Bad Girl

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  Bad Girl

  Bad Series #4

  Sarah Michelle Lynch

  Copyright © Sarah Michelle Lynch 2020

  The moral right of SARAH MICHELLE LYNCH to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. You must not circulate this book without the authority to do so.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  For more info visit sarahmichellelynch.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Reading Order So Far

  Bad Friends

  Bad Actor

  Bad Wife

  Bad Girl

  Bad Guys

  Bad Lover

  Chapter One

  Cole, my Australian beau, is pretty much the perfect guy. He’s six-two, muscular, has sun-drenched blond hair, a great smile, great tan… nice hands. He has a really nice cock and a few piercings and tattoos I quite like. He enjoys surfing. He knows how to fuck. We met in London when we were both doing the BPTC with a view to being called to the bar – in layman’s terms, becoming barristers. I completed the first year and decided to take a break rather than continue right away with my second year. I was studying part-time whereas Cole studied full-time and passed the course before we left London together. He could already be a barrister if he wished. He’s not just good-looking, he’s also wildly intelligent.

  Instead of starting his career right away, he decided to come on this adventure with me. Or did I convince him to take me on an adventure? I’m not sure.

  We’ve been travelling around Oz for two years now, here, there, everywhere. There was a short intermission when I had to go home and sort my visa out, but we’ve basically been adventuring non-stop for two years. We’ve worked on vineyards, in bars, restaurants, scuba centres (he was already PADI certified, then I got mine).

  We’ve driven across deserts in a camper van… eaten dinner on the beach more times than I can count… cooked breakfast on the beach, too. Made love on the beach. Slept on the beach.

  Then, last month I got an email from Saskia which made me think twice about what it is exactly we’re doing…

  Queen,

  When are you getting home already? Seriously, dude. How much fucking longer do you think you can continue to trek around? Sort it out already.

  Anyway, whether this will sway you or not I don’t know, but fuck… Lily is getting married. TO THEO! In TWO MONTHS. She asked me to ask you if you’d be bridesmaid alongside me and Marie. Bless her.

  Fuck, though. He’s fucking sexy. Never saw him that way until I saw his latest play and oh my god, phwoar (I know you hate that word but it’s the only one that works right now). She’s a lucky bitch and he does actually seem a little bit less weird now he has her.

  Also, babe. I have news on the Adam front…

  His psycho wife is beginning to show her true colours. Trust me on that one. Lily even said the girl isn’t the friend she thought she was. And apparently Susan was there for her after the whole miscarriage with Paul (we’re still not meant to know about that, remember?). Tom is such a loose-tongued but cute little motherfucker.

  Anyway, just bloody come home. Need I say more?

  Love ya,

  Sass xx

  Today we’re nearing the end of our latest jaunt… driving the Pacific Coast route from Sydney to Brisbane. We gave ourselves ten days to do it and we’ve taken in some amazing sights. The lushest farmland and the most awe-inspiring national parks on earth. We skinny-dipped in the sea and lay naked on empty beaches. We pulled up in tiny towns and stayed in old-fashioned B&Bs, drank ice-cold beer and listened to live country music.

  Now we’re almost back in Bribby where his family lives and we’ve found a quiet beach to eat fried chicken and chips in a basket from a van that was just about to close up. The sun is about to dip below the horizon but the smell of sun cream is still intoxicating; children haven’t ceased playing on the beach and are yelling loudly at one another; and Cole looks more delicious than ever before.

  “It’s time to go back, isn’t it?” he says, as though he read my mind – or maybe it’s been my marked silence today – which isn’t like me.

  “Lily’s getting married and has asked me to be her bridesmaid. It’s next month.”

  “God, but it’s been amazing, Chloe.”

  He’s looking out to sea, to the hazy pink-orange glow, but his face is in shadow as the sun goes down and his eyes are glinting.

  “It’s been the trip I’ve needed. The soul cleanse I didn’t even know I required.”

  He puts his arm around my shoulder and we watch the sun go down. Maybe it might be our last sunset, I don’t know.

  He bites his bottom lip and asks, “What are you going to do? Finish the course?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  He grabs hold of the white wooden railing protecting us from the drop down to the beach and stares at me, shocked.

  “Chloe? Why?”

  “If I really wanted it, I would have done it already. I was never doing it to please me, I was only doing it to prove people wrong. My mother has been a conveyancer her whole life and told me I didn’t even have what it took to do the same crappy job she does, and you know what?”

  He shakes his head, staring at me. “What?”

  “I went after the heights just so I could shove it in her face. That’s why I decided to go for the bar and everything, but since we’ve been here… I’ve discovered so much more than a profession or a job or a pay check. I’ve discovered a way of life, a way of being. And at the same time, I worked bloody hard on those vineyards and while clearing out koala poop in the sanctuaries we worked at. I feel like here I’ve actually been living. When I never lived before, you know?”

  The soft amber glow on the horizon as the sun dips beneath the earth is something magical… otherworldly, especially out here.

  We watch as the light fades more… and more… and more.

  “What if we went back to London? Got a place together. And I ask you to marry me? What would you say?”

  I turn my head and see he’s staring out to sea, maybe too scared to look at my face and find out my reaction.

  “Cole,” I murmur softly.

  “Okay, okay,” he whispers.

  It’s really difficult to explain to someone as wonderful as Cole why you don’t love them. Why you may never love anyone, in fact. I just know that the relationship we’ve had over the past three or four years… it hasn’t been conventional.

  “I’m done with London,” I tell him. “I’m going back to Leeds.”

  “You don’t want me to come to Leeds?” he asks, and I sense him trembling though it’s dark now and he’s stil
l not turned his head to face me.

  “You could come to Leeds but I would caution you against sacrificing so much for me. Not when neither of us has behaved particularly well in all the time we’ve been together. I’m not saying what we’ve had hasn’t meant something, because it has, but I wouldn’t ask anyone to sacrifice anything for me unless they were a million per cent sure. And I think you’ve been so happy on this trip… because your heart belongs here.”

  “And yours back there,” he groans.

  “I’m sorry, yes.”

  We put our empty baskets on the ground for a moment and he pulls me into his arms, kissing my forehead. He feels strong and warm and masculine. I really like him, perhaps even love him… just not enough. He and I have shagged around in all the time we’ve been together. First it was me doing it and then he decided to do it, too. A couple of times we smoked weed and did threesomes. The time it was two blokes satisfied me more than the time Cole brought another woman home and enjoyed fucking her while she ate my pussy. It’s been a wild adventure but I think he wants me to stick around mostly because giving up on me must also feel like giving up on this crazy and free period of time in our lives – not because he’s ever loved me enough to say, “Chloe, I don’t want other men shoving their cock in you anymore.” Perhaps it’s my flaw that I let other men fuck me – that I allowed Cole to believe multiple partners is really what I want – or maybe it’s just that our feelings for one another aren’t strong enough, which is why neither one of us ever initiated any promise of commitment.

  Or maybe I came on this whole trip because it meant I wouldn’t have to watch Adam get married. Most days I try not to think about that, but most days, I can’t help it.

  “This has been the most fun of my entire life,” I tell him, “but I actually do want to settle down one day. For a long, long time I told myself I wanted anything but that.”

  “That’s good, because I want that, too.”

  I pull my face out of his chest and smile up into his eyes. “My one stipulation is that the man I marry only has eyes for me and I for him and that nothing else even comes close. Because I think when you know, you just fucking know, right?”

  His expression softens from anxiously wanting to argue this… to then, accepting, maybe, I’m right. I don’t think he wants me enough to leave everything else behind – including our hedonistic days. Only a connection that’s deep and true makes people want to settle down. Like Lily and Theo. It was obvious for years he was in love with her. He wouldn’t think to flaunt another woman in front of Lily. Their friendship… their little cinema nights, their cosy book swaps and private emails to one another. I watched them closely and when Saskia told me the news, I wasn’t surprised, only shocked…

  Maybe people do get their happily ever after.

  You can push through all the bullshit trying to break you apart (like Paul) and you can get past fear and self-loathing (like Theo’s). I’ve begun to wonder, maybe it’s not impossible.

  Maybe I was only led to believe it is because I was brought up by a woman whose love life was disastrous, chaotic and plain gruesome.

  Chapter Two

  Two weeks later, and still heavily jetlagged, I enter Starbucks in the centre of Leeds and find Lily waiting by the door, anxiously anticipating my arrival. She’s in floods of tears before we’ve even hugged and I get to her, wrap my arms around her… and I’m shocked to realise, I’m hugging a bump, too.

  “God almighty, woman! What the bloody hell?” I hold my hand to her tiny bump and she hikes back her snot.

  “I guess Sass didn’t tell you about this?”

  “No, god no,” I laugh, and she wipes her face and laughs, too. “Let’s get you something to bloody drink, shall we?”

  We’re ordering tea and coffee at the counter when I pretend I’m putting my arm around her and instead find the waistband of her elasticated maternity jeans and ping it against her skin. She gasps with shock and shakes her head.

  “Come around to my way of thinking, have you?” I can’t help but laugh hard.

  “Hey, I have no choice,” she growls, “there’s a miniature Theo in me. Come on. What’s your excuse?”

  I pout and give her attitude. “They’re amazing for buffets, Lily. What can I say? You’ll see. Even after, you’ll still be wearing them. You’ll see, mark my words.”

  “You’re telling me that while you’ve been sunning yourself and sleeping on beaches you’ve actually been wearing maternity jeans still?”

  I frown and elbow her lightly. “Only for buffets, Lil. The rest of the time I was mostly naked.”

  She laughs the house down and adds a couple of muffins to the order, perked up, it would seem.

  We find a table and she stirs a peppermint teabag around a large cup. I suggested Starbucks because sue me, I like their coffee, especially the vanilla latte.

  “You look really well, girl,” she says, “really well.”

  “Thanks. It did me the world of good.”

  She looks around as if trying to figure out if I’ve got some bloke hot on my heels or something. I admit, for years, I had boyfriends show up to things like this as though it was unexpected, just so that I didn’t have to chat with my girlfriends for long. I’ve done some shit I’m not proud of, I’ve lived a bit carelessly, but hey… haven’t we all?

  “And you and Cole?” she asks gently, finally getting to it.

  “He’s still in Australia.”

  I smile and she smiles. She’s absentmindedly rubbing her stomach and I’m absentmindedly wondering when she got so fucking beautiful. At twenty-seven, it’s like she’s come into her own. This woman… seriously… she’s drop-dead.

  “And he’s not coming back here?”

  I shake my head. “I mean, maybe. Don’t quote me. But we sort of… had our goodbye shag, split the photo collection in half, gave each other back our bits and pieces of jewellery and t-shirts, and that’s that.”

  Her eyes look puffy again and I reach over for her forearm. “It’s okay, really.”

  “Chlo, come on,” she protests. “I’m pregnant, okay? Go easy on me today.”

  I hand her a tissue and she blows her nose.

  “It was an adventure, Lil. A beautiful, epic, sweeping adventure. But that’s all it was.”

  She eyes me shrewdly. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  She laughs, she loves my sardonic attitude really. “And he was in agreement?”

  I can’t help pulling a face and she sees it. On the last night, Cole did drop to one knee, but only in a last-ditch effort to get me to stay… or ask him to come here.

  “He proposed,” I laugh, and she gasps with shock.

  “No, he did not!” she yells, almost shocking the people passing by our table.

  “It was kind of dorky. He used a plaggo ring and it was a bit… dumb. He wasn’t being serious.”

  She stares down her nose. “Are you sure?”

  I stare back. “About what?”

  “That he wasn’t being serious?”

  “Oh, I knew he was semi-serious, babe. We’d just done the deed.”

  Lily throws her head back laughing while also tapping her fingers on the table in agitation.

  Once people get past our table and are out of earshot, I lean over and admit, “Neither of us was faithful, Lil. That’s okay, it was okay, you know? But even I know that isn’t the recipe for a lasting marriage. Especially when he looked at the others in the way he did.”

  She blows a raspberry. “You led him astray.”

  “Maybe, or maybe it just wasn’t real, Lil. Not like you and Mr T. Now there’s a man, eh? Now there’s a man.”

  She frowns and narrows her eyes. “You’re trying to change the subject.”

  “And who wouldn’t want to discuss your future husband? He’s an absolute catch. And rich, so I’m led to believe.”

  Lily chuckles on and off for the next minute or two while she either thinks about her fiancé or the amount of
money he inherited from his mother.

  She lifts her eyes eventually and gives me a smug little smile. “Life is good, that’s all I’m saying. Life is good.”

  I’m happy for her, I am. I know Theo will give her more children, not to mention security, encouragement and happiness, plus a jolly good shafting whenever she wants. But my mind turns to Paul.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asks.

  “Paul,” I tell her, because I think she knows.

  “You have that look in your eye. It’s the look of doom.”

  I look down at the table. “When we were in Melbourne he came and met us. He’d given himself a holiday and was passing through on his way to someplace else.”

  She looks beyond shocked. “You saw him?”

  “He’s okay,” I tell her straight, “a bit bashed around, but he’s okay.”

  “What do you mean?” She puts both hands around her mug, seeking comfort.

  “He lost you, didn’t he?”

  Her face twitches with unresolved issues. “He broke me, Chloe.”

  “He knows that,” I tell her without hesitation. “He definitely knows.”

  “Who was he travelling with?” she asks, still interested in his personal life, it would seem.

  “He was on his own but he was on his way to meet up with other friends.”

  “He’s not seeing anyone?”

  I shrug, because honestly, he could be seeing twelve people and you might never know.

  “I wouldn’t worry about him, Lil. He takes what he can when he can, you know? I’m sure he’s not deprived.”

  “He’s still living recklessly then.”

  “Hey, as long as you’re honest and practise safe sex, what’s wrong with that?”

  “I agree,” she admits freely, “honesty goes a long way. Like, maybe you should be honest and admit that you refused Cole because you’re just a bit scared of commitment.”

  I laugh in her face and contemplate throwing my muffin at her, which I must make a start on actually, seeing as though she’s almost demolished hers.