Beautifully Wicked: A High School Bully Romance (Voclain Academy Book One)

by Jordan Grant

  My stomach rolls. I don’t understand because it seems so clear to me that this isn’t an act of passion. There’s no enjoyment in Mrs. Beckett’s gaze, no anticipation, no excitement. There is nothing but fear. Her monster isn’t in a closet. He’s escaped.

  “Are you okay?” I ask Ian.

  He turns suddenly to face me, sending my arm falling from his shoulder.

  “Why do you care?” he snarls.

  I know he doesn’t mean it. He can’t mean it, but it feels like someone has carved up my chest and dug out all the warmth.

  “Because I am yours, and you are mine,” I manage, but the words—his words originally professed to me in the library at Voclain—shake with uncertainty. Just like I do.

  He stares at me, unblinking. I am as small as a grain of sand beneath his feet. He shoves me off him and stands, looking down at me.

  The spark I normally find in his gaze is extinguished. He is distant, shielded off from the world. He’s rebuilt every wall I fought, brick by brick, to tear down, and it’s taken him less than a minute.

  “We are only together because I didn’t give you a choice.” His words are emotionless, matter-of-fact, like he’s reading off his grocery list and not destroying my heart. “At the beginning of the semester, you hated me, Harlow. You didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “That’s not true,” I say, but as the words leave my mouth, I’m not entirely sure whether I am speaking truth or lies.

  “Yeah, it is. I dragged you into my world, and then I refused to let you go.” His lips thin with his disgust. “You don’t belong, and you don’t have to pretend to belong anymore, sweetness.” His words don’t sound sweet at all. They are sour and bitter and slice deeply.

  “Go,” he says, not even bothering to look at me. “Please, just fucking go.”

  I want to wrap my arms around him and hold him until it all goes away.

  I want to stroke his hair and tell him it’ll be all right.

  I want to go back to five minutes ago.

  “Fuck!” The scream rips from behind his teeth so violently his gums should bleed. He throws the tablet, and I flinch as the screen shatters against the wall and falls to the floor, the picture of his mother and father cracking with the glass.

  The image of him standing there, his shoulders pinched tight with rage, his hands shaking at his sides, wavers in my tears before I turn and run out of the room.

  — Ian —

  Harlow is gone, crying as she left my room. She took the last remaining piece of my soul with her. Now, there’s just darkness and the ugly thing that lurks in my chest.

  It’s fucking lonely in the dark.

  I am crying too. My father would be disgusted. He would tell me to grow up, to be a man, but he has never felt pain. I don’t think he has ever experienced any human emotion. He’s just an animal, surviving.

  I dig my vodka bottle out of the bottom of my nightstand and unscrew the cap. I take a big swallow, but I don’t taste the bite of the liquor or feel the burn as it collides with the back of my throat. I tip the bottle against my lips and chug.

  I shouldn’t do this. I disgust myself. I take another long swallow. Stop! I spew what’s left in my mouth on the floor and throw the bottle away from me. It shatters on impact, denting the wall with the hit.

  I stare at the tablet, the photograph of my parents flickering across the broken screen. Vodka drips down the wallpaper and pools on the floor. The stench of it burns my nostrils. The shit’s like 100 proof, and it’ll probably eat through the varnish. Not that I care.

  I should go find her. I fucked up. I really fucked up. But I don’t know if finding her will fix it. I don’t know how to fix it.

  My fingers bite into my palms. I want to punch something. I want to punch myself. Scratch that. I want to sleep like the mother-fucking dead and awaken from this nightmare. That’s the only thing that will make this better.

  I rip open the top drawer on my dresser and feel upward until the hidden compartment unlatches and falls, spilling all the nice things that will make the pain go away. I finger through the pill bottles until I find it.

  I open the Oxy and swallow two whole. I almost choke, the bitter chalky aftertaste lingering on my tongue, but I swallow again to force them down and grab a third for good measure.

  I should stop. I should take it slow. I should think about what I’m doing, but I walk back over to my nightstand and pull out the bottle of bourbon pressed against the far back corner.

  I shouldn’t.

  This is getting out of hand.

  I feel myself slipping.

  Maybe if I drink enough of this shit, it’ll all become one bad hangover.

  The gossip mag called it the Becketts’ kink, but they write whatever they have to so the housewives on the east coast will titter and follow them on Twitter. They are wrong. This isn’t a fetish. This isn’t some role-playing shit. It’s my fucking life.

  Rage beats inside me like a drum. Of course, my parents would do this. They always do. Their friends, pretty housewives choking on Valium and Xanax with their pompous husbands who have a side piece or two, now have a spark of gossip to ignite their dinner parties.

  But I know the truth. I know the smell of arnica cream on my mother and the pore-less look of the thick foundation she uses to hide the bruises. She may not adore my father, but she is afraid of him and the long line of money that follows his name.

  My limbs are heavy. I am becoming numb. I don’t even taste the liquor as it slides down my throat.

  My stomach rolls, and I choke down the urge to vomit. I could blame it on the pills or the booze or my shitty parents, but none of that would be true. I am the cause of my sickness.

  When I look in the mirror, I see him.

  When I think about all the ugly shit I’ve done over the years, I am reminded of him and the ugly bruises he’s left on my mother.

  I am not what she deserves.

  I am the monster.

  I am her monster.

  And there’s no mother-fucking way I get to turn into Prince Charming.

  35

  Harlow

  Our first fight.

  I feel…

  I feel...

  I feel...numb.

  Maybe if I hadn’t been bawling for the last hour, I would feel something. Maybe if I wasn’t weak, maybe if I didn’t have to rely on pills to keep the darkness away, I would feel something.

  But I am not the one who’s done anything wrong. Like Dr. Murray says in our appointments, needing medication isn’t something to be ashamed of and just because I don’t fit into some Hollywood notion of teenage normalcy doesn’t mean I am weak. I may resent the pills and I may be jealous of the Hallmark-approved version of me I lost months ago, but I’m not ashamed, and I certainly won’t take the blame for Ian being an asshole.

  In an instant, like a balloon popping inside my belly, anger explodes inside me. This isn’t my fault. I may have a fucked up brain, but who doesn’t? We didn’t have an argument. We had a conclusion, the equivalent of him slamming the door in my face and locking the deadbolt.

  I want to scream and yell at him. I want to demand answers until my throat splits and bleeds. I want to...

  I want to hold him.

  I’m giving myself emotional whiplash.

  I knew his parents had problems—whose parents don’t?—but I never would have guessed that his dirty little secret would be that his father beats his mother. My stomach churns like a choppy tide at the thought. What he has seen, what he has been witness to since birth, makes my skin crawl.

  Abuse. Fear. Money to make it all go away. And the cycle repeats.

  Ian’s mom loves him. I’ve spent less than five minutes with her, but it’s apparent all the same. It’s in the way her attention is devoted to him when he’s in a room, how her lips weigh down when he rubs his eyes or looks anything less than absolutely content. Maybe she thought she could protect him from the dark side of his father, but there’s no puttin
g the monster back in its cage.

  I want to go check on Ian, though he probably doesn’t want to see me. He told me to leave, yet all I can think about is crawling in bed beside him and soaking up his warmth. I am cold underneath this downy comforter in this big house with lots of space but little security.

  I can’t stay here and do nothing. I can’t hide out for the rest of fall break in this big room in this big house on this big estate and pretend he doesn’t exist.

  I don’t want to pretend at all.

  I just want to go back to a few hours ago and forget his words that sliced me to the bone and the look of indifference he was seemingly born with. I thought I had finally broken through, that I’d chipped away at his walls. But I was wrong.

  I am not the mousy girl in the movie who finally tames the bad boy heartthrob. I’m just a girl, a normal, boring girl. A girl who likes strange food combinations—like pickles and peanut butter—and needs meds to keep the darkness at bay. A girl with silly dreams of being a surgeon like she could somehow bring her brother back with every successful operation.

  Ian is ethereal, otherworldly. He was born into a life of privilege but seems content to shun it all—no, that’s not right. He seems okay with setting fire to it and watching it burn.

  He’s brilliant and beautiful and all things unordinary. I’ve never seen him study, yet I’ve also never seen him get anything less than straight As. He’s got an Adonis belt that deserves to be in the Guinness Book of World Records, and I can attest to his prowess in the bedroom. I am a fool to think I could ever change him, ever really make him mine. Catching Ian is like catching the wind, frustrating and useless and utterly impossible.

  But hope is a cruel bitch. It burns its little flickering flame in endless night. It keeps alive those dreams you wish you could forget and ignores the odds that stand like Mount Sinai in front of you. I hope for him. I hope for me. I hope for what we could be together.

  I climb out of bed, the floor cold and unforgiving against my bare feet. I slide a sweater over my head and leave for Ian’s room.

  The halls are quiet and lonely, my feet loud on the marble floor. A clock ticks, but the sound is far away. I wrap my arms around myself to ward out the cold, but it leeches the warmth from me anyway.

  This place is massive, a maze I could easily get lost in and have to yell for help. I cut through the library as Ian showed me. The space is enormous, lined with built-in bookshelves that climb up the two story walls and two rolling wooden ladders on opposite sides of the room.

  Lights mounted to the walls give off flicking flames like old gas lanterns, giving the space a cozy, warm feel. I want to take a moment and run my fingers across the worn spines of the books and feel the titles embossed in gold. I want to get close and smell them like a serious weirdo, but I don’t. I cross the massive Persian rug and slide the doors shut behind me as I leave.

  I am cold, colder than I’ve ever been, and something inside my gut screams at me, but the message is messy and jumbled and I have no idea what it’s trying to say. I walk a little faster and before I know it, I am jogging, my feet slapping against the floor. When I reach Ian’s door, it’s shut. I should knock, but I can’t stop. I go inside.

  “Ian?” I say, my voice loud against the soft hum of the heater on the far side of the room.

  His room has been trashed. His dresser lies tipped over, and there are clothes and papers everywhere, balled on the floor and bunched up in corners. An electric guitar literally sticks out of a wall, wedged in there by the lower bout, and the place smells like booze. The stench burns my nostrils as his tablet lies on the floor where it first landed, flickering on and off like a beacon to lost sailors at sea.

  “Ian?” I say again, his name a squeak.

  There’s no response, and my heart jitters inside my chest like someone’s playing paddle ball with it.

  I say his name again, louder. Again, no response.

  I walk over the destruction, careful to avoid the pieces of broken glass from the photo frames shattered on the floor. There’s a light on in the adjoining bathroom, and the door is cracked open. I push open the door, and it opens with a long, solitary creak.

  I am blinded, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust from the darkness of his room. The white light flooding my vision fades. First into focus are the white-and-black granite countertop and the mirror that extends over the vanity. Next are the walls, the same light gray as the cliffs that run along the Pacific. Last to clear are the floors of black marble and Ian.

  He’s on the floor, and the darkness inside me squeezes tight around my lungs. The world tilts on its axis and whirls like a wobbling spin top.

  I can’t breathe. I am shaking. My knees give way underneath me, and I collapse to the floor in front of him, a wail tearing from my throat.

  He lays on his side, his limbs splattered like a dropped rag doll. Vomit pools on the tile beside him.

  Images—no, memories, my memories—scroll like a broken projector inside my head.

  William with the needle in his arm.

  A spoon and a lighter and a cracked leather folio scattered on the carpeted floor around his body.

  Everly at his side, her eyes glossy and faraway, her painted lips, ruby red and open, her tights below her jean skirt torn at the knees.

  I stumble forward, and it’s like I am retracing my steps, only instead of stepping on carpet over needles, I’m stepping over empty pill bottles and broken glass crunching underneath my feet.

  One, two, thr...thr...thr...

  The world rolls. No! Don’t pass out!

  O...one, t...two, three, f...f...f...four...

  “Ian!” I scream, the sound wounded just like I screamed William’s name once before. I grab Ian underneath his shoulders and hoist him into my lap like I did with William. I grunt with the effort, my shoes slipping and squeaking against the floor.

  “Wake up!” I yell, my voice breaking as I shake him. “Please wake up!”

  I try to check his pulse, but my fingers are shaking so hard, I can’t steady them long enough.

  His body tugs to the side, wanting to fold over. It takes everything I have to not let him fall.

  “Ian!” I shake him, begging him to reply. “What did you take? What did you take, Ian?!”

  Blackness spreads inside my brain until it coats everything with its ruin. Something cinches inside my chest, and it’s like my heart forgets to beat and my lungs forget to breathe all at once. My fingers itch to claw at my throat, so they can rip it open and find more air.

  I don’t let go. I tremble and shake and hyperventilate, but I won’t let go.

  “Help!” I scream as loud as I can, the word echoing along the subway tiles. I force the word out of me again and again and again, each time louder than before.

  All the while, I am slapping him, kissing him, rocking him, begging him to please wake up.

  Ian’s mother is first into the bathroom, her ivory silk robe fluttering behind her as her big blue eyes widen and take in the situation. Ian’s father isn’t far behind in his pinstriped pajamas and when his gaze lands on Ian, he scrambles to the medicine cabinet, muttering, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

  He yanks something out of the medicine cabinet and rips it out of the box packaging. In an instant, he’s stooped on his knees beside me as Ian’s mother yells at a housekeeper to call for an ambulance. Ian’s father shoves whatever’s he got up Ian’s nose and decompresses the spray nozzle.

  I remember the hiss of the spray as the EMTs worked to revive William. I remember the look of it, a small and unassuming white bottle.

  Narcan.

  “Ian.” I stroke his hair. The brine of my tears sits thick on my tongue. My eyes itch from crying.

  Mr. Beckett jerks Ian away from me and onto the floor. He kneels, his hands pressed together to start chest compressions. His shoulders bunch together, about to begin, when Ian draws in a deep, sucking breath that sounds like a strangled huuuuhhhh.

 
“Iiiiaaaannnn!” Mrs. Beckett wails.

  Ian draws in another strangled breath and mumbles something that sounds like my name. I shake uncontrollably, so very cold in his bathroom, the expensive marble floor sucking the warmth from my skin.

  I’m going to be sick. I’m going to pass out. The world rolls like I am bingo ball spinning in the announcer’s cage. I squeeze my eyes shut and hope this is all a dream, a horrible nightmare.

  Images detonate like bombs going off inside my broken head. With every hit, another piece of me is lost forever, and no amount of therapy or pills will ever make this better.

  Everly’s wail when she realized his lips were already blue.

  My head dips between my knees.

  A girl yelling the moment before the music was cut off.

  I rock back and forth, my breath coming in quick bursts.

  Blaze busting into the room, drunk confusion on his perfect, quarterback face.

  I wrap my arms around myself and squeeze tight.

  The high-pitched wee-ooo of the paramedics as they arrived.

  Ian coughs and mumbles something unintelligible.

  A woman ripping me away from my brother, my best friend, my twin, and the crunch of his ribs breaking as they began chest compressions.

  My breath bursts from behind my teeth, my lungs wringing out all the oxygen like a soaked sponge.

  William’s body laying prone on the floor as the golden haired paramedic looked at his colleague and shook his head, sweat pouring down his face.

  Minutes later, one stretcher arrives, though two exist inside my damaged brain.

  One for William and one for my love.

  36

  Ian

  I am cold.

  Something beeps incessantly to my right, and I turn my head away from it, wanting the noise to go away.

  God, my bed has never been so uncomfortable. How much did I drink last night? My pounding head wants to find a guillotine and end the suffering for me. I try to roll away from the noise and wince. My shoulder and side hurt like I got hit by a tractor trailer.