by Sam Crescent
“You’ve got yourself a keeper there. Hold on to him.”
“I intend to.” She looked at Blue. “We’ve got to tell our parents.”
“First,” Blue said, getting down on one knee. “At least I came prepared.” He pulled out a black velvet box. He opened the box to the most beautiful engagement ring she’d ever seen. “Can I put it on, fiancée?”
She held her hand out, and he slid the ring on her finger. It was a perfect fit.
“Oh, Blue.”
“I love you, Laylah. So damn much.” He got to his feet and pulled her in close. This wasn’t how he imagined perfection, but he just knew without a doubt it would be perfect for them.
****
Two months later
Their parents had been thrilled about their upcoming engagement. At first, they did want them to wait, but she was in agreement with Blue—why wait? It did mean their parents felt they were rushing things, which did suck. The rumor of a pregnancy was thrown around at school, but they got through it. She thought it was hilarious when people stared at her stomach, trying to figure out if she was actually pregnant.
She wasn’t, but watching them was the fun part.
Now, as she stood in the church, waiting for her father to come take her, nerves hit her. Was she making the right decision?
Her cell phone went off and she frowned, going back into the room and finding her phone. Blue was calling.
Her nerves picked up a whole other level. Sickness swirled within her gut.
“Hello?”
“I can feel your second thoughts all the way here,” Blue said.
“I’m not having second thoughts. I’m just nervous. I’ve never been married before.”
“Neither have I. I love you, Laylah. I’ve loved you for a long time and that is never going to stop.”
She took a deep breath. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you for being the girl I always want to stay married to. You’re special and please, don’t run. I will only chase you halfway around the country.”
“I’ll be right there.” She hung up the cell phone and turned as her father entered the room.
“Are you ready?”
She laughed. “Hell, yeah, I’m ready.”
Taking her father’s arm, she smiled as she walked to the end of the aisle and spotted Blue waiting for her.
Everyone faded as her father walked her slowly and calmly up to where the love of her life stood. The moment Blue took her hand, all her nerves disappeared.
She handed her bouquet to Becky as she turned to face the love of her life. The priest began talking, and she spoke her vows, making the right declarations when they were needed. The moment he declared them husband and wife, Blue took her into his arms, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt they’d made the right decision.
She was now married.
The church erupted in applause. She laughed and snuggled against her man. He still held her hand as they faced them then walked down the steps.
Their parents came toward them, embracing them, pulling them into hugs, and she sighed, knowing they were so happy with them.
Once outside, she was instructed where to stand for the pictures. At first, the photographer made them take their pictures with family and friends. It seemed to go on for hours. Finally, Blue tugged her into his arms.
“Hello, wife,” he said.
“Hello, husband.”
The camera clicked away.
“You’re my everything,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“I do, and you are mine.”
He took possession of her lips and she knew she hadn’t made a mistake. There was no way any part of this could be a mistake. She loved him too much to regret this.
Epilogue
Seven years later
Laylah stood in the men’s changing room, waiting for that final whistle. Whenever he had a game, regardless if they won or lost, Blue’s request was for her to run out onto the field so he could fucking hold her.
She hated watching his games. More so now that she had seen so many injuries from the game.
Blue made her so proud. He’d been drafted straight out of college. His talent and charm immediately threw him into the spotlight. He was a celebrity and well, his love for his wife had helped him as well. Their romance had been one of many newspaper features. It was rather strange to have her picture spread all over, their story for people to read.
Pressing a hand to her swollen stomach, she nibbled on her lip, waiting.
The crowd lived for this moment, just as much as Blue did. She hated the attention.
With his success, she’d also been approached with a couple of book deals. Somehow, it had gotten out that she was an aspiring author. Rather than take any deals, though, she’d opted to go it alone, building her own name up, not that she wasn’t thankful for the offers, but she’d felt it was because of Blue.
He supported her no matter what, but she was a bestseller in her own right.
The whistle went and one of the teammates was there to escort her onto the pitch. He was a newbie.
Blue was already running over to her as she entered the field. Every other time, he swung her up in the air. They’d kept her pregnancy quiet, but as he bent down on one knee and kissed her stomach, she couldn’t help but smile.
He wanted to be the one to announce her pregnancy to the world.
Glancing up at the scoreboard, she smiled. They’d won. Of course, they had. They rarely lost.
Blue got to his feet, sinking his fingers into her hair and kissing her. “I fucking love you,” he said.
“And I love you.”
“How are you feeling?”
“A little nervous now.” The crowd was going crazy, cheering, applauding, screaming. “I think it’s time for us to go.”
Blue took her hand and lifted it up for the crowd to see.
The rest of his team jogged over and shook her hand, patting her stomach.
Then, in front of everyone, Blue picked her up and carried her right off the pitch and into the men’s changing room.
She was laughing, covering her eyes as the guys were already getting undressed.
“Cover your ugly asses up.”
She was taken to the coach’s office while Blue left her alone. She sat, waiting, and after ten minutes, Blue was ready.
“You’re not going to shower?”
“No, you’ve been tired and yet, you still come and see me, like always. You’re my good luck charm.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Blue, all you have to do is ask and I’ll come to you.”
He leaned down to her ear. “That’s good to know because in less than an hour, I want you coming on my cock.”
Arousal flooded her. Taking his hand, she followed him out, waiting as fans lingered. She loved Blue. Marrying him was the best thing that ever happened to her, and she didn’t regret it for even a moment.
The End
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BONUS SAMPLE CHAPTER
MONSTERS’ CREW
Crude Hill High, 1
Sam Crescent
Copyright © 2021
Sample Chapter
Emily
I thought about death a lot. It wasn’t morbid or for some quest to finally find the end. At eighteen years old, I hadn’t really lived. There had to be more to life than this empty shell of nothing. Life seemed to be playing out, and the longer I was part of it, the less I seemed to be relevant. I didn�
�t fit in. I wasn’t part of any crowd. To most, I was a loser. I didn’t mind. It helped me to dwell in my thoughts of death. For all I knew, a lot of kids thought of dying. About how their final moments on this very earth were going to go.
Glancing around the cafeteria, I couldn’t help but wonder if that wasn’t a whole crock of shit. The pretty girls. All with their long hair, styled pretty much the same, but there was always one girl who liked to change it up. For the team here, it was Nancy. She ran with the pack but the truth was, she danced above them all.
Then, of course, around them were the jocks. The football crew who believed they ruled the entire school, but the truth was they weren’t in charge, not really. I’d firsthand seen them really bowing down to one group of people, and they sat in the corner. No one messed with them.
Monsters’ Crew or the Monsters’ Boys. Depending on who you spoke to. Caleb Falls, River Block, Gael Parson, and finally, Vadik Keller. All of them deadly. No one crossed them. Even now as I glanced at them, I saw River with a knife between his fingers. He flicked the blade back and forth as if it was nothing more than a pencil. I’d seen him do this many times and yes, he’d even nicked himself, but he’d often just lick it up or wipe the blood away on his pants.
They were all scary as fuck. Caleb, their leader, made all the decisions. He always took the helm and the other three surrounded him, protecting him. Black hair, blue eyes, and he never smiled. It was odd to think about. He never laughed. When he found a target, he’d get this weird look on his face that vaguely resembled a smile, but it never was.
Taking a large bite of my burger, I averted my gaze as Caleb looked right at me. The last thing I wanted to do was to catch their attention. Everyone knew what happened if you caught their attention.
The girls loved it. I’d heard the rumors of the boys tag-teaming girls and then discarding them. A couple had left the school as they spent way too much time sobbing about the fact they couldn’t win one of them over. They were Monsters and were more than happy to wear the label as well.
Out of some of the guys who wished to join them, a couple of them had never been seen or heard from again. To the outside world, this was a prestigious school. Wealthy kids came here. All of the Monsters came from money. They were all filthy rich, but no one here was from the squeaky-clean kind of group. Nope.
My parents dealt in sordid deals and blackmail. They owned an entire city, and I’d even caught conversations about trafficking. There had been a lot of young women coming in and out of their house. Most of them covered in bruises.
I hated it.
There was nothing I could do about it. This school was the one place where I could breathe without worrying someone was watching. Of course, they were watching. Even the jocks, they came from backgrounds that had a double-edged sword.
I grew up surrounded by competition and the enemy.
Slurping up my banana milkshake, I jumped, nearly choking on the straw at the sound of a loud clattering.
Near the Monsters’ table stood a kid I didn’t recognize. He was clearly a year, or several years, below us.
River got to his feet and the tension in the room mounted. Silence fell.
“Please, no, please.” The boy’s whimpering filled the air.
The biggest mistake he could make.
In hell, no one ever showed weakness. We were all monsters, all destined for lives we didn’t want. At the top of the tree stood the four Monsters, and we were nothing but their minions. I hated it.
River slammed the kid to the table. The blade pressed against the boy’s throat.
“You think it’s funny to throw a spitball?” River asked.
See? All of this over a wayward spitball that had come at the beginning of the school day.
Nibbling on my lip, I watched as the boy held his hands up in surrender. He was in the wrong place and was about to become target number one in a sea of sharks. I’d seen enough as River landed the first blow. As if on cue, Caleb, Gael, and Vadik got to their feet, and away they went. Anyone who dared to step up would feel his wrath.
With my tray in hand, I dumped the trash into the bin and left the dining room. My heart pounded.
Violence disgusted and fascinated me in equal measure. I hated myself for it. There was no way for me to get away from it.
The marks on my back were already evidence of my absolute hatred of it. My father wasn’t known for his patience and since I was his only daughter, he always made an example of me. Unlike my brother, who was always considered the best thing in the Crane household.
Stepping out into the cold day, I stayed perfectly still.
Would dying from being left in the cold be so bad? In the movies, it never looked painful. I’d rather go out with no pain than to be screaming.
After a few seconds of stillness, I moved, heading toward my next lesson. There were five minutes of lunch left. Teachers rushed past me and I stepped out of their way. The last thing I wanted to do was step in their path. They had a boy to save.
This was what you got at Crude Hill High. There was a time it was a boarding school for our very kind, but there was too much death, leaving the families no choice but to keep the gates open.
On rare occasions, the gates would be locked and it was like a free-for-all. Two years ago, that had happened. Someone had broken the rules and brought a gun. That had ended messy. Mom tried to persuade my dad to send me elsewhere. To let me have a normal life.
No Crane was normal.
We were sharks, thriving to be on top.
The truth was my father craved a place at the four. He wanted to be the fifth shark, but with what I knew, he didn’t have the balls to do what these guys did.
I arrived at English, taking a seat in the back near the window. School sucked. It was boring. Teachers tried to pretend we were like other kids. The ones who weren’t going to be responsible for killing people when we got out of here, but no matter what they tried to tell themselves, it was never going to happen.
We were the enemy. Plain and simple, and if one of them stepped out of line, their lives would be forfeit. It was hard for a teacher to threaten you when you could have them killed at a snap of your fingers. The cops were useless here, so was security footage. Money talked and the more you had, the better it was for you.
My family was wealthy and throughout the years, I’d learned how to take care of myself. I had to. Without it, I’d have been dead in the water long ago.
The English teacher came in. It was Mr. Bucati, who had replaced the previous teacher two years ago. The one before him had been caught sleeping with a student, and seeing as he was supposed to be teaching all the fine arts of literature, and the girl in question was supposed to remain a virgin until her precious wedding night, the previous English teacher was now lying dead in an unmarked grave, at the bottom of the lake, or just plain dead. No one knew, and the girl had also disappeared. This was another precious little detail in our world. We weren’t just shipped off to some foreign place until the scandal died down. Nope, sometimes the girls or the guys were never seen or heard from again.
Keeping your nose clean was more important in this world.
I licked my dry lips, keeping a close eye on the door as one by one, students filed in. To the outside world, we were set up like every other school. Like in the cafeteria, jocks, cheerleaders, the rebels, the nerds, and me, the loner. But the truth was, lower your guard for even a second, and we were all dead.
It was odd to think how many of us actually went here. I don’t have an exact number, but we filled a rather prestigious school. The crooks’ kids. Criminals. Taking over from our families when the time was right.
Since I was a female, my only role, according to my dad, was to get my education so I could marry. I was sure he already had a man who I would hate lined up. Unlike some of the more exclusive mafia types who liked to keep their daughters virginal and completely cut off from the rest of the world, there were those who wanted us to be prepared. For my da
d, I was potentially a spy. With a daughter in high school, right in the middle, he could find out who was who. It gave him an excuse to come to my parent-teacher nights. Those were fucking fake. I knew he was fucking my art teacher. I was shit at drawing or painting, but yet, it was a subject I had to take. My mom never came to my parent-teacher nights. She always had to stay home.
Father’s rules.
I hated him more than I hated anything else. If I had the courage to do one thing in my miserable life, it would be to take a blade to his fucking neck, slice him open, and watch as the blood leaked from his useless, pathetic body. He was a scary piece of shit.
All of our families were. There were rarely any coward’s kids, but it did happen. There were bastard kids as well. Drake, one of those kinds of kids, came in. He had short hair, a torn shirt, and ink completely covered his arms. He took one look at Bucati and went in for a pretend attack.
Bucati was used to this and didn’t even flinch. On the first day, he did and went running to the principal. From that day forward, he had to learn to grow a spine. I imagined the teachers here got paid a fortune. Money always changed hands when they were told to look the other way.
Drake dropped down into a chair, spreading his legs out. He was the bastard of one of the English family’s gangs. His father owned part of London or something, and he was the one who kept the streets clean. Drake was a loose cannon. Rumor had it he came from a rapist father, and he wasn’t used to being told no.
He was one of the few guys I steered well away from. Catching him on a bad day led to bad things.
The activity in the room paused. There was no need for me to see who had actually entered. For all of Drake’s craziness, it didn’t take the whole Monster Crew to create tension. It only needed one, and right now, Caleb Falls had entered the classroom.