Her Shame: A Dark Bully Romance (The Forgotten Elites Book 1)

by Eden Beck

  I pause.

  Shit, hadn’t thought about that.

  Alaska sighs.

  “I can’t believe I’m helping you with this, but rumor has it he’s been seeing a girl over at Donovan House. I’d say if they’ve been able to keep it pretty low-key, she’s probably got a phone on her and she’ll have the number.”

  “Does everyone here have a phone other than me?” I ask, incredulous.

  Alaska shrugs. “I don’t have a phone … but only because I don’t need one. I was never a big texter before in the first place.”

  “For once … I wish you were,” I mutter.

  Alaska looks at me in a way that quickly makes me backtrack, hands lifted up in a gesture of surrender.

  “Okay, but like, what, I just find this girl and ask her for the number? No way she’d just give it to me.”

  “No, but say, if you could get your hands on her phone … I’d say he’s likely to meet up with whoever were to text him from that number,” Alaska says knowingly.

  I pause, only for a second. Do I really care about tricking Sterling?

  I know that answer.

  “What’s her name?” I ask.

  “Savannah Johns, I have Art History with her,” Alaska replies. “I can point her out at lunch.”

  “Okay,” I say, the knot in my stomach growing, and admittedly—I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I’m jealous of Savannah, or nervous about literally stealing from her.

  “You also, you know, don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Alaska adds. “I can’t say I ever pegged you for this kind of girl when I met you.”

  “I’m sick of all the bullshit. If this is what it takes, then so be it,” I say with fake confidence.

  “Alright, suit yourself,” Alaska says.

  But I see the faintest flicker of pride on her face when she turns away, and that is the image I cling to.

  The next day at lunch I sit with Alaska as she scans the room. Finally, she nods toward a girl at the far table.

  “That’s her, Savannah.”

  I follow her subtly pointed finger until I catch sight of a petite blonde sitting at the far end of the room. Once again, I find myself pushing back a curdling anger at the thought of Sterling’s hands wrapping around that small waist, at the image of him pulling her closer, his lips moving to—

  Alaska interrupts me by kicking me under the table, hard. “Stop it. You’re staring.”

  I shake my head to clear it and duck low over my plate.

  “You think she has her phone on her?” I ask, my eyes flickering over to glance at her just one more time.

  “I mean, hard to tell, but I’d assume so. I wouldn’t want to leave it in my room in case they do a random inspection.”

  “So … how do I get it?” I ask nervously.

  “Well, for starters, you can stop shaking,” Alaska says with a sigh. “Jesus, there’s no way you’re gonna be able to pull this off.”

  “I’m sorry, theft isn’t on my rap sheet …” I say sarcastically.

  Alaska rolls her eyes and looks over Savannah again. Just then, I see Savannah get up and walk away from her table. Alaska turns back to me.

  “Tell me I’m the best friend ever.”

  “What?”

  “Right now, tell me I’m literally the best friend you’ve ever had,” she presses.

  “Uh, I mean, yeah, pretty much,” I reply.

  “Alright, good enough,” Alaska says, and with that, she hops up from the table and follows Savannah into the girl’s restroom.

  I wait nervously, wondering what she’s up to. She emerges about five minutes later, a sly smile on her face.

  “Damn, I forgot that rush,” she says.

  “What did you do?”

  “You a huge favor,” she says as she sticks her hand underneath the table.

  I reach under and feel the smooth edges of a phone in my palm. Alaska presses it into my hand.

  I feel a sudden rush of my own.

  “And now my involvement is over, got it?” she says, sitting down opposite me. Her hands move to wipe anxiously across the top of her thighs.

  “This is … this is …” I gape at her at a loss for words. “Thank you, Alaska. You’re amazing.

  She just waves one of her shaking hands dismissively.

  “No problem, it’s been ages since I’ve flexed those muscles, actually felt good,” Alaska says with a grin. “Besides, you’re my best friend too, and if you got expelled for attempting to snatch and split the rest of the year would be really boring for me.”

  The two of us move to put our backs to Savannah’s table as we examine the stolen goods.

  The phone is just an old flip phone.

  “Classic burner, this girl is legit,” Alaska says, admiration in her voice.

  I flip it open and open the messages. There are a few different conversations.

  “How many people here have phones?” I ask.

  “Oh tons, c’mon, it’s not that hard to sneak them by,” Alaska says.

  Great, just another sign of how poorly I’ve fit in here. If it weren’t for Bridget, I’m pretty sure someone else would have found a reason to bully me by now.

  I see a conversation labeled “S” and open it. I scan over the messages and I can feel my cheeks flush as I read some very descriptive text. Alaska leans over my shoulder and her eyebrows raise.

  “Damn, girl has quite the vocabulary,” she remarks.

  My stomach turns, but I start to type out a message before I lose the nerve. It’s easier—and yet somehow impossibly harder—with Alaska here reading over my shoulder.

  Meet me behind the Admin building at 9. I have something I need to tell you.

  “That’s good, that’ll scare him enough to show up,” Alaska agrees.

  I hit send and wait. Minutes tick by. Nothing.

  “Maybe he’s lost interest,” Alaska says, glancing over her shoulder toward the boys a few tables over. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  I feel another pang in my stomach before I realize even if Sterling has lost interest, it wouldn’t be in me.

  Do I want it to be me?

  Or … more … do I want him to show interest in me?

  These thoughts I don’t share with Alaska as we wait. And wait. And continue to wait as people file out of the lunchroom until we’re the only two left.

  “You’re gonna be late to class,” I say to her.

  “This is way more interesting, I’ll just fake a stomach ache at the nurse,” Alaska replies.

  Suddenly, the phone buzzes. I flip it open.

  K.

  Short and to the point. But it gets to the point.

  “Well, I guess you’ve got … a date?” Alaska says.

  “Ha, sure, we’ll call it that,” I say with a scoff. But I can’t help the slight blush that colors my cheeks.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ten minutes to nine, I stand shivering behind the admin building, tucked into a dark corner and feeling remarkably cloak-and-dagger.

  Which is very unlike me, like, what am I even doing here? Sterling isn’t going to want to talk to me. He’s probably going to just turn around and leave as soon as he sees who’s really waiting for him in the dark.

  The minutes tick by in an agonizing drag. Nine o’clock rolls around, then nine ten. Finally, at nine fifteen, a tall, dark figure rounds the corner. It’s Sterling.

  As soon as he sees me, his eyebrows raise in genuine surprise.

  “What the hell, Aubrey?”

  “Yeah,” I reply, my voice shaking ever so slightly.

  Sterling stops and looks to either side as he scans the old brick walls and then the trees at his back.

  “Is Savannah here?” he asks.

  “No, just me. I … uh … found Savannah’s phone. I needed to talk to you away from Warren and Chase,” I say.

  He pauses.

  “You … found her phone?”

  The doubt is obvious in his voice, but I just ignor
e it and nod my head, biting my lip.

  “Okay, and why is that?” Sterling asks, his features looking even more severe than usual in the dim light.

  My words suddenly freeze in my throat.

  What did I want to ask him? Shit, I didn’t think this through.

  “Look, I don’t think you’re like the other guys. I think you actually give a shit about people, and so I want to know why you spend all your time hanging out with Warren and Chase and giving me hell.” The words tumble out with surprising confidence. Sterling looks as taken aback as I feel.

  “What, you have a crush on me? You stole a phone so that you could drag me out here to tell me that you understand me better than anyone else does, and actually know what I’m about. Come on Aubrey, this is high school shit,” Sterling says, visibly frustrated.

  “No … I …” I start to stutter.

  “Look, stop trying to act like you’re some sort of badass. That’s your issue. You can’t make up your mind about who you’re gonna be. You keep playing both the sinner and the saint and that’s why you’ve got a giant target on your back,” Sterling spits.

  “Okay, so if you’re so mature and wise, why have you been giving me just as much hell as those other idiots you hang out with?” I ask.

  “Because it’s too easy Aubrey, and fun,” he says as he fumbles in his pocket for something. A moment later, he produces a cigarette from some inside pocket and lights it up.

  What did I think I was going to do here? Shove what I found in his face? He’d deny everything. This was a stupid plan.

  Still, I don’t catch my next question before it tumbles out of me. “Why don’t you give Bridget hell then? Is it because you’re—”

  “I’m going to stop you there,” Sterling says, his voice suddenly surprisingly low. He fixes me with a steady look. “I want nothing to do with your little spat with Warren’s sister. I won’t have you drawing me into this quarrel over something that happened years ago.”

  Something that happened years ago.

  The look on Sterling’s face changes even as he registers what he’s just said.

  What he just let slip.

  “It was nothing,” he hisses at me, stepping closer. “Nothing. And you’d do well not to think about it again. Not if you know what’s good for you.”

  At this point, I’ve been threatened so many times that this newest one hardly phases me. I’m not given the time, anyway, before Sterling takes a step closer and reaches out to twirl one of my loose locks around the tip of his index finger.

  “Now, if you want to admit that what you really want is a little piece of this action, we can talk,” Sterling says with a smirk. “But I don’t screw around with little girls who are just playing pretend.”

  The knot in my stomach jumps into my throat. I try to say something back but I can’t choke out a single word. Sterling stares at me with those piercing eyes of his, and suddenly … he’s all I can think about.

  Not Bridget. Not revenge. Not even the girl who’s stolen phone brought me here.

  For a moment, I imagine Sterling looking at me with a look other than disgust. I imagine him looking at me the way he did that one time in the music room, his body responding to the way his eyes scan the shape of me.

  And then I look back up at Sterling, standing against the side of the building, and for a second—I see that look again.

  I came here for answers, but now my body is asking me for something else.

  Here, in the soft moonlight, we forget ourselves for a moment.

  We forget who we are, where we are. The space between us is suddenly stiflingly small, his hand unable to keep from brushing mine as it raises once again to press the cigarette between his lips.

  Lips that are tilting closer to mine, parting, breathing hot, smoke-laden breath onto my face.

  He doesn’t touch me, but I feel his hand hovering so close to mine that the heat of it makes my skin tingle.

  For one second, I lift my eyes to meet his. They’re so close to mine that for the first time, I see the golden sunflower coloring around the center of his irises.

  I part my lips, leaning ever so closer, the softest of sighs punctuating the darkness.

  And then just as quickly, I lean back, one thought on my mind—the girl who’s phone I stole, Savannah.

  I’m not about to add homewrecker to my ever-increasing rap sheet.

  Sterling just lets out the quietest of dark chuckles.

  “Fuck, Aubrey,” he hisses into the night. “Stop trying to play games you’re not good at, it doesn’t suit you.”

  I’m grateful for the dark, because it hides the heat that floods my face.

  “And give me Savannah’s phone back,” he says, putting out his hand expectantly.

  I clutch it in my fist, refusing to move. Sterling sighs.

  “Fucking hell Aubrey, I’m not going to tell her you took it, okay? I’ll just say she left it in my room.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because there’s no fun in getting you expelled for being unbelievably clumsy and stupid. It’s just … sad,” Sterling says, hand still outstretched.

  I sigh now too, and drop the phone into his palm.

  “Thank you,” he says as he pockets it.

  I start to walk away, but before I get too far, he calls out after me. “I expected a lot better from you, Aubrey.”

  I stop and glance back him.

  “What did you expect then?”

  For one moment, his eyes rove over me—and I do nothing to stop him.

  When they raise back up to meet mine, that hunger is there again. His breaths have grown shorter. His eyes are hooded, his lips once again parted.

  For a second I consider turning back, consider turning my shame into something more than rumors. But only for a second.

  “Sterling …” I start, suddenly taking a step back. And just like that, any heat rising between us suddenly cools. Sterling’s face hardens and his lips press together in a tight line as he throws the rest of the cigarette to be ground underfoot.

  “See?” he says, his lip curling up as he turns and starts walking away. “I don’t care what everyone else says. You’re just playing pretend.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I’ve never felt so seen, and yet so offended at the same time.

  I have no right to be upset. Of course I’m playing pretend.

  But that doesn’t stop me from having to choke back tears as I burst back into my room at Mason House, where Alaska is laying on her bed. I collapse onto mine.

  “That was unbelievably stupid,” I say.

  “Well, yeah, but … are you okay?” she asks.

  I rub my eyes and take a breath. “I think so, just … I don’t know what I was expecting.”

  “I don’t know either girl. Unless you were planning on putting out …” she says.

  I sit up suddenly. “Is that what it looked like?”

  “I mean …” Alaska trails off, shrugging a bit. “I wouldn’t judge you if you were.”

  For one moment, the image of Sterling there in the moonlight surfaces to the front of my mind. There in the silence, without his own harsh words or criticisms to remind me who he is, I had the distinct feeling that … that …

  That I wanted him to kiss me.

  I wanted him to do more than kiss me.

  I don’t tell Alaska that, of course—and certainly not that if I hadn’t just stolen the phone from the girl he’s supposedly seeing—I might have let him.

  I can still taste Mr. Peters like bile on my lips. It’s a memory I’d like to replace.

  And kissing Sterling would certainly be hard to forget.

  I don’t tell Alaska any of that, but I think she gets a good idea of my thoughts anyway from the long moan that slips from my lips as I bury my face in my arms.

  “Well, did you at least find out what you wanted?”

  I press my palms into my eye sockets for a moment as another sigh escapes from my lips.

&nbs
p; “Oh my god, I’m such an idiot.”

  I suddenly sit up, my head swimming momentarily from the sudden motion. When I look at Alaska this time, I watch as her own expression mirrors mine as it twists from angry to smug.

  She scoots forward to the end of her bed, eyes bright. “You did, didn’t you?”

  I nod, the smile spreading across my face until it’s a full-on grin.

  What was I thinking, wallowing over the fact that—what—Sterling told me I was ‘playing pretend’?

  We’ll see who’s ‘playing pretend’ by the time I’m finished with him.

  “Yes,” I say, turning to Alaska. “Yes, I did.”

  All I really got from Sterling was a slip of the tongue, but that’s all I needed.

  I don’t need to know everything about Bridget’s secret. I just have to know enough.

  And now I do.

  All that’s left is to wait until the right moment to tell her. To do that, I’m going to have to get her alone—something that, now that finals have arrived, is proving to be more difficult than I expected.

  Now that finals are finally breaking over us like a series of unrelenting waves, I find myself bouncing from exam to exam, each one as nail-biting and anxiety inducing as the next. But as difficult as they are, they can’t occupy my mind away from Bridget’s secret—and what exactly it is I’m supposed to do with it.

  As I sit in my English exam at the end of the week, the backs of Warren, Chase, and Sterling’s heads just ahead of me, my mind churns with what’s coming next.

  Will I actually be able to pull this off? It’s not exactly like I have experience with this kind of thing.

  My mind drifts back to the library and Bridget’s tense encounter with Sterling. Even Bridget, with all her bravado, couldn’t crack Sterling.

  But do I want to crack her?

  In all honesty, I don’t want Bridget to suffer the way she’s made me. The way she’s stoked the whispers and jostling elbows of the entire Ridgecrest class. The way she tormented me in the weeks leading up to her finally revealing my past anyway at the first sign of not getting what she wants.

  But I would like an end to the bullying.

  I’d like her to take back the lies.