Skank: A Dark College Bully Romance (Hillcrest University Book 3)

by Candace Wondrak

  Why was it always Travis? What was so much better about him? Why did Travis draw their attention like no other?

  My fingers clenched in my lap, and I tugged down the sleeve to cover up my scar. I’d have to ask her about it, once Will was alright.

  And he had to be alright. If I lost Will tonight, I didn’t know what the hell I’d do. Dad had to be called, which I supposed I should do now, rather than later. I’d be in for a hell of a scolding when he strolled in here, that’s for sure.

  I heaved a sigh, pulling out my phone. Will would be in surgery for a while to repair the organs and everything the blade had cut into, so even if I called Dad right now, he’d do nothing but sit next to me and bug the crap out of me.

  Hmm…maybe I should wait a bit, then.

  I was just about to shove my phone back in my pocket when the nurse at the front desk got up and hurried down the hall, yelling something about a hit and run. Five minutes, she shouted, just down the street. Patient was unconscious.

  The ER flared to life around me, and as I sat there, I wondered if this was how busy it was—nurses running around, trying to get a room ready—when Will had been brought in.

  And then it hit me. Like a brick wall, suddenly appearing out of nowhere and slamming into my body at one hundred miles per hour. If I wasn’t already sitting, I would’ve fallen. A hit and run, just down the street.

  Were they talking about Ash?

  I hadn’t seen anyone else around, and there were hardly any cars on the road since it was still an ungodly hour on a Sunday morning. My mind could hardly form the sentence-slash-question: was Ash hit by a car?

  No. Ash was many things, one of them invincible. She would’ve seen the car coming, got out of the way…but then again, she’d hardly been herself while she was saying this was all about her, how this was her fault. She’d sounded manic, too similar to Sabrina during her episodes. It wasn’t too far out of the realm of possibility that she was too lost in her own head to notice an oncoming car.

  If time was a crawl before, it absolutely stopped when an ambulance crew wheeled in the hit-and-run patient on a stretcher. My heart fell to the floor when I saw it was Ash, the one person I never wanted harmed. The one person I needed to be alright, besides Will. That girl meant so much to me, and my whole body hurt as I laid my eyes on her unconscious form.

  Damn it. I should’ve gone after her. I shouldn’t have let her run away from me. I should’ve fought for her…wasn’t that exactly what I’d told her? I was going to fight for her, and yet while Will was in surgery, I simply let her go. That wasn’t fighting for her; that was the opposite.

  Stupid, stupid me.

  As they started to wheel Ash down the hall, down the same hall that took my brother, I rushed over, attempting to follow. The same nurse that told me I wasn’t allowed to see Will until he was stabilized darted between me and the stretcher, and I watched, helpless, as they rolled Ash away from me, turning down another hall further away.

  “She’s my roommate,” I said, my voice rising with each word. “I have to know if she’s alright.” The words felt wrong on my tongue, and I felt the need to be sick. This night just kept getting worse and worse. Was I trapped in a nightmare? Was this really the state of my life?

  The nurse gave me a level look, ridiculously calm, considering the circumstances. Considering my entire world was falling apart in one night. “She needs to be checked. Until she gets her own room, only family is allowed to be with her.”

  Only family.

  Only family.

  I could feel my blood pressure rising. I wasn’t Ash’s family. It was stupid, but that realization hit me hard. I hadn’t known her long in the scheme of things, but God, I wanted to be able to go back there. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it anymore. If she wasn’t family to me, what was she? My roommate, my friend…my heart.

  My heart never chose the right ones, I guess. My heart had a thing for heartbreak and suffering.

  My fists clenched at my sides, which the nurse noticed. She lifted a single eyebrow, looking tired. “Am I going to have to call security over here?” she asked, a pointed threat. If security was called, I didn’t doubt I’d be thrown out, and unless I called my dad and had him grease some palms, I knew I wouldn’t be allowed back in the hospital to visit Will or Ash, assuming they…

  No. I wasn’t going to finish that thought. I couldn’t.

  I let out a shaky breath, turning my back to her as I returned to the seating area and sat down. She watched me all the while, as if half expecting me to try to make a run for the hallway. After all, both my brother and Ash were down there somewhere in the maze that was this hospital, fighting for their lives. Will was in surgery, and Ash…I had no idea what was happening to her. And that—that made everything worse.

  As I sat there, lost in my own mind, I wondered who could’ve hit her. Accidental? Someone hungover from a long night of partying, someone driving who shouldn’t have been? Or, I came upon another possibility, the idea dawning on me and causing my stomach to feel like a hundred-pound rock in my gut: what if someone hit her on purpose? What if someone hit her because they knew I cared about her?

  Both Will and Ash were in the hospital, both of them injured on the same night. The coincidence was almost too much.

  If this was all for me…what the hell was I going to do? Because I knew, if this was indeed all done to make me ache inside, whoever did it wouldn’t stop until they made me hurt exactly how badly they thought I deserved.

  I didn’t think Sawyer was capable of going after Will like that, or hurting Ash that badly, but another name popped in my head. Would Travis?

  I sure as hell wasn’t going to call Sawyer…but Travis? He’d seemed relatively calm, as calm and collected as he always was, when he drove Ash and I to the hospital. What if he’d stuck around? What if Travis was the one who hit Ash? He used to be my friend, but now…now I knew better than to put anything past him. Plus, now that I was older, I was able to pick up on the weird vibe he gave off.

  Dawn’s light emerged outside, flooding the windows to the ER’s waiting room. The eternal world of night, the night that seemingly went on forever, was no more, and yet I was still here, still worried about two of the most important people in my life. The only important people, if I was honest. Mom…she’d died a long time ago, and it was hard to look at Dad and know he was the only one Will and I had left.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I reached into my pocket and dialed a number I hadn’t called in ages. He’d texted me not too long ago, showing me a picture of Ash and Sawyer together, and I’d played right into his hands, storming to that stupid party and showing Ash how I was when I got mad.

  I didn’t often get mad, but when I did, it was no holds barred. If Ash hadn’t been there, I might’ve done something I would’ve regretted, like throwing it down with Sawyer—and I would have regretted it instantly because he spent most of his time weightlifting still. He had worlds more muscle than I did. In a fight between him and I, he would win unless I played dirty.

  The phone rang a few times, and it was the moment when I wondered if he’d let it go to voicemail that Travis picked up.

  I had to see Travis for myself. I had to talk to him one-on-one, to gauge whether or not he could’ve done this. If he did, if he was the one who hurt Ash…

  Honestly, I didn’t think myself a monster like Sawyer or even Travis. I was the level-headed one, the easy-going one, the one who let the pieces fall wherever they may without trying to cheat and fix the board. But if Travis had a hand in this, I wouldn’t be the nice one any longer.

  I’d show them I could be a monster, too.

  Chapter Three – Travis

  I made it back to Sawyer’s house, an uneasy feeling in my gut as I parked his car and got out. With the keys in my pocket, I made my way to the front door. Everyone else was gone now, his house a mess. I heaved a sigh, heading up the stairs to check on him.

  Sawyer was out like a light, snoring
a bit, even with his wrists chained to his bedframe. And his normally blonde hair was covered in a bright pink dye, a very similar hue to the one he made Brooklyn dye hers. His clothes were rumpled and stained a bit, and even though he was asleep, he looked an ungodly type of uncomfortable.

  Still, this was just a pittance of what he deserved.

  He’d hate it, of course. When he woke up and wandered to the bathroom, saw in the newly-replaced mirror that his hair was covered in pink dye, Sawyer would absolutely lose his shit. He’d freak the fuck out and try to wash the dye out, but Ash knew her dye. She probably chose one that stained the hair a bit.

  I’d be here when Sawyer woke up, be here to help him with the chains locking him to his bed. If left to his own devices, I knew he wouldn’t be able to escape the same way Ash did. My mistake with Ash was leaving the key in arm’s reach—at the time I never thought she’d go so far as to dislocate her own thumb just to escape. I’d told her I wasn’t going to hurt her, that I’d never hurt her, and yet she didn’t believe me.

  Ash didn’t believe me, and she’d hurt herself just to get away from me.

  It was something I could respect, and it took a lot out of someone to make me respect them. Sawyer? He might’ve been my friend at one point in time, but I never respected him. And Declan? A fucking pushover. There was nothing special about Declan, nothing unique about him. He let people walk all over him, skulking in the background and hating how his life turned out.

  I noticed Ash’s backpack sitting on the floor across from the bed, and I went to it, quietly picking it up and moving back into the hall. I unzipped it, stopping only when I found the key she kept hidden in the inner compartment. I wasn’t going to unlock Sawyer right this instant; I’d wait until he woke up, realized what kind of fucked-up situation he’d found himself in, and then I’d let him go.

  Maybe. Or maybe I’d make him grovel, first. After all, we weren’t friends anymore; we were…hmm. Actually, I wasn’t quite sure what we were. Enemies? Perhaps. It was clear he’d hurt anyone in his path, even Ash, and that was something I couldn’t allow.

  No one would hurt Ash. Not on my watch. I’d do anything to protect that girl—and I meant anything. Nothing was off the table where she was concerned. My obsession with her was all-consuming, and I reveled in it.

  I grew bored quickly, and I meandered downstairs, grabbing the trash bags I knew were in the kitchen under the sink. Picking up from his party wasn’t my responsibility, it never was, but I might as well make myself useful while I waited for him to wake his ass up.

  I was two full trash bags into the clean when my phone went off. Odd, because it was a strange time for anyone to be calling, but then again, I knew at least a few people who were up right now. My ever-hopeful heart thought it was Ash, and I answered my phone without glancing at the caller, “Hello?”

  It wasn’t Ash. It was someone else. Someone who I hadn’t spoken to in a long while, at least not directly.

  Declan.

  “Travis,” Declan said, for once, not sounding like a pushover. He sounded…almost menacing. He practically growled out my name, which made my spine straighten and all of my attention snap to the phone call. He sounded like he wanted to strangle me, and I couldn’t help but wonder what had his panties in a twist.

  Did Will die?

  I was never a huge fan of Will, mostly because he seemed smarter than Declan, like he knew, deep down, I wasn’t like the rest. And I wasn’t—my family had made sure of that. There were things most people would never do that I wouldn’t hesitate on doing. Crime sort of went hand in hand with my family, especially those crimes which would be considered felonies…

  “What do you want, Declan?” I asked, frowning to myself. I was curious as to why he was calling me, but then again, it wasn’t like I could show him that. I tried keeping most of my genuine emotions tucked neatly away, hidden from the world. I only let out the real Travis to those people who I knew I could trust.

  Until Ash, those people had remained family members. Not even Sabrina had known the real me, not really. She thought she knew the darkness lying within me, but she didn’t. In that journal, she wrote that she was afraid of me, and I supposed that was true. She was just a little girl in the end, but she was right to be afraid of me. I wasn’t like most people.

  “Where are you?” Declan asked, sounding quite ticked—a tone I hadn’t heard on Declan since the ill-fated party when I’d sent him a picture of Ash and Sawyer dry-humping each other on the living room dance floor.

  “I’m at Sawyer’s house, picking up,” I said. When Declan remained quiet on the other line, I added, “What’s wrong? Don’t you believe me? Should we video chat instead?” I thought it was a reasonable offer, especially if he suspected me of hurting Will.

  I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d never hurt Will, because if he ever lifted a finger to Ash, I’d sure as shit lay into him, but as for what happened to him? Whatever that was, I didn’t do it, nor did I have a hand in it. Whatever happened to Will was of his own doing, random or not. Not because of me.

  “I need you to come back to the hospital,” Declan spoke quietly, a seriousness in his voice that made my skin cold. The way he ordered me back was almost…almost enough to make me upset, and yet, when he said what he said next, I stopped myself from saying anything snippy back: “It’s about Ash.” And then he hung up, as if that was that.

  Ash? What about Ash?

  I tried calling Declan back, over and over again, but the bastard kept sending it to voicemail. “Fuck,” I muttered to myself, glaring down at my phone as if it was the culprit.

  Well, one thing was for sure. I couldn’t stay here. I had to go to the hospital and see what Declan was talking about.

  My nerves were fried as I stormed out of the house and got in the same car I’d taken the first time. If this was some prank, or…something, I wasn’t going to be happy. And if this was real, if something had happened to Ash in that hospital, I was going to fucking kill someone. A hospital was supposed to be a safe place.

  I drove like a speed demon, needing to find out just what the hell was up sooner rather than later. I parked in the ER’s lot, hurrying inside the sliding glass doors, spotting Declan in the sitting area. There was hardly anyone else nearby, due to the early hour. The sun was on the rise, though, so I knew the ER would probably just get busier as the time wore on.

  Ash, I noticed instantly, was nowhere to be seen, and when I called her phone on my way here, it had gone straight to voicemail, too.

  I swore to God, if this was her getting back at me for doing what I did, I wasn’t going to be happy. I’d let her get her payback, but worrying me like this? Unnecessarily cruel. That girl should know by now just how much she meant to me—and here’s a hint: it was a lot.

  After tossing a quick look to the nurse behind the desk at the front, I headed towards Declan, a severe look on my face. Declan was on his feet the moment I arrived, giving me his own glare. Not my biggest fan, that one. Couldn’t blame him, of course, after what happened between Sabrina and I.

  Sabrina was a fun little distraction every now and then, and I’d thought, at the time, she was perfect for me. She wasn’t. She was just bipolar. No, it took a lot more than a medical diagnosis to be perfect for me. Ash wasn’t diagnosed with anything that I was aware of, and she was strong in the ways Sabrina simply wasn’t. If Declan thought he’d have Ash…

  “Where’s Ash?” I demanded, resisting my urge to lay my hands on him and rough him up. I would’ve, if the nurse hadn’t been watching us closely. There were certain things you could only do when you were alone. Letting my inner beast out was one of them.

  “Getting checked out by doctors, I’d imagine,” Declan replied. He shot a look at the nurse behind the desk, and I was too stunned at what he said to deny him when he added, “Let’s go outside. You and I need to talk.” He headed toward the doors, not even bothering to wait for my answer.

  Once we were outside, alone save for the cars
in the parking lot, I asked, “Why the hell would she be getting checked out by doctors?”

  Declan had his arms crossed, as if he thought he could intimidate me. Me, Travis Scott, a member of the family, someone who’d been taught since he was ten years old how to take down your opponent. Someone who had connections deeper than any plain old rich boy could. No one intimidated me. In fact, I hardly felt a thing as I stood there staring at him, nothing but concern for Ash.

  “You’re saying you have no idea,” Declan muttered, narrowing his dark eyes. His brown hair was ruffled, his bedhead having never been fixed after getting the call about Will.

  “Why the fuck would I know?” I asked. “I just got here.” If he didn’t fess up and tell me what this was about…I was seconds from blowing up.

  Declan studied me, studied me hard, as if he was trying to get to the bottom of everything—the bottom of something I was still so fucking clueless about. “Because if you did have something to do with it,” he practically growled out, “you should know I won’t sit back and take it. If you did something to her, I won’t let you get away with it.” It was the worst, most serious threat a person like him could make, and what was even stranger?

  What was even stranger was that I believed him.

  His posture, his expression, how his voice sounded. He wasn’t that good of an actor. Declan cared about Ash so much he’d hurt me if he thought I did something to her. He was protective of her, which irritated the shit out of me, frankly. Ash wasn’t his.

  “Noted,” I stated. “Now will you tell me what the fuck happened, or do I have to start guessing?” I did not hide the venom from my voice, but Declan didn’t back down, didn’t flinch at the acidity in my tone. The little sad boy was finally starting to show a backbone, but why?

  “Ash was hit by a car,” Declan said, watching my reaction. It must’ve been exactly what he wanted to see, for he then added, “You really didn’t know.”

  “Of course I didn’t know,” I quickly shot back, anger coursing through me. Then I put it together. “You thought I did it. You thought I hit Ash?” I didn’t know which was worse, Declan thinking I’d hit Ash or him thinking he could intimidate me. No, wait. The former was the worst, because I loved that girl, in my own way. “I would never hurt her, Declan. She’s everything to me.”