I don’t even think about it because it’s almost like an extension of me. I pop the cap open, shake out one glorious pill, close the cap tightly. I make a grab for my unopened water bottle resting on the cup holder, twisting the cap, I swallow big gulps before I pop the pill in my mouth and proceed to swallow it.
Immediately, I start feeling my limbs relax, my breathing is calm. I feel so damn chill now. My mind is no longer racing and everything around me becomes sharp, clear but most importantly, everything around me is still, so damn still. My nerves are in check, my feelings—or lack thereof—are intact and for the first time since landing, I feel like I can do this.
“You might want to right yourself there, Miss A. We are home.”
Home? What is home? I haven’t had a home in years and suddenly Trumbull thinks I will call this home? How can this be home when the only thing—the only person I know and associate as my home—is dead? And the only reason why I’m back is to bury him.
This isn’t home and the ones that I thought would always be home decided I wasn’t good enough—not after what happened to me.
THE CAR COMES TO A stop around the perfect circular driveway that I have ever seen in my life, in front of a house—no—a kind of mausoleum of a house that I have never seen before. And maybe just as cold as a cemetery from the looks of it.
Everything is brand new. From the manicured lawn that stretches for miles around the estate, the tennis courts that I can see in the distance. A green house that I have never seen before is also on the grounds and I’m sure the sound of rushing water is not a fountain but some kind of makeshift waterfall that splashes into a large swimming pool. Of course, my knowledge of all of this stems from every tidbit of information that my brother gave me each time we talked. I especially loved when he would bring pictures with him whenever he came to visit me in person but now. . .it’s all gone. He is gone.
Breathe Astraea.
My car door is opened, I step out of the car but my eyes are still taking in the grandeur of this house. It’s huge, even bigger than the last house. The house where. . .
“It’s huge isn’t it? Sir. Richard wanted it to make a statement.” Mr. Trumbull explains and I notice a glimmer of pride in his eyes. My father is now capable of statements huh? I guess when it’s in connection with world domination and wealth, why the fuck not give a statement or two.
“That’s an understatement. This. . .” I gesture towards the house as my bags are being unloaded by some maids that I have never seen in my life. “This is over the top.” I say with a little bit of disdain but I know my emotions are in check and I won’t be having a panic attack anytime soon. My being here is not something I take lightly seeing as the last time I stood on this very land, I was carted out of a burning down house—passed out having inhaled a lot of smoke and even then, I didn’t mind surrendering to the destruction of the flames.
“’Well, best get inside then. They are waiting for you.”
“But” I start, not sure if I should be voicing my concerns but I go for it anyway. I’m no longer that naïve, quiet girl from four years ago. I’m not that thirteen-year old girl anymore.
“Yes, Miss?”
“Where is everyone? I thought this is supposed to be a funeral?” I question.
There are no cars in the driveway. There are no people, there is no sound of crying or any sense of grief in the air. It’s so silent, as if nothing has happened. As if the world hasn’t just lost its brightest light, as if it’s normal for a healthy, vibrant young man to just die.
Something rubs me the wrong way each time I think of George not being on this earth. It just doesn’t feel right.
I look up at Trumbull with expectation, waiting for an answer. Surely there must be one because if there is one thing that I know other than the fact that I don’t want to be here is that my twin brother, George, was so loved by everyone around him. Everywhere he went, people just smiled and felt lighter in his presence. He has—had—that aura of happiness, joy and understanding that made people easy. Made people love him, accept him and want to have him around. So, the lack of people here, when it’s his funeral, makes my head turn and my heart ache.
What’s going on here?
“Astraea.”
I freeze.
My entire body stills, my breath stutters as my train of thought falters. I know that voice but I did not want to have to face its owner now. Not now, but I don’t have a choice. Not when my name was said like a command from a drill sergeant. I haven’t seen my mother in over two years and the first time I’m in her presence, she calls my name like it’s the last name she wants to have called around here.
“Mother.”
I look up and there she stands. In all her regal glory and poised sophistication. I don’t know what I was expecting to see when I arrived but it’s certainly not this. I think I expected to see her all messed up, with the evidence of grief that comes with losing a child. The same grief that ravages me from the inside right now as I stand before her but that’s not what I see.
No. Instead, my mother stands atop of the landing, dressed in all black, shimmering, clearly expensive clothes. Her makeup is perfect and expertly applied, not a single smudge in sight as if she wasn’t crying. She looks unbothered, as if this is a normal day, as if she hasn’t just lost a son.
It’s that flawless, plastic perfection that stares back at me, but I won’t let her ruffle my feathers—so to speak. Shit, I hate feathery stuff, like that damn hat she has on.
“Come on up, we don’t have much time. You are already late.” My mother’s voice is just like the new fixtures of the house. It's new. It’s stern, cold and direct. It’s hard and it demands no argument and I notice Trumbull straighten up and the maids quickly take my luggage up the side of the house, most likely to use the other entrance or more likely to avoid using the front entrance where my mother stands like a dragon about to breath fire at anyone who dares approach her.
My mother is beautiful alright. She is the epitome of class and wanna be top tier sophistication, looking like a damn barbie—if Barbie was a cold, heartless and self-serving bitch. Her perfect brunette curls styled to perfection atop her head. Her perfectly tanned skin shines in the sunlight probably due to some expensive, rare body lotion but it’s her eyes that I can’t look away from. The same eyes as mine.
The same eyes eerily similar as my brother’s. Those deep, muddy brown eyes. I hate those eyes. I hate my eyes. I loathe them with an intensity that I can’t describe.
But that’s where the similarities end. Where my brother’s eyes held joy and playfulness, my mother’s are hard and unyielding. And mine? Well mine are just flat and dead.
The other half of my soul is gone and with it, the only hope of happiness and a twinkle in the eyes is gone. George was my everything and now, I’m nothing and it shows. I used to have more, but that too is gone.
“Aren’t you going to welcome me?” I tilt my head to the left, watching her as she scrutinizes me. We stare at each other. I hate her so much! Everything about her sets me off and I wish she were a better parent, a better person at least but she just isn’t.
I mean, what kind of mother sends her daughter away? What type of mother turns her back on her daughter in need but rather, she hushes said daughter, and signs away her daughter’s life to some mental institution as if to make it seem like her own child is crazy? What kind of mother does that?
What kind of mother decides that a little girl is lying and is delusional and therefore she should go to an institution? Who does that?
Amanda Fields of course.
She stares down at me like I’m the unwanted gum under her expensive custom made Louboutin’s. She stares down at me like I’m a problem that she never wanted, like she doesn’t want me here but she has to deal with me anyway—same here bitch.
We stare at each other, she sizes me from the strands of my flat, unflattering hair to my comfortable sneakers that I opted for when I woke up yesterday for the l
ong, agonizing journey back to Westbrook Blues.
“I’m not going to repeat myself. Get up here and wash up all that travel funk off of you and come down to the study.”
And with that, she turns and walks back into the house just like that.
She doesn’t spare me another glance, she just fires her instructions and is gone in the next instant, as if I’m a waste of her time. Well, that makes two of us then. I don’t want to waste any more time here than I ought to.
I’m only here for one reason and one reason only, for my twin brother. I need to make sure that he rests in peace and I also have this unwavering need to find out what happened to him. As soon as I get my answers, I’ll be on the first flight back to London. I hate this place, and I especially hate this land that I’m standing on. I’m not sure how I’ll survive the next few hours and I only have eleven pills left to calm my nerves, but as I go up the stately stairs that lead to the huge front mahogany doors, I imagine they are not enough. Not nearly enough to deal with all of this bullshit.
As I enter, I turn to close the door and that’s when I feel them again. A pair of intense, icy eyes looking at me. The hairs on my arms stand up on end, shivers shake my body like a leaf as goosebumps make their way all over my skin and my breathing falters. I know someone is watching, I know what it feels like—or maybe I knew what it felt like once—to be watched with such intensity that the feeling never really goes away.
Who is that?
I look up and right there, all the way down the driveway, past the gates—is a deep blue, brand new Lamborghini, moving at a snail’s pace on the private lane that connects the estates. As it passes by the open gates of my house, I can’t help but feel like that slow pace is deliberate. Someone in there is watching me and I start moving backwards because I sense it.
Trouble.
That car is trouble. The person watching me is dangerous and I feel like I’m being stalked.
“Miss. Your room is this way.”
The soft voice speaks from behind me and I almost jump a few feet in the air. I feel like I’m being spooked and everything around me has eyes. But as I glance behind me, it’s one of the maids that just spoke. I swallow and look at her, then back at the private road that wounds around these lands but the Lambo is gone. It’s gone like it was never there in the first place.
Did I imagine that? Am I imagining things?
“Miss?”
“Yes, please lead the way.” I say, my voice raspy and a bit frightened.
“Right this way then.” She says and turns on her heel towards the stairs. Quickly, as if there is something chasing me, I shut the front door and spin around, my breathing is hard and fast when I peek at something blue again but no, that isn’t real.
I’m fatigued, tired and sad. There isn’t anyone watching me.
Or so I tried to tell myself. This wretched town belongs to a certain blue-eyed Adonis.
I should have known better.
CHAPTER TWO
ACE
IT’S HER.
After all these years, she is finally back and not for the reasons I would have wanted her to come back on.
I fucking always knew she would come back. It didn’t matter how that would come to be, all I knew I was she was going to come back to me, even if I had to drag her fine ass—that grew into a sight for sore eyes—back here kicking and screaming. It's just that this time around, the timing is just shit.
“That’s her alright.” Emmett says from the passenger seat as we both watch her talking to her mother. His words are clipped, as if he is not pleased with reality. Fuck, none of us are particularly pleased with anything these days, Astraea coming back is also part of that shitty list. She isn’t supposed to be fucking here at all, not yet anyway.
We both watch her interacting with her mother, but really they are just staring at each other. I can tell from all the way here, that her body language is tense. The way she looks at the huge mansion in front of her with disdain, it’s obvious that she hasn’t been back here in the four years since she’s been gone.
I think she never saw what later became of the burned down ruins that used to stand on that same land she stands on. As far as I know, she was last within the gated community of the Westbrook estates that night, until now.
“Yeah.” I grunt out.
It’s her but she is different. She looks different. Her hair is much longer than I expected. She is wearing some kind of cut off shorts that make her sexy legs stretch out, making them look so damn long that I’m suddenly assaulted by a vision. A vision in which those very legs are wrapped around my torso as I pound into her. In my mind I have her nailed to the wall, fucking her deep and hard until she screams to the fucking world that she will never do what she did again. Punishing her for her transgressions. Fucking her until she vows to me never to leave again.
Fuck, get it together asshat. Can’t be wrapped around her finger after all these years.
“You think she knows?” My brother and closest friend, Emmett, questions as we both watch her bitch of a mother, with her perfect poker face, turn and walk back into the house like she doesn’t care that her only remaining child is back. I watch as Star shakes her head and then heads up the steps, with a calmness that I know she isn’t feeling.
“We’ll just have to wait and see. The funeral is this afternoon.” I mumble after a while, my eyes hidden by the shades that cover my obvious ogling of a certain Blue Star.
“They said they are not doing an open casket.” Emmett offers but I already know that.
“We need to find a way to get his DNA samples and we need to do it fast.” Noah’s voice floats in the car from the speakers. I forgot for a second that Noah was on the line all this time. The entire world might have caught fire in that moment and I wouldn’t have noticed—drowning in the sight of Astraea, the worst nightmare ever to happen to me. I fucking hate that she does that to me.
“Where are you anyway?” Emmett questions as he looks down at his phone.
We have so much to do today, before the funeral starts. Everything surrounding George’s death, one of our own, doesn’t look right. He didn’t just ‘die’. There is a fucking war happening right this instant. We are being head hunted by a prey that is too cowardly to show itself, but no matter, I’ll flush him out. Astraea being back is not a coincidence. Yes, it’s her brother’s funeral, but this is a play. Something is at play here and I’ll be damned if I’m not on top of that shit.
“I’m at the fucking police station. I need to get that report like you said and by the way, why the hell did you send me here, mofos?” Noah complains through the line. It’s then that I hear background noises of telephones ringing and people talking from his end but my eyes, they are still trained on her, as she slowly gets to the front door. It’s almost as if she is forcing herself to move. Like this is the last place she wanted to be today.
“Because you talk too much dipshit!” Emmett answers and it’s true. Noah can talk himself into anything, besides that, he’s our best chance at the police station. Unbelievable to the rest of the world, myself included, Noah hasn’t been booked and arrested before, unlike Emmett and I.
“And besides, aren’t you still seeing that chick from the valley?”
“Uh, about that. I kind of slept with her best friend and she walked in on us. Not sure if the Chief of Police knows about that or not.” Noah says with a laugh. “I think she caught feelings after I bought her that coffee. But to be fair, I only got that second cup because I wasn’t about to let my coupons go to waste.”
I roll my eyes at that. Noah has probably fucked half of the town already and George the other half. But now that George is gone—said to have died in an accident but we know better—Noah thinks it’s on him to make the female population happy.
“Well, let’s just hope the Chief doesn’t find out that you fucked up his daughter’s feelings over some damn coffee.” Emmett says with a light chuckle.
“And then broke her heart by
fucking her best friend.” I finish, watching as Astraea turns around, about to shut the front door. I don’t know what happens, but in that moment, she looks up, her eyes immediately track the car. I watch on fucking bated breath as she squints, trying to look through the tinted windows but I know her eye sight is not that great.
Can she feel us watching? Does she feel the ripeness of danger in the air?
Does she know it’s me?
She looks different alright.
“Fuck, she is stunning.” Emmett breathes besides me, having noticed her too. And isn’t that the truth.
Her angelic features are sharper now, not a hint of make up on her face, she is just absolutely breath taking. Her wide, dark eyes are looking at the car and I slowly begin to ease the car, watching with intrigue as she jumps in the doorway, then whips her head back, obviously being startled by someone.
In that moment, I press down on the acceleration and speed up the estates private lane that leads towards the gates. I don’t have time to look at her right now—I'll get my feel of her later.
Right now, I need to find the asshole who murdered George because whoever it is, is coming after her too.
“She knows that we were not on good speaking terms with George this past year.” Emmett’s speaks after a while of silence, both of us processing the fact that she is back. “But she doesn’t know that it was all a hoax. I guess we played our cards too well and in the end those assholes were a step ahead of us.”
I grip the steering wheel with a force that threatens to destroy the damn thing. Who the fuck are these guys and why the fuck did they kill George? Also how did they know that he had a sister? The message they left was fucking clear. Now she is back, playing directly in their hands, whoever they are.
But that’s not our only dilemma or the mind fuckery that is our current situation. What Astraea doesn’t know is, she literally broke all of us when she left—including her own brother who was only holding on because of her.
Reckless Hate: A Bully High School Romance (enemies-friends-enemies-lovers-enemies) (Westbrook Blues Book 1) Page 3