Puck: Broken Hill Boys (Novella 1)

by Sheridan Anne

  I put in my combination for my lock and get busy sorting everything out for the first day of school. Brylee’s just a tad more organized then me and already has her shit waiting front and center, and no doubt, it’s probably color coordinate as well.

  She tosses her handbag into her locker before scooping up her bag and shutting the door, while I busily scramble around, trying to work out what the hell I did with my binder.

  Brylee looks up and down the corridor as though she’s trying to find someone and I look at her with a strange curiosity. “What’s up with you?” I grumble into my locker before finally finding what I need and pulling it out. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

  Bry’s face scrunches up before she takes another look around and cringes. Her eyes come back to mine after what feels like a lifetime. “Shit,” she sighs. “Promise you won’t say anything?”

  My brows instantly shoot up into my hairline as the curiosity nearly kills me. “What?” I demand. “What did you do?”

  She cringes again and I have to resist grabbing her shoulders and shaking her to get answers I’m so desperate for. “You remember the party on Friday night, right?”

  My eyes close for a brief moment as I’m instantly reminded of my momentary lapse of judgment. “Yes,” I tell her with a sight groan. “Though I’m trying not to.”

  “Well…I, um.” Her eyes flick back over her shoulder before glancing up the other end. Brylee steps into me, grabbing my arm and pulling me in closer to where she can whisper and still be heard. “Fuck, Court. I think I slept with Tyson.”

  My hand slams down on my locker, desperately searching for something to grab onto so I don’t fall to the ground and embarrass myself on day one. “What the hell do you mean you ‘think?’” I shriek, staring at her as though she’s some sort of stranger. Brylee does not screw around like that at all. She’s generally the first one to speak out about what a filthy habit it is. “You either did it or you didn’t. How can you not know?”

  “I don’t know,” she whisper yells. “I hardly remember anything from that night. The last thing I remember clearly was you grabbing a bottle of Vodka and then everyone shoving it down their throats. Everything after that is fuzzy, but what I do remember is sneaking off with Tyson.”

  I bite down on my lip to stop myself from laughing, but the tears spring to my eyes and I can’t help myself. “That’s fucking hilarious,” I tell her. “So, you seriously don’t know if he fucked you in the bushes or not?”

  She shakes her head. “No, and it’s not like I can just go and ask him. That would be way too humiliating.”

  “Oh, Bry,” I laugh, throwing my arm over her shoulder and dragging her along beside me as we make our way back over to Brooke and Tora, though if we were smart, we’d wait a while as it looks as though Josh has found our girl and is currently trying to eat her face. “Do you want me to 007 the shit out of this for you?”

  Her elbow comes slamming down into my ribs. “Don’t even think about it,” she seethes, knowing me well enough to know that I’m going to be doing everything I possibly can to figure out this little mystery.

  We step in with Brooke as she scrunches up her face at Josh. “Ugh, get a room,” she tells them, though it comes off as more of a ‘get lost’ to Josh, which luckily for him, he does just that.

  I fall in beside Tora. “Are you sure you want to keep messing around with their quarterback? Elle looks like she could tear you a new asshole right now.”

  “It’s fine,” Tora says. “Nothing is going on with me and Josh. It’s just a little innocent flirting and a bit of making out.”

  “Even though he had a blonde getting acquainted with his junk on Friday night?” Brooke grunts.

  “As Josh just so kindly reminded me, we’re not dating. So, technically he can have whoever the fuck he wants sucking his dick. Hell, he can even suck a few dicks if he feels inclined to do so.”

  Brooke gives Tora a tight smile. “You sure?” she questions before raising her coffee to her lips.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Josh is just fun, and besides, in order to be anything more to him, I’d have to run around the school with a pair of pom-poms, cheering about school spirit, and that’s just not me.”

  An image of Tora attempting to fit in with those girl flashes through my mind and I find myself unable to swallow the laugh that comes bubbling up my throat. “Oh, I can just see it now,” I tell her. “You’d be the worst cheerleader.”

  “Shut up,” Tora says with a laugh. “Besides, Josh would make an awful boyfriend. He’d be super high maintenance and would constantly need his ego stroked.”

  “Yeah,” Brooke scoffs. “You’ll be stroking more than just his ego.”

  She’s not wrong.

  The bell rings throughout the school and just like that, students begin scattering. Tora and Brooke head up one way with a promise to catch up later while Brylee and I turn on our heels and head down the other end of the hallway, desperate to get to our homeroom classes before it’s too late.

  Chapter 4

  Puck

  I lean up against the brick wall of Broken Hill High, watching through narrowed eyes as some freshman props himself against my Escalade, getting comfortable against the hood and taking a fucking selfie with my car.

  What’s his fucking deal? Is he trying to claim it as his own for his lame as fuck social media account? Trying to appear as though he’s hard? I don’t know, but what I do know is that it makes me want to flatten his ass and send my fist flying into his jaw.

  “Leave it, man,” Nate grumbles, noticing my clenched fist hanging by my side as he ashes his cigarette butt against the brick wall. “He’s not worth it. Just some dumbass kid.”

  I know on some level that he’s right, but then, what kind of man would I be if I didn’t show the kid right from wrong on his first day of school? Who knows, maybe the fucker needs a little guidance in his life and I’ll be more than happy to volunteer.

  “Dude, stop,” Maxen says. “He’s like fourteen. What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve been a fucking grouchy prick all weekend.”

  “I’m fine,” I grumble, glancing away.

  Maxen doesn’t seem to catch on to the point that I don’t want to talk about it and continues on. “Is it because of that wicked case of blue balls you’ve got? I saw you strike out with Phoenix at the party and then that Courtney chick was walking home, and if she was walking home, then she’s wasn’t in your fucking bed.”

  Fuck me. He hit the nail right on the head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Tyson grins wide, unlike me, the fucker hasn’t been able to wipe the smile off his face all weekend and none of us can figure out why. “Bullshit, man. Courtney must have bruised your ego. I’ve never seen you try so hard.”

  “Who the fuck is Courtney?” Jesse murmurs, joining our group just seconds before the bell rings.

  Tyson turns to his best friend as the five of us start making our way toward the front entrance of the school. “She’s that friend of Tora’s that Puck was dancing with on Friday night. She left him with blue balls.”

  I nail Ty in the arm. “I don’t have fucking blue balls.”

  Jesse chuckles as he looks back at me. “Could have fooled me.”

  I roll my eyes as we step through the big double doors. There’s no point arguing with either of them. All I’m going to achieve is to dig myself a deeper hole.

  Jesse stops to talk to Tyson while Nate and Maxen take off in the opposite direction, leaving me to get on with my morning.

  Not bothering to stop by my locker, I head straight to homeroom. After all, homeroom is the most important class of the day. All I need is my attendance taken for the day and as long as it’s down in the system, it’ll keep my mom off my back.

  As I walk down the hallway to Miss Blakeley’s room, I find Courtney chilling outside of the new teacher’s room with her friend, Brylee. Her back is to me, leaving her ass wide open for the taking. Well, not really, but one day,
I’ll be slamming into it over and over again as she screams out my name.

  After realizing that maybe she’s not the good girl I always thought and that perhaps she has a bit of a wild side on Friday night, I figured there’s no longer any point in holding back from her. Maybe she can handle it after all.

  My eyes travel down her back and find that perfectly plump ass just waiting for me to grab it, though I don’t. That would be borderline creepy, besides I grabbed it plenty of times on Friday night to remember the exact shape and feel of it in my hand, and fuck me, it was as close to angelic that I’ll ever get.

  As if sensing my eyes on her body, Courtney’s head turns back over her shoulder and I watch as she sucks in a deep breath. She seems to straighten herself out and as her stare meets mine, an odd longing appears in her eyes, but it’s gone in the next instant.

  A smirk crosses my lips. She’s thinking about my hands on her body just as much as I am, but unlike me, she has a little more self-control and tears her gaze away.

  Yeah, fucking with Courtney is going to be fun. I take back everything I ever thought about her. She’s no longer the forbidden fruit that I’m not allowed to touch, she’s the perfect princess that I’m going to enjoy corrupting.

  I keep on walking by. Let’s face it, no corrupting is going to be done right now, especially as her walls are firmly in place. A girl like Courtney is going to need a little time and maybe a bit of coaxing, but when she finally gets there and lets me in, she’s going to go fucking wild, and I can’t wait.

  The warning bell for homeroom sounds just as I grab hold of the doorframe of Miss Blakeley’s classroom and swing myself through. I head straight to the back of the classroom and drop down into a chair, grinning to myself as I notice the less than impressed scowl on Miss Blakeley’s face. She’s clearly not excited to see me and to be honest, the feeling is mutual.

  She’s an alright teacher where it comes to caring for her students and making sure they succeed, but when it comes to dealing with guys like me who don’t seem to want to be there, she can be a little brutal. Though, maybe a teacher like her is exactly what dickheads like us need. Someone to keep us checked and in line, and make sure we don’t derail. Maybe it’s teachers like her that are the ones that actually care and think that maybe there’s hope for us after all, and in my opinion, teachers like Miss Blakley are the good ones. That’s not going to change the fact that she probably doesn’t want to deal with me first thing on a Monday morning, but I’ll behave. After all, I have to spend all of my senior year starting the day off in her classroom.

  The room fills up and bodies take all the chairs around me. I scrunch up my face as some kid from my old History class sits down beside me and turns to me with a smile. No. He’s fucking insane if he thinks I’m going to sit here and chat with him about his killer weekend playing online video games with some twelve-year-old boy across the country.

  The door swings open once again and I can’t believe my luck when Courtney strides through the door with a welcoming smile for Miss Blakeley.

  Fuck me, I’m constantly forgetting how damn beautiful she is. What I wouldn’t give to have that smile directed toward me.

  Courtney begins scanning the remaining chairs and the second she sees me sitting in the back of the room, her smile fades from her face.

  Maybe corrupting the perfect princess can start a little earlier than I had intended.

  Courtney starts making her way across the classroom to the only available seat left in the room. I turn to the guy beside me, narrowing my eyes and give him the look that I know for a fact can bring grown-ass men to their knees. “Move,” I demand.

  He turns at the sound of my voice and his eyes bug out of his head. He scrambles for his things and dives out of the chair, and in his desperation to get as far away from me as possible, he bolts across the room and launches himself into the seat that Courtney was just moments from taking.

  She gasps at his sudden intrusion and she’s left standing in the middle of the room, wondering what the hell just happened.

  “Come on, Courtney,” Miss Blakeley says. “Hurry up and take your seat so we can get started.”

  Her mouth drops, clearly not loving being reprimanded by the teacher, but nonetheless, she swivels around to figure out where she should go. When she sees that the only available seat in the classroom is now right next to me, her features drop. I didn't even try to hide my amusement.

  Courtney walks across the room slower than a toddler walking towards a doctor with a needle and I pull out her chair, unable to rein in the wide grin on my face. “Real mature,” she grumbles, dropping into the chair. I have a feeling she's being sarcastic and referring to the way I frightened the kid out of this very seat, rather than complimenting my chivalry."

  “Don’t look so happy to see me,” I tell her.

  Her glare flicks across to me. “I’m not happy to see you.”

  “Could have fooled me. You seemed pretty damn pleased to see me on Friday night.”

  “Friday night was a mistake,” she murmurs, trying to keep her voice low as to not draw any unwanted attention to the topic of conversation. “It was an error of judgment after way too many shots of Vodka, and it will never happen again.”

  I slide my arm across the desk in front of her while I turn in my seat to face her front on, the move slightly caging her in. “And what if I want it to happen again…and again, and again?”

  I watch as her chest rises and falls with deep breaths before she shoots daggers at me once again. “It’s never going to happen, Landon.”

  Well, damn. The only person to use my real name is my mother. no one in school dared to speak that name since I was a kid, either that or they don't remember it. Courtney here seems to be the toughest chick or the dumbest chick around, but that doesn't explain why I liked my name on her lips so fucking much.

  “What’s this chip on your shoulder?”

  She looks back toward the front of the room, pretending to listen to Miss Blakely as she checks off the students’ names, but there’s no doubt about the fact that she’s still hyper-aware of me, she always is. “I don’t have a chip on my shoulder.”

  My arm falls to the back of her chair as my eyes narrow on her, realizing that I’m a little more interested in her response than I have the right to be. “You’ve glared at me every single day since Kindergarten. Believe me, there’s one hell of a big chip on your shoulder, baby.”

  “I’m not your ‘baby,’” she declares. “And if you really must know, it’s because you’re an ass.”

  “Really? So, I was an ass all the way back in Kindergarten?”

  Her chin raises as she focuses heavily on the front of the room. “Yep.”

  I watch her a little closer, trying to figure out what I could have done in the past to piss her off when it clicks; the very first day of school. Courtney was upset, scared maybe. I’m not entirely sure, but that very first day, I walked up to her and took her hand, gently prying her away from her parents. She smiled at me and in that instant, I could have sworn we were best friend. And then it happened, Samuel Kingston came in with his big ass monster truck and I narrowed my eyes. My monster truck was bigger and I was damn well going to prove it. I marched over to that sucker, and made sure he knew that I was going to be the king of kindy. When I went to proudly boast about my win to my new friend, she was gone. What did it matter? She was just a stupid girl anyway, but deep down, it crushed my little five-year-old soul. I’ve never forgotten it and because of that, I never spoke to her again.

  “Tell me this isn’t because I ditched you on our first day of school?”

  Courtney’s head whips in my direction with her eyes as wide as saucers. She sucks in a surprised gasp. “You remember that?”

  “I sure fucking do, babe, but you can’t seriously hold something against me that I did when I was five. That’s one hell of a grudge.”

  “I sure fucking can hold it against you,” she snaps, once again setting herself apa
rt from the other chicks at Broken Hill High. “You were an ass then and you’re an ass now. So, why in my right mind, would I ever give you the time of day again?”

  I watch her for a brief moment before leaning forward in my seat. My fingers trail over the bare skin of her shoulder, giving me that same electricity that I felt on Friday night.

  Her body tightens, telling me that she’s affected by my proximity, just the way I like it. “Because I felt the way your body reacted to mine when you were rubbing that fine ass of yours all over it. I felt the way your nipples hardened beneath your dress when you pressed your tits into my chest, and I saw the way you were silently begging me to fuck you,” I whisper. “You’re intrigued. Curious. You want to know what it would be like to dance with the devil and have him scratch that itch that’s been burning you up.”

  Courtney grins, leaning back in her chair and turning her face into mine, close enough that if I moved even an inch, my lips would be on hers. “You think you’ve got us all figured out, don’t you?” she whispers in a tone that has my dick begging to jump out of my jeans to say ‘hello.’ “You talk a big game, Puck. A real ladies man. In fact, I think you could get any girl you wanted into bed, but you know what?” she continues, making me wait with bated breath, desperate to know what she’s about to say. “When it comes down to it, and comes time to actually satisfy a woman, I’d dare say that you’d fall short. You’re all talk, Puck. I bet you’d have absolutely no idea what you’re doing and I bet everything that I have that you’ve never made a woman scream and leave her begging for more.”

  My hand curls around the back of her neck and she sucks in a breath, once again proving how affected she is by my touch. “Baby, that’s a dangerous game you’re playing,” I tell her, knowing damn well that she’s wrong and wanting nothing more in this world than to prove it. “Why don’t you come with me and find out?”

  “Over my dead body,” she says, pulling away.