by Dakota Lee
I raise my glass in a silent toast.
"To the bitch queen." Tabby mutters beside me. "I hope she chokes on her olive."
Epilogue
Everywhere I go on campus, I feel like I'm being judged and watched. In high school, I was teased because I was different thanks to my love of art.
Robbie helped me a lot through my senior year, and eventually the natural progression of our relationship was to date. I loved him, and it hurt me when our relationship ended.
But now I know I was never in love with him. Not in the soul crushing, abandoned way I'm feeling right now.
I gave Logan McKay my entire heart, and he sat there while Bella took a sledgehammer to it. Beating it into a broken, unfixable mess. More than that, he shaped and forged the weapon for her to use, with his lying lips, traitorous touch and cruel kisses.
A broken heart pairs nicely with the evisceration of my hopes and dreams. I didn't win the internship or scholarship I needed to transfer back to Carryville.
I told the judging committee and school that I didn't consent to the images Logan used, but somehow I still violated their morality clause. How’s that for irony? The school where the student body is made up of morally bankrupt students has a clause.
One good thing came out of the betrayal I experienced at Logan's hands. His pushing me to step out of my comfort zone helped me create an extraordinary painting, and someone paid a hefty stack of cash for it at the auction. I'll be putting money aside for me and Summer and giving some to mom to help give her some breathing room on the household bills.
For the next six weeks, I'm banishing Logan, Bella, and everyone and everything related to Van der Borne University, to the back corner of my mind where they belong. They've already taken up far too much energy and thought.
I settle into my seat and stare out the window. I insisted on riding the bus home, because I'm not ready to see my mother or answer any of her questions.
Since that day in the dining hall, all I've been able to see is ugliness and hate. The beautiful people have turned my world view to shit and I don't want this dreariness engulfing me any more. With any luck taking the scenic route home will help me recapture the gift I used to have for finding beauty around me.
The bus is practically empty. Here’s hoping the seat beside me stays vacant, because I'd prefer not to have to make small talk.
I put my headphone in my ears and lean my head back against the seat, preparing to close my eyes. A shadow looms over me and my plans for stretching out comfortably go to hell when the person takes a seat beside me. I'd recognize the scent and fingers on the lap beside me anywhere.
"Hello, Jordy."
"What are you doing here?"
I glance down at the envelope that was placed on my lap. "Let's play a game..."
The Van der Borne University Trilogy
continues with
BROKEN PRINCESS
Coming October 2021
Turn the page to read Chapter One of
Broken Princess
Sneak Peek at Broken Princess
Prologue
Jordanna
Winter break went by faster than I imagined and once again the first day of a new semester looms before me. I started my vacation in a dark place, but the weeks I spent on the beach have helped me heal. I'm stronger now, ready to face them. To face him.
They played their twisted game, and I lost. But only because I didn't know there was a game to be played. Or the rules of engagement. I do now.
I left school a broken, empty shell of myself. Last semester the only thing I wanted was to get away from the school, now I'm going back, to reclaim my dignity from the beautiful bastards that sought to strip me of everything good in my life because it amused them.
I finger the key on the thin silver chain around my neck, that was delivered in a sapphire jewelry box on Christmas Eve. I unfolded the note card and read the words written in an unfamiliar scrawl.
The missive gave my mind something else to focus on other than the pain. I buried the note in the bottom of my suitcase so mom or Summer wouldn’t see it.
Know thy self, know thy enemy, it said. The BP’s are my enemies and according to the writer, this shiny piece of cut metal, is the first clue to uncovering their secrets.
I guess in a way I should thank Logan and his friends for what they did. I’m stronger now, and I have a new purpose for showing up at school. Round one definitely went to the Beautiful People, but round two clears the board for new players.
They destroyed the naïve charity case, they toyed with, along with her virginal innocence. The stage is reset for a new game. I want them all to pay, and there’s only one rule. Audentis Fortuna Iuvat.
Chapter One
Jordanna
“Honey, I wish you’d tell me what happened between you and Robbie.”
My mother’s been hounding me all break trying to figure out why we broke up. I didn’t realize she was such a fan of our relationship, seeing how she used to tell me we spent way too much time together.
“Mom, there’s nothing to tell. The distance was too much, so he moved on with somebody else.”
“Almost two years and you just call it quits when it gets a little hard?”
If only it were that simple, but I can’t tell her what really happened, because finding Robbie with Simone, set me on a path where I was so out of focus, I couldn’t see that I was being played.
“Is the breakup the only reason you’ve finally stopped trying to convince me to let you transfer back to Carryville?”
More like the mess I got dragged into ruined my chances for going back. A member from the scholarship committee was at the auction and saw Logan’s sculpture.
My stomach roils at that memory of when a private moment between us became public. No. She can never know any of it. Mom has enough to deal with, with the step-doofus’ trial coming up. I don’t want to add another embarrassing scandal to the mix.
I guess I have VDU’s history of secrecy to thank for why what happened at the auction isn’t front page news.
I focus on the things that will distract her from this line of questioning. “VDU raised my scholarship amount. Besides, students who graduate from there have job opportunities at some of the top companies in the world. It’s like you said, I should focus on how lucky I am to have this chance.”
“Well, I must say, your time at the beach has done wonders for your mood.” Her smile matches the joy in her voice. “You were so morose when you came home at the start of the holiday break.”
Two heartbreaks in under six months will do that to you.
She finishes transferring the items from one purse into another. “Classes don’t start for another couple of days. Are you sure you want to head back to campus so soon?”
Avoiding the inevitable won’t make this any easier. “I’m sure. I wanna take my time unpacking and getting settled back in before the first day of classes.”
She flicks off the light in the kitchen and tells me she’ll meet me in the car in ten minutes. Summer’s at a friend’s house, so it’s just the two of us on the ride to to school.
Mom spends most of the drive talking about her latest client, and I’m happy to let her prattle on about her vision for their master bedroom, because it means she’s not asking me any more questions that I can’t answer about my personal life.
I had no expectations for what I would see when I got back to campus, so I’m not sure why I feel a sense of disappointment when we pass through the golden gates of my academic cage, when I realize nothing looks or feels different.
I grab my things out of the trunk, say goodbye to my mother at the curb, and promise to call more often than I did last semester.
Making my way across the lobby of my dorm, I bypass the elevator, heading directly for the back staircase, because I don’t want to be out in the open any longer than necessary.
“New year. Same dorm. Different bullshit.” Kassidy laments when I walk through the door.
“But one bright spot is you and I are still roomies.”
She pulls me in for a hug. “Jordanna, I can’t tell you how happy I am you came back. I wasn’t sure you would even after the reset.”
I ignored Kassidy’s calls and texts the first week I was home, lumping her in with all the other assholes from Kingsley Hollow. Then I realized she didn’t deserve my anger. She may have convinced me to go to their parties, and to give Logan a chance, but she was just as pissed as I was when she found out he only pretended to care about me, so he could fuck me over, and win his bet.
When my hurt, anger and embarrassment settled, we called and texted each other every day. If someone forced me at gunpoint to find a silver lining in all this, I’d have to say our friendship is the one good thing to come out of the hell scape that punctuated last semester.
“What can I say? Three weeks with you and your family convinced me I shouldn’t let the beautiful people win. They meant to run me out of school, now they have to deal with failing at that.”
I know from the notifications I’m getting on Prospectus that most of the students moved back on campus in the middle of January. So by their standards, I’m late.
I don’t care that I wasn’t here for any of their pre-semester social activities. I waited until the last possible minute to come back, because I didn’t want to risk running into any of them, before I’m ready.
Kassidy pulls a lock of hair in front of her eyes, making a cutting motion with her fingers. “You know they train these kids not to take failure as an answer, right? They’ll probably try again.”
“Let them. I have nothing left to lose and before you say my pride, let me remind you, that I gave up my virginity to a guy who bet he could take it. A guy who instructed his friends to harass and bully me every chance they got. Someone who had no problem making a photo sculpture of me in the most intimate moments of my life. So nope. No pride left.”
Kassidy falls silent. What else can she say? We all know what happened and ignoring it won’t help. She told me they pulled Logan’s sculpture from display, because I didn’t sign a release to have my face shared with the world.
Not because of the very obvious curve of breasts, hips and ass molded in clay, or because the photos show snippets of my body from an angle that I know means he was between my legs. They didn’t pull the sculpture because it was indecent, but because the artist didn’t have a signed release. The elite are so insulated around here, they could probably get away with murder.
Kassidy leaves me to unpack, and then I settle onto my bed to read the first chapters for my history class, until she suggests dinner. It doesn’t take much to get her to agree to order takeout and watch a movie instead of slogging down to the cafeteria.
I’m here, and I’m going to make the best of it, but I’m not ready to walk through the place where my humiliation began, just yet.
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Heartless. Cruel. Merciless.
Those are the words used to describe me, and they're all true. There's no limit to how far I'll go to get what I want.
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Every anti-hero has a backstory. This one is part of mine.
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About the Author
Hey guys and gals,
So, I’m supposed to talk about me, which I find is always hard for me to do, which is ironic, since my job is to be a puzzle builder of words.
I’m a mother of three humans and one fur baby, I love travel, seafood, paranormal/ supernatural books and tv shows, Hallmark movies, and after dark deliciousness that I would never tell my co-workers about.
I’m here to push boundaries with my stories, and hopefully take you all on a fantastic journey along the way.
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