susie’s expression, but I could tell that she was wincing. “Not even close. First, you’re going to be hooked up to a lie detector, and second, they’re going to ask you hard and personal questions. Like, they could care less about your hopes and dreams. Trust me. They want to know if you’re going to cause any problems for them. It’ll be exasperating, too, because the rich kids at Blackburn aren’t held to this standard — just us — as Mia will tell you in length if you give her the chance. She wrote a research paper on it. So . . .” Susie rolled back her shoulders, “Do you want me to take you through the interview that they did with me? They’ll change it up, but you’ll have an idea of what’s coming.” She held up her hands. “Feel free not to answer. And please know that I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  Maybe it was because I was tired from the jog, but even though I didn’t know Susie, I automatically felt comfortable confiding in her, so I said, “Shoot.”

  “First, be sure to make a lot of eye contact with the testers. They’re going to be the ones to score you and a lot of that will be based on how trustworthy they feel that you are.” She cupped her hands around her eyes, and I did the same. We probably looked pretty ridiculous doing it, but we could see each other’s eyes past the glare.

  “Okay. First, they’ll ask you some non-threatening questions to put you at ease. What’s your name?” She waited long enough that I realized she was expecting me to answer.

  “January Renee Moore.”

  “What did you eat last night, January?” she asked.

  “Sausage. Sauerkraut. Two pieces of toast. An eighth-stick of butter.”

  “You don’t have to get that specific.” She grinned. “But, props to you for keeping such close track. All right. Have you ever committed a violent crime?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Have you ever witnessed a violent crime and not reported it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” Susie winced a little. “What happened, and how old were you?”

  “Um.” I worked my jaw back and forth. “I witnessed a lot of crimes. Our next-door neighbor was my mom’s friend most of the time, but they got into it once in a while. She also stabbed her husband with a barbeque fork and tried to run him over with her car once.”

  “Why didn’t you report it?” Susie asked.

  “Because . . .” I stumbled over my words. “Well, Irina and her husband got into it with each other, and hell would freeze over before they’d ever split up. Like they talked about it, every other word, but beware coming between them in any possible way. If I called the cops on Irina for stabbing Rudy with that fork, Rudy would have been showing up at our house, spitting fire on Irina’s behalf. Then, he’d have moved heaven and earth to get her out, and they’d end up with court bills they’d never be able to pay. Two weeks out, their relationship wouldn’t have changed. You can’t make other people’s decisions for them and calling the cops would just get one or the other of them arrested and not solve anything. Actually, my mom once called the cops when Rudy drove off drunk, and the police ended up coming over and arresting my mom. At the end of the day, people want you to care about them, but they want to continue living the way they’re living.”

  Susie nodded before biting her lip. “All right, January. Have you ever committed a crime?”

  “Yeah.”

  She gritted her teeth, and her voice was a bit strained when she asked, “How many?”

  Damn.

  “Well, technically, dumpster diving is illegal in Brightside according to city ordinance. So, maybe a couple of hundred times with that.”

  “How about shoplifting?”

  I calculated. “Maybe fifty to a hundred times. There was a year where one of the Wondermart employees let me take candy, juice boxes, bread, peanut butter, and one journal every week. Then, she got fired because she was always sick, and I got caught, and I confessed to all of it. Then, I found out the lady had been paying for it. They banned me for two years for that final shoplifting but didn’t press charges.”

  “How old were you?” she asked.

  “Thirteen.”

  Susie’s shoulders slumped, and she dropped her hands. The sun had already risen to the point where we didn’t need the shade, so I lowered mine, too.

  “I’m doing miserably, aren’t I? Like, worse than the obstacle course, huh?”

  “The problem isn’t you. After my mom died, my dad and I couch surfed with friends for five months until he could get a steady job. Even after five months, I get why you stole those journals and that candy. The problem is that the people who are going to judge your test are going to hear that you stole up to a hundred bags of candy and journals for a full year from Wondermart, and they’re going to think of that in terms of a thirteen-year-old who steals for the thrill of it. They’ll fit it into their kleptomaniac schema and move on. That’s why their kids steal, but they can erase that it ever happened with enough money.”

  “Does it count that I wouldn’t do it now?” I asked as I unscrewed the top of my water bottle. I wasn’t even thirsty, but my heart was sinking, and I wanted to do something with my hands. “I actually worked for the same Wondermart for two summers and Christmas seasons, and they said that I could come back any time.”

  “It might count. You should definitely tell them that.” Susie bit her lip again. “Have you ever lied or given a false statement to an officer of the law or any government official?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. The interview only went downhill from there. I could tell that Susie wanted to change the fact that I was bound to fail this trial, but she didn’t have that power. At the end of it all, she nodded and said, “If you want my advice, I’d say try to anticipate the assumptions that they’ll make and predict what they’ll want to hear. They’ll want to believe that you’ll make them proud. They want to believe that you’ll never embarrass them. They’ll want to feel like they’re benevolent and generous and you’ll be eternally grateful.” She gestured out. “They all go to “Les Misérables” and cry their eyes out. They want to root for a redemption story or a fairytale. Just make sure you never tell a lie wh
ile you’re doing it.”

  I nodded and finished off the last drops of my water bottle to avoid responding. She was right, but I’d never had a talent for telling people what they wanted to hear. After capping my bottle, I nodded and said, “I don’t know how I could ever thank you enough, Susie.”

  She scooted to the end of the bench, hopping down and brushing off her legs. “I can do this again with you before the interview if you want.”

  “You know what, you guys are already doing so much for me.” I untangled Bailey’s leash as she’d managed to wind it around the nearest oak tree twice before snuffling around the grass.

  I didn’t tell Susie that the real reason I didn’t want to accept any more work from her was that it looked like I was going to fail. But, as I called my dog back to me and prepared to leave, tears pricked at my eyes. I’d been wasting everyone’s time. Of course, the universe wasn’t going to hand me a one-hundred-thousand-dollar scholarship. What the fuck was I even thinking? Fate had once again put me in my place.

  She bit her lip and leaned in. “Okay, can I admit something to you, but you can’t say anything to anyone ever in your life?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh a little at that. “Yeah. No worries. I do not do the gossip thing.”

  She pinched her fingers together. “So, originally, I didn’t come out here to help you today. Actually, Richard told me that he was meeting you out here, and we kind of . . .” she paused before saying the rest in a rush, “arranged to meet up before you arrived. I pretended that I was just going for a run.”

  “I thought I saw you two have a moment at that first meeting,” I said.

  Her smile dropped off her face, and she suddenly looked worried. “Really? Was it obvious? Do you think everyone else saw?”

  “Whoa.” I held out my hands. “What did I say?”

  “Sorry.” She rubbed her forehead. Exhaling heavily, she said, “So, Zack and I went out for about two years and broke up four months ago. I broke up with him. Zack, Richard, and I are all best friends. Richard was my best friend first if that counts for anything. It probably doesn’t.”