Bully (Angel & Demons Trilogy Book 1)

by Ashley Love

  If I don't, I'm afraid I might get too attached to Zane and it'll all just hurt more when nothing happens.

  I spend the rest of winter break in a pretty foul mood, and work out my frustration mostly by masturbating a lot (practically every night, as sad and pathetic as that is) and throwing myself into work and cooking with Bonnie. Bonnie knows something's going on with me, because I'm too quiet, but she doesn't pry. She just lets me punch down the dough as much as I want, and makes sure I have mitts on before I grabs thing out of the hot oven.

  During the last week before school starts up again, I'm at home with Sophia, and we're both sitting in front of the TV. I don't even know what we're watching, because I'm too busy thinking about Zane's tongue. We said goodbye to our parents the day after Christmas, but both Mom and Dad barely said two words to us before going their separate ways, arguing the whole way down the driveway as they got into their cars. I'm relieved that they're gone, but it leaves less distractions for me, so I just think about Zane a lot.

  Sophia notices me staring off into space, and punches me in the arm. Ow. Sophia is getting better at punching people.

  I wince and rub my arm, looking over at her. "What was that for?"

  She glares. "You're not even watching the show."

  I sigh. "I'm just tired."

  She purses her lips and shakes her head. "You've been out of it ever since Christmas. Is it about Mom and Dad?"

  I roll my eyes. "No," I say. "Just stop worrying about it."

  She narrows her eyes at me, turning towards me. "You're hiding something."

  I fix her with a look. "And why does it matter to you what I do?"

  "Because," Sophia smiles, "I think I know your secret."

  I crunch my forehead up in confusion. "What?"

  She grins at me, folding her arms. "You remember Liam from Hartley's Bend?"

  I bite my lip. I don't like where this is going. But I nod anyway.

  "You remember his big brother Zane?" she asks, her smile growing more sly.

  I can't help but blush when she says Zane's name, but I try not to let my expression falter. Do I remember Zane? Ha! I nod as nonchalantly as possible.

  "Well he showed up here the other day," she says, and I can't help but let my eyes widen a little.

  "Here?" I ask. I didn't even know Zane knew where I live. But then again, everybody seemed to know where we live when we moved in, as this house was the only house up for sale in the town. Maybe that's how he knows?

  Sophia nods. "He was asking about you, but you were at work," she says. "And he looked all hot and bothered."

  I roll my eyes. "Don't be so dramatic."

  She grins. "You're dating him, aren't you?" she assumes, and my eyes actually pop out of my head.

  "What? No!" I reply. "Where did you get that idea?"

  "Because you've been all distracted lately! And then Zane shows up here? What am I supposed to think?" she laughs.

  I scoff and shake my head. "You have too wide of an imagination," I accuse. "I barely know Zane. He probably just needed to borrow my homework."

  "Mm-hmm," Sophia says, raising her eyebrow to indicate that she doesn't believe a word I'm saying.

  But honestly, I'm telling the truth. Me and Zane aren't dating. We're the furthest thing from dating. We kissed once, and it was the best kiss I could ever imagine, but that doesn't mean anything else is going to happen.

  But Zane showed up here. I bite the inside of my cheek, pondering that. The fact that Zane came over could counter my idea that he's just a player looking to get laid. But I'm desperate to think that he's just a scumbag, because then it'll be easier to get over him.

  Fuck. Zane Peterson is turning me inside out and carving me raw. And I must be a masochist because I love every minute of it as much as I hate it. I love thinking about Zane's little groans while I masturbate. I love cumming with his name on my lips. It doesn't matter that I feel stupid afterwards for doing it, because in the moment, it's the best feeling ever.

  And I want more. I want to kiss him again, and I want to touch him. I want more, and it hurts.

  Sophia turns to me again, breaking me once more from my thoughts. "Oh, by the way, Mason called and he's coming over tonight with Charlie and Kira."

  I raise one eyebrow. "And you're just telling me this now?"

  She snorts and rolls her eyes. "If I told you ahead of time, you would have backed out. You've been acting like such a hermit lately."

  I glare at her and sit back into the couch again. She's sort of right, but at the same time, I love my friends, and I want to spend as much time as I can with them before Mom and Dad make us move away from Windsor Falls and on to the next town. I realize I haven't hung out with them once since winter break started, and I feel a little guilty for it.

  Zane is consuming my mind so much that I'm forgetting about my friends. Everything about this is bad, but it's so, so good too.

  I close my eyes for a moment, trying to expel thoughts of Zane from my head for now. My friends deserve my undivided attention, and damn it, I'm going to give it to them.

  47

  Zane goes back to Hartley's Bend every single day for the last couple weeks of Christmas break. He sits on the creaky wooden swing for hours, just smoking and waiting. He's not sure what he's waiting for. Even if Ariel does show up, what does he expect to happen?

  He was right about his good mood. The night he and Ariel kissed, he was ecstatic. But it all sunk in the next day. Ariel ran away after the kiss, with barely another word. It was clear that she regretted it. And he doesn't deserve her anyway.

  So Zane has once again reverted back to his usual gloomy self, hating almost everything, and hating himself most of all.

  Nevertheless, he sits at Hartley's Bend. He sits there when it snows, he sits there in the cold, he sits there at night. He just sits there. He keeps thinking that maybe Ariel will show up. And what if she shows up and he's not there? What if he misses it?

  And what if he doesn't miss it, and she shows up while he's there? What would they do then? Talk? Kiss again? Ignore each other?

  Zane is completely consumed with thoughts of her. And that's not exactly any different than the way he's been obsessed with the girl for months now. But still. It hurts.

  And he deserves all that hurt.

  He grows a pair and actually walks to Ariel's house once. Just once. Her little sister Sophia answers the door, and tells him she isn't there, and Zane is actually a little relieved on top of his disappointment. It took a lot of guts for him to go to her house, but he didn't exactly have a plan for when he got there. Maybe it's a good thing that she wasn't there.

  Zane is sitting at Hartley's Bend again in the middle of the morning when Noah suddenly shows up at the park the week before winter break ends. Zane doesn't really say anything to him, because he hasn't been talking to any of his friends, Noah included, even though he misses having him there. Dickhead or not, the Brit has always been a decent friend, all things considered.

  Noah takes a seat on the swing next to Zane, and they just sit there in silence for a couple minutes. Zane doesn't say anything, but he pulls out a cigarette and hands it to Noah, who takes it with a small nod of thanks and lights it up.

  It's actually not terribly uncomfortable sitting here in silence with Noah. Neither he nor Zane are particularly talkative people, and they've been friends for so long that it's just not awkward to hang out and not talk. But of course, Noah has to break the silence.

  "Do anything fun for Christmas?" he asks, his voice sounding a little too sweet.

  Zane raises an eyebrow and looks over at his friend skeptically. "Like you give a shit," he says with a little smile.

  Noah laughs at that. "Yeah, you're right, I don't," he confirms, pulling out a whole bottle of impressively nice scotch from the inside of his pea coat. "Drink?"

  Zane snorts, wondering how the hell Noah even fits the whole bottle inside his jacket without lookin
g like he has something under there. He shrugs. "Yeah, okay." He reaches for the bottle, but Noah pulls it away, holding up a finger.

  "On one condition," he says, and Zane rolls his eyes, leaning away.

  "What's that?" he mutters, sounding unamused.

  Noah just smiles, because his favorite activity is pissing people off, especially when it comes to Zane. "You have to come to Ghost Town with me," he says.

  Zane feels his face drain of color, and he tries to keep his expression neutral, but he has to look away from Noah and take a drag on his cigarette to keep his poker face on. He pretends to be looking at something interesting down the street while he schools his expression. "Why?" he asks, and his voice comes out as more of a growl than he had hoped for.

  Noah scoffs. "What's so wrong about Ghost Town?" he demands. "We used to go there every day! It's our place! We have loads of good memories there. Why are you suddenly so opposed to the idea?"

  Zane feels that crawling sensation start up at the base of his neck again, the one he gets every time anything involving Slate and Ghost Town is mentioned. It's been getting easier to deal with it. He hasn't puked or anything in a while at just the mere thought of it, but it still doesn't mean that Zane likes to remember it.

  He deliberately looks over at the place on the sidewalk across the park where he and Ariel were sitting when they kissed. It makes him feel marginally better, and helps him relax a little. He looks back at Noah. "Why are you so set on going there?" he asks. "There are tons of other places we could go in Windsor Falls. Why do we have to go all the way out there every time?"

  Noah's face falls, and even though he's a pompous dick with a God complex, Zane actually feels a little bad. He feels like he just took a lollipop from a little kid. "Yeah, but it's Ghost Town," Noah pouts. "I mean we've been going there since freshman year. It's where we popped my cigarette cherry, remember?"

  Zane actually snorts a little laugh. They were fourteen when Zane and his friends went to Ghost Town with Noah for the first time, and the very first time Noah tried a cigarette, he coughed so hard he farted.

  "You're never gonna live that one down, just so you know," Zane chuckles, taking another drag on his smoke.

  Noah chuckles. "I'm not even embarrassed anymore," he claims. "You slags have told the story so many times, it's like it happened to someone else."

  Zane pops his eyebrows and shakes his head. "Yeah, yeah, you just keep telling yourself that Gas-X."

  They both chuckle and then fade off into silence again. Noah rocks himself just slightly with his heels, and the rusted chains of the swing groan rhythmically like a dying animal. Zane chews on the filter of his cigarette, enjoying the taste of the menthol, and stares at the spot where he and Ariel made out.

  Would it be so bad for him to go back to Ghost Town? It's not like Slate is going to be there, right? Maybe it's what Zane needs to help him get over what happened. Every time he thinks about it, his hands start shaking, and his scars flare up with pains, and so far the only thing that's helped at all is putting out cigarette after cigarette on his forearm. But he's developed a taste for that, and burning himself is almost like a hobby now. It's starting to worry him a bit.

  Maybe going back to Ghost Town would help. And maybe it would get him to stop burning himself, because he's starting to think that maybe that's getting a little out of hand.

  Zane swallows back the bile rising in his throat, and inconspicuously presses the heel of his hand into his scars to stave off the ache. He looks over at Noah. "Okay," he says finally, chewing on his lip.

  "Okay?"

  Zane swallows again, convulsively. "Okay, let's go to Ghost Town."

  Noah stares at him for a second, and then a huge smile spreads across his face. "Really?"

  Zane actually chuckles a little at how much Noah sounds like a little kid right now. "Yes, let's just go before I change my mind."

  Noah doesn't need to be asked twice. He jumps up from his swing excitedly, and Zane stands too. He holds onto the chain of the swing for a moment, just making sure that his legs don't give out under him with his sudden rush of nerves.

  He glances both ways down the street, his eyes scanning for any sign of life, just in case Ariel happens to be walking towards Hartley's Bend by chance. But there's no one out here except for an old lady walking her dog near the public restrooms across the way.

  Zane blows out all the breath in his lungs, and then lets go of the swing, following Noah into the woods. They take a shortcut, which is basically just straight through the trees, where they have to stomp through some bushes and duck under branches in a couple places since there's no worn path here.

  It takes them only about thirty minutes or less to get to the old abandoned train cars. Every step Zane takes in that direction feels like one step closer to the edge of a cliff, and he's just going to fall off at any second and get speared by a giant stake, Vlad the Impaler style.

  His heart is racing, and his scars are pulsing violent waves of pains that have Zane hunching over cradling his side every few minutes. When Noah asks, Zane says it's a side ache, and his friend laughs and says he's getting flabby.

  Zane has to admit that having Noah out here with him is helpful, but he would almost rather it be Ariel with him right now. He clings shamelessly to the thoughts of her sweet, delicious mouth, and her gentle hands touching him on Christmas night. Anything to keep him from having a panic attack in front of Noah right now.

  When they make it to Ghost Town, it looks exactly the same as it always has. A few of the train cars are on their sides and overgrown with weeds. The one Zane and his friends always sit in is upright and full of old, rotting lumber. But, even though everything is physically in its place, Ghost Town looks so much more menacing to him now. The paint looks darker on the train cars, the weeds look more like arms, and the inside of their usual spot looks like a black pit of everything bad you could ever think of.

  Zane stops at the edge of the trees, hesitating for a moment when he sees the train car because he feels hands all over him and his shoulder aches like there are teeth sinking into it. Noah walks ahead, but stops when he realizes Zane isn't following him anymore.

  "Well come on then," he urges, raising the bottle of scotch and waving it in the air before continuing on towards the train car.

  Zane swallows hard, and takes a moment to just breathe. He reaches down and presses the pad of his thumb hard into the most recent cigarette burn on his arm through the sleeve of his jacket. A stinging pain lances through his arm as he presses into the wound, and a wave of giddiness overcomes him for a moment as endorphins spiral down from his brain. It's like he has his own personal constant IV drip of feel-good drugs, and every time he hurts himself, it just makes more drugs swirl around in his system.

  It works, for now, and he forces his heavy legs to continue on, crossing the small clearing to the train car. Noah has already climbed inside, and he is sitting in his usual spot on an old stump that they dragged in here their sophomore year when Noah claimed that he didn't like sitting on the rotting floor.

  Zane climbs in and purposely sits where Gordon usually sits, because it's furthest away from where he was attacked. He can't help but let his eyes trail over to the exact spot where Slate hurt him. There's a fading dark stain on the floor, and Zane almost vomits when he realizes that it's his own blood from where his forehead impacted the floor when Slate knocked him down face-first over a month ago.

  Noah snaps in his face, and Zane blinks, realizing that he's zoned out a bit. He accepts the bottle of scotch when Noah hands it to him and takes a long swig, ignoring the burn of the alcohol, the corners of his eyes watering with how much he pours down his throat.

  "Whoa killer, slow down," Noah laughs, taking the bottle back as Zane coughs but keeps all the alcohol he just chugged down. He's always hated scotch. He's more of a whiskey guy. But right now, he needs something to keep his mind off of what happened the last time he was here.

>   Noah rambles on mindlessly as they drink. He gets more talkative when he's drunk, and Zane just sits there and listens like he always does. It's actually nice. After Zane's taken a half dozen swigs or so, and the fuzzy feeling of drunkenness starts to set in, he finds it easier to push thoughts of the attack aside, and he just blinks blearily and stares at the woods out of the train car, thinking about Ariel as Noah talks.

  Whenever bad memories start to trickle in again, Zane just presses his thumb into one of his cigarette burns through his sleeve again until the memory flickers and fades away. It feels good and it works, and he thinks to himself that maybe it wasn't such a bad idea that they came to Ghost Town. Maybe he can finally move on.

  He drinks a little more than half the bottle of scotch, and when he is well and truly drunk, it's a little after noon. Noah steps out for a minute to take a piss, and Zane removes his jacket, balling it up and using it as a pillow as he lays down. There's no way he's going to make it home walking if he's this drunk. The world is spinning and everything feels heavy and thick.

  The world still spins a bit when he closes his eyes, like that feeling you get when you try to go to sleep after spending an entire day at an amusement park on roller coasters. But Zane keeps his eyes closed anyway, and he falls asleep cradling his burned arm to his chest. He barely even hears Noah come back from his piss, and before long, he's dead to the world.

  48

  I drop Sophia off at Bonnie's for the rest of the night, since Mason, Charlie, and Kira are planning on staying for a sleepover and I don't want to keep Sophia awake with how loud we are. She's okay with it, and hangs out with Ethan in Bonnie's living room for the rest of the night.

  My friends arrive shortly thereafter, and Mason grins when I answer the door, holding up two grocery bags. "I brought supplies," he says, and I roll my eyes as they carry the bags to the living room. When they dump them out on the floor, it's just about every type of candy you can buy at the little convenience store near Main Street. It's the only place open this late, so Mason argues that he had no choice but to buy all this stuff.