RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE)

by Wild, Nikki

  “Greg,” I called out, my hands out to the sides in a gesture that I wasn’t going to hurt him—not right away, anyway.

  “I—” he stammered, taking a step away from me, his hands going up above his head. “I didn’t!”

  “You didn’t what?” I began, but before I knew it, he was taking off in the opposite direction heading right for Jessica. I started to head after him, my footfalls slapping against the concrete like drumbeats. I knew that I could catch him, in fact he’d hardly gone ten feet before I was halfway to him. But just as I was about to take him down I noticed he’d already started to topple over.

  I stopped just in time to watch Greg fall into the low bushes that lined the sidewalk, my stepsister standing over him. She turned her gaze toward me, a smile half-cocked on her face as she gave me a shrug.

  “What’d you do?” I asked as I took another few steps closer, closing the distance between the three of us while Greg recovered himself from the tangling grasp of the shrubs.

  “Me?” she asked, eyebrows raised and her hands raised in a show of mock surrender. “I didn’t touch him. He just turned around and saw me running toward him and panicked. I didn’t have to lay a hand on him—he sort of just did it himself.”

  “You startled me!” Greg said, trying to defend himself as he got to his feet.

  I shook my head before grabbing Greg by the front of his witty T-shirt, pulling him up nice and close to my face. I could practically smell the fear on him, his face dripping with sweat as I stared right into his eyes, my jaw set. I even threw in a growl for good measure.

  “Why did you take the pictures for Michael?” I asked, drawing myself up over him as much as I could, trying to seem more intimidating. I’d been the bully during my last few years of middle school the anger of my mother’s death finding its way out onto others before I found football. I knew how to make guys like Greg wet themselves.

  “I’m sorry!” he said, throwing his arms over his face to save himself from whatever punishment he imagined that I would give him. “They said they’d pay me to get the pictures. I’m barely able to afford to go here as it is! I figured that it wouldn’t do much harm. Getting a picture of some guy and his girlfriend doing it? I figured Michael was just being a pervert.”

  “He didn’t tell you why he needed them?” I asked, almost lifting him off the ground. I hoped to god no one came around the corner and saw this, or this whole thing would have been for nothing.

  “No!” he exclaimed, turning his face away from me in fear.

  He was just a stooge, I thought, shoving him away from me hard. Greg didn’t know what Michael wanted the pictures for or even that Jessica and I were step-siblings. That, probably among other things, meant that Greg had no clue how Michael was storing the pictures or where any copies were.

  “And what about Becky?” Jessica asked, her voice quivering with anger. Before I could stop her, I heard the sound of her hand meeting Greg’s face. “Did it make sense when you threw her to those bastards? When you let her get raped in the bedroom at some frat-house?”

  Once again Greg was on the defensive, his arms raised over his head as Jessica swung her bag at him. Her face was red with anger as she forced him right back into the bushes. I’d never seen her so mad in my life, all the fury of seeing what Michael and his friend had done to Becky, of what Greg had let them do to her, it all poured out of her at once in a violent torrent of rage.

  “You let them violate my best friend! You son of a bitch!” she cried out, forcing Greg onto the ground with another swing of her bag. “You lead her right to them, and they chewed her up and spit her out like she was garbage!”

  “I didn’t know what they were going to do!” he whimpered, curling up into a ball on the concrete. “I swear to God, I didn’t know they were going to touch Becky!”

  Jessica stopped, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her face still red. It was taking everything that she had to keep from swinging that bag again. I knew I’d have to step in if my stepsister couldn’t control herself, but would I want to?

  “They told me that they’d give me the money at the party,” he continued after the assault had abated, lowering his guard so that he could look up at Jessica. “When I handed Michael the pictures, I noticed that something was wrong. Becky wasn’t acting right; she looked drowsy and confused. And when I asked them for the money, they just laughed.

  “Michael’s guys pulled Becky off the couch and told me that they were going to show her a good time,” Greg’s eyes started to well up with tears. “I tried so hard to get them to stop. I tried to bring her back. I ended up getting my ass kicked and thrown out of the house.”

  “Why didn’t you call the cops?” I asked, my brow furrowed.

  “I did!” he shouted, his own anger rising in his voice. “And by the time they got there, the party was over. And besides, half the cops on campus were in AEΩ. They’d never have done anything to their brothers.”

  Jessica took a step back, her hands covering her mouth as she dropped her bag to the ground. She turned her eyes toward me and I watched them begin to fill with tears. I knew that look, that hopeless frustration. She and I knew exactly what the other was thinking—if the campus police were on Michael’s side, then we were going to need some damn hard evidence if we even wanted to think about getting justice for Becky.

  “You’re going to help us get those pictures back, Greg,” I said, glaring down at him. “Jessica and I aren’t about to let Michael get away with this, or with what he did to Becky.”

  “You don’t understand,” he whimpered, looking up at me in fear. “They’ll kill me. If they find out that I’m helping you, then I’m a dead man! No, I won’t do it!”

  Before I could move to grab him, Greg was scrambling away between me and Jess, sprinting down the sidewalk at breakneck speeds. I started to run after him, but the feeling of Jessica’s hand on my chest kept me from giving chase.

  “Let him go,” she whispered, her eyes still downcast. “We’ll just have to find another way.”

  _ SEVENTEEN _

  Jessica

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do, Becky.”

  The two of us sat in our dorm room, each occupying our respective beds. Both of us had at this point resigned ourselves to skipping class that day, especially after the disastrous encounter that Richard and I had had with Greg only a few days before. And while my stepbrother had football practice to keep him occupied all I had was time to myself to stew and think on how utterly screwed the two of us were.

  “Can’t you talk to the cops?” she asked, sitting cross legged across from me. “Michael’s blackmailing you, and last time I checked, that was a crime.”

  “All they’d have is our word,” I sighed, “and besides, Greg said that almost half the campus police force were brothers at AEΩ. Even if we did report it, word would just get back to Michael and they’d cover everything up. I wouldn’t even put it past him to set us up for something we didn’t even do just for revenge.”

  “Isn’t that what the pictures are supposed to be for?” she asked.

  “No, I think he wants to hold those over our heads, make us squirm until he needs something or just wants to royally fuck with us.”

  Becky shook her head, almost as distressed about the situation as I was. It was bad enough what Michael had done to her already, now he was ruining the lives of others as well. It had been almost a week since Becky had gone to class, which, despite everything, had still allowed her to do her coursework from the comfort of her bed, safe from the stares and rumors of the other students—and there were definitely rumors flying when it came to the events of that night at the party, spread in no small part by the brothers of AEΩ.

  “I still can’t believe that Greg would have just run like that,” Becky said, leaning back on her elbows. “I mean, he’s not the bravest guy on campus, but I’d think that maybe he’d try to fix his mistakes.”

  “Sometimes we really don’t know people as well
as we thought that we did,” I said. “Even people you might think are nice and sweet can be cruel on the inside.”

  “You’re starting to sound like me now,” she remarked, a sad frown on her lips. “I’m sorry about all of this, Jessica.”

  I wish sorry could fix it, I lamented, running my fingers through my hair.

  “I don’t know what I did to deserve all of this,” I said, my gaze drawn up toward the slowly revolving ceiling fan. “Like, did I insult a gypsy? What does a person have to do to make them deserve people like Michael inflicted on them?”

  “I wish it were that simple,” she sighed. “Sometimes I almost wish that it had been a punishment for something I’d done—at least then it would seem like there was a reason. But that’s just it, there isn’t a reason that it happened to us. There was no grand design that put all of this into place. Sometimes bad things just happen, and whether we deserve it or not we have to deal with them.”

  I looked into Becky’s eyes, at the tears welling up in them. I felt horrible spilling my problems out onto her, especially after the awful experience she’d been through at the hands of Michael. But in a way, what she’d been through at the hands of my own tormentor somehow made her the perfect person who could understand what being the target of someone so cruel was like.

  I got up from my bed and crawled over onto Becky’s, wrapping her up in my arms in a tight, warm hug as I laid my head on her shoulder. She was my closest and dearest friend, the person who I could rely on for anything. But even in my own time of crisis, I knew I needed to be there for her too, even if it was just for a simple hug.

  A soft knock broke me and Becky from our embrace, both of our heads turning in curiosity at who would be here in the middle of the day, right when classes were going on all across campus. I glanced at Becky, meeting her eyes nervously as I got up and crossed over to the door and peered through the peephole.

  Standing on the other side, to my shock, was probably the last person I’d have ever expected to see ever again. Greg loitered nervously just outside of our dorm room, his hands in his pockets as he rocked back and forward on the balls of his feet.

  “It’s Greg,” I whispered, turning my head back to look at Becky, my eyes raised.

  “What? What the hell is he doing here?” she asked standing up and coming to the door to look through the door as well.

  “I don’t know… should we let him in?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Becky said, looking once again through the hole.

  “We should at least find out what he wants,” I said. “We don’t have to let him in, but I’ll talk to him and if you want you can stay hidden behind the door.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding and moving to the side to keep the door between herself and Greg as I undid the lock.

  Greg looked like crap, his hair was a mess and underneath his eyes were dark bags that could only have come from a desperate lack of sleep. His clothes were rumpled and he honestly smelled like he’d failed to take care of himself since the last time I’d seen him.

  “What do you want?” I asked, the door opened just enough for Greg to see my face.

  “I need to talk to you… and to Becky.”

  “And what if neither of us want to talk to you? You’re not exactly high on our list of people right now, Greg.” I glared at him, watching his sad, simpering expression.

  “It’s about Michael—about what he did… and had me do.”

  I stared at him for a moment, unsure whether I even wanted to hear another word from his mouth. The only thing that kept me from slamming the door in his face was Becky’s hand on my shoulder, encouraging me to hear him out.

  “All right,” I said. “What did you want to say?”

  “Could I come inside?” he asked, glancing down the hallway in either direction. “It’s not exactly something I want overheard.”

  Another squeeze from Becky’s hand told me that she was okay, and wanted to hear what he had to say. I reluctantly nodded and moved aside, opening the door wider to allow Greg to enter. Once he was inside I shut the door and locked it with both the bolt and the chain lock.

  Greg stood awkwardly in the center of the room, his eyes downcast and his shoulder hunched. He looked absolutely pathetic, like a scolded puppy dog that had been left out in the rain all night.

  “What did you have to tell us?” I asked, keeping myself between him and Becky. “I want to make this quick. Like I said, you’re not my favorite person right now.”

  “I don’t really blame you,” he began, “I did something stupid for cash, and instead I got people in a really bad situation.”

  “A bad ‘situation’?” Becky asked incredulously, finally speaking up. “Is that what you’re calling what happened?”

  “No! I didn’t mean—”

  “Do you even understand what he did to me?” she asked, her voice suddenly rising to levels I’d never heard it go, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Of course you don’t, because I can hardly even remember half of it! All I remember was waking up in the dirt with my panties around my ankles!”

  “Becky, I—” he stammered, but she couldn’t stop herself, even his pleas for understanding were rolled over by things she’d been holding inside since that night.

  “He took me!” Becky cried. “He did awful things to me. He drugged me! And after all of that, after everything he did, you had the chance to do something when Richard and Jessica found you… You ran!”

  “I’m sorry!” he cried, tears spilling from his eyes. “I was afraid! Afraid of what might happen if I stood up to him and it failed. I didn’t know what he’d do if I helped them—if he’d hurt you again, or hurt me… I didn’t know what else to do!”

  “So now what, you’re just here to make amends?” I asked as Becky held herself behind me. “You say sorry and hope that everything’s forgiven?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head almost violently. “I don’t think I even deserve that… but I can help you do what you asked me to do. I can help you get your pictures back.”

  “How?” I asked, frowning.

  “It’s not exactly legal,” he said, a grimace on his face. “And it’ll require you to do something that I doubt you’re going to be comfortable with.”

  _ EIGHTEEN _

  Dick

  The last two days had been more than a little hectic.

  With Greg’s refusal to help us get the pictures out of Michael’s possession, we had no way out when it came to our predicament. Either we found a way to delete those pictures or Michael would hold them over our heads. Even if we could nail him to the wall for what happened to Becky, our lives would be ruined.

  I’d tried my best to go about the day like normal, though wherever I went I saw members of AEΩ, watching. I knew Michael didn’t have much power among the upperclassmen in the fraternity, but the amount of influence he’d apparently gathered among his fellow pledges was more than a little unnerving. People like Michael always knew just how to get others to do what they wanted, sometimes even eagerly; they brought out the worst in people.

  Jessica and I hadn’t seen one another since the confrontation with Greg, and I was beginning to wonder if she’d given up on what we’d begun together. The thought of that alone was enough to make me feel like my heart was being stabbed out.

  The fact that I was so powerless to stop what was happening was what killed me the most. I’d always been strong, fast, capable, even smart. But faced up against an obstacle like Michael, there didn’t seem like there was any way to really beat him. Sure, I could hurt him, kick his ass from here to Oregon, but the fact remained that once I was done he’d just send every single one of those pictures to the entire campus. No matter what I did, Michael still had the upper hand and Jessica would suffer for it.

  I sat on my bed, my head in my hands for most of the morning. There were only a few more days until the game, and for once the coach thought that maybe getting a little rest might do us some good. My entire body was sore
now that it had a chance to recover from its weeks-long torture before the first game of the season. Sleep would have been more than welcome, but the thought of that bastard holding those pictures over Jess and I kept me tossing and turning through the night. It would be one thing if I was disgraced, I could probably find another college to take me, especially with my prowess on the field, but the shame it would put on Jessica if we were outed like that wasn’t something I was ready to put her through. Sure, some day we’d need to own up to our parents, but I wanted that to happen on my terms, not thanks to some filthy pictures being sent by mail… I had to keep her safe.

  It was late in the evening, and after the previous night of restlessness I was more than ready for some sleep. I’d been regrettably lax in giving commands to Jessica, but with the situation with Michael I felt like now wasn’t the time for our intimate games and with Michael on our heels I thought it best no one catch us with our pants down—literally.