Reckless Hate: A Bully High School Romance (enemies-friends-enemies-lovers-enemies) (Westbrook Blues Book 1)

by Thandiwe Mpofu

  “I think I’d like a part-time job too.”

  The words leave my mouth before I can even stop them or process them in my head as part of the ritual my therapist taught. Think before you speak and repeat the words back to yourself before letting them into the atmosphere. But that shit hasn’t really been working since coming back here, not since seeing my mother standing on those stairs.

  So, whatever.

  I think back to this morning when my absent, asshole of a father had the audacity to try and act like a father now when Noah pulled up to pick me up for school.

  I think back to my mother who didn’t even bother to ask me what I wanted to do, instead she just dictated—up on her high horse—that I won’t be going back to a place that I had somehow begun to associate with as my home.

  I think back to Trumbull and his inquisitive eyes that track me each time I move around the house. I have no idea how he does it but he is always there, as if waiting for me to venture back to George’s room only to divert me from there.

  I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be within the walls of that huge ass house any longer than necessary so maybe Kim is right. Not seeing certain faces might help with the darkness that rattles in my head, just waiting to ravage me whole as it has done so many countless times.

  “Uh, you need a job?” Kim raises a perfect eyebrow and looks me up and down as if she doesn’t think I would do it.

  “Yes! I want a job. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Nothing. It’s just. . .”

  “I look like I can hardly fold my own clothes or make my own bed.” I finish for her and she laughs.

  “No, no. Well, maybe. You do smell like money though but still, it’s just surprising is all.” She says.

  “I just figured you are right. You know, about staying away from home and all.” I say and she nods then.

  “Okay, do you want a ride home so we can talk about where to drop off our resumes?” Kim asks as she unlocks her car and I stop in my tracks and look around, knowing good and well that I’m way past the four minutes and fifteen seconds that a certain someone allocated me at lunch.

  “Uh, thing is I. . .”

  “Astraea!”

  And think of the devil, he shall appear with a glint of murder in his eyes. “I forgot to tell you something. I have a ride that I was trying to ditch.” I quickly explain to Kim, feeling a heated stare on my back.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

  “Good afternoon to you too.” I turn to watch as Emmett approaches with steam.

  “You still don’t know how to tell time? How pathetic.” He growls, not at all impressed by me. But whatever.

  “And you are still here, so. . .your point?” I say to him, folding my arms.

  “Come on, we are late.” He says after a while of staring at me then shooting Kim a look.

  “I think not. Kim can give me a ride back home. I’m not going anywhere with you when you so clearly don’t want to be around me.” I tell him as I glance back at Kim who is watching the entire exchange with a raised brow.

  “You will if you want answers to all that snooping you have been doing lately.” He grits out and with that he turns on his heel and starts to walk away, leaving me with my jaw dropped and uncertainty crawling through my blood like some damn virus.

  “Wait!” I call after him but he doesn’t stop, just keeps walking towards the direction I know his car is parked at.

  “What just happened?” Kim questions.

  “Uh, I’m sorry to ditch you but can we do this job hunt tomorrow?”

  I have to go with him or else I’ll miss my window of opportunity. And at the rate I’m going, none of my questions have been answered. I even have more questions and suspicions than I started with and if Emmett will answer them. . .

  “Okay but. . .”

  “Sorry, have to go!” I say to Kim and begin jogging in the direction that Emmett disappeared to. Answers are what I want, come a pissed off Emmett or a sly Ace, I will get them.

  I OPEN THE PASSENGER’S door just in time as Emmett starts the car and it rumbles to life like the beast it is. And before I can even pull my seatbelt over, we are zooming through the open private gates.

  “Would it kill you to slow down?” I mumble but he only increases the speed.

  “I wouldn’t have to if you had just been on fucking time.”

  “I had other things to do.”

  “Like ditching with someone you hardly even know.” He says as he switches gears, weaving in and out of traffic with a smooth precision that impresses me. He doesn’t even have to think about it, he just flows like some damn river. A river with an engine if that’s possible.

  It’s silent in the car and I really don’t know what to say. What can I say to him? How can I deal with all of this. . .hate?

  “I can safely say I know her better than I know you.” I whisper, looking out the window. And it’s the truth isn’t it? I don’t know him anymore. Not really. He doesn’t look the same, doesn’t behave the same. None of them are the same anymore.

  “And whose fault is that?” He asks after a long pause. His voice is terse, deeper than before and I glance over at him only to see his knuckles growing white with the force of his grip on the steering wheel.

  “What?” I ask him but I heard what he said, it’s just the silence stretched on for too long, I thought he had dismissed me already.

  “You come here acting like a high snotty bitch and act as if I did you wrong when it’s you that caused all of this.”

  I gasp in shock as I look at him, my body growing tingly and a bit shaky now as I look at him. Emmett has never, not once, spewed so much venom to me like this before. Hell, he was the first boy that I met before his friends, Ace and Noah. And in all of that, he has never said all that.

  “Excuse me? You are calling me a bitch?” My voice is shrill and breathless and honestly, I can’t believe what I just heard. He just keeps quiet and presses down on the gas pedal, shooting us forward even more.

  He is silent, tense and brooding while my heart is pounding and I feel sick to my stomach.

  “What did I do to you that you would hate me so much.” I ask, my voice a broken whisper and my eyes now teary.

  “After all these years, you really don’t know just how much damage you left here?” Emmett questions and I can’t move, frozen in my seat by the icy frost that accompanies his words.

  “A fucking disaster is what you left. Noah, who you made fucking promises to that you broke, completely lost it! The guy was drinking by the age of fourteen and we had all vowed not to touch alcohol until later on—after what happened to Sean.”

  My heart stops and I gasp as I think of Noah’s older brother Sean who died in a devastating carnage after having drunk the entire night away. He died when we were twelve and as I sit here in Emmett’s car, a clear vision of Noah breaking down when he heard the news about his brother snatches my breath away, but that doesn’t deter Emmett, that only fuels his rage.

  The thing about Emmett and his anger is that unlike Noah, he doesn’t flare around or shout or any of that. He is too calm, too calculated and still, completely in control of his actions, his words and his body. He doesn’t bother gracing you with a look, he just speaks, knowing exactly what he is doing, knowing that he is destroying you. He isn’t much of a talker, but when he does it’s beautiful or it used to be. But now. . .I wish he could just ignore me because this, I can’t take it at all.

  Noah’s words from yesterday hurt but the way Emmett calmly and coldly talks now, now that is painful. Blistering pain that I want to throw away but I’m stuck within the confines of this moving car, at the mercy of a man that hates my very existence.

  “George, your own fucking twin brother. . .did he tell you just how deep he fell after you decided to leave? Did he?” He savagely questions, the car going faster and faster, along with the pounding of my heart and the sweaty palms, the cold shivers that are now starti
ng.

  I mutely shake my head because each time I talked to my brother, everything seemed alright, it all seemed normal but now I’m left questioning everything. Was it all a lie?

  “And don’t fucking get me started on Alex. Shit, I can’t even talk about that because that’s not my story to share but you need to know that it’s just gotten worse with time. You did that. You did that to him.” Emmett’s voice is low, deep. He doesn’t shout, doesn’t make any sudden movements but his jaw is locked, muscles bunching within the confines of his long sleeved white shirt.

  I can’t look at him, so I drop my head to my hands and that’s a fucking huge mistake because the tears start falling then.

  “Don’t. Don’t you dare start crying.” He demands with that deep voice of his and the next thing I know he passes me what looks like his football jersey. I look at it with question.

  “I don’t have any fucking tissues in here. Wipe your fucking tears or there will be a war that we don’t have time for right now.” He says but doesn’t bother to look at me.

  The fact that he doesn’t look at me as he speaks only breaks any semblance of a heart that I might have had. As I slowly accept the jersey and it’s only then that I realize that the car has stopped.

  Quickly wiping the treacherous fallen tears, with a broken heart that is painfully twisting in my chest, I look up and notice a huge log like cabin right in front of me. “Where are we?” I ask Emmett and he takes a deep sigh, running a frustrated hand through his short crew cut curls.

  “It’s the Brook House.” He announces, and only then looks at me. “It’s the safe house that we have been working on for three years.”

  “Safe house?”

  “Yes, it’s something that we realized we needed after you left. Technically this place does not exist. There is no record of it in any of the city documents and logs.” Emmett explains as I study the huge thing.

  “And no one has discovered it? With that size?” I question him. The damn thing is huge but as I look around, I notice that it is covered by really tall trees and bushes that somehow camouflage the dark woods of the house.

  “We are at the other side of the mountains, no one dares to wonder out here. And besides, not even aerial footage can pick it up.” He explains and I somehow suspect that Emmett is the one responsible for building and concealing this place. He has always been smart and really great at building anything or preserving life.

  “It’s beautiful Emmett.” I whisper to him and he sucks in a deep breath and then he finally turns to me but not for the gentle reasons I had envisioned. No.

  I watch him as he reaches over and grips my jaw firmly, locking it in his firm grip, forcing me to stare into his hard, pale green eyes, his tense, locked jaw and his unimpressed features that cut me up.

  “You might have Noah wrapped around your little finger right now but make no mistake, I see you for the selfish, destroying bitch that you are and I won’t allow you to hurt him or Alex ever again.” His words are hard, brutal and laced with venom that makes me angry.

  I can feel my entire body grow tense and in this moment, I hate him as much as he hates me, even more so. “Then why the fuck am I here?”

  “Only at the request of Alex. He just wants to use you and then discard you. Must sound familiar, after all, that’s your area of expertise.” He says with a wink, leaning closer to me and I hate him. “You are not welcome here, not now and not ever.”

  We stare at each other, locked in some kind of heated frenzy and I study him. He is fighting to hate me, I can see that much in his eyes. Too bad I learnt about hate from the very best of them. And Ace’s one arsenal, among the rest, is stringing you along with a bit of longing—and then right after, rip your fucking heart out. Tenderness in the hands of hate.

  I raise my hand steadily, still locked in that battle with him, and reach for his other hand that rests between us and as I make contact, I watch as his entire body tenses up and somehow begins to vibrate but he doesn’t look away from me. So, I start slowly caressing his large fingers with my index finger. From his thick wrist that I can’t see to the tips of all five of his long, thick football player’s fingers—I caress and enjoy the shivers that wreck his large body as I do so.

  “You see Emmett, you can fight it. You can fight me. But deep in there you know you all belong to me. All of you!” I say, making damn sure that my voice is as sultry and deceptive as I have learnt.

  As he sucks in a shocked breath, his grip on my jaw slackens and I make my move then. I lean over and press a soft kiss at the corner of his lips. And then whisper in his ear.

  “Even in hate, you are still mine.”

  I don’t waste another second, I open the car door and I’m out in less than two seconds, leaving a huge, pissed off Emmett breathing hard and fast in the car.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ASTRAEA

  I’M NOT OUT OF THE car not five seconds before I hear the rumbling of a fast car driving up the dirt driveway that I hadn’t noticed before. The road is perfectly hidden by the bushes that I wouldn’t have noticed if it hadn’t been for the sound of a loud car coming up.

  I watch as Noah’s car raises up a cloud of dust as he speeds up and parks his car right beside where I stand, almost giving me a heart attack because I didn’t see that coming.

  “Fucking Noah!” I shout at him as I jump out of the way and try to wave away all the dust that he just raised, but all I hear is his laugh as he steps out of the car.

  “Oh, come on baby Blue! You were in my way.” He says and the next thing I know, another car comes up. A familiar black and silver Jeep that I was in on Saturday night. The same car that Ace laid me on the hood and ground his hardness in me. I shiver as I watch him pull in to the space right beside Noah’s. I don’t think I’ll ever look at Ace or his car and not think about Saturday night and that fucking kiss we shared.

  But even as I think that, my last words to him in that very car, will always haunt me. Asleep or awake, I’ll always feel the vibration of my chest and the piercing of my heart when I told him that I hate him. But then, I should hate him. Nothing good ever comes with Ace. Everything that I have ever loved, cherished or had just wilted and died each time Ace found out about it. Ace is my childhood terror, the boy that would torment me and never listened to anyone.

  With that remembered thought in mind, the haze of arousal that was about to surround me quickly dissipates and I realize that all three boys are about to disappear into the house through a side door.

  “Hey, you can stand there like a freaking statue all day but there are still mountain lions out here!” Noah shouts and I jump into action, immediately walking after them looking over my shoulder.

  “Are you guys crazy? Didn’t you have a perimeter fence put around the property?” I ask him and he just laughs, holding the door open with one hand and the other holds a plastic bag filled with food and. . . The Haven’s fried chicken! Yes!

  “If we did that, it would mean that the whole town will know about this place.” Noah says with a smirk. “And besides, what better security system than the natural wildlife that the good Lord gave us?”

  I roll my eyes as I pass through the door and into this mysterious safe house that I have never heard about.

  “Did George know about this?” I ask as I start looking around. I didn’t know what to expect coming in here, dressed in my school uniform and looking like a dwarf in comparison to the tall giants around me that move around this place like they can navigate it with their eyes closed. I guess they spend a lot of time out here, on the other side of the mountain no less.

  “George built the damn thing too.” Noah snorts and shakes his head, “He even wanted a damn pool put in.”

  Yeah that sounds like my brother, anything to spruce up a place. As if this needs any upgrading. This log house looks like a damn hunting house or something. There is no trace of any kind of technology, it’s just a few couches in the sitting area, a huge fireplace that looks like it
has never been used.

  “Uh, how often do you guys come out here?” I ask. It looks rustic and a bit old and unflattering, just like the outside. Everything is just, simple and outdated as if they don’t really care much about appearances.

  “All the time.” Noah says as he takes off his blazer and then rolls up his sleeves, showing a good amount of skin and muscle. Damn, he really does look good.

  “Really?” I ask skeptically.

  “Oh, sorry. This is just the front. The real action is down there.” Noah points out the direction where Emmett and Ace have disappeared to, neither of them have spared me a glance since they arrived. I mean, I would know if Ace was looking at me, I have felt his gaze for so long I know the owner just as much. But when he arrived, his gaze on me felt different, it’s almost like. . .

  “And why couldn’t you drive me?” I demand as Noah and I walk down the hall, passing bare, dusty walls as we go. “You had me stuck with that brute!”

  He only laughs his hyena laugh and keeps going as if I didn’t say anything. “He isn’t all that bad, baby girl. He just won’t trust you as easily as he did before and you know what that means.”

  “So why bring me here?” It just doesn’t make any sense. I mean if you don’t trust someone, why bring them to a place that you have designated as “safe”?

  “Because you need to know, Raea. We are out of time.”

  And with that, Noah punches in some code and then bends over to have his eye scanned and I almost gasp. I hadn’t noticed that panel and I sure as hell wasn’t expecting it, what with all of this old wood logs around. It’s almost like there just isn’t any space for any kind of technology, let alone this kind of security.

  “Why the hell do you need that? Please don’t tell me you are hiding dead bodies behind that door.”

  “Dead bodies in the house? That’s so unsanitary baby Blue.” Noah says as he glances at me while the hidden door that I hadn’t noticed opens. “We just throw them to the wild, like I said, nothing like the wildlife, Raea, nothing quite like it.” He says with a huge smile on his face.