Our Secret: A College Bully Romance (Golden Crew Book 1)

by Belladona Cunning

  "All this time, I had a son I didn't know about." My emotions run unchecked. "Harloe never cheated on me, and I was cruel to her because I thought she had."

  "I'm s—"

  "You ruined my life!" My crazed yell is the only warning he gets.

  I throw the torn pieces of paper at his face, overturning the table to get to him. My hands ball into fists, and the force of my assault makes us tumble to the floor as I knock him out of his chair. Straddling his waist, I rear my arm back with a guttural yell and start taking all of my frustrations out on him.

  "Family is supposed to mean everything!" I scream, hitting him again and again. I crack him in the nose, blood spraying everywhere as it crunches on contact.

  "You took everything from me!"

  The sound of shit crashing in his room doesn't even pull me off him. I reign down jab after jab, beating him black and blue. It's not enough, though. Nothing ever will be.

  Harloe and I had a future. A future we both were looking forward to—college at UCLA, marriage, kids, and spending the rest of our days growing old together.

  He ruined it all.

  Owen pathetically cowers, trying his best to cover his face with the back of his arms. But I don't give a shit. As long as he gets what he deserves, I don't care what I'm hitting.

  Out of nowhere, strong arms band around me and pull me off him. Struggling and fighting their hold, I grunt and growl like a man possessed. He still hasn't had enough. No matter that he's lying on the floor covered in his blood. I need more.

  He took my life, so I need to take his.

  "What the fuck is going on here?!" the sound of my dad's razor-sharp voice pierces through my haze of anger. But not enough for me to stop fighting. I still twist and turn in his arms, desperate to gain freedom.

  Growling, I roar, "Let me go! He fucking deserves everything!"

  "What in the world?!"

  My mother darts to her knees, hunkering over Owen. He groans in pain as her worried hands trail over him. Shouldn't be too surprised, she's always loved Owen more than she loved me.

  Her eyes meet mine the moment she sees Owen is fine. Her lips are thinned into a tight line. "You'll tell me what is happening this instant."

  Ignoring her, I ask a question of my own, heaving for air. "Why are you two here?"

  "Hunter!" she reprimands in a shrill tone. "Answer me right now!"

  I'm still gasping for air, my body shooting high from adrenaline. My dad must see I'm no longer fighting him, so he releases me slowly. Turning on him, I see his wary expression. He's not even paying Owen any attention. His gaze is firmly on mine.

  "Son?"

  I grit my teeth to push through the pain slamming into my chest. "He lied about Harloe." I breathe deeply in through my nose, before pushing onward. "Harloe had a baby, and thanks to my goddamn brother, I wasn't there for her when she needed me the most."

  "A baby?" my mom gasps, eyes jerking to her husband. "Landon."

  "Hunter," my dad ventures, hesitant in speaking, like I'm a spooked cat or something. "What did Owen lie about?"

  My eyes meet his as I speak through clenched teeth. "He showed me a picture and a small snippet of a video of him and Harloe having sex under the school bleachers. Said she came on to him, and since I had taken his spot on the baseball team,” I grit my teeth in remembrance, “my sophomore year as pitcher, he wanted to get back at me. Said he didn't think it'd be a big deal."

  "Owen!" My mom turns her head, completely aghast by his actions. "Please, tell me that's not the truth. We come over here for a nice dinner and walk in to find you and your brother fighting. All because of a lie.”

  Owen grumbles before spitting blood out onto the floor as he sits up with a grimace. "I didn't think he actually loved her, so I didn’t see it as a problem."

  My mouth fishes open as rage threatens to consume me once more. I start toward him, and it takes my dad putting a hand on my chest to force me to a stop. I meet his eyes, so much like my own, and in them, I can see pleading. I cock a brow in return, silently communicating that I don't give a shit.

  "Even I'm smart enough to know Harloe would never sleep with you. She hated you for the way you treated her." My mom crosses her arms and steps back, surprising me when she doesn't offer to help Owen to his feet.

  Looks like the good son he is no more.

  He gets up on his own, grunting from the effort. Coming to his full height, he dashes at the line of blood flowing from his broken nose. Seeing the red substance must enrage him because the next we know, he’s picking up the chair he was sitting in and throwing it over the balcony with a guttural yell.

  "I had to do it, okay?!" He huffs and puffs, fighting for control.

  My dad pipes up, his dark voice demanding an explanation. "Owen, you better speak before I bend you over my knee."

  Owen's eyes meet his, and then my mom’s, before finally settling on mine. And what he tells us is so horrific, so downright disgusting, I don't even know what to do or what I should start processing first.

  Ultimately, I don't even know how I should begin to have this conversation with Harloe. She deserves to know the reason for my actions all those years ago. And I know she knows the gist of it, but I need her to know everything. No matter how good, bad, or ugly. That’s the only way she will know why I did what I did.

  Owen didn't ruin our lives alone. He wasn’t even the ringleader. He’d been betrayed just like me.

  CHAPTER 34

  By the time Hunter finishes telling me everything, I'm nearly on the edge of my seat and threatening to lose my lunch.

  "Cassandra?" I ask to make sure I heard him right. “She set it up?”

  Rubbing a tired hand over his face, he replies wearily, "Yeah. Apparently, that was her he was fuckin'. Not you. Don't know why I couldn't tell the difference."

  I can, and there's no explanation necessary, even though it's like some sick joke. "Hunt, she and I looked almost identical, from behind. We had the same hair length, body type, and all. But, the voice ... " I trail off.

  He shakes his head, catching my eyes. "That's where it fucked me up. The girl on Owen's lap never said a word. She got off on his lap with your name on his lips. The only person who said shit was O."

  "But if he was with her, then why was he saying my name?"

  By the way Hunter looks away, I know there's more to the story. So much more. A knot rises into my throat at the implication of everything that transpired in that video, and I know, without a doubt, I'm going to hate what he has to tell me. But I also know that I need to hear it. To know why our future was thwarted in such a manner that nothing about it is salvageable.

  "Hunt?" I lean forward, trying to catch his gaze.

  His eyes close like he's pained. "Owen had a crush on you. Cassandra told him he could fuck her, but ... "

  My head tilts in confusion, eyebrows slanting as I try to piece together what he's saying. For several minutes, we're both silent, his eyes pleading with me not to make him continue, and my mind running a thousand miles an hour.

  I start to think I'll never piece it together, and that I'll have to ask him, even though I know it pains him to talk about it. When I open my mouth to ask, that's when it hits me like a ton of bricks.

  My mouth falls open in equal parts shock and disgust. "Oh, my God. She said he could say my name, didn't she? She knew he had a crush on me and used it against him. To make it seem like he was with me?"

  Hunter nods.

  "And she videoed him, and then ... Oh, shit!" I grasp my face between my hands and then run them through my hair. "She used that video as blackmail."

  He nods. His sad eyes find mine. "Cassandra wanted me, Owen said. She told Owen he could fuck her and pretend it was you, and at least then she could say she’s ridden one Prince’s dick. She seduced him at school under the bleachers, and because he was stuck on you something fierce, it worked. He never expected her to use the tape against him. At the time, she was fifteen, and he'd just turned eighteen. With
the way he was holding her ... "

  Hunter visibly swallows, barely able to finish his explanation. "With the way he held her—” he demonstrates by putting a hand on the back of his head and around his back, “—she could have cried rape because of his dominating position. She threatened to do just that."

  "So, O lied?"

  "Yeah. He would rather I hate him than go to jail for statutory rape. He just never thought losing you would break me so badly."

  Same here. Losing Hunter was one of the worst experiences I've ever had in my short life. The allegation against me wasn't even worse than his absence. Honestly, I don't even know how I did it without anyone intimately beside me. Like, having a constant co-parent for Maverick. But I did, and I can't fault what happened between us. Because what happened between us made me the person I am today—a fiercely protective mom to a two-year-old mini-me of Hunter Prince.

  I'm not going to sit here and say that what happened didn't make me mad. Oh, there for a long time, I was completely engulfed in rage. Through my entire pregnancy, with each kick and roll of Maverick in my stomach, I couldn't stop the blistering hatred from nearly consuming me.

  Hunter had tossed me out, and to now find out that it was all because of that heinous bitch he's been fucking for the past three years doesn't make it any better. He—we—fell right into her trap.

  “Leaving nearly destroyed me,” I can’t help but whisper. “Every day, I wanted to die. Dramatic, right?” I laugh. Because if I don’t, I’m libel to cry from just the echo of pain I feel cramping my chest.

  Actually, we don't have anyone to blame but ourselves. In all reality, Hunter is the one to blame. If it weren’t for his actions, I have no doubt we’d still be together. He’s the one who allowed lies to twist his insides into knots. He's the one who didn't have enough faith in our love and relationship that he allowed some pathetic girl to ruin it.

  "It's not dumb." He shakes his head forcefully. "You could never be dumb, baby. What I did was dumb. I didn't believe you, and I should have. I allowed my emotions to rule my decision. Fuck. There wouldn't be a way for you to ever forgive me, would there?" he questions, looking at me expectantly.

  You'd think with such an innocent question, I'd be able to answer. But I can't. The words simply won't come.

  I sit back numbly and stare straight ahead at the blank wall. It's hard to articulate what I'm feeling right now, and to be honest, I don't even want to try.

  Hunter still hasn't said what took him so long to come knocking back on our door. But it's not hard to figure it out with his rumpled clothing and the smell of alcohol wafting off him.

  The news hit him just as hard as it did me, only he was able to work through his problems without the distraction of everyday life. He could focus strictly on himself, instead of having to deal with the outside world, too.

  I didn't have that luxury.

  He didn't go to classes, which angered me because he was my partner, and I had to do all the work by myself. His friends were constantly finding either myself or Jenna and asking if we'd heard from him.

  Until seeing him at the door, I was angry and confused because he simply stopped existing, and it made me flashback to when he forced me out of his house. How I wanted nothing more than to stop existing. How I wanted the world to swallow me up, so I didn't have to feel the pain of losing the one person I loved.

  Could I ever forgive him? When I was in high school, I thought losing Hunter was the end of the world. It took me several months and a bouncing baby boy to let me know differently.

  Hunter was never my world.

  He helped provide my world.

  He helped give me the one person I know for a fact will never leave me. And, for that alone, I can't hate him. No matter how much I should. He took away my reason to breathe, but not without giving me a reason to exist.

  Sparing him a look, I give him a genuine smile. "A lot has happened, but I think I could learn to."

  The smile that etches across his tired face has the blood singing in my veins. Flushed, I quickly turn my head away, mumbling, "Why don't you go get cleaned up? Maverick's been pitching a fit for days because his dad hasn't been here."

  Hunter's silence catches me off guard. Caught up in his thoughts, his eyes rapidly move as he thinks about something. And when he raises his eyes back to mine, the wholesome feeling of gratitude I see shining through his gaze nearly knocks the wind right out of me.

  "I'm a dad," he whispers in awe. "Little man is mine." But just as quickly as the light-heartedness and joy come, they disappear like a thief in the night, and in its place is a mind-crippling sadness I feel to my very core. He props his elbows on his knees and puts his face into his hands. "I missed so much."

  That he did, and by the look marring his features, he fully understands how it is all his fault. I played a part in it, don't get me wrong. But without the catalyst, I'd never have left.

  Clearing my throat, I say, "Remember that night you broke things off with me?"

  He sits up straighter. "Yeah?"

  I take my lip between my teeth, grazing my lips across the surface nervously. "That was the night I was going to tell you I was pregnant. I—the pregnancy test was your present."

  "God." He wrangles his hair in his hands, pulling the strands taut with tension. "I'm such a screwup. If I had—if we had ... Goddammit!"

  "The past can't be changed, but—" I say with a hint of a smile, trying my best to cover up the hurt, "—it's up to you if you miss anymore."

  "I won't make the same mistake again, Lo." His eyes flash with steely determination, and I can't help but think he's talking about more than just his duty as a dad to Maverick.

  Please, I won't be able to survive it again. "Good. He needs a dad."

  He hoists himself off the couch, and I slowly follow after him toward the door. When we pass the kitchen island, I watch him as his eyes catch and stay on it. He doesn't say a word, just stares, like he's remembering everything I do each time I wake up and see it there, in the middle of the room, for everyone to see.

  Opening the door, he turns, catching it with the other hand. He seems contemplative, but I have a feeling I know where his thoughts are leading. And I have to put a stop to it. Nothing good will ever come out of Hunter and me going back down that road. We've been interrupted more than once, and I think of that as a sign from the cosmos or something.

  I shake my head, insinuating I know exactly what he's about to say. When his entire body seems to deflate right in front of me, I know I'm right. He was going to ask me about us, about the chemistry we seem to still share.

  Chemistry we may have, but a whole lot of toxicity we have as well.

  "Bye, Hunter."

  He leaves without saying another word.

  It doesn't bother me, really. At least, it shouldn't.

  Fuck ... I'm so screwed—because it does.

  A little later, Jenna is coming into the apartment with her hands full of my son and his things. He's wiped plum out and snoring with his head on her shoulder. He's wrapped around her like a Koala, and the sight causes me to giggle.

  "A little help," she whispers, huffing. "He's like a heating pad."

  Hurrying over, I quickly take him from her and put him to bed. I can give him a bath in the morning. Upon my return, Jenna is just then coming out of her room in her nightclothes—a long ratty T-shirt that goes down to her knees.

  It's better than nothing, and so much better than what she used to prance around the apartment in.

  Closing the door behind me, I make my way back to the couch where I was studying. However, the moment I sit down, I know there will be no studying done. Jenna sits right down on the couch near my extended legs and stares.

  I highlight another portion in the textbook and glance up. She continues to stare at me without saying a word, like she's expected something.

  Oh, I know what she wants, but it's not going to tickle her fancy.

  "Nothing happened," is all I give her.

>   Just like I predicted, she blows out a breath and flops back onto the couch. "Why not?"

  My eyes bug. "Why not? The last three years is why not."

  "So."

  I slam my book closed, the sides hitting together with a sharp pop. "So? Do you even know why he showed up today?"

  She shakes her head but licks her lips. It's then, I know that I fell into her trap. But I can't even bring myself to give a damn. I proceed to tell her everything that happened. About the video, the pictures—I talk to her for so long that she has to pause the conversation and sneak into her kitchen to open her smuggled wine she stole from her mom and stepdad's house.

  By the time I'm through ranting and raving, we're halfway through the bottle, and our tongues are getting super loose.

  "Just fuck him." She takes a gulp of wine, nearly draining the glass. "Not like you have to love him to fuck him."

  "I ain't fucking no one, Jen."

  She gives me a look—one I don't much care for. It's her calculating glare that lets me know she's trying to analyze me. "You're droughting bad, aren't you?"

  I hate that she's right. I'm also not going to admit it, either. Sure, we've been living together for almost three months now. Doesn't mean I haven't gotten my kicks elsewhere.

  "No." Keeping my face as neutral as possible, I know the moment she sees through my bullshit because she starts snickering with laughter and holding her stomach as if it pains her.

  "You are so in a drought. When's the last time you had sex?"

  "I am not having this conversation with you," I quip, gathering our trash from chocolate bars and little snack cakes.

  Heading toward the kitchen, I toss them all away and flip around just as she rounds the corner, effectively trapping me. Her smile spreads when she sees my flightiness. White teeth gleam in the shadows where the light above the stove doesn't reach.

  "Harloe Maree Rose. How long has it been since you've had your insides flipped?"

  "Gross!" I whisper-hiss.

  "Your little red flag played with?"