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

by Savannah Rose

  “I’ll be right down!” I told Julianne and finished putting myself together before grabbing my backpack and talking the steps two at a time.

  I couldn’t remember the last time all of us had used one car to get to school. We should have done it more often, honestly—we all lived so close to each other it was kind of dumb to burn four cars’ worth of fuel every day—but none of us really thought about it that way. This wasn’t carpooling so much as it was an excuse to hang out and have breakfast together before the opening bell rang. I thought it was sweet. More, I thought my level head had finally had the right effect on the war between us and the Seymores. It was progress, and progress was everything.

  It was so easy to drift back into my role. I laughed at Julianne’s jokes, ignoring the mean undertones. I listened to Joan’s gossip, ignoring the obvious flair of exaggeration. I agreed with Macy’s compliments of her own attire, and piled on some more. I drank the sugary, caramel-flavored, might-as-well-have-been-dessert drink and ate the maple bacon donut and felt appreciated. It was intoxicating. Calming. And after the anxiety that consumed me over the weekend, it was also just what I needed.

  Only a few minutes later, Julianne was turning the car into the school parking lot. Laughter was still high in the air and chatter in full effect. So consuming was the peace inside the vehicle that it wasn’t until we stepped outside the car and slung our backpacks over our shoulders that I noticed the crowd gathered around the Seymores’ car. I slid a curious glance at it, but stuck with the girls, who hadn’t seemed to notice the commotion.

  Julianne had parked farther back, so we would have to pass the crowd anyway. I walked on the outside, in my usual place, nearest the crowd—until Chris saw me and stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

  “Do you have any idea how hard Rudy had to work for that damn car?” Chris growled through his teeth. His eyes were bright with fury. I blinked, not understanding.

  The crowd turned to look at me and then slowly, ever so slowly, they parted to let me see just the very front of Rudy’s car.

  “Yeah, go look at it, bitch. Admire the fuck out of your disgusting artwork.” Chris’ voice cracked, making him sound younger than he was. I brushed past him and pushed through the crowd.

  “Damn, Kennedy. That’s cold,” someone said as I passed.

  “You didn’t have to take it out on the GT,” someone else whined. They were whining at me, like I’d done something.

  When I made it to the front of the crowd, my heart just about stopped. The hood of Rudy’s dark blue Mustang had been absolutely destroyed. Overlapping circles the size of bologna blocked out the words, “Love, Kennedy” across the hood, stripping the paint down to the bare metal. I couldn’t imagine how much that would cost to fix.

  Bradley, Chris, and Gary were standing protectively around the car, glaring at me. Rudy sat inside, his forehead pressed against the steering wheel between hands that were gripping so tight the knuckles had gone white.

  I had the horrible thought that he might be crying in there, in front of god and everybody. If he was, Julianne would be the least of his tormentors, at least for a while.

  “Well? You proud of yourself?” Chris demanded hotly.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t do this,” I said quietly. “I wouldn’t even know how to do that.”

  “Bullshit!” Gary shouted. “You’re in my fucking auto shop class you uppity bitch, you heard the hippie’s stories about bologna stripping same as I did.”

  I gave him a flat look and shook my head. “He must have told that story the day I was absent.”

  Chris narrowed his eyes at me, then flushed red when he realized that he was the reason I’d been absent. I turned away from him and stalked up the steps, something a lot more potent than anger pumping through my veins.

  Julianne had gone too fucking far this time. Roping me in was one thing. Making me liable for a criminally significant amount of material damage was something else entirely. I jerked away from her when she tried to link her arm through mine on the other side of the door.

  “Oh stop, Kennedy. As soon as they calm down they’ll find the cash in the glove box. You’re decent like that, paying for what you break.”

  “I didn’t do that and you damn well know it,” I growled.

  “Really? Odd, seeing as you signed your name and everything.”

  I glared at her and she just… smiled at me. So much of me wanted to swipe that fucking smile off her face. But I wasn’t that kind of girl. Just the same as I wasn’t the kind of girl to fuck up someone else’s personal property. I shook my head, cold fury tightening every part of my body. After a long moment, she sighed.

  She tugged me into a little alcove and dropped her voice. “Look, I know it wasn’t cool to do without talking to you first, but you have to believe that I’m doing it for your own good. The Seymores—one of them, anyway—has been taking an interest in you. Not the right kind of interest, either. I’ve seen their car circling your house. They’re stalking you, Kennedy. And it’s probably because they think you’re weak…because out of all of us, they think you’re the easy pick. You need to nip that in the bud before somebody gets dangerous.”

  I blinked at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Look,” she said patiently as if she were talking to a child. “For as dangerous as the Seymores are on any given Tuesday, they’re five times as dangerous when they have a crush on somebody. Sabrina, remember? Every girl they’ve ever gotten stuck on has horror stories. Stalking. Terrorizing. Things worse than death, if you know what I mean.”

  It took a minute for me to register what she’d just accused them of. I didn’t even know what the heck to say to that.

  “So you see,” she said, “That’s why we have to make Rudy hate you. It’s the only way to keep you safe. Understand?”

  “Sure,” I said, too stunned to say anything else and also grinding my teeth so hard that it really was difficult to get more words out.

  Julianne gave me a long, warm, protective embrace. “I just don’t want to see anything bad happen to you,” she said tearfully.

  I wanted to shrug her off, push her away, shove her to the ground. I wanted to scream at her, throw in her face just how badly she’d hurt Rudy for no goddamn reason. But I didn’t. I was too stunned. It was further than I’d ever expected her to go, way further than was warranted even if they were responsible for the dye in the pool and the crickets everywhere. The worst part of all of this was that she wasn’t doing it because of what happened at her party. She was doing it because she’d seen Rudy’s car near my house. Because even if she had no proof that Rudy and I were getting close, her suspicions were enough to convince her of that very fact. It was my fault, really and truly.

  Guilt hit like a fist in my stomach. Julianne made sympathetic noises and ushered me to class.

  “It isn’t your fault,” she said, reading my mind. “Guys get stuck on people for all kinds of reasons. It’s not like you invited him in or anything—they’re animals, the Seymore boys are. They can’t control themselves. And let’s face it, Kennedy—when you put a little effort in, you’re as pretty as anybody.”

  The only effort I was putting in just then was the significant effort to keep my tongue civil.

  Rudy didn’t sit behind me in homeroom—he took a spot on the other side of the room. Bradley stuck close to him, keeping his massive bulk between Rudy and us.

  Wave after wave of horrific guilt washed over me. I was done, I decided. No more of this shit.

  After class I left the girls behind but didn’t try to hide from them. I went up to Rudy out in the open and asked if we could talk.

  He looked at me, fury and hurt blazing in his eyes. I almost lost my nerve. He hated me.

  “What do you want?” he growled.

  “I wanted to see if you could meet up with me tonight so we can talk,” I said, flustered. “Um—and to tell you that I’m sorry about your car. It wasn’t me. You do know that, right?”<
br />
  “Right,” he said bitterly. “Whatever.” That was it. That was all he had to offer me before he turned and walk away.

  A lump the size of my fist in my throat, I hurried to catch up to him.

  “Look,” I said a little desperately. “I have to make up that class tonight and I’ll be fixing my car. I’ll ask Mr. Foster if I can repaint yours, too. I’ll pay for it.”

  “Why bother, if you aren’t the one who did it?” he asked mockingly.

  I stopped, letting my hands fall helplessly to my sides. “Because I want to,” I said.

  He shook his head, his eyes hard with fury. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll talk tonight. Six o’clock, under the bridge.”

  “I’ll be there,” I promised.

  Julianne and the girls were nowhere to be seen, which was a relief. The risk factor of my impulsiveness didn’t really hit me until after Rudy walked away and I realized that I’d nearly thrown everything away for nothing. He was too angry to hear me. My name was stuck on his car and burned into his brain. It would take a lot of trust for him to believe that it wasn’t me who did it—trust we’d barely begun to build. Trust that broke every single time he saw me with Julianne or Joan or Macy.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  At lunch, I was surprised to see four more coffees at our usual places. Julianne sat behind them, smiling apologetically.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “An olive branch,” she said. “I know you think I went too far. I thought this could maybe make up for some of that.”

  “I’m just coming down off the first one,” I said. “How many shots did you put in there, anyway? I’ve been jittery all morning.”

  She nodded pertly. “Mm-hm, and you’re about to crash super hard. You have a project this afternoon, right? So you’re going to be here for hours yet, and I can already see you falling asleep in third. I didn’t have them put as much espresso in it this time, so you shouldn’t get all nervous and chatty again.”

  I would have argued with her, but I was too busy yawning. I accepted the coffee, then frowned at her in confusion.

  “When did you even get these?” I asked.

  She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I ordered them at the end of last period, and had one of those doormates or postdashers or whatever drop them off. Timed it perfectly, too!”

  We ate and talked and despite how much I fucking hated her, had a civil enough time. She kept the acid out of her words and didn’t sling anything objectionable at the Seymores, who were also behaving.

  Rudy was pale and kept his eyes fixed on his lunch, which he didn’t touch. I wanted to go to him, but I had more control over myself at that point. I wasn’t sure which guardian angel had my back earlier, but I wasn’t about to tempt fate again. Not when things were this close to exploding violently all over everything.

  At the end of the day, being alone with Mr. Foster in the garage was something I was really looking forward to. I liked the shop. It was simple. Tools to work on cars, a sequence to everything, straightforward problems. It soothed my soul and stole my mind off the rest of the world and all the things that were wrong in it. When I walked in, Mr. Foster greeted me with a big grin.

  “So, I went ahead and fixed it myself,” he said. “You could have done it, but it was such an easy thing that I fixed it on accident when I was just trying to figure out the problem.” He tossed me my keys and I snatched them out of the air.

  “So what was the problem?” I asked.

  “Spark plug leads,” he said. “They’d just popped off. I don’t know how, unless you have gremlins crawling around inside your hood, but, like I said, it was an easy enough fix.”

  I frowned down at my keys. I had been one hundred percent ready to take my car apart and put it back together, so much so that I’d forgotten everything else I was supposed to be doing in that class. Mr. Foster saved me by pulling a tarp off of the big engine that still needed to be taken apart.

  “There she is,” he said. “Get to it, kiddo.”

  The thing about having a lot of caffeine in a day when you’re used to not having any at all is that, at some point, it’s going to affect you in weird ways. For me, it triggered a level of hyper-focus I’d only ever felt before when I was running, but this time it was directed at the engine and all of its various bits and pieces.

  Mr. Foster was there working on his own project car, an ancient Camaro that whined a lot but didn’t do much else. Technically he was supposed to be supervising me, but I preferred it this way. Him under his car, me taking things apart and cataloguing them so I could put them back together later, scraping up the data I needed from various manuals and blueprints and Youtube videos. It wasn’t until my phone chimed with a text from Rudy that I realized how late it had gotten.

  “Mr. Foster, it’s almost six. I’m going to get going.”

  He whacked his head on the underside of his car, cussed a blue streak, and slid out. “Did you say six? That’s some dedication, girl.”

  I shrugged. “Not really, I just sort of got lost in the work.”

  He nodded solemnly. “If you have your things with you, I can just let you out the back.”

  I lifted my bag to show him, hiked it up on my shoulder, and went out the door. My hands and back ached, but I’d managed to finish tearing the engine apart and couldn’t wait to put it back together.

  I pulled out my phone to text Rudy.

  Might be a couple minutes late. Got super into the rebuild. OMW now.

  I sent the text and was debating whether to follow it up with a whole line of kissy emojis when something dropped over my head, blacking out my vision. I tried to push the covering off, but strong arms slammed around me, pinning my elbows to my waist. In the struggle, my phone slipped from my fingers and I heard it shatter on the ground.

  Right along with my heart.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “Let go of me! Let go!” Screaming only made me panic.

  My voice was muffled, absorbed by the fabric bag over my head. Every time I inhaled, my mouth would fill with fabric, leaving dusty fibers on my tongue. I was pretty sure suffocating didn’t happen this fast, but I was also pretty sure I was suffocating.

  I kicked and wiggled, tried to pull my hands and my arms out of the holds they were trapped in. When none of that worked, I threw my head back, trying to headbutt the person holding me.

  My feet were no longer touching the ground and I had no leverage. Whoever had grabbed me was carrying me—somewhere.

  If I hadn’t been freaking out, I might have tried to notice things like the person’s scent or build, but I couldn’t even try to think about things like that when part of me was certain that I was suffocating.

  It wasn’t until I heard the click of a car’s trunk opening that I froze and held my breath. My shocked mind refused to process what was clearly happening. It made no sense. It was too insane. Too…too…far out of the damn leftfield.

  The landing jostled me into reality as my nose smashed sharply against something. The wheel well, perhaps. My eyes squeezed shut against the pain and I missed my chance to tear the bag off my head and turn around to face my captor.

  After the trunk clicked shut with me inside it, I finally managed to fumble with the stupid fabric and get it off of my face. It didn’t help much. It was so dark in there I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed.

  Kick out the taillights. That’s what they always tell you to do, right?

  I didn’t know who “they” were or where I’d heard that bit of information, but I wished I’d listened a little better because as much as I knew cars and engines, I couldn’t even find where the damn taillights were.

  There didn’t seem to be anything but the bulge of the wheel well, the rough fabric under and beside me, the hard plastic above and fear. Crippling fear.

  I tried to take a deep breath, but even that made me feel like I was choking on my panic.

  Focus, Kennedy. Focus!

  Seats! A lot
of cars have push-down seats in back, right?

  The car was already running and whoever was driving it wasn’t trying too hard to avoid things like speed bumps and potholes.

  Searching for a way out became a game of speed, reaching an arm out here or there then bringing it back in time to brace myself.

  Not knowing when I needed to brace myself made it harder, and it was pointless anyway. This trunk had a solid wall between it and the cab, no fold-down seats to be found.

  Frustrated and terrified, I started beating on the hard plastic underside.

  “Let me out! I swear to God I will call the police and your mother and everybody in between if you don’t let me out of here right now!”

  I screamed for a good long minute before I remembered that shouting uses more oxygen than not shouting, and that this trunk was sealed really, really well. The idea of suffocating in there made my heart race and forced sharp intakes of breath—which wasn’t much better than screaming for oxygen consumption. Meditate, damn it. I closed my eyes—at least I think I did, there wasn’t much of a light difference—and focused on taking the slowest possible breaths.

  But even with most of my focus spent on hardly breathing, it was hard to keep the culprits out of my mind.

  Was it Chris?

  Was it Gary?

  Bradley, maybe?

  My heart just about stopped as Rudy’s face, his anger, all of it, pulled to the forefront of my mind. Except, he wouldn’t. Even with his car ruined and even with my name all over it, Rudy would never do this!

  Which left the question, did Rudy know they were going to do this to me? He was the only Seymore who knew that I’d be staying late tonight, I’d made sure of that. I’d talked to Foster between classes, not during class, and made sure that Chris and Bradley weren’t around to hear me do it.