by Huss, JA
Because it’s a real smile. And it reminds me of what we had together once upon a time.
She was… what was she to me? To us? I don’t think there’s a word for it. But this girl is a witch. A very talented genius of a witch who can weave a spell over me like no other girl in the world ever could.
And that, Cooper, is why she’s so dangerous.
Among other things, of course.
I drag her through the door, kick it closed with my foot, and then push her away from me. “Please put on a pair of real shorts.”
“Just leave.”
“I can’t just leave, Cadee. My father sent me to find you. It took me three hours. He’s waiting up. Don’t you get it? You’re fucking everything up for me right now.”
“Me?” She laughs and points to her chest. “I’m the one fucking things up for you? You have some nerve, Cooper Valcourt.”
“Put on. Some real shorts. Right. Now.” I clench my jaw as these words come out, totally at the end of my patience with her.
She frowns at me, then walks to the closet. She’s in there for a long time. Like several minutes go by.
“Hurry up!”
“There’s nothing here. This is not my closet. It belonged to one of your stepmothers.”
“What?” I walk into the closet and start pushing things on the rack. “Jesus Christ. What the fuck was my father thinking?” Then I spy the shelves of neatly stacked shorts. I grab a pair and throw them at her. “Just put these on.”
She holds them up, crooked smile on her face. “These?”
I run my hand over my jaw. They are like… short. Very. Short. My third stepmother was a legit whore. A high-end call girl my father frequented for a while. I’m pretty sure she had dirt on him and that’s why he had to marry her. But then one day—poof. She was gone.
I try not to think about that too much. Stella might’ve been a working girl, but she was nice to me. A lot nicer than my father ever was. Not too smart though. You don’t threaten a man like him. You don’t want his secrets. Because no one, and I do mean no one, is safe from his wrath if you make him feel threatened.
“Cadee,” I say, so tired of this day. “Can you please, please just help me out here?”
She huffs. “I can’t magically conjure up a pair of shorts suitable to wear for a meeting with your father, Cooper.” She turns back to the clothes, shuffles through them for what feels like a very long time, and then finds a pair of white leggings and drags them up her legs. “How’s this?”
I look down her legs. They are long. And shapely. And these skin-tight leggings show every muscle of her calves and thighs.
Snap out of it, dickhead. Didn’t you learn your lesson with this girl three years ago?
“They’ll do. Come on.”
I drag her out of the room and down the hallway, stopping at an intersection to listen. Making sure Dane and Jack aren’t still here with their wives. That’s the last thing I need right now.
Clear. So I drag her through a few more hallways and then pause when the door of my father’s study comes in to view. “Listen to me,” I say.
She looks up at me. She looks like a goddamned princess. Her dirty blonde hair looks like Isabelle’s when she comes back from getting expensive highlights. But Cadee’s is natural. It’s long and straight. She doesn’t curl it, or style it, or do anything to it except tuck it behind her ear every once in a while, when she’s trying to concentrate on something.
Her face is a perfect heart shape. Her eyes are wide and a very light brown color that sometimes looks green in the sun. Her lips are lush and plump. And right now, she’s pressing them together as she waits for me to continue.
“I know you’re probably thinking, ‘Hey, if his father is so concerned about me that he sent Cooper out to find me in the middle of the night and produce me as proof that I am safe, he must certainly care about me.’ But I’m going to tell you something right now, Cadee. He doesn’t give a fuck about you.”
She recoils a little.
“If you say one word about what happened today, he won’t feel sorry for you. Understand me? He will learn—” Jesus Christ. Why am I telling her this? I want her to tell him what happened. I want her to spill all those details.
“He will learn what?”
“That you cannot be trusted. That’s it, Cadee. That’s what this is all about. I don’t know why he’s obsessed with you at the moment.”
We stare at each other. Because we both have an idea.
“But,” I continue, “it’s just a test. Everything is just a test with him. If you tell him what we did to you at the Glass House, if you breathe a word of any of it, he will get rid of you so fast, your pretty little head will spin. So be nice, tell him thank you, and then go to bed.”
“I thought you wanted me gone?”
“I do.”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
I have no idea. But I don’t want to think about it. So I don’t answer. Just tug her over to the door and knock.
“Come,” my father growls on the other side of the door.
I open it, push her forward, and say, “Found her. She was outside on the beach looking up at the stars.”
My father stares at her, daring her to contradict me.
“I fell asleep. Sorry for worrying you, Chairman. And thank you”—she smiles at me—“for sending Cooper to be my white knight.”
My father smiles at her from the massive wingback leather chair in front of his fireplace. He’s not working. He’s wearing his smoking jacket. Waiting up for us, even though it is nearly midnight. Clearly infatuated with this girl for some reason.
But I can’t blame him. Not really.
Because I am clearly infatuated with her as well.
I need to fix that. I need to get rid of this girl.
“I’m glad you’re OK,” my father says. “I thought you would come for dinner. But I understand. Are you sleeping here tonight?”
“Yes,” I say.
My father glowers at me. “Don’t answer for her, Cooper. Women don’t like that.”
“Yes,” Cadee says.
“Cooper will help you move in to the cottage tomorrow night. Won’t you, Cooper?”
“Sure,” I sigh.
“I…” Cadee starts. “I don’t think I can live there.”
My father frowns. “Why not?”
“I don’t have a boat. I can’t get back and forth to the Glass House for work.”
“Oh.” My father frowns deeper. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I made an assumption. But of course, you don’t have a boat. Cooper?” He barks my name loudly. Like I need those extra decibels to hear the order that’s coming. “You will be Miss Hunter’s chauffeur for the summer. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s not necessary,” Cadee protests.
“Nonsense. I didn’t give you a place to stay just so you couldn’t stay there. Cooper doesn’t mind, do you, Cooper?”
I grit my teeth and bite back the instinctual response that really wants to come out. Then I breathe. “It would be my pleasure.”
“Perfect,” my father says. “Well. Have a good night, you two.”
We turn. But then my father says, “Cadee?”
“Yes?” She turns back.
“Did you have a nice first day?”
I do not move. I do not breathe.
Because part of me wants her to tell him everything. The sane part.
But another part wants her to just play along. Play the game with me. Just like we did three years ago.
“Yes,” Cadee says.
And I breathe a sigh of relief. Even though I know she can’t stay. And tomorrow we will do everything in our power to make her quit.
“Thank you for this opportunity,” Cadee adds. “I really appreciate it. And I had fun today.”
My father nods and smiles even wider. If that’s even possible. “Good. That makes me very happy.”
We back out of the room, close the door, an
d I take her quickly through the hallways and back to her room. She opens the door, and I’m just about to say something.
Thank her, maybe?
For being a… good sport about this day?
For sticking it out so I can use her again?
But she doesn’t turn. Just shuts the door in my face.
My whole body gets hot with anger.
What the fuck is wrong with this girl? Is she playing me? Did my father send her to the Glass House as a setup to make me fail?
Or… does she just really hate my guts?
No. She didn’t reject me. That’s not what that was.
She disrespected me.
I lie in bed thinking about this. Thinking about how she is the cause of all my problems this summer. Realizing she thinks she’s so much better than everyone, when it’s all of us who are better than her.
She doesn’t care that my father is paying her bills right now. She gives no fucks at all that she has been handed an opportunity that people would kill for.
Does she have any idea how many parents would fall all over the Chairman to get their kid a spot at High Court? They put their baby’s name on the Prep preschool waitlist before the proverbial ink is even dry on their newborn’s birth certificate.
There are only five hundred students in the college and lower school at any one time. That number has not changed in more than a hundred years. This is über-elite education. Hell, the school trips in Prep are insane. Students at Prep aren’t taking buses to DC. They’re flying in private corporate jets to Rome and Athens to study ancient ruins in person. And the guest lecturers are leaders in the field. Mostly super-successful alumni—and that list might be short, but it is mighty.
You need a summer internship? How about shadowing the billionaire who owns your favorite online retail store?
An apprenticeship, you ask? Learn to paint from modern masters.
Wanna be a writer? How about we let that number one New York Times bestseller read your manuscript and put you in touch with their agent?
These are the opportunities that come from sticking it out at High Court Prep and graduating from High Court College.
Interested in a PhD from Carnegie Mellon? Or an MBA from Wharton? Or an MD from Harvard? No problem. Here’s your one-on-one meeting with the dean. You’re having dinner with them. At their house.
And Cadee Hunter just fell into this. Her parents never paid a cent.
And I get it. She didn’t go to school here. Ever. But that makes this scholarship offer even worse.
She didn’t earn it.
I actually feel sorry for Lacy Pendleton. She did the work. She’s been a High Court kid since pre-school. And one dead mother rips all that away in an instant because… why?
Why is my father bending over backwards for this average girl when all around him are exceptional kids who would die for this kind of personal attention?
She’s sleeping in our fucking house. Right now. Probably wearing Stella’s nightgown.
It pisses me off. It really does. And I have an almost uncontrollable urge to sneak down to her room and scream at her that she does not belong here.
But I control it. I’m breathing heavy with anger, but I control it.
I need to make her realize she’s not welcome. My father isn’t really interested in her. He’s using her. And I want to disrespect her the way she just disrespected me.
I reach under the sheets and tug on my cock. It’s swelling with blood, getting hard as the anger courses through me. And then I picture Cadee Hunter asleep on that chair. If I had known she was naked under that shirt while I was watching her sleep, I’d have looked a little harder. Maybe jerked one off right there.
And maybe she would’ve woken up. Her plump mouth opening up in a gasp when she saw my hand on my cock.
I close my eyes and picture her doing this as I slide my hand up and down my now-thick shaft.
She would untangle her legs and stretch them out in front of her as she leaned back in the chair. Then lift that white t-shirt up and play with her tits, slowly opening her knees to give me a peek at her pussy.
It would be wet. Glistening as her fingers played with her clit.
I breathe a little harder as I immerse myself in the fantasy.
Her eyes would be hooded and heavy. Her breasts rising and falling. Her heart pounding inside her chest.
Then I would beckon her with a finger. “Come here,” I’d say. “On your knees.”
And she would. She would not hesitate.
She would crawl across the marble floor, her eyes locked with mine, her tongue darting out to lick her lips. And then she would settle between my legs and take my hard cock in her hands. Smiling at me with her eyes as she lowered her mouth over the top of it, playfully flicking her tongue across the tip of my head. And then I would wrap both hands in her hair, gripping it so hard she would moan as she took my cock deep, sealing her lips around my shaft and gagging on me.
I come in my hand. Breathing hard and heavy from the fantasy.
But then I smile to myself in the dark as I grab a t-shirt and clean up my spilled mess.
It wasn’t a fantasy.
This really happened.
And I’ve relived it in my head hundreds of times since I left her crying in her Alumni-Inn attic bedroom three years ago and told her I never wanted to see her face again.
I wake up the next morning before dawn breaks. Flush with a new punishment for Cadee Hunter. Excited.
I can’t wait to make her pay for disrespecting me.
For showing back up in my life after I threw her away.
For forcing me to look at her every day for the rest of the summer.
I am the bully king.
I will make her pay for that.
And that price will be high.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - CADEE
I set my phone alarm for five AM and I do not dawdle in the shower. It does take me several minutes to find an appropriate outfit in the stepmother closet, but I get clever and decide to cut off a pair of jeans to make my own shorts.
The stepmother had lots of cut-offs too. But they were so short, not even Daisy Duke would wear them.
Mine are the appropriate length. I cut a little slit up the side of the thigh so they don’t ride up. And even though I don’t want to wear another woman’s underwear, she left behind a whole drawer of brand-new lacy bras and matching panties that still had the tags on them.
The price too. Never in a million years would I pay what amounts to a car payment for a pair of panties.
I tug on a loose-fitting gauzy shirt in pink, with three-quarter bell sleeves, and leave my hair down, but tuck it back with a pink headband.
In the bathroom I find a whole drawer of brand-new makeup samples that come with a free-gift zipper bag when you buy a bunch of expensive products at a department store. I’m not into makeup much, but I dab some pink gloss on my lips and when I look in the mirror I actually smile. I look pretty. Pink was always my color.
Then—because I learned my lesson yesterday—I pack another outfit in a small backpack. Just in case those bitches get any more ideas about sending me into the lake. Then I decide… maybe I’ll take a couple other outfits. I don’t have any clothes. The movers packed them all up. So I choose three more simple outfits and stuff those in the bag too.
Then I look down at Cooper’s boxer shorts on my floor. I cannot believe I was wearing those last night. In fact, last night felt a little bit like a dream. And if I didn’t wake up in this bedroom, I wouldn’t have believed it happened.
Plus his father ordered him to drive me back and forth across the lake to my cottage.
Ha. I do not feel sorry for him. He deserves it. I don’t even understand how I ended up in this life right now, but I do know one thing.
It’s all his fault.
Everything is all his fault.
I look in the mirror again. Adjust my shirt a little. Smile. “OK, Cadee. Forget about yesterday. You got this. Becaus
e when you leave tonight, you have a home to go to. You have a few changes of clothes, you have a check to cash from the Chairman, and you are going to be just fine.”
Better than fine. Because I don’t care what Victor says. I’m going to make it the whole summer and come out the other end with a freaking scholarship to one of the most elite private colleges in the world.
Take that, Cooper.
Suck on this, Lars.
Kiss my ass, Ax.
I look for the path that Cooper took last night when we came home and find it easily now that I know what to look for.
“Wait up!”
I look to my right and find Mona Monroe jogging to catch up to me. I walk faster.
“Don’t be a bitch!” she calls. “You know I can outrun you any day.”
I sneer at her, kinda pissed that she’s cramping my good mood and positive attitude this morning. “Maybe. Before you started choking on cigarettes.”
“Well.” She laughs. “Someone has some pep this morning. So what are your revenge plans?”
“What?”
“Your revenge plans. The mean girls get you. Then you cry all night and come up with a plan. So what’s your plan?”
“First of all”—I hold up a finger— “I didn’t cry at all.” This is true too. Which even surprises me. I should’ve cried last night. Hmm. Interesting. “Second, I am not going to waste one moment of my precious life thinking about bitches.”
Mona laughs and lights up a smoke. She drags on it, then exhales in my face.
“Don’t be a child, Mona.”
“Well, that’s all very mature of you, Cadee.” She kinda sneers my name. “But they’re going to be upping their game today. I know how this works. And trust me, I’m very glad you’re the Fugling this summer. Because I was sure it would be me and I’m so not as evolved as you are. I would’ve fought back hard. But I have watched from the woods for about a dozen summers now. It’s just going to get worse. And they never win. You won’t win. You will not be here at the end of the summer.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“So why are you going? Hmm? What’s the big prize?”
“A scholarship to High Court.”