Beautifully Wicked: A High School Bully Romance (Voclain Academy Book One) Read online

  “Move,” the voice says, though I can’t see the speaker. My shoulders sag in relief as the blonde boy retreats and the students part like the Red Sea at the command of Moses.

  I would like to say my body refuses to breathe because I’m in shock from my guardian angel’s act of kindness, but that’s not true. The boy, if you could call him that because his haunted gaze ages him beyond his years, strides forward to stand in front of me.

  Obsidian hair falls into his pewter gray eyes. He is tan, tall, and beautiful. His cheekbones could have been chiseled from marble, and you can tell from the insouciant expression he wears oh-so-well that he doesn’t give a shit about any of them.

  His tie, a brilliant navy blue embossed in silver with the Academy’s logo, hangs loose around his neck. The top five buttons of his white dress-shirt are undone, though it is tucked into his gray slacks, the official uniform for males at the Academy. He has no pudginess in his cheeks, probably nowhere on his entire body.

  Wait. I shouldn’t be thinking about his body.

  Three guys flank my guardian angel, two at his left—one with auburn hair that skim the tops of his ears and a tall blonde whose Thor bloodlines run deep—and one at his right, a broad-shouldered guy with his black hair shaved short. They are all beautiful, born into luxury from the lazy way they hold their heads high, to the self-assured confidence that oozes from their pores. But I lock my gaze on my angel.

  He steps forward, an indiscernible expression on his face. He is so beautiful it hurts to look at him. He is a Michelangelo masterpiece, and I am a commoner, lost in the sea of bourgeois. His perfect lips turn down into a moue as Molly cowers at my side.

  No one talks. No one moves other than the boy. Even the kids who darted past us stop to turn and watch. What are they looking at? I open my lips to thank the boy, but he leans in, sucking the air from my lungs.

  My guardian angel dips his head, heating my forehead with his breath, before he inhales deeply like he is trying to determine if I am something he can eat. My breath catches low in my throat, and even though black spots dot my vision, I refuse to breathe. He inhales again, his nose kissing the top of my white-blonde hair, so light compared to his own. He catches the single lock of black that runs alongside my temple and rolls it in between his fingers.

  He doesn’t glance at Molly. He doesn’t look at anyone else, only me.

  “What is your name?” he asks, his voice low and rough like he gargles with a bit of gravel every night.

  “Harlow Weathersby,” I say, but it’s so soft I think only he and I can hear it.

  “Harlow.” He repeats my name as though he savors the taste of it.

  My mouth waters as I lean into him. A foreign fire untangles low in my belly from a knot I didn’t realize was there before.

  His steely gaze returns to my black lock of hair in his hand, but disinterest now replaces the fire I thought I saw there. He meets my gaze, his gray irises locked on my blue, and for a moment, the world disappears around us, lost to the shadows while we live on together in brilliant technicolor.

  The darkness inside my chest rips me apart, shredding at my insides as it tries to claw free.

  The boy drops my lock of hair as Molly cries softly beside me on the grass. Then he slams into me, his hands boxing me in on either side of my shoulders. I hiss through my teeth as the stone wall behind me cuts into my back.

  “She,” he growls, leaning in so close his words kiss my mouth, “is mine.”

  Then he pushes away from me, and I fall to the ground, my knees giving way underneath me.

  He is no angel.

  He is a wicked, wicked boy.

  3

  Ian

  My heart batters against my chest like a run-away jackhammer as I stalk away toward the administration building. I breathe in deeply as Chase, Everett, and Archie take their place at my sides. She smelled like fresh-cut granny smiths, my own personal apple pie.

  I groan, my eyes rolling back into my skull as I think about how good she felt pressed against me, the heat of her soft skin brushing against mine, her nipples hard against my chest. My cock twitches, ready to go back and play. I wanted to fuck her right where she stood, but I doubt she would be into voyeurism and I don’t like to share.

  “Ian,” Everett says, brushing a rogue curl away from his hazel eyes. My name is both a question and a statement.

  Archie and Chase let him take the lead on this one. How smart of them.

  “You can’t help her,” he says, his words not judgmental, just matter of fact.

  My nostrils flare when I remember Berkshire and the smug look on his stupid face. Why did she have to pick the Thing as her friend?

  “What the fuck do you know?” I snap.

  Everett’s expression remains guarded. He’d let me beat the shit out of him just to get this…this…girl out of my system. Of course, he’d then beat the shit out of me, but I’d definitely make him work for it.

  “What’s your plan?” he asks.

  A curse erupts from behind my clenched teeth. I want to slam my first into something. Where the fuck is that football? I rip it away from Chase and punch it angrily between my hands like I’m playing hot potato with myself.

  “I don’t know,” I reply, my words more misery than vowels and consonants.

  “You know the Rules,” Everett says.

  “I don’t give a fuck about the Rules!” We made them a long time ago, or at least, it feels like it was a long time ago.

  “She chose her, Ian,” Everett says. “There’s no way out of it, and you know it.”

  But the girl doesn’t know, I want to scream. She does not understand what bomb just landed on her. We were drunk and angry and stupid and…

  Archie interrupts my murderous thoughts.

  “There is another way,” he says, looking at his phone like we are already boring him, his thumb swiping lazily at the screen.

  “What are you…” Everett begins, but Archie cuts him off, flashing a shit-eating grin and raising one self-assured eyebrow.

  “The girlfriend exemption.”

  I am torn between kissing Archie on the lips—God knows what rumors that would start—and grabbing him by the lapels and demanding to know why he is smiling like that.

  When Archie proposed it two years ago, late in the morning at Aurora’s pool house, I had rolled my eyes and given him shit for weeks. He was always thinking of the next girl, the one he was certain existed, though he hadn’t met her yet. I voted for it out of love for my brother, and Aurora joined me out of…whatever for me, breaking what would’ve otherwise been a tie.

  “There’s no way, man,” Chase grunts, shaking his head. “That clause was a joke. You know the Rules.”

  “At least Ian called dibs,” Everett muses. “No one’s ever done that before. Well, except Finn with the Thing.”

  I roll my eyes. It’s always been a game, just a foolish game. Until now.

  Everett lowers his voice, though you’d need a death wish or at least an AWOL self-preservation instinct to try to listen in on us.

  “You play by the Rules, Ian.” He grips my forearm, and we all stop walking as he stares at me, his lips thinned into a wan line. “You know the price if you don’t.”

  “I know the price,” I bite back.

  As the sun beats down on my face, I roll down my sleeves, button up my shirt, and straighten my tie. Everett thinks he understands, but he doesn’t. None of them do, and that’s good, because it will keep me safe from the wrath of Aurora and Berkshire for now. It will keep them from calling a damn vote.

  They have no idea, no clue of what their seventeen-year-old friend, Voclain’s beloved quarterback, already knows.

  That he would pay anything, any price, to have that girl.

  — Harlow —

  I sit on the ground, my legs splayed in front of me and my book bag lost a few feet away, abandoned on the grass. My fingers bite into the soft lawn as I tilt my head up toward the sky and let the sun warm my fac
e. Blades of glass slide through my fingers as I force my palms to unclench and my shoulders to relax.

  My lungs work in sporadic bursts as the stone of the building jabs into my shoulder. I close my eyes and begin, just as Dr. Murray taught me.

  The numbers pop into my head as I count, forming clouds of mist in my mind.

  One, two, three, four, blue.

  I try my best to visualize my version of serenity—a perfect summer sky over ocean waves—but it eludes me.

  One, two, three, four, blue.

  O...one, two, three, four, blue.

  The darkness slithers back toward the shadows, and my picture of the perfect beach day shows itself. I latch onto it, and the darkness disappears completely as my heart rate slows. I know it’s still there though, lurking at the edges where I cannot see.

  Cold sweat coats my forehead and pools low on my back as my hands tremble from the adrenaline of whatever just happened. I should take a pill, but the distance to my book bag seems uncrossable and even my bones are weary from hours spent at the airport yesterday.

  Molly cries beside me. Unshed tears prick at my eyes, and I bite my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood to stop it from trembling. I don’t join her, even though I could use a good cry. I don’t join her because they will see, and after that, I’ll be the girl who cried. William taught me better than that. I know better than that.

  Why do they hate me?

  The question rings in my ears, though I know I shouldn’t ask it. I shouldn’t even think about it. It’s not like people ever need an excuse for hatred. Hatred simply is.

  It’s easy too, with none of the effort required by empathy or compassion. It spills from our lips like poison and from our fingers like an airdrop of napalm, incinerating everything in its path. It exists because we allow it to exist.

  Molly sniffles, wiping the back of her hand across her nose before she opens her book bag for a tissue. She’s devoted a whole side pocket to tissues, and the realization that she saw this coming makes me grimace.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, and it sounds like she’s talking more to herself than to me. “They never strike twice in one day.”

  She blows her nose, and it sounds like a trumpet. I giggle, and she joins me. It’s ridiculous, sitting there, sweaty from our sprint and trembling with nerves as the warning bell for first period rings.

  “Crap,” she says, “ten minutes to get to class.”

  I pick myself up off the ground and help Molly to her feet. Dirt and grass cover my flats. My white stockings have an ugly rip in the back thanks to the stone wall. I look like I got lost in the woods and had to push my way through the trees to get out.

  We hurry toward the main building, a mortar-and-stone sprawling structure that resembles more of a medieval castle than a high school. There are pathways all over the campus, crossing and winding from one building to another, but a few of them intersect in front of the building to form a long cement path. A row of tall flag poles flanks the path on either side, each bearing a flag of royal blue embossed in silver with the Academy’s logo.

  Students avoid Molly and me like we are contagious. I want to flip them off and shout, “What is your problem?” but that might scare Molly. I don’t want to scare my only friend.

  If I’m honest though, the actual reason I don’t yell is because I’m a pansy. I hate confrontation. I don’t understand it, and I think it’s all background noise when you should be belting out the lyrics to your own soundtrack. Plus, what if those kids tell me the truth? What if they tell me the reason they hate me and I can’t handle it? When I can’t handle it, the darkness comes to visit.

  “Who were those guys?” I ask Molly as I comb my hair with my fingers. I like to think the tremble in my hands is only from adrenaline, but that’s not true, and Molly and I both know it.

  “The first one, the blonde,” she says, swiping on cherry-flavored Chapstick, “was Finn Berkshire, you know, of the Berkshire Oil Company.”

  I shrug. The name means nothing to me. Why isn’t she cursing his name and threatening to kick his ass? Why isn’t she shouting for help and demanding that the teachers do something? I am disturbed by the realization that this is her normal, an acceptable part of her day. I want to wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tight.

  Next comes her compact, which she quickly flips open to fix her ruddy cheeks. As she pockets the compact and retrieves a hairbrush out of the compartment on her book bag she has apparently devoted to this worrisome routine, she says, “Then there was Everett Reynolds, Archie Blakely, and Chase Tallum from your left to right, behind the tall one with black hair. They are sons of the ultra-rich from all over the United States.”

  I am lost, putting faces to names and mesmerized by her near picture-perfect memory. Molly hands me her brush like we are old friends. I accept it quickly and go to work fixing my tangled hair.

  This is exactly why I told William I would never be a runner. Well, this and my aversion to aerobic activities. Thick hair + sweat + movement = I look like I met a family of birds and offered them permanent residence. Once upon a time, William had laughed at that excuse, and the next morning, he slid a brand new pack of hairbands under my door.

  Molly opens the door to the building for me, and a rush of cool air washes over me. Surprisingly, she is not on edge, though I am. I wonder if my morning welcome party will appear at any second, but she said they only strike once per day, and maybe that’s why she is relaxed.

  “The really scary one at the end is Ian Beckett, son of the international conglomerate by the same name,” Molly whispers to me as we walk down the hallway, passing students who wave and give hugs to friends they haven’t seen since last semester. “He comes from a long line of money. If you combined the net-worths of all the families with students here at the Academy, we wouldn’t even come close. His family could kill all of us and then pay the cops to bury the bodies.” My head swims at her words. I can’t fathom that kind of wealth, even after Grandma and Granddad’s luck put us well above the ranks of middle class. Molly lowers her voice and looks around to make sure no one is paying attention before adding, “Don’t piss him off, Harlow.”

  “What did I do?” I snap back. “And what does ‘she’s mine’ even mean?”

  She shakes her head, sending her brown hair swaying against her shoulders. “I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”

  She frowns, and I join her as she examines my syllabus and leads me to my first period. I peek over her shoulder for the class description.

  The Adaptive Nature of English.

  Whatever that means.

  Molly points me to the correct classroom.

  As I walk inside, the chatter of students goes quiet, and I look up to find my guardian-angel-turned-personal-devil already staring at me from the back of the room.

  4

  Ian

  I am sitting in the back, slouched low in my desk and ignoring Mia Beauregard as she gives me fuck-me eyes across the aisle. She’s got her arms crossed over her chest to push up her breasts so they spill out from the top of her shirt. She should be pretty with straight black hair past her shoulders and a mouth that promises all sorts of fun, but she’s desperate to get into Aurora’s coven and that alone makes me sick.

  I don’t know exactly when I got tired of this contrite bullshit. All I can say is that the parties, the booze, the girls—nothing seems to interest me anymore. Except football. For a while, I even fought Archie for the title of Voclain’s premier man-whore, but somewhere along the way, it all blurred into a mess of skin and sex and monotony.

  Then it stopped being fun. It was work.

  On the gridiron, everything washes away, and there is only one truth I have to concern myself with: victory. There’s just me and the rub of the pebbled leather against my hands, the salt of sweat as it stings my eyes and slips between my lips, and the press of my cleats into the painted field.

  In those moments, as I stare into the eyes of my opponent across the line of
scrimmage, everything fades. The roar of the crowd dials down to a buzz in the background, my father’s expectations for me to carry on his legacy cease to exist, the pressure I put myself under to be the best so that my mother will notice me lifts from my shoulders.

  On the field, I am no longer a grain of rice steaming inside a pressure cooker. I am just me.

  When I was five years old, I asked my father for a football. He replied it wasn’t a sport for “our kind.” Over the years, with my incessant asking, I wore him down until after one particular bout when I asked every hour, on the hour, for a day and a half, and he finally gave in. Now, he is there at nearly every game, dressed to the nines and using my respite as a photo opportunity.

  Across the aisle, Mia openly pouts at me, batting her eyelashes like she’s got something stuck in her eye. She has unbuttoned her shirt to the point of indecency, and I can’t help but think this is a test, Aurora sending her minions after me no doubt. She will be glad to hear I ignored her newest temptation, but she will also certainly take it the wrong way. She will think I am interested in her, and that one day soon this game of cat and mouse we’ve been playing for years will end with me on top of her as she screams my name.

  Only she has got it wrong. There are no mice here, only two predators.

  The girl walks into the room, and joy fizzes inside of me until I am weightless with the bubbles. She threatens to ruin my aversion to mornings.

  The Thing waves to her from the hallway and disappears into the sea of rushing students as the final warning bell tolls. There’s only one open seat, and it’s directly in front of me. Although I had staked it as my own to create a personal leave-me-alone bubble, I much prefer this recent development.

  The girl looks up from whatever she’s been studying on the floor, lost in thoughts I can only guess. Her self-preservation instinct must take over because as soon as her gaze lifts, her guileless, blue eyes zero in on me. Her gaze goes wide as the buzzer goes off, signaling it’s time to be in class or risk the wrath of Headmistress DuMonte. She sends a quick pleading glance to Ms. Edmonds, who is too busy studying her syllabus to notice the girl, and hesitates.