The Proxy: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Thorns of Rosewood Book 2)

by Cassie James

  “It’s fine, Piper.” It doesn’t sound fine, but I don’t feel like arguing anymore, so I let it go. “But I want you home right after school. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah,” I start, and my easy agreement seems to just make her suspicious. I add a flippant, “Whatever.”

  I guess that’s good enough because Mom shakes her head at me but she does leave me alone after that. I turn back to the girl in the mirror, studying my features, looking for some spark of recognition. That I’ll see something real instead of this image that was built for me. But as hard as I stare, it never comes.

  I’m packed up and heading for the stairs when the doorbell rings. My feet slow as I hear Mom answer the door and start speaking in a harsh tone. What the hell is her problem now? As I start to reach the bottom of the steps I hear her say, “She isn’t going to be needing rides from you anymore. I would appreciate it very much if you would stop showing up here.”

  That is decidedly not Tyler at the door. My eyes connect with Macie’s, and I finally get that spark of recognition I was looking for. Something in me wants to reach out for her, to seek comfort in her. Maybe there’s a little 2.0 left in me somewhere, after all. I can’t risk alienating Mom this soon, though, not when I know what’s at stake. I swallow my guilt the best I can as I fix a confused look on my face.

  “Piper?” Macie says my name uncertainly. Mom whirls around, eyes blazing until she sees that I wasn’t expecting the other girl.

  “Macie Wharton, right?” I ask, trying my damnedest not to break on the spot when her face falls. I wish I could have warned her or something. Even though I obviously wasn’t expecting her to show up like this. I feign a cool tone of indifference as I ask, “Was there something you needed?”

  Macie’s mouth falls open like she’s getting ready to ask a question, but I shoot her a sharp look and she closes it. A few seconds later, her eyes are eyeing me critically and her mouth is falling open again. C’mon, Mace, don’t make me do this. “Pipes, are you okay?” Dammit, Macie.

  “Maybe I should be asking you that, Wharton. Why are you here?” I sound like a real asshole.

  Slowly, she looks me dead in the eyes and says, “Guess I got confused, Hawthorne.” And then she’s gone just as fast as she appeared. My heart beats a thousand miles a minute as Mom shuts the door behind her. She doesn’t even bother trying to explain why Macie Wharton would be showing up here. Just disappears into the next room like as long as she doesn’t acknowledge anything’s happening, she can keep pretending the outside world doesn’t pose a problem for her little charade.

  How long can she really expect this to go on? My phone chimes. I dig through my purse for it as I head for the door. I’d rather wait outside than risk going toe-to-toe with my mother again this early in the morning. I didn’t realize Tyler had been texting me.

  Leaving my house now. Be there in five.

  Shit, do you even have your phone?

  If you’re not out here in a couple minutes, I’ll assume you don’t have your phone and I’ll come get you.

  I roll my eyes and shove the phone back in my bag. As far as I can tell, sending text after unanswered text has never been Tyler’s M.O., but I guess after last week… I maybe get why me not answering would put him on edge. Sure enough, he’s already parked in the driveway when I open the front door. I take a deep breath and steel myself as I walk out to him.

  There are two parts of me warring over Tyler Hamilton. The part telling me I can trust him, that he’s been my friend for years—and my boyfriend for the last two of those. But the other part? It’s telling me to be careful. Reminding me what I saw in Brennan’s logs. If he was really one of my best friends, shouldn’t he have done a better job protecting me? Instead, he’d been an asshole, stood by while his friends were assholes, and then had sex with me in a way that seemed pretty damn meaningless to him.

  “Hey, Piper.” He stares at me as I slide into the car. The leather of his heated seats is like a warm bath, and I sink into it happily. This feeling? It sends another spark of recognition through me. This feels so deliciously familiar. To the part of me that’s Piper—or to 2.0? I lose myself for a moment to the sensation of the heat seeping into the bare skin on the back of my thighs, ignoring his greeting altogether.

  It takes me longer than it should to become aware that Tyler’s fingers are sinking into my thigh, tapping out a pattern that pulls me from my reverie. I jerk away from his touch, not at all missing the way his eyes darken. I straighten my skirt, covering up the skin he just touched so that I can fight the urge to trace my fingers over my thigh.

  The last thing I know for certain happened with Tyler was that he let me walk out after sex like it meant nothing to him. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the current state of our relationship. He shouldn’t be touching me so intimately. I buckle myself in without a word and lean into the door. I can still see him out of the corner of my eye, but I tilt my head so that it doesn’t seem like I’m paying him any attention. An Original Piper trick. There are hundreds of pictures of her doing the exact same thing, I’m sure for the same reason. Look disinterested—still see everything.

  “So,” he starts slowly, filling the awkward silence around us. “I saw Macie leaving the neighborhood this morning. Did you talk to her?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?” he asks, there’s a challenge in his tone, but it’s soft. Like he’s not sure what exactly he can get away with Piper 3.0 yet. I bite back a scoff. I wonder when they’ll start calling me that? Or am I going to go straight back to Silicunt? 2.0 isn’t the nicest thing to call a person, but it’s certainly the nicest thing the Thorns have called me over the past few months. And though I hate to admit it, taking up the nickname for myself has helped me to try to keep it all straight: Original Piper, 2.0, and now me.

  Since my silent streak was going so well before, I fall back into it, ignoring his question completely. I take my phone out of my bag and focus on that instead. A few straggling text messages are still coming in from people too afraid to name themselves and claim their own shit. Cowards. I delete the lot of them before pulling the email back up, just as grossly curious this morning as I was last night when I first found it.

  I’m looking for clues in between the lines. It feels like I can’t risk missing a single detail.

  Tyler pulls up to a stoplight and leans over the center console to see what I’m doing. “Shit,” he mutters. “Why are you reading that? That’s…” He trails off as the light changes. A whole minute passes in silence before he says any more. “That’s not everything that happened, Piper. Not even close. Brennan… he didn’t post everything.”

  I scoff in disbelief. “And what? I should be thankful for that?” He makes it sound like that was such a noble thing—Brennan not posting it all. Well, fuck that. It would have actually helped me more right about now if he had just let it all out there. At least then I wouldn’t be worrying about filling in the gaps myself.

  Tyler doesn’t say anything this time, but that’s okay, because now that he’s got me started, I’m not done.

  “How would you feel, Tyler, if all of your most intimate thoughts were posted for everyone to see? So that people already trying to tear you apart would just have one more reason to hate you? Or fifty, I guess, since there’s about that many pages here, right?” He looks downright pained now, but I’m still not done. “It wasn’t enough to humiliate me. No, he took it a step further and made sure everyone would know how it felt to be humiliated. To be used and cast aside like a sex toy.”

  “No one thinks of you like that,” he says in a low voice, the sound barely carrying to my side of the car.

  “And yet that’s how you treated me. You and Jude, both. So, yeah, I can’t wait to thank Brennan for not sharing everything. I can’t wait to tell him how appreciative I am that he let me keep some things for myself.”

  Silence stretches between us once more as we draw closer to Rosewood. I’m trying so damn hard to
control the erratic emotions swirling through me, but they all threaten to come spilling out. I need out of this car before I lose my shit.

  We’re pulling into the parking lot when he finally says, “You just—You don’t know everything that happened.” His voice is thick with emotion and a heaviness that I didn’t expect. I shift uncomfortably in my seat.

  “Enlighten me, then.” Damn my voice for cracking right now. “Because right now, all I’m seeing is months worth of data that suggests all you guys wanted was a way to get rid of me.”

  “Do you have any idea how hard it was for us to see you again after—” he cuts off abruptly, focusing his attention on parking his car in lieu of finishing the thought. I want to reach out for him, wrap my arms around him and tell him that I know it had to have been insanely hard, but I hold my ground, even as the footing begins to feel tenuous at best.

  This must be the part of me Stan tried to explain. The part of me instilled with the instinct to comfort those that cared about Piper. Except, I’m pretty sure comforting Tyler about the replacement I replaced wasn’t exactly what he meant. I push my hair over my shoulders, squaring them as I go, and shift in the seat to face Tyler. My eyes meet his, and there’s real regret I think I see there.

  “I’m sorry for being so defensive. It’s like being a toddler and being expected to understand existentialism. I’ve only been around for a few days and I already can’t keep up.” I blow out a frustrated breath. “My memories of the real Piper are choppy at best. I’m contending with the knowledge that I’m not even the first replacement the Hawthornes tried out. And now I’m also dealing with the fact that all the people I thought I could trust turned on me the last time around.”

  “Piper, I—”

  “I’ll meet you back here at the end of the day?” It comes out like a question, but I don’t stick around long enough for an answer. I’m not sure I can’t handle anything he has to say right now. Not if I’m somehow going to survive this day.

  My footsteps echo off the pavement as I keep a steady pace on the way inside, eyes sliding over the faces in the parking lot, trying to pick out the one face in the crowd that deserves an apology right now. All I see are sneering faces of people I don’t give a shit about. I don’t let my shoulders drop an inch as I keep my chin up and head into Rosewood alone.

  7

  Piper

  Macie manages to avoid being alone with me all the way through lunchtime. I watch her turn toward the courtyard and start to head the same way, but something in me can’t help but sneak a peek into the cafeteria first. The Thorns are at their usual table, holding silent court. One of the first things I notice is that The Roses are nowhere in sight. Strange, because they’ve also been sort of invisible the rest of the day, too. The other thing I notice is that everyone is giving the guys a wide berth, people going out of their way to avoid the table and the three surly, glowering guys.

  Yeah, I don’t want to touch that with a ten-foot pole, at least not today. I set my attention back on Macie just in time to see her ducking into a faculty bathroom that I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to be using. I fight back a laugh. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would expect from the girl I read about in my logs. Sassy with a little bit of rebel in her.

  I wait outside the door, worrying the inside of my cheek as one minute ticks by slowly. Then another passes. And another. I’m beginning to worry that maybe she noticed me following her and decided she didn’t want to deal with my shit. I swallow my pride and push the door open, stepping into the bathroom but stopping short when I come face to face with Macie. For a tense moment, all we do is stare at one another wordlessly.

  “Can we talk?”

  She tries to move past me but I step into her path. This is only a two stall bathroom, so it’s not very big, and that means it’s easy to block her from leaving. There’s no time left to wonder if I can trust this girl or not. It’s sink or swim time—and I’m diving in.

  “Was there something you needed?” she asks, her tone dripping with sarcasm. I can’t help but flinch from the sound of it. I totally deserve it, I know, but it sucks anyway.

  “I owe you an apology.”

  She scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest as she glares at me. “You think?”

  I open my mouth to explain, but words fail me. I need someone on my side right now. I can’t trust my parents, I’m not sure I can trust Stan since he would have had to be the one to reset me or whatever, and The Thorns and The Roses have made it clear they belong at the top of my shit list. But I don’t know Macie Wharton the way 2.0 did. I don’t know how things work with her or how to apologize to her the way she deserves.

  “What’s your fucking problem, Piper?” She doesn’t actually give me a chance to answer, barreling on as her eyebrows furrow. “I’m not good enough to show up at your house anymore, but I’m good enough for a quick chat in the bathroom? I get that what Brennan did was really fucked up, but you don’t get to take that out on me!”

  “My parents reset me.”

  Macie takes a deep breath, like the words I’ve just said—the ones that are rattling around inside me, making me question everything I know—have gone in one ear and straight out the other. “I don’t care about your bullshit excus—” But then she splutters to a stop, like her brain has finally caught up with her ears, and her expression morphs from surly to horrified in a split second. “Your parents did what?”

  “They reset me. I think.” I don’t actually know that for sure. I’m only going off of what I do know so far, which admittedly isn’t much. But it’s the only thing that makes sense. Like restarting an unruly computer.

  “It’s not possible,” she breathes out slowly, and I wish desperately that she was right. Because goddamn, I would give anything to have a grasp on who I am. To remember what I’ve already experienced.

  “I woke up with nothing except what’s been programmed. Macie, even my computer was wiped clean. But then I found my phone under the bed—maybe I hid it under there or something—and when I turned it on and read Brennan’s email…”

  I trail off as she blanches. “Brennan’s email? That’s all you have of the past four months?” I nod, watching her face fall and then soften towards me. “Who else knows?”

  “Tyler Hamilton. So, probably the rest of The Thorns now, too,” I admit, my lips twisting down. I’m not sure how to keep the rest of the school from finding out about my reset, but I know I need to try. Everyone’s mostly left me alone today, but if word gets out that I don’t remember anything that’s been going on, there’s no telling how my classmates might decide to react. They could lash out at me worse than the last time. And just because I know I could handle them, doesn’t mean I want to have to prove it.

  “This is so fucked up,” Macie says. She took the words right out of my mouth. “This morning when you acted like you didn’t know why I’d be at your house…?”

  “I figured you’d probably been giving me rides.” I nod, confirming what I’m sure she’s already figured out herself. “But I didn’t want to give Mom any clue that I know about 2.0 or any of the shit that’s been happening these last few months. I don’t trust her, Mace. I think you’re the only person I can really trust. At least, it seems like you’re the one person I trusted the first time around.”

  “Of course you can trust me.” Sincerity shines in her eyes as she releases a slow breath. I start to feel like I can breathe a little easier, myself. Then, Macie asks the one question I wish I didn’t have to face. “Do you think she’d reset you again?”

  A naive part of me wants to believe that once was enough. That she would never do something like that to me again. But then I remember that crazed look on her face when I first woke up—and I know I can’t count on her black fucking heart to show any compassion.

  So I answer Macie, “I think… yeah. Maybe.”

  “Shit,” she breathes out, sagging against the sink as the weight of the situation dawns on her. Macie picks absentmindedly at
her nails as she stares at me with wide eyes. “What do you need me to do, Pipes?”

  “Support me.” She scoffs as if I didn’t even need to say it. “And,” I add, “Help me figure out why the hell I got reset in the first place.”

  “God, yeah. Of course.”

  “There’s just one thing.” I hesitate before the next part. “I don’t know how far Jackie Hawthorne is willing to go to keep up this pretense that I’m really going to satisfy her as a replacement for her real daughter. I can’t rule it out that she might be having someone keep tabs on me here. Which means I’ve got to be really fucking careful about how I’m spending my time here.”

  “So you’re saying what? You don’t want to be friends with me anymore? Are you planning on going back to The Pricks, Piper? They’re horrible.”

  “That’s not it at all,” I’m quick to defend, but there’s hurt swimming in her eyes and she’s gone tense all over again. “I’m just saying that appearances are going to be key right now, Mace. If I want to figure out who I am, who I really am, I can’t risk another reset. So we distance ourselves at school, and Tyler Hamilton becomes my ride. We still talk every day. And we still hang out, we just do it in a way that doesn’t give Jackie any reason to want another do-over.”

  “Yeah, no, I get it,” she finally admits with a low groan. “So what, you’re planning on infiltrating The Pricks?”

  “Sort of.” I make an unpleasant face. “I need to figure out what they know and see if there’s anything they know that will help me. Plus, I hate admitting it, but I think hanging around them will put Jackie at ease, too. She nearly lost her goddamn mind when I told her I had a ride this morning, but she backed off when she found out it was Tyler.”