Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
More Bully Romances
STAY CONNECTED
Chapter 1
Before the accident
Adam was the Yin to my Yang. The strength to my weaknesses. The light to my darkness. If we weren’t siblings, we would have been lovers. It’s a weird thing to think, yes. But sometimes the truth is a bundle of discoveries that should never be thought or said out loud. Truths that should never be acted on. Truths only shared by one member of the duo.
My twin is more than just a sight to behold, he’s loving and kind, caring and…distant. He wasn’t always that way. At least not before he found his opposite. A girl with stringy hair and deep-set eyes. I’m woman enough to admit that she’s pretty enough, but enough doesn’t quite cut it in this family.
Anna is not the type of girl Adam deserves. She challenges him in ways a man should never be challenged. She questions his intentions. Plays hard to get.
She changes him.
Mother likes to think that it’s for the better – throwing around comments like ‘your grades have been great since Anna’s been around,’ and loosening the chokehold of protection she likes to have on us. She smiles at Anna the way she used to smile at me.
And father…when I look at father, I see Adam. Not the Adam of yesterday, but the Adam of right now. A man who married a woman who took and took and weakened him. I guess he has that in common with my brother. But I don’t think those kinds of things are genetic. They’re simply a product of circumstances. And right now, while the circumstances are what they are, I’ll be damned if I get left behind.
I’m not resentful of the shifts that have come into play. Truth be told, I’ve got my own little someone. A man who is rough around the edges. A man who knows what he wants and fights to get it. Someone worthy to be looked at. Someone worthy of love. Someone who doesn’t allow me to wrap him around my fingers the way Anna has wrapped Adam around hers. Life would be easy that way. God, it would be so much easier. But… if Damon was as pussy whipped as Adam pretends to be, it would be boring, too. Maybe that’s why Adam chose to love Anna – if you could really call it love. He knows he’s out of her league, that she’d never stray, never want more than the things he’s able to give her.
Maybe I’ve gotten this whole thing wrong. Maybe Adam is the controlling one, he’s just better at hiding it.
I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the thoughts that are swimming aimlessly through my mind. When I look over at Damon, I see that I’m not the only one plagued by the voices in my head.
“Penny for your thoughts,” I say, but he doesn’t hear me.
We’re sitting in the school’s courtyard, the sun pelting against us with an unmatched intensity. My legs are thrown over his, and our upper bodies are close enough that my words should never go unheard.
I lift my eyes to meet his and then follow his line of sight. He’s focused on something by the auditorium, or… someone by the auditorium. I track my eyes back to him and follow his focus once again, all without him noticing. I have a feeling that no matter how many times I do this, the focal point will remain the same. Though I can’t see the girl’s eyes from here, something in my gut tells me that it’s Damon’s eyes she’s focused on. There’s no other reason she’d be standing there like she’s stuck in time.
With my eyes still focused on her, I wave my hand in front of Damon’s face, prompting the little bimbo to lower her head and spin on her heel. It could be a coincidence. It really could. Except, I fucking know that it’s not.
Something in me sinks and I can feel the anger rising. I know better than to allow it to spill to the surface, though. God, I know better. Men stray, it’s just what they do. It’s not because she’s prettier or nicer or any of that. It’s just that she’s different, new, a mystery they’ll regret figuring out.
I plaster a practiced smile on my face and lean into Damon, pressing my lips against his and chewing softly on his lower lip despite the urge I have to bite the damn thing off and spit it down his throat, if only to teach him a lesson.
“Penny for your thoughts,” I repeat, my voice saccharine sweet.
Damon laughs. “You couldn’t spend a minute in my head,” he says, pressing his nose against mine and deepening our kiss. There’s so much lightness in his words, so much ease in the way he kisses me. It almost makes me doubt that I saw what I just saw.
“Try me,” I tell him.
“We’d need a dark room and a lot less clothes,” he quips.
He says ‘we’, but I wonder if he’s talking about him and her and not him and me. Like he’s telling me the truth, but the truth is also a lie. Or rather, it’s a truth that’s not made for me.
I pull back and straighten my sundress. “Why do you think I couldn’t spend a minute in your head? We know each other, Damon. We’re close, right? We’re in this for the long haul, right?” I ask those words, but I don’t ask the other ones. A part of me is afraid of exactly what I’ll see if I throw love into the equation.
“We also have our problems,” he says.
“Because I’m not ready to have sex with you?”
“This isn’t about sex, Eva.”
I grind my teeth, forcing myself to tame my voice. I get angry too easily. I’ve always been this way, but over the years, I’ve also gotten a heck of a lot better at keeping my anger on the inside. There aren’t many people out here, but if I let Damon get to me, there will be an entire crowd in less than a minute. I can’t let that happen…reputation, and all.
I scan the courtyard one more time and try to keep my voice tame. “Just a second ago you were talking about dark rooms and nakedness. That doesn’t sound like it has nothing to do with sex to me.”
“If I really wanted in your pants I’d have gotten there already,” he says and something about his tone puts me on edge.
“So you don’t want to fuck me?”
“I never said that.”
“But it’s what you meant.”
“Guys aren’t as picky as you like to think, Eva. You’re fucking gorgeous, of course I want to fuck you. Anyone with a working cock would.”
“So that’s all it takes, a pretty little girl and your cock is all riled up and ready?”
His strong, long fingers wrap around my ankles and without care or caution he throws my legs from his lap. “I’m so sick of this shit,” he spits, ready to cause a scene.
Him? He’s the one who’s sick of this shit? Seriously?
“I’ve been nothing but good to you.”
“You’ve been nothing but a pain in my goddamn ass.”
“So why are you with me?” I ask him.
For that, he doesn
’t seem to have an answer. But the way he looks at me…the sadness in his eyes. The sadness of losing me. The sadness of imagining what life would be like if it weren’t me he was linked to. He doesn’t say it, but it’s there, plain as day. As much as we argue, as much as he stares at other girls sometimes, Damon fucking loves me.
I let it be and allow the fight to fall into the background as I pull myself closer to him and cover his lips with mine. “I’m sorry,” I whisper against him. “I’ve just been a little on edge, lately,” I say, slipping my tongue into the warmth of his mouth.
I’ll get him back for all the things he said today, for staring at that girl, for how angry he just made me, but I won’t do it right now. Right now, I’ll make sure that the bitch he was staring at by the auditorium, the one who’s walking across the courtyard at this very moment, sees just what she can’t fucking have.
Chapter 2
NOW
I knew when I saw the SUV parked in the driveway that this was going to be a rough homecoming. The SUV meant that my dad was home, and my mom and dad wouldn’t be caught dead in the same zip code unless something bad had happened.
I sighed and tried to mentally prepare myself for whatever was waiting for me inside.
I was kind of glad that whatever happened had happened today. The day was pretty much shot anyway, so why not add one more tragedy and complete the circle of hell that I’d been living in all day? There was no point in ruining a separate, perfectly good day with bad news.
“Anna, is that you?” My mom called from the living room. Ooh, that was even worse. ‘Serious conversations’ were had in the kitchen. Talks in the living room meant that they’d been there for hours, discussed whatever the issue was, made a decision, and had a game plan about how they were going to tell me what they’d decided.
My heart began to beat a little faster as I tried to think of what could have possibly happened to bring mom and dad together. Did my grandma die? Nah, dad would probably be ecstatic if she had. They’d never liked each other and he still blames her for helping to end his marriage. The drinking and sleeping around didn’t help either, but in his mind, it was still mostly the old lady’s fault.
Maybe mom got laid off and we were going to have to downsize or move away. She might have been up in arms about it, but I couldn’t really say that would have been the worst thing in the world. There really wasn’t much holding me back here in Donnerville. I hated school. School hated me. If it wasn’t for the fact that this high school was one of the best in the state, I would have begged to go and live with dad months ago. I was almost hopeful until I turned the corner, stepped into the living room and caught sight of the two of them sitting close together.
A united front meant that whatever the issue was, I was the subject. I was the only kid I knew, whose parents actually meant it when they said they would put their differences aside to be “positive co-parents”. Which meant they hated each other less than they loved me, but it also meant that the only time they managed to play happy family was when I was in trouble.
“Why don’t you come in here and give your dad a hug. I haven’t seen you in a while, love bug.”
“Uh-huh.” I rolled my eyes and gave him an empty embrace, complete with a patronizing back pat. No point in pretending that I thought they were about to bless me with any form of good news.
“I got a call from school today.” Mom jumped right in with both feet, as she was known to do.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Okay?”
“They said you had an outburst in drama class. Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Seriously? That’s what they said? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“They said you were doing some kind of an exercise where you had to mime something and you threatened a student.” Mom looked horrified as she spoke. I almost wanted to laugh. Seriously, the school had a way of reading into all the wrong things; worrying about people who didn’t need to be worried about. They thought I was a threat? What about all the kids who were threatening me? And the ones bold enough to do it whether an adult was present or not?
“I didn’t threaten anybody. As a rule, miming involves NOT speaking. I didn’t say anything threatening to anybody.”
“Okay, so what did you do.” It was dad’s turn to play the part of Concerned Parent. I was beginning to prefer him drunk.
“I detonated an IED,” I said.
“A what?”
“An IED; Improvised Explosive Device. A bomb. I pretended to light the fuse of an IED and walked away. I didn’t target anybody in particular with my performance. I simply let the IMAGINARY bomb sit in the middle of the stage.”
Dad choked back a chuckle as mom’s jaw hung open like a broken gate.
“What? How do you even know what an….what are you doing….Anna!” She sputtered and stumbled over her words as she attempted to chastise me.
“Calm down Elaine,” dad said.
“Calm down? How can I calm down when our daughter is pretending to be a terrorist in school?” She turned to me with tears in her eyes. “Do you know I had to beg them not to call the police? This isn’t funny, Anna. It’s not a joke! They really thought you wanted to kill people.”
I hated to see mom so upset, but I wasn’t going to back down. I was probably the least mentally unstable, potential felon in that school.
“The teacher said to make it challenging. They should consider themselves challenged.”
Dad and I made eye contact and shared a smirk. One of the few things we enjoyed as father and daughter was making my mom crazy, and it seemed like I was doing a great job of it this afternoon.
“Do you see what I was talking about?” Mom turned to him, pointing at me.
“Don’t get so worked up, Elaine. It doesn’t seem like she’s unhinged to me. I think she just wanted to shake them up a little and get them to back down. It was a dumb way of making your point though, kiddo.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Whatever.”
“Whatever?” Mom squeaked.
I held up three fingers and put on my best and most serious scouting voice.
“I swear I do not now, nor have I ever attempted to, or thought about attempting to use explosives at school or anywhere else for that matter. I was just blowing off some steam in class with an invisible, imaginary bomb.”
“You’re going to counseling,” mom interjected.
“What? No way!”
“That’s not negotiable,” dad backed her up. So that was the thing they agreed upon. Hopefully they reserved spots for themselves, too. “And I will be dropping you off and picking you up to make sure you go,” dad added.
“I’m not a nutcase. You two are the ones that need counseling.”
“Look at it from our perspective, Anna,” mom begged. “First you had that car accident. Then I had to buy you a whole new laptop and phone so that you wouldn’t get hacked or burned or whatever it’s called. And now I’m getting calls about you threatening other kids in school and making other students feel unsafe. All of this anti-social behavior is just-”
“What your mother is trying to say,” dad interjected, thinking that he could say it better. He was wrong, of course. No matter who said it, none of them were going to get me comfortable with the idea of going to therapy when
I didn’t need it.
It damn well wouldn’t help with a single one of the problems that I actually had.
“You must be shitting me,” I cut him off, waving my hands in a feat of disbelief.
Dad steadied his eyes on me and started again. “What your mother is trying to say is that we’re worried about you, Anna. And more importantly, we have to prove to the brass that we are doing our best to sort out your problems or else they could boot you out of there. And you didn’t come this far to be booted out by those pricks, did you?”
Okay, so maybe dad did have a way of putting things that made it hard to deny the wisdom of his positions.
“Fine. I’ll go,�
� I said, swinging my backpack up onto my shoulder. “Are we done here?”
“Yes, I think that’s it for now,” mom said, retaking her seat on the sofa.
I turned and escaped from the room. I headed straight up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I would not let them see me cry. I’d managed to hold it together all day, all through lunch and Spanish class where my former friend spent the period constructing a limerick in my honor, and even during the walk through the parking lot where I had to watch the boy I love look right through me and smile at some trust-fund bimbo. I’d managed to survive all of that. I would NOT crumble in front of my parents.
That would mean I was truly a loser.
And no matter what any of them said, I was NOT a loser.
They might be winning this shitty game they were playing now. But they wouldn’t stay in the lead forever.
I closed the door behind me and took several deep breaths. I waited until the world came back into focus, blinking away the tears that threatened to slip by my eyelids. As soon as I could see, my eyes fell on my desk. My parents had obviously been through my drawers. Lucky for me, I had nothing to hide. But, in typical fashion, mom had failed to put things back the way she found them. Dad was better about things like that. So, it goes without saying, I knew exactly who the culprit was.
On the desk sat my old cell phone, pristine in its flowery pink case. It was what you expected a teenaged girl’s phone to look like. It was simple, fragile, even a little whimsical. I looked at it and scoffed. It was all bullshit.
Filthy Pride: Dark Bully Romance Page 1