Manic: A Dark High School Bully Romance

by Savannah Rose

  “Get in, drunkie,” Blayze’s voice teased in my ear.

  I giggled but cut it out quickly as bile rose in my throat. I was still desperately aroused, but my body and brain couldn’t seem to get their act together. Blayze poured me into the car and I curled myself around until I was sitting up—or thought I was sitting up—straight. I was startled to see him in the driver’s seat beside me, and couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there.

  “Kiss me,” I said.

  He did, and I crawled into his lap, grinding against him as his hands ran over my body. Every touch was amplified, interrupted occasionally by the sloshing nausea in my gut. The spinning cul-de-sac around us only heightened the sensations. My fingers fumbled with his belt for several helpless seconds, and I buried my nose into his neck, filling it with his scent—musky sweat and smoke and booze—I needed more. More. So much more. I needed everything. Frustrated whimpers slid through my lips as I gave up on the belt.

  Next thing I knew, cold air was blowing on my face and I was curled up against something hard and plastic. I wiped the drool from my face and tried to sit up. My head exploded in pain and my belly jumped like I was falling from the top of the world. There was something uncomfortably hard between my knees. I tried to move it, but ended up just gripping the sides of it. A bucket, I realized as I blinked my eyes open.

  “Go ahead,” Blayze said calmly. “That’s what it’s for.”

  That green drink was way less pleasant on its way up. Replacing the heady scent of Blayze, with the vile scent of fresh vomit. When I was finished puking my guts out, I leaned back against the car seat with my eyes closed and groaned against the pounding explosions in my head.

  “Drink this,” Blayze said, pushing something cool into my hand.

  “Ugh, I don’t want to drink. Ever again.”

  “It’s water,” he said, laughing. “We stopped at the gas station for hydration, remember?”

  I blinked, trying to recall the memory, but came up short. With a shrug, I put the water bottle to my lips and took slow steady gulps until I couldn’t fathom swallowing another drop. Screwing the lid back onto the bottle, I started to shake my head, then thought better of that. After some of the acid fire was rinsed from my throat, I spoke instead. “I have no memory of that. Like…none at all.”

  Blayze chuckled, throwing me a sideways glance. “Didn’t think you would. You were pretty gone for a few minutes, there.”

  I opened the water bottle back up and this time emptied it of its contents. Ever the provider, Blayze handed me another one. I drank this one more slowly, breathing deeply as my brain tentatively switched back on. We were driving on a virtually empty highway with the windows down and the heater off, even though it was the middle of the night in January.

  “Where are we?”

  “Just circling the city,” he said. “Didn’t want to take you home if you couldn’t walk. I would have taken you back to my place, but I didn’t want you thinking you did more than you wanted to.”

  My eyes widened. “Wait—what did happen? Last thing I remember is we were… sort of… almost…” I trailed off, feeling for my underwear. It was still in place. Still wet, too.

  Blayze scoffed. “What kind of douchebag do you take me for? You were way drunk, Arlena. Beyond drunk. I was still pretty tipsy myself, or it wouldn’t have gone as far as it did. Don’t worry, princess. When you couldn’t get my belt undone I moved you over and strapped you in. You weren’t too happy about it, but you were in no condition to fight about it either.”

  A deep relief washed over me, as deep as the disappointment I remembered feeling before. I reached out and took his hand, squeezing it.

  “Thank you,” I said, and meant every word of it.

  Blayze shrugged it off, but I knew how big of a deal it was. It would have been so easy for him to take advantage of me. I’d practically begged him to, and he still didn’t. I smiled at him, tracing a finger over his jawline. “My knight in shining armor,” I murmured.

  He grinned. “Your knight in Gucci knock-offs, maybe.”

  I laughed and he squeezed my hand, gently, reassuringly. We drove a little longer, and it was only when Blayze was sure I could get safely to bed under my own power, that he brought me home. Parked outside, far enough away from the front of my house to go unnoticed, he pulled me to him and turned my head slightly to kiss my cheek. I wouldn’t have wanted him to kiss me any other way. Not with the smell of vomit still stiff in the air and on my tongue.

  I made it to bed without waking anybody and collapsed into it without even taking my shoes off. My phone chimed as sleep crept in around the corners of my eyes. Fighting the darkness with all my might, I squinted at the phone.

  Goodnight, sweet princess. Only the most beautiful dreams for the most beautiful girl.

  Sighing happily, I let the wave of darkness sweep me away.

  2

  “Glasses off,” the guard at the door told me. “Put them in the basket and empty your pockets. Arms out, legs apart.”

  I did as he said as he said it. It wasn’t the first time I’d been to the courthouse, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the last. Not with Damon for a brother, anyway. I wasn’t too worried; he’d only been caught with a couple grams, well within the “personal use” category. But it was his second strike, and the cops had been turning the heat way up lately.

  “Watch it,” I yelped as the guard’s wand came uncomfortably close to crushing some very important body parts.

  “You’re good to go,” the guard said gruffly. “Your stuff’ll be on the other side.”

  I stepped through the redundant metal detector and waited for the x-ray machine to spit out the plastic bin with my wallet and glasses. The guard at the machine didn’t even look at me. Friendly bunch, these guys. I took the elevator up to the third floor, found the appropriate courtroom, and slid inside. Damon sat in the front row with a cop on either side of him. A shock of pink and blonde hair in the back row caught my eye. Frowning, I went and sat next to the woman under it.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered.

  Sam, my ex, glared up at me. Her big blue eyes were wet and her mouth was pressed into a thin line. “What, I’m not allowed to support my friend?”

  I squinted at her suspiciously. “Really? That’s why you’re here? You didn’t come hoping to corner me with another one of your psycho mind games?”

  She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t a mind game, asshole. It was a miscarriage. And, by the way, the world doesn’t actually revolve around you. I care about Damon. You see that guy? Gucci suit, silver hair, nose for days?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They call him the super prosecutor. Got a reputation for locking up whole cities.”

  “Right, like that’s possible.”

  She gave me an exasperated look and held up her phone. “I looked him up, dumbass. He’s brutal. Drug dealers aren’t human to him, he gives zero fucks about circumstances. I’ve been watching him work for hours. The last trial? He argued from the basis of…if it could have happened, then it probably happened, and if it didn’t happen, then it’s only a matter of time before it does happen.”

  I snorted. “Bet that went over well.”

  She blinked at me blankly. “They charged the guy with intent to distribute and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

  I blinked back at her. “So?”

  “So? The defendant was the minor! Gucci-man got a fifteen-year-old charged as an adult with intent to distribute with nothing but a dirty goddamn pipe. He got five years!”

  My heart sank. I shook my head. “There had to be more to it than that.”

  Sam pressed her lips together then sighed heavily. “Damon’s fucked.”

  “All rise! Court is now in session. Judge Foreman presiding.”

  The judge stepped in, looking tired and pissed, not a good combination at all. But, then again, there have been worse. My eyes dipped to the prosecutor, who looked respectfully smug. D
on’t ask me how he managed that, but he did. Bile churned in my stomach and a nail-biting anxiety crept its way up to my throat. Suddenly, the air felt stiffer than when I’d first walked in and something in my gut told me that this wasn’t good at all. Everybody sat down, then the judge sighed and glanced irritably at Damon.

  “What are the charges, Mr. Drake?”

  The last name caught me off-guard, but I brushed it off. This was a big city. Lots of people had to have the same name—even if those people happened to be my girlfriend and the guy currently trying to send my brother up the river.

  Prosecutor Drake stepped forward, the look on his face even more smug than it was before. “Possession of illegal substances with intent to distribute,” he said. His voice was sharp, direct. The kind of voice that you didn’t fuck with.

  “Shocker,” Judge Foreman said. “Mr. Arrow, how do you plead?”

  Damon cleared his throat and stood. “Not guilty, your honor.”

  “Shocker again,” the judge said. “Mr. Drake, you have the floor.” And take the floor he did.

  All the points the prosecutor made were…well, speculative, at best. But he made them sound like fact, like the dangers of the world all sat in my brother’s palm. The more he talked, the more uncomfortable I got in my seat. And when Damon’s public defender finally rose, it felt like a drummer was going to war inside my head.

  Damon’s public defender rubbed his forehead nervously with the sleeve of his worn-out grey suit. Head down, he didn’t so much as look Damon in the eye as he spoke. Whereas the prosecutor looked like a big ball of over-fucking-confidence, Damon’s public defender wreaked of failure. He went on and on with his stuttering. On and on with wiping beads of sweat away from his brow. And when he was done, it was as though he’d said nothing at all.

  The prosecution presented the evidence and it went just like Sam said it would.

  “Damon—Mr. Arrow—was carrying four grams of street-level methamphetamines. At the time of his arrest, he was meeting with a known drug user.”

  The judge fixed him with a piercing gaze and I had a moment of hope. Hope is such a shitty emotion. Sam bit her lip hard and dug her nails into the bench beside me. Putting on a show for my benefit, no doubt.

  “Four grams hardly indicates intent to distribute, Mr. Drake. How do you justify these charges?”

  “If you look at the evidence in front of you, your honor, you will see that those four grams were held in two individual baggies, two grams each. As stated, he was in the process of meeting with a known drug user, who just happened to have cash on him—sixty dollars.”

  Gucci turned that smug look back on the audience, then spared a disgusted glance in Damon’s direction before continuing. “As you may know, your honor, methamphetamine sells for approximately thirty dollars per gram in this area.”

  The judge rubbed her chin and squinted hard at him. “Do you have witnesses, Mr. Drake?”

  “I do. The arresting officer, Officer Morton, is present, as is the woman who was with Damon at the time.”

  “Call them. Officer Morton, if you please.”

  A cop—he was clearly a cop, even though he didn’t wear a uniform—stood and strode up to the stand, his high, flat buzz cut and comically broad jawline making him look like a caricature version of himself. He was sworn in and took the stand.

  “Your witness, Mr. Drake.”

  “Officer Murphy, when you discovered Mr. Arrow, what was he doing?”

  “Meeting with a shady character and a woman behind a dumpster. I overheard an argument about money. He held a bag of meth in his palm.”

  Drake spread his hands. “Caught red-handed. No more questions, your honor.”

  The judge sniffed and looked over at the public defender who was sweating so profusely that the stains under his armpits were the most prominent things about him. Fan-fucking-tastic.

  “Do you have any questions for the witness, Mr. Brown?”

  “Erm, yes. Yes. Officer Morton, what were you doing in that alley?”

  The officer stiffened and tore the sweaty man down with a brutally icy glare. “My job,” he said shortly.

  “Yes, but were you there to investigate a crime? To investigate my client?”

  “I was walking my usual beat,” Morton said. His posture was somehow more rigid than it had been before. “This—man—happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.”

  “I see, I see.” Brown wiped the sweat from his brow, shaking his head. “Erm—you didn’t happen to read the accused his rights, did you?”

  Morton glowered. I thought his eyes would peel the flesh from Brown’s body. “Of course I did. And I had my body cam on, just in case you want to grasp at the brutality straw next.”

  Brown wilted. He mopped his brow again, muttering, “No more questions.”

  Drake smiled smarmily up at the judge. “Do we even need to call the next witness, your honor?”

  The judge didn’t seem to like his attitude any more than I did. She sniffed sharply, shot a disappointed look at Brown, and nodded. “I’ll hear her side of things before deciding how to proceed, thank you.”

  Drake hesitated, then sighed. I don’t know how he managed to sigh respectfully, but he did. He should go into business teaching that trick to kids.

  “Very well. Ms. Slider, would you take the stand, please?”

  My heart skipped a sick beat and I whipped my head around to stare at Sam. She wouldn’t look at me. She shook from head to toe, her fingers curled into white-knuckled fists as she stood and moved stiffly down the aisle toward the stand. She stuttered through her oath, her face looking deathly pale beneath her shocking pink hair. But nowhere near as pale as I’m sure my face looked as I stared at her up there.

  “Ms. Slider, thank you for joining us.” Drake’s tone was suddenly soft and fatherly, nothing like the tone he’d been using this whole time. It pissed me the fuck off. Blatant emotional manipulation, that’s what it was. I hoped to God that Sam was smart enough to see through it, but I wasn’t optimistic. If she had one weakness, it was her need for masculine approval. Her need for a fucking father figure. And Drake here, he was playing all the right beats.

  “I was subpoena’d, I thought I had to come,” she said shakily.

  Drake smiled gently. It wasn’t smarmy or sarcastic, and surprisingly enough, this time it didn’t have so much as a hint of smugness to it. That rat bastard knew exactly what he was doing.

  “Sam, how long have you known Damon?” he asked her.

  She swallowed a few times, her eyes wide. “Um—since freshman year. My freshman year, not his.”

  “So about three and a half, four years?”

  “I think…yeah… Something like that, yes.”

  “Okay. And would you mind telling me how you met him?”

  She stiffened slightly, her eyes shooting over to mine and back to his in a flash. “Uh—I met his brother first. We sort of dated off and on for some time. Me and his brother, not me and Damon.”

  “Are you and Damon’s brother still in a relationship?”

  How is that any of your goddamn business? Stick to the topic, Gucci. But Sam was shaking her head furiously. “No,” she said. “Not even a little bit. He and I broke up months ago.”

  “Over drugs?” Drake asked in that gentle, fatherly tone.

  Sam almost agreed with him before she stopped, frowning. “What? No. Who breaks up over that? No, we just don’t work. He likes to be the center of attention and so do I.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Did she really think that was why we broke up? She thought I was jealous of her spotlight. Damn, she probably thought I kept track of her followers, too. My anger wavered, unfocused now in confusion. I pushed the thoughts away and glared.

  “So if you are no longer dating his brother, what were you doing with Damon in the alley?” Drake asked kindly.

  Sam hesitated so long and so hard that my belly twisted. What the hell were the two of them up to?

  “Uh—we were
just hanging out,” she said. Her casual tone was utterly unconvincing.

  “Ah, I see. So you were just hanging out with him when he decided to randomly wander down an alley with you - a younger, more vulnerable person—in tow, and strike a drug deal in broad daylight?”

  Sam blinked. “What?”

  “It’s okay, Sam, I understand. The older boy, the bad boy, the power and money—it’s appealing, isn’t it? You didn’t want to put up a fuss and be seen as a liability. That’s not what cool girlfriends do, after all.”

  “Mr. Drake,” the judge said sharply, but her admonishing gaze swept over to Mr. Brown. “Stop leading the witness.”

  “I apologize,” Drake said. Nobody believed his damn apology. “Ms. Slider, would you tell me, in your own words, what happened after you and Damon entered the alley?”

  Sam bit her lip, her brow furrowed, then she shrugged as if to say, screw it. “Sure. We went into the alley. We were talking. Right when we were passing the dumpster, Scraggle Joe popped out and started asking for change. We said we ain’t got any, and he kept pressing. Damon blew him off. Scraggle Joe said he’d make it worth our time, and shoved the bags into Damon’s hand.”

  Drake’s shoulders stiffened slightly, but then he relaxed, smiling. “And what happened next?”

  She shrugged. “Then beefy Cop McCopperson over there grabbed Damon for possession. Guess he overheard the argument like he said, it just wasn’t the argument he thought. You all got it wrong.”

  Damn it, Sam, don’t you know what an oath is? Her right ear was twitching almost imperceptibly. She’s a pretty convincing liar when she wants to be, but she never could get rid of that tell. She knew as well as I did, as well as Drake did, that Damon had those drugs on him before they ever set foot in the alley. Scraggle Joe wouldn’t be caught dead selling meth. He’d smoke it all first.