Beautifully Wicked: A High School Bully Romance (Voclain Academy Book One)
Beautifully Wicked
Jordan Grant
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, or distributed in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
Copyright © 2020.
Contents
Acknowledgments
An Introduction to Voclain Academy
Playlist
The Rules
1. Ian
2. Harlow
3. Ian
4. Ian
5. Ian
6. Harlow
7. Harlow
8. Harlow
9. Harlow
10. Ian
11. Harlow
12. Harlow
13. Ian
14. Ian
15. Ian
16. Harlow
17. Harlow
18. Harlow
19. Ian
20. Harlow
21. Harlow
22. Harlow
23. Ian
24. Ian
25. Harlow
26. Harlow
27. Harlow
28. Harlow
29. Ian
30. Ian
31. Harlow
32. Harlow
33. Ian
34. Harlow
35. Harlow
36. Ian
37. Harlow
38. Harlow
39. Harlow
40. Harlow
41. Ian
Warning
A Note
Resources
Coming Winter 2020
A Wicked Empire Series
All About Jordan
Acknowledgments
Specials thanks to the best beta reader this side of the Mississippi, Edith Taylor, and my amazing editor, Kate Studer.
An Introduction to Voclain Academy
This is the place where the ultra-rich send their sons and daughters, and now I’m one of them. Transferring to a new school junior year is tantamount to social suicide, but there’s a beautiful boy with a mess of inky hair, and I dare to hope.
— Harlow
The Academy is my kingdom, and none of these fuckers would dare challenge my rule. A blonde bombshell just stumbled into my world, and she’s got a mouth of hellfire and a frozen heart.
Let’s play a game, sweetness.
— Ian
Playlist
IDK You Yet — Alexander 23
Monster — Skillet
Bully — Shinedown
Scream With Me — Mudvayne
Wicked Game — Stone Sour
Spiegel im Spiegel — Arvo Pärt, et al.
Not Strong Enough — Apocalyptica, et al.
Animals — Maroon 5
What if I Was Nothing — All That Remains
Run — Joji
Sorry — Buckcherry
Back to You — All That Remains
Control — Zoe Wees
Enter Sandman — Metallica
Always Remember Us This Way — Lady Gaga
The Rules
1. We will destroy Molly Addison Bellamy, henceforth and forevermore known as “the Thing.”
2. All known associates of the Thing shall be treated the same as the Thing.
3. At the request of Ian Aldrich Beckett, the Thing and her associates shall feel our wrath once per day.
4. At the request of Archibald Orson Blakely, associates of the Thing may choose to change teams at any time. At which point, Archie insists they are “free game.”
5. Associates of the Thing must abandon the Thing of their own volition and may not be given a copy of these Rules or told the sordid story of our dear Darcy.
6. At the further request of Archie—the slut he is—girlfriends, regardless of association with the Thing, are exempt.
7. Any of the executors of this contract may call dibs. No one shall interfere in the sacred contract of dibs. At the request of Ian, dibs shall be limited to one semester at a time.
8. At any time, the parties hereto may call a vote if they believe anyone has broken the Rules.
9. There is only one penalty for breaking the Rules. You will suffer the same fate as our beloved friend and brother, Darcy Oliver Quinn.
1
Ian
She enters my world like a comet plummeting to earth, brilliant, beautiful, and capable of catastrophic damage. My gaze catches her in my peripheral, just a glance, as I turn to run for the ball.
I stop, my feet planted to the field.
She’s wearing a pleated, plaid skirt over white tights that go on for days and a matching button-down. Even her black leather flats look regulation-approved at this distance. She’s like the poster child for Voclain Academy, and I want to rip that poster off the wall and hang it above my bed so it’s the last thing I see before I go to sleep every night.
Archie yells something as the football sails past me and hits a passing freshman in the skull.
“Yo, Becky!” Chase snaps at me, butchering my last name as he jogs past me toward the ball. “Get your head out of your ass.”
“Beckett,” I correct him automatically, though there’s no bite to it.
Chase, Archie, and Everett could commit murder at this point, and I’d willingly help them clean it up...the bastards. They are my brothers, not biologically but in every other sense of the word—in all the ways that matter.
Everett walks to my side and stays there. I feel him before I see him. That’s just how we are, best friends with an inexplicable bond. He is more than just my left tackle. He protects my blind side, both on and off the field. He’s one of the few people capable of saying shit that burrows under my skin like a parasite and stays there until the infection consumes me. We’ve shared blood, and we are stronger for it.
Everett says nothing. He just stands there, staring right along with me at the spirit that is certain to haunt my dreams.
The girl stops walking for a moment, turning to look over her shoulder. Sunlight kisses the white-blonde hair that dusts her shoulders, her eyes wide and searching. The sight steals what’s left of my breath away, and I feel it explode from my lips in a rush of air. Then she’s walking again, a moue of disappointment on what I somehow know are perfectly kissable lips. She twists a lock of hair around her finger obsessively as she continues forward, looking straight ahead.
I am not the only one staring—more than a few male gazes latch onto her every move—but she doesn’t notice her admirers. Or, at least if she does, she ignores them. She’s obviously more comfortable being a wallflower than the center of attention. Begrudgingly, I rip my gaze away from her.
The girls have stopped their morning gossip session and are staring too. Aurora tosses her red locks over her shoulder and smiles at me, her grin nine parts poison and one part the bleach treatments she gets on her teeth.
Shit.
Chase plants the football flat against my chest, and reflexively, I wrap my fingers around the worn cowhide leather. The girl is like a black hole, and I am helpless as I am pulled back to her. He follows my gaze and whistles but says nothing.
Archie is the last of us to notice, and I don’t have to look to know it’s because he’s been staring at his phone. He’s addicted to the damn thing. It’s amazing I even know what his face looks like when it’s not tinted blue by LED light.
One of these days I’m
going to go berserk and crush the thing. I’ll probably break it in half and throw it at his face.
Archie, who has a way with words, says, “Holy fuck me sideways, beautiful.”
The monster that lurks inside my chest snarls and snaps its chains taut. Back the fuck away!
My fingernails bite into the ball, though I want them to bite into Archie. He’s got the face of an angel, sun-kissed blonde curls, and a year-round tan. The girl is a goner if he goes for it, but not if I get there first. He’s the only one with the balls at this school—hell, on this goddamn continent—to set his sights on what’s mine.
Well, it’s on, brother.
At the thought, my lips curl in the whisper of a smirk. I force my shoulders to relax and crack my neck as I prepare for the game. I will burn the girl’s world to ash and watch her rise from the ruins. When I’m done with her, she will have no ex-lovers—fuck, I don’t want to think about her ex-anything—no knights in shining armor she fantasizes about, no boy she wants to bring home to her mother.
There will only be me.
Time to bury the beast and broadcast the beauty.
I step toward the girl, ready to intersect her path, but she veers abruptly. I halt, Archie along with me.
My gaze flits wildly.
Where is she going?
Then I spot the cowering Thing, head hidden behind a book she isn’t even reading. Her eyes dart wildly like she’s expecting snakes to erupt out of the ground at any moment and strike her.
I watch in horror as the girl waves at the Thing. The Thing jumps as if the girl slapped her. Berkshire, the asshole he is, spots them as the girl enters the Thing’s path.
FUCK!
Berkshire smirks, and it carves the last of my grin out of my face with a dull blade. He sprints toward them both, and the girl has no idea, busy chatting with the Thing. The girl has plummeted straight down into the middle of a war, and she just chose the wrong ally.
I slam the ball into Everett’s chest and run. My heart hammers against my sternum as the heat of summer bakes onto my skin.
I run faster than I’ve ever run before—even on the gridiron at the height of the game—but no matter how fast I pump my legs, Berkshire has distance on his side.
The girl and I both are well and truly fucked.
2
Harlow
I am so relieved when I spot Molly that glee threatens to split my chest wide open. Thanks to two delayed flights turned red-eyes and one lay-over in Vermont, I arrived at Voclain Academy last night long after orientation and just in time to be escorted to my dormitory by the night guard before falling into bed for a two-hour nap. I am exhausted, and I’m hoping a friendly face will point me in the direction of my first class.
Although I grew up well enough off, I am new to this kind of money and all the nice things it can bring. When Grandma and Granddad won the lottery this past winter, I thought, Cool. Mom and Dad will get to retire, and we’ll spend more time together before I go off to college. That was before Grandma announced her decision to send me to the—and I quote—“premier collegiate preparatory school in North America, where future Presidents of the United States and Fortune 500 CEOs are groomed.”
With its monolithic stone structures and sprawling thousand-plus acres smack-dab in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, Voclain is breathtaking, but I refuse to be distracted. I can’t mess this up.
Focus, Harlow! Focus!
This morning, after Molly left our dorm room in a rush, barely even giving me her first name, I ran after her.
“Hey,” I say in greeting, but she isn’t looking at me. Her brown eyes dart every which way as she steamrolls ahead. “Would you mind pointing me to the—” I blink down at my schedule “—the Colin Firth Center for Excellence?”
I blush, my love for vintage rom-coms getting the best of me. “I mean the, uh, Colleen Mirthe Center—”
Molly grips my forearm tightly, her pink glittery nails digging into my flesh.
“Why did you follow me?” she hisses. “You should have left me alone!”
“W—what?” I manage as she tugs me ahead. “Where are we going?” I ask. A moment later when she quickens the pace, I add, “Why does it feel like we’re running? Are we running?”
Molly’s eyes nearly bulge out of her head. She is beautiful in a frail, porcelain doll sort of way that reminds me of myself more than I would like to admit. Both of us hover at a respectable five foot five inches tall. While my nose is small and button-shaped, hers is long and pointed. While my hair is a white blonde save for the singular black lock at my right temple, hers is a chestnut brown tinged with auburn. I always wanted big boobs and a nice ass like a reality TV star. Instead, I am stuck at a b cup, seemingly for life, and no matter how much I eat, I never add junk to my trunk.
Our feet slap against the field now, the expensive ballet-style slip-ons my grandmother insisted on threatening to trip me. We are full-fledged sprinting across the football field. I can’t ask anymore questions. I can’t even breathe.
Fresh cut grass wets my shoes as my lungs sear like steaks inside my chest. I am about as aerobic as a freakin’ potato.
From the sweat that dots her brow and the fact that her face has reddened to a cherry tomato, I know Molly cannot be in any better shape. Rushing blood floods my ears as the inside of my thighs itch from my tights.
“Cut them off!” someone shouts, malice oozing like pus from their mean words.
I am going to throw up. My head swims in a sea of dizziness, and the darkness claws at my throat, begging to be let free.
Not now! Please, not now!
Molly goes down first, her hand ripped from mine as we pass a stone building I can only assume holds field equipment. I don’t know whether to keep running or save her. I don’t know if I can save her. For a split-second, I freeze, a victim of my own indecision. That is all the time they need, and I am slammed into the wall beside Molly so hard the world rolls again.
A boy dips his head to look Molly in the eyes. Her gaze flits to the ground and to me and then back to the ground again, anywhere but at him.
“Who’s your friend, Mols?” the boy asks, his words husky and hoarse like he’s speaking to a lover and doesn’t have his hands pressed against the wall on either side of her face.
Molly whimpers, actually whimpers, and I feel like I am lost in the Land of Oz. Only where did I end up after the tornado came? Because this ain’t Oz and it sure as hell isn’t Kansas either.
A few students keep walking, their heads buried as they clutch their textbooks to their chests and pretend like they don’t see what’s happening.
Wait. What is happening?
Straight, golden-blonde hair falls into the boy’s face. He can’t be older than seventeen, still having the round pudginess in his cheeks of a child. His eyes are an electric blue that would be beautiful if I found anything other than disgust in his gaze. He regards me like I am lower than the dirt on the bottom of his loafers.
“Are you with her?” he asks.
I know he’s referring to Molly, though he doesn’t look at her.
“Am I with her?” I say. This guy can’t be for real.
He looks at me like it must be hard being this slow.
“Are you with her?” he repeats, his words rushed in his frustration. “Are you friends? Make your choice now before I make it for you.”
Sunlight stings my eyes, but I refuse to look away from the waste of worm food in front of me. I may be scared, but he doesn’t have to know that. No one deserves this shit, no one, no matter what they’ve done. And I’ve already decided if this is the price I have to pay to be Molly’s friend, then I will open my wallet willingly.
No one deserves to feel all alone.
“Can it really be called a choice if you take away my vote?” I ponder aloud. “You might want to rethink your choice of words next time, bud. ‘Cause you sound a good nine George Washingtons short of a ten-dollar bill.”
&nbs
p; The students who have gathered around the boy erupt in snickers. One guy openly chortles and spits his granola bar in chunks across the grass. A red-head in the middle of a group of girls you know just from looking at them are the queen bees of the Academy holds up an iPhone and snaps a pic.
Great. There goes my candid shot for the yearbook. I barely suppress my eye-roll.
The boy sneers, his upper lip disappearing into his fleshy gums.
“You will regret that, bitch,” he warns, leaning in further so that his putrid breath heats my face.
“Jesus,” I say, fanning my nose dramatically. “Are you scared of Dracula or something? Choose something other than onions and garlic for breakfast.”
Students snicker again, but I don’t. The boy’s fists curl, his knuckles blanched bloodless. He’s going to hit me. Good thing my brother showed me how to take a punch.
The darkness thunders on the horizon inside my brain, threatening to arrive. I draw in a steadying breath. Just when I think Führer Fetid will strike, a voice falls from the sky like my guardian angel sent down from Heaven to save me.