Beautifully Yours: A High School Bully Romance (Voclain Academy Book Three) Page 9

  I walk two doors down the hall to the room Raven shares with Emma Bardot. I think they both secretly hate each other, but it works for them because they both leave the other alone. Raven’s left the door propped open, and when I walk inside, Emma is nowhere to be found. I find Raven and Molly in Raven’s bedroom.

  Raven sits at her vanity, arranging an impressive collection of nail polish, while Molly sits on Raven’s bed, streaming Teen Wolf through Raven’s laptop.

  “Hey,” Raven calls. She waves a hand at her nail polish. “Pick a color, any color.”

  “Pink,” I say, “the bright, fuchsia one.”

  “Oh, good choice!” She plucks the bottle from the assortment. “Paint Me Pink. It has glitter, and it glows in the dark.”

  I sit down at the vanity beside her and accept my fate. Raven and Molly get to work immediately. Raven paints my nails as Molly does my hair and makeup. When they’re done, Raven walks over to her closet, demanding I stay in place to not smudge my manicure.

  “Pick a dress,” she instructs me.

  “I believe I was promised ice cream,” I reply.

  “All in good time, dear,” she says. “First, we leave this hellscape, then we hit Sylvie’s Shake Shop on the way home.”

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  Raven ignores my question as Molly starts rifling through dresses too.

  When did they get ready to go out?

  “Hmm?” Raven holds up a purple ballgown for my consideration.

  I wrinkle my nose. “It would be very pretty for prom.”

  She frowns down at it and nods. “Def too formal.”

  She disappears into her closet, digging to the very back, and plucks out a garment bag.

  “This is it!” she announces before she points a finger at me. “No debate, okay?”

  “I might debate,” I say with a laugh.

  “No debate!” she emphasizes. “Come over here and try it on, and watch your nails.”

  “Yes, boss,” I tell her with a salute.

  Molly snorts, and Raven sends us both a look that says she is not amused.

  I duck behind her privacy divider and change into an iridescent white tube dress. Raven slides a pair of silver Louboutins around the divider.

  “These too,” she says.

  I debate claiming my feet are too big, but we’re the same size and we both know it.

  I strap on the shoes and smooth the dress as I round the divider. I give a twirl for Raven and Molly. Molly whistles.

  “I don’t know,” I say, tugging at the fabric. It’s sort of hard to breathe. “I don’t think I can pull this off.”

  I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My hair is curly and blown out by what Molly’s used. My makeup is simple, but whatever she’s done to my eyes makes them look huge and a crystal-clear blue. Raven straps a single gold chain around my neck before she looks at me as I look in the mirror.

  “You’re a killer, Harlow,” she says. “It’s time to act like it.”

  I debate my options because there is definitely at least a fifty-percent chance I’m going to fall on my butt if I wear this outfit tonight. “If I wear it, do I still get ice cream?”

  “Of course!” Raven practically squeals before she grabs my hand and pulls me toward the door. “Now, let’s go. We’re late.”

  We walk to the campus garage, and when we’re in front of Molly’s car, she swaps into a pair of Chucks from her bag and tosses her heels in the back.

  “Where are we going?” I ask for like the sixth time since we’ve left Raven’s dorm room, but this time as I climb in the rear of Molly’s SUV, I finally get an answer.

  “A party in the woods,” Raven says. “It’s like a senior-only thing, but I invited some of the guys from the local college nearby.”

  Molly pulls out of the parking spot as Raven turns around to pin me with a stare.

  “You, sister, need an older guy.”

  She turns back around as we pull out onto the road and Molly revs the engine. I can see her rifling in her bag, and I hear the crinkle of a wrapper before she hands me a giant brownie.

  “Snack time!” she says, then gives Molly a gun salute before she adds, “But none for you, DD.”

  I freeze, brownie nearly to my mouth, and eye the chocolate chips on top suspiciously.

  “What’s in it?” I ask.

  “It’s okay,” Raven assures me. “Just a little pot. Take it slow though, tiger.”

  I take one very small bite, and it is freakin’ fantastic. It’s fudge-filled goodness, and I take one more. When was the last time I ate? Yesterday, I think, when I raided my Snickers desk stash...and won. I take another nibble as Molly cranks up the radio and drives.

  An hour later, I feel the car roll to a stop before Molly turns off the engine. I look down at my brownie.

  Oh, no. Where’d it go? I frown down into my empty lap and carefully brush the crumbs into the palm of my hand.

  Why am I holding crumbs?

  Oh, yeah. I pop those in my mouth too.

  One delicious brownie devoured.

  My door opens, and Raven stares at me. “Space cadet, you coming or not? Where’s the rest of the brownie?” she asks, hand extended like I’m supposed to be handing her something.

  “I think I ate it,” I say slowly.

  “The entire thing?” Raven’s eyes nearly bug out of her head, and oh my god, it’s gorgeous outside with the burnt orange blaze of the fading sun on the horizon.

  I vaguely hear Molly ask if I’ll be okay as I step outside into a pretty world of colors and calm.

  “She’ll be fine,” Raven says, and it sounds like she’s laughing as I admire the view.

  There are so many people, and I thought Raven said this would be a small thing. Normally big crowds make me nervous, but I am light, a carefree feather carried by a gentle wind. Right now, these people feel like a big family welcoming me home.

  The party is gorgeous. Outdoor bulb lights hang from trees in beautiful criss-crossing rows like somebody’s perfect wedding venue. Crickets chirp in the air, and it’s not too warm and not too cold, like the night air hugs my skin and holds on tight. Most of the people are on a giant, stained deck that stretches across a massive lake, a strobe light flashing across them.

  Raven grabs my hand and leads me toward the crowd. There are definitely way more people here than from our senior class. Guys and girls I don’t recognize mingle around us.

  Raven guides us to a serve-yourself bar on top of a wooden picnic table, where some generous soul has left a ton of Jell-O shots. She grabs one for me, one for herself, and a can of Coke for Molly.

  “Cheers, bitches!” she says, and it sort of burns as it slides down.

  I shake the burn away.

  “One more and then we dance!” Raven says, grabbing one for me and one for her again. She pushes mine into my palm.

  This one slides down easier, and before I know it, we are weaving through the crowd, and I’m not really sure how I get there, but I’m on the dance floor and Raven is smiling, her teeth lit up by the glow-stick necklaces hanging around her throat.

  I dance alongside her and Molly, and it’s easy to lose yourself to the thump of the music as the beats blur and change, one song slipping into the next. I’m hot and sweaty as I close my eyes and move with the group.

  A warm hand curls around my rib cage, and I don’t open my eyes because I am afloat on calm waters. It slides farther down to curve around my hip, but this doesn’t feel quite right. I start to slow, no longer caught in the current of the music.

  The hand abruptly disappears, and the warmth is gone with an oomph that sounds from behind me. My eyes pop open, and I’m met by Ian’s angry glare, irises of steel and stone pinning me where I stand. Even though we don’t touch, the breath is knocked from my lungs.

  He stares at me, and everything about his image is imprinted onto my soul. He’s a dark angel, promising to bring sin and carnage and devastation to my world without uttering a s
ingle word, and he landed in a land of glow-in-the-dark colors and rainbow LED lights when he plummeted to earth.

  His hair is dark.

  His button-down shirt, rolled up to his elbows, is dark.

  The slice of his jawline is dark.

  His eyes are dark, endless orbs that bore into me.

  He’s a dark, delicious devil standing before me.

  The light overhead strobes blue then yellow, then red, and then green, but through it all, he remains motionless. I inhale the clover of a freshly smoked cigar lingering on his skin and the hint of beer from his lips.

  Wait, has he been drinking?

  I fight a frown. He’s not supposed to be drinking.

  We stand there, staring at each other, both motionless, before the spell breaks and he grabs my wrist. He tugs me through the crowd, shoving through strangers until we are outside the crowd dancing underneath the giant awning and standing on the pier. The lake water is right there, still and inviting. I could dive in, get away, and just swim.

  Ian releases my hand and glares at me. A beat passes before he growls, “Fucking strangers now?”

  Holy...what...the...

  “No,” I say. “I was just dancing.”

  Though I don’t know with whom, and the thought makes me a little dizzy as a blush of embarrassment burns across my cheeks.

  He scoffs and takes a step toward me. For a moment, I think he might kiss me. Or maybe I’ll kiss him.

  “Run along, Harlow,” he says, peering down his nose at me, “before I change my mind and end this suffering for us both.”

  Because I have no answers and there’s no way in the world I can make it all right, I do just as he tells me.

  I turn away from him and run.

  12

  Harlow

  There are kisses that you remember.

  Your first.

  Your sloppiest.

  The one that was at a perfect time at a perfect place with a perfect boy.

  Then there are kisses that tattoo themselves on your heart. That you remember when you wake up and your lips are still tingling from the memory, those you can’t forget no matter how hard you try.

  Ian’s kiss in the locker room is mine. My heart remembers the way it lost its rhythm in the moment. My skin remembers the invisible fire that played across my chest and down lower to spread over my belly. My tongue remembers the burst of cinnamon and sweetness that’s no longer there.

  I was poisoned by that kiss, by his lips. No one can ever compete. I am ruined for all others. And there’s no hope of solace for me either.

  He wants nothing to do with me. He practically said so after the pep rally and then at the party this past weekend. I almost told him then about the lies to protect him from the truth, about how I have done the only thing I could, about how I was—am—scared Finn’s waiting for the perfect moment to break the bargain and screw us both.

  But I love him too much to do that, and in a week’s time the indictment will be over, and I will apologize. I will beg for forgiveness if I have to, and this entire ordeal can be extinguished.

  I walk toward the cafeteria with the flow of students. It’s loud, students bright and cheerful at the beginning of the week. By Friday, nearly everyone will be dragging their feet and dreading their mountain of weekend homework.

  My flats click across the marble tile as I walk, but I can barely hear them over the cacophony of students. I hear tidbits of their conversations, though I’m not trying to and definitely would prefer to avoid it, given how much of it has centered on Ian and me the last few weeks.

  Did you see what she wore? She must have gotten it from her cousin. You know her daddy just went to prison for—whispers—laundering.

  Dude, she is so into you, it’s sick. Just ask her out.

  Oh my gosh, he is sooooo gorg. I want to take a bite and eat him whole, if you know what I mean.

  Luckily none about me, not today at least. My stomach pinches as I plot my in-and-out. I’ll grab a sandwich from the grab-and-go counter and eat on a bench outside. It’s become my go-to lunch plan lately.

  Sometimes Blaze joins me if his training session with Coach Wells gets out early, but he’s preparing for spring baseball season in his every free moment, and although he’s already gotten sports scholarships to Notre Dame and half a dozen other schools, he really wants a major league recruiter to make an offer. Molly should be here, but her organic chemistry lab runs late nearly every day, so it’ll be another twenty minutes until she’s out, and Raven has the second-hour lunch period and spends my lunch hour in her theater class.

  I’ll sneak in the cafeteria like I always do, grab my food, and leave. It’s better this way, or at least that’s what I tell myself. I’m trying to give Ian space and remain out of his orbit. It’s bad enough for him we have a couple of classes together.

  I spot Ian through a set of open double doors leading into the dining hall as Archie gives him a tight-lipped smile. The waiter delivers his plate, and the entire table is laughing, but not Ian. I never see him laugh anymore, and it shatters my glass heart. I watch him a moment longer.

  “Try harder, Weathersby,” a voice whispers in my ear, and I startle, my heart landing somewhere in lunar orbit.

  I glance over to find Finn Berkshire staring at me, unimpressed by the looks of it. He’s buzzed off his blonde hair, and I’m guessing he thinks it makes him look badass. Instead, he looks like a permanently angry toddler; of course his sour expression doesn’t help.

  “I did what you wanted,” I hiss back at him. I’ve destroyed both our lives.

  “Apparently not good enough.” He eyes Ian and frowns. “He looks happy to me.”

  What the hell? Is he blind or something?

  Ian looks anything but happy. He wears the mask expected of him—his overbearing father would expect nothing less from his son and certainly no tears from anyone sharing the Beckett name—but even that pretense of normalcy is carefully insouciant. At worst, it’s downright apathetic.

  He doesn’t look happy.

  He looks devoid.

  “I did what you wanted,” I repeat, careful to keep my voice low, though I want to shout it at the asshole. “Hold up your deal. You promised.”

  “And you promised to make him miserable.” He shrugs like I should have seen this betrayal coming all along. “Grand jury indictment was pushed out four weeks.”

  Fuck! I want to scream at him, and if my fingers weren’t biting into my palms, I’m pretty sure they’d be clawing his eyes out.

  “Do it yourself,” I seethe.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” His grin pours over his face like sludge before it disappears from his thin lips. “Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I can’t. Hundred-foot protective order and all, but I guess technically that’s for your ex to worry about, not me.” He regards Ian from afar again before leveling his gaze on me. “Do it, Weathersby, or your boyfriend will spend his prime years rotting in a six-by-eight.”

  “You’re a terrible person,” I say, though there’s a lot more I want to say but can’t, not without setting him off.

  My insult rolls off him like he’s made of Teflon.

  “I still own you and your boyfriend,” he says before starting away, “remember that.”

  He leaves me there, alone in the hall, contemplating my next move. I debate doing something later, in private perhaps, but Finn’s no doubt going to find some hole and wait it out so he can see the destruction firsthand and revel in its aftermath.

  Since I can’t go to the cops, maybe I should go to the school. Surely, they have that on camera, but then again, what does it show? Two students talking in a hallway, at best? Plus, what if they don’t believe me? Then Ian is in worse trouble than before.

  No, I have to push Ian harder, and I have to do it now while somehow not breaking us both. Maybe I can get him in private? Convince him to go into the hallway?

  Doubtful. What am I going to do?

  Uh, hi. Hey. Could we, uh, do t
his mass humiliation thing over there please, away from the crowd?

  My stomach pinches again, and I’m reminded that I still haven’t eaten. Fuck, I need to get this over with now. I shuffle inside the cafeteria, and normally I’d make a beeline for the grab-and-go section, but this time I don’t. I head straight for his table.

  Archie sees me coming first, mostly because I obstruct his view of Mia Beauregard’s ass, and his fork pauses mid-way to his mouth before his eyes go wide. He elbows Chase beside him, who stops whatever he’s saying to stare at me with Archie. Everett is last, mid-conversation with Ian, and thank God I’ve veered my path a little so that I come up behind Ian. I don’t think I could take him staring at me too, not when the rest of the cafeteria is already watching.

  I hope my expression tells Archie, Chase, and Everett, I’m sorry for everything. I have the best intentions, really I do, but by the way they’ve all gone still and are looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.

  I wear a mask too, and mine is the ice queen who abandoned her throne. There are a lot of masks going around lately.

  Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thump pounds the beat of my heart.

  The hair on the base of my neck stands on end as the chatter of our classmates softens to a sea of whispers.

  A blush burns its way to the surface of my cheeks, and I am on fire in this air-conditioned room.

  My feet glide across the tile as Ian carefully sets down his fork, the line of his shoulders going rigid as he sits up straighter. He swivels in his chair, and his nostrils flare when his intuition is confirmed.

  I stop a couple of feet in front of him.

  “We need to talk,” I say.

  His gaze narrows on me, but he doesn’t reply, not at first. He just laughs like I’ve said the funniest thing in the world. When he’s done, he carefully pushes himself back from the table and stands.

  “No, thanks.” He’s so tall beside me, and he turns back to his friends. “I’m out of here. Lost my appetite.”