─────────────────
Chapter 26
─────────────────
This whole night was like a fairy tale. Actually, the whole day had been a fairy tale. She felt like Cinderella, except her stepdad wasn’t evil. And apparently, neither was her soon-to-be stepbrother.
It had been a long time since Beckett had been the cold asshole like when she and her mom had moved in. Ever since her face had been smashed against a wall his demeanor had gradually changed. Now he seemed to go out of his way to be protective instead of mean. It was time to recognize it and let the past go.
Just thinking about what happened in the limo made her body heat up again. But it was his words after her powerful orgasm that had made her body clench all over again and realize she wanted to be with Beckett.
When the exited the limo, Beckett pulled her hand into his. Greer was thankful for his calming touch and the comfortable silence as they made their way to Lexi’s apartment. She needed a little time to gather her scattered wits. Her body was still wishing they were back in the limo and a part of her mind was as well.
Beckett stopped them in front of Lexi’s door and raised a questioning eyebrow. She gave him a smile and a nod. Beckett raised his hand and knocked. Lexi must have been standing at the door because it was thrown open before Beckett’s arm was lowered.
Lexi looked at their joined hands and then raised questioning eyes to her before she threw herself in Greer’s arms. Jason stepped to the door and the commotion of greetings and pictures made Lexi forget her questions about what she had seen.
As soon as the four of them climbed into the limo Lexi’s eyes had lit up. Together, Lexi and Greer explored the inside of the extravagance on wheels while Jason and Beckett laughed, delighted at their findings.
The limo stopped to pick up Pepper and Mark. After another round of pictures, the limo took them to supper. Walking into the five-star restaurant put Greer on edge. She had never dined somewhere so formal, which meant she wasn’t sure exactly what she should do. From the moment they stepped in they were surrounded by formal opulence and classical music. A host greeted them and led them to a circular booth in the rear of the restaurant. Then another person gave them hot cloths and laid their napkins in their lap. Greer glanced at Lexi and saw her wide-eyed stare. Greer looked at the rest of the table and they were talking and wiping their hands like this was something they did all the time. Oh right, they probably did do this all the time.
Everyone’s casualness gradually calmed her nerves and she just followed their lead. By the time the five-course supper was done she felt like she was going to burst from her dress. Everything had melted on her tongue, but she didn’t even want to know how much the lusciousness cost.
When they left the restaurant, Greer had been relieved. They were on their way to school, somewhere she was familiar with. She wouldn’t take back her spa experience, ride in the limo, or her five-star restaurant experience, but it had all been so unfamiliar. Now she could let her guard down a little and not have to worry so much about protocol. It was time to dance! She forgot who she was walking in with.
It was like the president of the United States walked into the gym as soon as she and Beckett crossed the threshold. Every eye swung their way, and the only sound was the ballad the DJ was playing. Greer slowed her steps, but Beckett continued forward, seemingly oblivious of the starts they were receiving.
She gripped Beckett’s arm tighter and had mumbled on the down low, “Why is everyone staring?”
Pepper, not so much on the down low, answered from behind her. “Umm because you look like a billion bucks, unlike your normal million bucks.”
Was that why everyone looked astonished as they passed? Because she actually looked put together for a change? She was getting the same kind of looks as when she had followed Jenn’s makeup advice, but never kept up with.
The knowledge helped settle her uptight nerves down, but it was ironic. For once she actually fit in, well as well as she ever would. And she was still in the spotlight, but because she actually looked like one of them. To her astonishment, a few girls actually said hi to her.
As soon as they found a table the girls shed their wraps and Pepper was dragging her and Lexi to the dance floor. The guys were shrugging out of their jackets and told them they would stay to hold the table.
Several dances in and Greer was having the time of her life. They had done the Chicken Dance, Cupid Shuffle and jammed out to some classic 70s and 80s music. The music segued into YMCA, and Lexi and Pepper jumped up and down in excitement. Greer jumped up, feeling the excitement, but her bladder insisted she had a bathroom break. Singing and dancing her way to the edge of the dance floor she looked back and laughed at Lexi and Pepper’s exuberant dancing. She gave herself a moment to recognize how happy and content she was in the moment before heading out of the room. Several ballrooms shared a public bathroom, so she weaved her way through groups of people to the exit.
As the ballroom doors swung shut behind her, Greer took a moment to absorb and appreciate the silence and cool air rushing around her. Several seating arrangements, with engulfing high back chairs, were spread throughout the hall/gathering area. Greer could hear the buzz of conversation, but the size of the chairs prevented her from seeing any faces, just sprawled legs.
As she headed toward the glowing sign indicating where the restrooms were, a small smile started on her face and got bigger. She recognized the distinctive timbre of Beckett’s voice at the last cluster of seats before the restrooms. The seats were off in a corner and Greer decided to sneak up on them and tease them about avoiding the dancing. The closer she crept, the more forbidding Beckett’s tone sounded. Her feet instinctively slowed until she was hiding behind the pillar they were by.
“…at all happy she and her mom moved in with us.”
Everything in her seized and she was incapable of doing anything other than listening.
“Why?” was Mark’s confused question.
Greer’s heart clenched at the long, weighted silence. Finally, Beckett’s weary tone answered.
“Do you know how many times Dad has talked to me or warned me that with the kind of money and name recognition we have that we need to be wary of girls?”
“Dude, your dad brought Greer’s mom home as his fiancée. Didn’t that tell you she was different?”
Greer breathed a silent thank you at Mark’s confused tone.
“It told me she was a better actress then all of the rest.”
At Beckett’s decisive words, Greer’s clenched heart exploded into a million pieces and the ricochet was felt in her entire body. Her body slumped into the pillar.
“You really think Greer’s mom is a gold digger?”
“I know that she is decidedly lower middle class and all of a sudden she is living in our multimillion-dollar house and her daughter is going to our private school.”
Tears sprang to her eyes and she swallowed the bile rising from her stomach. Her heart was telling her to run. With each word, Beckett was destroying her, but her head told her to stay. She needed to know the whole truth and the only way she would hear it was to stay hidden.
“Is that why you were such an ass to Greer?”
“Yes.” The declaration was soft, but he wasn’t done. “Dad made it clear that if I wasn’t nice to her, then I could start to live like her.”
“What does that mean?”
A harsh, cynical bark of laughter escaped Beckett, “It means no truck and no credit card.” He continued on with the sarcastic tone that she knew so well but hadn’t heard in a while. Now she knew why. “It means I would need to get a job to buy anything I wanted to get.”
A stunned silence and then Jason asked the final dagger, “That’s why the turnabout with Greer?”
“Initially.”
Greer’s hands wrapped around her waist and she wildly looked around. Frustrated, she wiped the tears to clear her visi
on. She needed to get out of here. Each floor had a balcony with seating looking down on the ground floor gardens and it beckoned her as the quickest escape route.
With stuttered breaths, Greer desperately tried to stop the upheaval of emotion from spilling out, as she stumbled toward the atrium door. As soon as she opened the door a sob escaped her.
The humid air hit her and the tears started pouring down her face. Mindlessly her hand gripped the railing to guide her further into the atrium.
The last couple of months of her life became clearer. Beckett’s cold dismissiveness to reluctant acceptance made sense, but why did he have to humiliate her? A frenzy of pictures passed through her head, her top off at the fire, in his room, and god help her, the ride in the limo brought her to her knees.
Greer brought her arms around her bent legs. He had played her and everyone knew it. That’s why everyone was always looking at her. They were laughing at her. Laughing at the fool she was making of herself.
“Well, well, well, what’s the matter princess?”
The sneered satisfaction oozing from the question made Greer close her eyes tighter and pray they would go away.
The hollow cackle filling the air made the hair on Greer’s arm stand at attention. She stilled and raised her swollen eyes and stuttered in a breath when they met Brittany’s hazel eye’ swirling with satisfaction and hatred.
A prickle of fear slithered down her spine. Brittany looked like an unhinged stranger and Greer’s stomach clenched. The longer Brittany glared down at her the more the air swirled with her malevolent intentions.
Greer felt like a cornered animal. She didn’t want to make any sudden movements, but Greer felt like a sitting duck with her looming over her. She couldn’t take her eyes off this obviously unhinged person in front of her. Brittany had always dismissed her, glared at her, or made snide comments, but Greer had never thought of her as evil. The person standing in front of her radiated gleeful satisfaction to have found her prey in front of her. Greer blinked her eyes to clear the tears and softly and slowly said.
“Brittany?”
Instead of answering, Brittany marched over in her strapless, sweetheart neckline, ruby red, beaded floor length dress. With her beach waved, blond curls flowing behind her she looked like a flame striding toward Greer. The fireball reached down and grabbed Greer’s ear.
“Get up.”
Greer mindlessly obeyed struggling to ignore the pain radiating from her ear. As soon as she managed to get upright Brittany was pulling her, by her ear, to the railing.
The railing was ten floors above the ground floor garden. Panic exploded in Greer and she tried to dig her shoes in, but her heels made no traction in the cement flooring. With her arms outstretched to catch the railing, Greer desperately hoped she could stop their progress.
With Brittany’s hand still pulling her ear and the momentum propelling her forward Greer’s arms buckled. Her stomach rammed into the railing and Greer struggled to find her breath. When she opened her eyes after the impact, her blood froze.
She was on the tip of her toes, leaning over the railing, ten floors up. Every part of her body started bucking and twisting in a desperate attempt to escape the weight at her back.
Brittany cackled in her ear, and through a tunnel, Greer heard her mock, “Enjoying the view, bitch?”
Oh God! That was the voice from the bathroom. Greer tried to bring her hands up from her sides, but Brittany had locked them to her sides by putting her own hands on the railing. As her helplessness set in, Greer struggled for breath. Every bit of energy drained from her and all Greer could do was stare at the blurry festival of color swimming before her.
“Why?” She managed to whisper out. If she was going to die, she wanted to know why.
Hot breath hit her neck and, in a hiss, Brittany answered, “I tried to be nice and warn you to stay away from Beckett. Instead of listening, you stuck even closer to him. I don’t forget my promises.”
With the distant ground filling her view and the pounding blood all rushing to her face Greer whimpered in disbelief. She was going to die because she had agreed to let Beckett be her pretend boyfriend. The irony that he convinced her to do it to help keep her safe wasn’t lost on her. Especially since she now knew it was more about keeping himself in good graces with his dad.
A jerk on her ear pulled her back to her precarious situation. “Pay attention when I am talking to you, bitch!”
Greer cried out in pain and the tears that had been locked in shock came pouring down her face as she blubbered with no shame. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We are done, I swear to god, we are done.” It was true, but she would say anything at this point to get the death grip on her ear loosened and what felt like a rock behind her to move. She wanted to fight, but she was clueless about how to do it.
Her pleading caused Brittany to crowd her body even closer to hers and Greer felt her toes leave the ground. The hot, threatening breath and the smell of Chanel No. 5 was filling her senses.
“You still think I’m an idiot, Greer? You waltz in here like the belle of the ball and expect me to believe you are broken up?”
Greer’s hands were sweating, and her body was losing strength from fighting the natural force to go over the railing with all of the weight behind her. “It just happened, that’s why I am out here by myself.”
She felt Brittany’s body still and Greer kept frantically talking hoping to say something that would make Brittany believe her. “He was just using me to make his dad happy. His dad made him be nice to me. I was out here trying to figure out how to get home. If you let me go, I promise I won’t go back to Oak High.”
“Brittany. Let go of Greer.”
Beckett spoke slowly and deeply, but it was an authoritative demand. Greer felt Brittany’s body stiffen, but Brittany quickly recovered. She adjusted her grip so one hand was in Greer’s hair and her other hand wrenched Greer’s hand behind her back, spinning her to face Beckett.
Greer lost her balance at the quick maneuver, but Brittany wrenched her arm higher to keep Greer upright and in front of her. The searing pain made Greer cry out and she closed her eyes in hopes of blocking it out, but all it did was intensify. She opened her eyes and saw Beckett standing with his legs braced apart, his hands in fists at his side, with all of his focus on Brittany.
─────────────────
Chapter 27
─────────────────
Beckett had been busy relieving his guilty conscious and hoping for some advice from Mark and Jason when Evan burst into their trio. He stood in front of Beckett, hands fisted, demanding.
“What the hell did you do to Greer?”
Beckett swung his eyes to Jason and Mark and saw the same wide-eyed alarm. His stomach started heaving. “What do you mean?”
Evan’s tense body loomed over him. “I was coming to see what you guys were doing and I saw her turn from that pole.” Evan stabbed his finger at the marble column five feet from where they had been sitting. Evan’s accusing glare hit all of them before he finished. “When she turned away there were tears running down her face.”
“Shit!” Beckett sprang up from his seat. “Where did she go?”
Evan looked at Beckett with a locked jaw. Beckett knew he had to get to Greer and explain. He didn’t have time for this shit. He got up in Evan’s face. “I’m only going to ask this one more time before I punch your face in…Where. Did. She. go?”
Evan’s eyes widened. “She headed toward the atrium doors.”
Beckett didn’t waste any more time on Evan. His blood was pounding. He had to get to Greer and explain. He was vaguely aware of Mark and Jason’s worried expressions as they followed him.
When he opened the atrium balcony door, Beckett frantically looked around. He needed to get to Greer and explain he didn’t feel that way anymore. Jason’s hand on his shoulder brought him back.
“We’ll find her.”
B
eckett drew on Jason’s determined words and realization dawned. Greer wouldn’t stay in plain sight and draw attention to herself. With his head on a swivel, Beckett headed further in. When he saw a someone in a red gown bent over the railing, he assumed they were sick.
Beckett was sneaking by, intent on finding Greer, when a flash of green in the red skirt caught his eye. He slowed down and horror ran through him. The girl in the red dress had Greer pinned to the railing. Greer was sobbing and talking, but the blood rushing through him made it impossible to understand what she was saying. Greer was fighting for her life.
He took a step toward them to tear them apart and then he stopped. If he grabbed the girl in the red dress, Greer could topple over the railing. He needed to think this through.
He felt Mark and Jason tense beside him. Mark murmured to him in a stunned voice. “Is that Greer in front of Brittany?”
One of them, Beckett wasn’t sure who, murmured, “Holy shit.”
Beckett kept his attention on Greer and Brittany sorting through all of the ideas in his head to get Greer to safety.
“Go. Call the cops.” Beckett was aware of one them leaving.
He tuned everything else out and made his presence known.
“Brittany. Let go of Greer.”
Brittany stopped all of her movement and then the next second, she was a blur of movement. She snapped her head and then twisted Greer around. Brittany’s back was now at the railing. She had one hand in Greer’s hair and the other wrenching Greer’s arm behind her.
Brittany’s maniacal laugh rang through the atrium and made the hairs on his arm stand up. “And here is your prince to save the day, to bad this is going to be a romantic tragedy.”
Beckett felt his muscles tense and he opened his mouth, only to snap it shut. Getting Greer away from that railing meant he needed to be in control. He couldn’t give Brittany an excuse to throw Greer over the railing.
Battling Beckett Page 20