Them Seymore Boys: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 1)

by Savannah Rose

  Heart pounding, holding my breath, I crept out of the classroom as silently as possible. Rudy was waiting for me on the other side of the hall, brown arms crossed over his chest, blue eyes blazing under his thick, dark brows.

  He jerked his head at me again, then disappeared into the dark classroom across the hall—it was empty, as it had been since Billy Farcus accidentally set fire to it last year.

  The room had been cleaned over the summer, but the wall across from the door was still blackened in a high, jagged, flame-shaped pattern. The way Rudy stood in front of it, defiant and proud, made him look like a rouge demon prince. I was walking into a trap, I just knew it—but as soon as I’d taken one step out of my classroom, it had been too late to turn back.

  I met his glittering, defiant stare with one of my own.

  I get bitchy when I’m nervous.

  Bitchy and antagonistic.

  Part of me wondered if he knew that, if he was counting on me saying something I shouldn’t to give him an excuse to lash out at me. So I stayed silent, crossing my own arms in a subconscious mirroring of his posture, and leaned against the wall by the door.

  The silence stretched out between us, tense as an over-strung guitar string.

  He took a step toward me, his pupils dilating in the dark. My heart jumped in my throat, my whole body prepared for whatever he might do.

  “You always go around looking for trouble?” His voice was low and husky and shook a little.

  I blinked. “What the fuck are you talking about, Seymore?”

  He slammed his hands against the wall on either side of my head.

  “Feel familiar?” he asked. His breath wafted over my face, warm and musky, as though the toothpaste he’d used that morning and the cafeteria food he’d had for lunch stepped out of the way long enough to reveal his heightened state.

  I tipped my chin up to meet his eyes fully.

  “Yeah,” I said, cursing the way my own voice shook. “Feels to me like you’re emulating a troll with a brain the size of a peanut.”

  He smirked at me. It wasn’t a nice expression. “You lured that troll in and you know it.”

  “So?”

  “So? So, you do all of your homegirls that way, or just Julianne?”

  “What if I told you that it was Julianne who asked me to do exactly what I did this morning?”

  He started to scoff, then stopped. He frowned, looking past me somehow, then wrinkled his nose. Without warning, the full power of his intense gaze was back on mine.

  My heart beat harder until my pulse shook the little gold chain of the necklace I wore around my neck.

  Rudy moved closer to me without really taking a step, breathing on my lips. “So you didn’t want to kiss the quarterback?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “You’ve kissed him before.”

  “Didn’t want to then, either.”

  My words hung in the air between us. Understanding hardened the corners of Rudy’s eyes. Then, without another word or a change in his expression, his lips were on mine. I had my eyes open and so did he, and his blue eyes morphed together into a cyclops gaze as my eyes crossed.

  His lips were hot, his body trembling—or was that mine? My heart pounded in my ears, in the soles of my feet, and deep in my belly.

  Before I could let myself relax into the sensation, he pulled away, his face a furious dark storm.

  “Didn’t want to,” he said. It might have sounded scornful if he wasn’t so breathless.

  He turned his flushed face away from me and stalked out of the room.

  I slid to the floor, my knees trembling too much to keep me upright. My head was spinning, my mind turning somersaults through clouds of butterflies, except the butterflies were on fire.

  Rudy was dangerous in all kinds of ways; socially, emotionally, maybe even physically if I decided to believe Julianne on that point. Letting him kiss me put me at a disadvantage in a game I didn’t even want to play.

  I tried to untangle the problem, but my mind refused to focus. My attention kept drifting to my lips, his taste which still lingered on them, the way they still tingled.

  My body reacted to the memory of his sudden, possessive gesture. I pressed my hands between my thighs and squeezed them tight together, trying to force myself under control.

  I never got to see the end of the movie.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I waited in my car the next morning until the perfect moment presented itself. Rudy and his brothers were by the door, standing around in their usual spot. Julianne had arrived and was leading the other two toward the stairs, looking around for me. When the two groups were within shouting distance of one another, I walked across the parking lot.

  I had time to examine Julianne’s face as I approached. There wasn’t even the slightest sign of chemical burns or excessive peels. In fact, she looked exactly the same way she did every day. Perfect.

  Somehow the perfection of her skin annoyed me more than the fact of her betrayal. I kept my expression neutral until I got to her. By then, she was more than close enough to the Seymores that even a casual conversation was sure to be overheard by them.

  I wasn’t sure then why it was so important to me that Rudy believe my side of the story. I had already been convinced for years that he didn’t like me for reasons beyond my control—but the last few weeks had made him one of the few people whose opinion of me I cared about. I didn’t mind if he hated me for something I did, but it infuriated me to think that he thought badly of me for something that wasn’t even my fault.

  “What the hell, Julianne?” Maybe not the most diplomatic way to begin, but I was beyond diplomacy.

  Her pretty smile curved down into the sort of frown that wouldn’t leave wrinkles. She was very conscientious about that kind of thing. “What’s the matter, Kennedy?”

  “You bailed on me and didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me? What was I supposed to do when you didn’t show up to take your great hulking goat of a boyfriend off my hands?”

  She blinked at me like she had no idea what I was talking about, then her eyes widened. She hid a laugh behind her hand, then reached out to me. “Oh god, Kennedy! You didn’t actually go through with it, did you? Oh my god, I was kidding! You think I’d really ask you to flirt with my boyfriend? Really?”

  My stomach curdled. She had asked me, and she had been serious, damn it. Joan and Macy were staring at me in shock and disapproval.

  I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes at her, knowing that there wasn’t anything I could say at that point that wouldn’t sound defensive. She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at me patronizingly.

  “Now, Kennedy, misunderstandings happen. Nothing came of it, right? Good. So you see, no harm, no foul. And girls? For the record, I totally don’t hold Kennedy responsible for flirting with Thomas. She took my joke a little too seriously, that’s all.” She smiled at me brightly, as if she’d done me some great service. “There! Now we’re all friends again. Let’s take this school by storm, shall we?”

  I followed them in. I could feel Rudy’s eyes on me, and I knew my face was burning red. I could have planned that out better, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of a way I could have approached her without her twisting it somehow.

  I stewed on the problem all day, but by the time school was out I still hadn’t come up with anything. The other girls were behaving as usual, sticking verbal pins in the Seymores and screaming bloody murder when they fought back, but I stayed out of it as much as possible. I had vengeance to plot.

  I didn’t even pretend to go home after school. Instead, I drove across the river, following an old blue Mustang packed to the rafters with Seymore boys. Rudy was driving. I made sure to tailgate a little too closely a couple of times until I caught his eyes in the rearview mirror, then I backed off. I wasn’t trying to intimidate him. I just wanted him to see me.

  I followed them until Rudy pulled into their driveway, then I kept going. I rounded
the corner onto the little street that lined the forest, waited a few minutes, then turned around and went back.

  As I’d hoped, Rudy was waiting alone, leaning against the back of his car. I pulled to a stop in front of him. I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t have to say anything. He smiled his dimpled smile at me. I smiled back and the next thing I knew he was sliding into my passenger seat. I took off down the road before his door was fully closed, feeling like the Bonnie to his Clyde.

  “Stalker,” he said with a roguish grin.

  “Nah. Stalking would be watching you from the top of the hill next to your backyard while you play a surprisingly supportive game of basketball with a twelve-year-old kid,” I said recklessly.

  He paused. I thought he would be furious, but he startled me by throwing his head back and laughing from his belly. “Better than you, Ms. Goodbye daddy I love you so much that I’m going to break every dish in the house when you leave and replace them before you get back,” he said slyly.

  I gasped. “That was last year! And it was only once. How many times did you stalk me?”

  “Just the once,” he said innocently. “And I wasn’t really stalking you. It was Halloween, remember? Me and the boys took the kids up there for trick-or-treating and just happened to witness the drama.”

  I slid a suspicious look at him. “Oh, really? Then how did you know I replaced the dishes?”

  He shrugged. “You’re that kind. A good girl, when you get right down to the core of it.”

  I snorted, recalling the recent conflicts with my parents and all the shit I had gotten myself into with Julianne. Things that my parents would have disapproved of.

  “No, I’m not,” I said.

  Rudy grinned, flashing that dimple at me, his eyes half-closed. “Yeah, you are. You put up with blondie dragging you all over the mall, maxing out your credit cards, then return the shit so your parents don’t have to foot the bill. You’ve got money, no doubt. But you don’t trash people who don’t—unless Julianne starts it. You’re a good girl, Kennedy. And a rich one.”

  I didn’t like him talking about my money. Weren’t there enough people in my life using that against me already?

  “I didn’t ask to have a lot of money,” I said, prickling.

  He chuckled softly. “None of us ask for this life. But that’s not exactly the point, is it?”

  “What exactly is the point then?” I snapped, all of a sudden regretting this adventure.

  He put his hand on my knee and I had to pull over or I would have crashed the damn car. I slammed my foot on the brake as we skidded onto the soft shoulder. Rudy rubbed his thumb over my thigh and, instinctively, I looked up into his liquid, sky-blue eyes.

  “The point is, Kennedy, good girls like you don’t mesh with rough guys like me. You should listen to your little friends—avoid my kind.” He winked at me and my face heated up. I wanted to kiss him, I wanted to throw him out of the car, I wanted to drive with him for as long as it took for me to forget this whole town and the people in it even existed.

  “So what are girls like me supposed to do with guys like you?” I asked as my heart threatened to slam my throat shut.

  He leaned close to me, moving his hand from my thigh to my hair, brushing it away from my ear so he could whisper into it.

  “Avoid us like the plague.” His lips brushed my earlobe on that last word, sending a shiver of pleasure down my spine.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said breathlessly.

  He chuckled, still lingering close to me, his breath hot on my neck.

  Before he could pull away, I turned my head, brushing my lips over his – not gently, but not exactly forcefully, either. He jumped, shocked, and I took pleasure in throwing him off his game.

  “I’m a red-blooded American,” I whispered, letting my lips move over his as I spoke. “We’re not real good at avoiding plagues.”

  He stilled my lips with his, pressing but not opening, even though I was pliant and ready for him to take more. With a soft, satisfying pop, we parted. When I looked up at him, his eyes were dark, his ears were red, and I could see his pulse flutter madly in the hollow of his throat.

  I grinned at him and turned the car around, taking him home.

  He didn’t say a word until we were a block from his house. “Did you want that?” he asked.

  “Yep,” I said. “Kinda wanted the one in the old chemistry lab, too.”

  He nodded jerkily, still looking stunned. “Good to know.” He stared at me for a second when I pulled up in front of his house, then just shook his head and climbed out of the car.

  My heart beat fast as I watched him walk away, hoping that I hadn’t just ruined both of our lives. But when he turned back at the door to look at me, I couldn’t find it in myself to care.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt more alive.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The track at school was a mile-long loop which wrapped around the football field, soccer field, tennis court, and pool. Racing around it meant being out of sight of one area or another for a few moments, mere seconds if you were running fast, but unless someone was deliberately timing you at the blind spots they wouldn’t notice if you stopped for a breath. Or a kiss.

  Rudy and I had already proved ourselves to be the fastest runners on the team, so it was no surprise to anybody when he and I started competing against each other. And when we stopped, the day after I’d followed him home and taken him for a ride, no one was close enough to see him push me up against the big green generator box and kiss the soul right out of my body.

  His attention made my heart beat faster than running possibly could and his touch stole all my breath away. The thundering thud of approaching classmates broke us apart, but I couldn’t find my feet. Rudy laughed at me and took off at a sprint.

  Not willing to let him beat me that way, I took off after him. I caught up to him behind the outdoor shower wall, spun him around by a shoulder until his feet slid out from under him, straddled him where he fell, and kissed him back. It wasn’t fair and I knew it—how was he supposed to run with a tent in his shorts? But I laughed at him and kept going.

  He still beat me across the finish line. I was plotting my revenge when Ms. Roach approached us, shaking her head and frowning.

  “You both lost thirty seconds from Wednesday’s run. I would hate to think that you were giving each other breaks just because you’re ahead of the class. If you want to compete, you compete against yourself first. Best your own time. Don’t start getting lazy on me now.”

  The rest of the class pounded across the finish line as soon as she’d finished, and she blew her whistle. A cool-down lap followed by stretches, and my reprieve from the girls and a chance to steal more kisses from Rudy were over.

  Unwilling to let this high fade, I jostled him as I walked past.

  “Meet me by the old bridge under the broken ‘no swimming’ sign at four,” I told him under my breath, looking away from him.

  “I’ll be there,” he said to his shirt.

  I put distance between us as the tennis players began filing off the field toward the locker rooms.

  Jogging got me in the shower before Macy and Julianne reached the door, giving me a buffer just in case they had noticed anything. I didn’t think they had. Rudy and I had been careful about where we stopped, and for how long—but I was so paranoid about what they would do if they found out that I couldn’t feel like safe was safe enough.

  When I emerged, fully dressed, they were both waiting for me. Julianne looked thoughtful. Macy, of course, was bored.

  “You know, between track and music, you’re pitting yourself against Rudy a lot. With the Seymores in your—” she paused to shudder, “-auto shop class, you’re competing with all of them more or less directly.”

  “Not Gary,” I pointed out. “I don’t see him in any of our classes. Is he a sophomore?”

  Julianne sighed impatiently, as though she had answered this question a millio
n times before.

  Patronizingly, she said, “No, he’s a junior. He just doesn’t take electives because he went to shitty poor kid schools and he’s a million years behind on basic concepts. He’s pretty dumb, you know, just like the rest of them.”

  “Get to the point, Julianne, I have a nail appointment next week and I’d like to get out of this locker room before then,” Macy murmured tonelessly as she examined her cuticles.

  Julianne shot her an irritated glance, then smiled conspiratorially at me. “The point is, you are in a prime position to humiliate all of them. Even if you don’t share a class with Gary, humiliating his brothers will affect him. So—I see you’re already on your way to besting Rudy on the track, but he still beat you today. We need to think of ways to make sure you win.”

  I blinked, wondering if Julianne was going to hire me a running coach. The evil glitter in her eye told me no, but I couldn’t think of another way to interpret what she was saying. Or rather, I didn’t want to think of another way.

  “If we can, we should make it doubly humiliating—maybe the old chocolate on the shorts trick, but I don’t know how that would slow him down—oh! Laxatives in his water bottle! Running makes you have to go, doesn’t it? Add the laxatives and he’ll mess the whole track and you’ll beat him for sure! Oh, he would just die.”

  She threw her head back and cackled, unaware for a full minute that she was the only one laughing. As soon as she noticed, she stopped unnaturally short.

  “Gross,” I said. “I have to use that track. I fall on that track occasionally. Hell, I have to lie down and stretch out on that track. No way in hell am I making him shit himself all over it.”

  I stared at her as if I was seeing her for the first time. It’s not often I’d been in the presence of true evil and recognized it. I couldn’t imagine hating someone so much that I would wish that on them—and I really, really couldn’t imagine actually planning to do that to someone.