One Eighty (Westover Prep Book 1) Page 2

  “I’m watching a half-naked Dalton fucking Payne wash his car.”

  “We hate Dalton, remember?”

  “But we don’t hate Dalton’s body,” she says with awe in her voice.

  “I haven’t noticed,” I mumble, reaching for a hair tie.

  Frankie’s knowing chuckle rubs me the wrong way. Of course, my tormentor would be the best-looking guy at Westover Prep, the captain of the baseball team with more muscles than any teenager should ever be allowed to possess, and the brightest green eyes I’ve ever seen outside of a Hollywood movie. Even with all of that, he chooses to torture me daily, just because he can.

  “The boy lives to make my life miserable,” I remind her, even though there’s no way she can forget. She’s been on the receiving end of his hostility more than once, as well. “His attitude makes him ugly.”

  “Jesus,” she mumbles, unable to hide the appreciation in her voice. “Why does he have to be a dick?”

  I shake my head at her antics as she bites her lip, still watching him.

  I clear my throat to get her attention. Reluctantly, she turns around in my direction.

  “What?” Her eyes widen as she finally gets a full view of me. “I like the color, but I thought they were going to do more with your hair?”

  “It didn’t work out,” I mutter. I don’t know why I don’t tell her about his latest assault. No one knows the extent of his behavior. I stopped telling my parents in fourth grade when they gave the ‘boys will be boys' speech and urged me to just ‘kill him with kindness.’ Maybe I’m too embarrassed to lay all of my unwitnessed humiliation at her feet.

  “I can braid it,” she offers. “I imagine Vaughn will love it no matter how it’s fixed.”

  “I already said I’m not going to the party.”

  I guess your plans for the night have changed.

  Dalton’s words from earlier begin to make more sense after the hose down. He must’ve found out I was planning to attend.

  “I have a bad feeling. Nothing good can come out of me going there tonight.”

  Frankie is shaking her head, immediately rejecting my plans to back out. “Vaughn is going to be there. He likes you and won’t let anyone mess with you.”

  “He’s a baseball player,” I remind her. She’s smart enough to figure out the implication.

  “He’s JV. It’s not the same thing as Dalton’s varsity team.”

  “I can’t-”

  “Nope,” she says, pressing two fingers against my mouth to shut me up. “We’re going. The jeans aren’t bad, but at least put on a tank or something. You look frumpy in that oversized t-shirt.”

  I try for twenty more minutes to back out of the party, so long that we miss graduation, and instead of following a ton of other people to the party, we’re stuck arriving alone. I’d planned to meet up with Vaughn and sit with him at graduation, but he texts to let me know an out-of-town family member had stolen the seat he was saving for me. I inform him that I’m running late, and we decide just to meet each other at the party.

  “This is what everyone comes to school and raves about?” Frankie scrunches her nose as she peers out the windshield of her car. “This is just like homeroom only with alcohol.”

  I take in the scenery and can’t help but agree. The same people who gather in groups in class are doing so on Kyle Turner’s front lawn. Each person has a Solo cup or a bottle of beer in their hands.

  “I don’t want to do this.” I’ve said it a dozen times since Frankie arrived at my house a couple of hours ago, but only now does it look like she’s going to agree with me.

  “Ugh.” She cringes. “Bronwyn is here.”

  “Of course, she’s here. She’s Dalton’s toy,” I remind her.

  Dalton can have his pick of any girl at Westover, and he uses his selection freely, at least from what I’ve seen at school and the comings and goings at his house.

  If Dalton is the king of our school, that makes Bronwyn the queen, if only because she’s declared herself as such, and no one has been brave enough to contest it.

  “We need to do this,” Frankie says with a resolve she didn’t possess mere moments ago.

  “We can just go back to my place and watch Vampire Diaries reruns,” I offer.

  “What about Vaughn?” I shrug, unsure if Vaughn is even worth heading into the lion’s den. “I’m leaving first thing in the morning.”

  The reminder makes my heart plummet. I’ve known for the last two months that Frankie is obligated to her grandmother’s farm in Utah this summer.

  “I want to leave knowing that you’ll have someone who will force you to leave your house more than once a week for church.”

  “I’m going to be tutoring Peyton,” I counter.

  “At your house,” she clarifies.

  It’s true. Going to the Payne’s today was unplanned, and when I tutor her this summer, there’s no chance I’ll be doing that at Dalton’s house. I never would’ve agreed to help if that was the case.

  “How does this party have any bearing on my summer?” I look away from the front of the house when I see Vaughn walking up the front lawn. I don’t want Frankie to see that he’s here, or she’ll never let me leave. Just seeing him clap hands with several of the guys from the varsity baseball team makes my palms sweat.

  “Vaughn,” she angles her head to the front of the house, having noticed him, “will make you leave the house on all the dates he’s going to take you on.”

  Frankie has been the one driving the bus with this entire Vaughn situation. I’ve been leery from the start, but she keeps telling me that we’re going to be seniors, and everyone in our class is growing up. She assures me that no one will mess with me this coming year. She only believes this because I’ve stopped telling her about the instances of bullying she hasn’t witnessed.

  I should know better. I shouldn’t have even let things get this far, but I can’t seem to convince my lonely teenage heart that, at some point, the scales have to tip in my favor. Today may just be that day—the day where I stop being Bloody Mary and become just Piper. I’ve wanted nothing more for as long as I can remember.

  “Okay,” I agree quietly.

  “Okay? Really?” Frankie shoves open her car door before I can change my mind. Frozen, I sit in the front seat and watch as she rounds the front of the car to open my door. “Come on.”

  Hesitantly, I get out of the car and immediately reach for my phone, firing off a text to Vaughn to let him know I’m here. When he doesn’t respond right away, I tuck the thing in my back pocket and look up at my friend.

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Not one bit,” she says with a false smile, tucking her arm under mine and walking toward the front door of the house.

  Most of the people that were standing around have now made their way inside, so it’s only the two of us in the cool night.

  “This is going to be epic,” Frankie assures me with a soft pat to my hand. She opens the front door without even knocking and drags me along to walk in like we own the place. That’s always been Frankie’s style, and if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have experienced half of the things I have in life. She has a way of encouraging me to step out of my comfort zone. Tonight, however, I’m not comfortable at all.

  The world doesn’t end when we breach the threshold of Kyle Turner’s house. The music blasting through the hidden surround sound doesn’t screech to a halt when Frankie closes the door behind us, effectively trapping us inside with the monsters.

  A quick glance around the room doesn’t reveal Vaughn, and I avoid the corner where Dalton and his closest cult followers lurk. Instinctively, I reach for my phone once again. The sooner I make contact with Vaughn, the sooner I can get out of this place.

  Chapter 3

  Dalton

  I flinch when Bronwyn shifts her weight on my lap. Her bony ass digs into the top of my thighs, but my grunt must make her think she’s turning me on because she does it twice more before I can
clamp my free hand on her hip.

  “Be still,” I hiss.

  She giggles like a little girl, and the noise grates on my nerves.

  “Am I turning you on?” she coos, her beer breath a little too close to my nose.

  “Just be still,” I repeat.

  Tonight is the first party of the summer, but you wouldn’t be able to tell just by walking in. It’s the exact same as last week’s party and every weekly party before that. I’m certain I’d have more fun sitting at home playing video games, but the expectation is that I’m here and having a good time. The only good thing I have going on right now is one hell of a good buzz.

  Kyle always has the best alcohol selection since his parents own and operate several liquor stores in the state. It’s also one of the reasons his house is always hosting the parties. His parents work late on the weekends when sales are optimal.

  The front door opens, and although I’m not one to usually watch who arrives, my eyes have been laser-focused on the thing tonight. Just as I had hoped wouldn’t happen, Mary and her only friend, Frankie, just showed up.

  Bronwyn yelps when my fingers dig into her hip at the sight of the two girls who have no damn right to be here. I’ve kept Mary from every single party to date. Who the hell does she think she is showing up tonight?

  Surely, she wouldn’t believe for a minute that Vaughn was seriously interested in her. She’s well aware that every guy in Westover has been warned away from her. I know from her ridiculously high GPA and number one ranking in our class that the girl is smart enough to figure out when someone is going to prank her. She’s managed to thwart several pranks of my own due to diligence and her guard always being up.

  “What is it, baby?” Bronwyn asks, and it takes everything in me not to cringe at her bad breath as I jerk my head back. “Wanna go upstairs and have a little fun?”

  “No.”

  My short answer doesn’t seem to bother her. Whatever you want to call this situation between Bronwyn and me is past its expiration date. It has been for a while, but at the same time, pickings are slim to begin with in Westover, and I had a really wild time sophomore year. Cocky as it may seem, I can take my pick of the girls in school and many from the nearby college, but I’m not really one to revisit.

  “Did you see who’s here?” Kyle asks as he leans in closer when Bronwyn climbs off my lap and mumbles something about getting another beer.

  Hopefully, she’ll get several more and won't be interested in coming back over here.

  “Who?” I ask even though I know he’s spotted the same petite girl I just did moments ago.

  “Bloody Mary is here.”

  I allow my eyes to drift to her when he nods his head in her direction. She doesn’t look our way, but I’d be a fool to think she didn’t locate us the second she stepped inside. She knows she’s safest when she can locate her predators and keep away from them.

  “So?” Pretending to be uninterested, I turn my head, so it looks like I’m paying attention to the people dancing in the center of the room.

  She’s back to her old self in jeans and a t-shirt that’s two sizes too big for her, but even seeing her like she is now doesn’t make the memories of what she looked like earlier fade from my mind. Her hair is not as frizzy as it normally is, but the curls are gone as well as the sultry makeup she was able to hypnotize me with earlier.

  Her friend, Frankie, points toward the kitchen, miming getting a drink, and I watch as Mary shakes her head when Frankie holds up two fingers, clearly asking her if she wants one as well. Smart girl not planning to drink tonight.

  Mary stands alone only halfway through the foyer, looking lost and out of her element. Her lips turn down in a frown when she looks down at her phone.

  “This is going to be so much fun,” Kyle says, rubbing his hands together mischievously as he stands from the couch. “Catch ya later.”

  I don’t bother speaking as he crosses the room, giving Mary a wide berth before shooting up the stairs. Someone else takes Kyle’s spot on the sofa, but I don’t acknowledge them. Thankfully, they don’t try to engage me in conversation either.

  For what seems like forever, I stare at Mary as she stares down at her phone. She types something on it several times like she’s texting, but they must not be responding because she’s growing increasingly agitated. The irritation doesn’t fade when Frankie shows up at her side and offers her a red Solo cup. Her head shakes back and forth as her thumb hitches over her shoulder, indicating that she’s going to leave.

  “Here, man.” One of the incoming JV baseball players offers me a shot glass, and I turn it up, slamming it in one go just to get him out of my hair. Like he’s never tasted alcohol before, the boy refills my shot glass before I can pass it off.

  That shot goes down easy, too, but most of my drinks have for the last two hours. I feel heavy and somehow detached from what’s going on around me. In the soft light from the overhead chandelier hanging in the entryway, Mary actually looks ethereal. I know if we weren’t in Westover, if I’d seen her walk into a party, never having met her before, I would try to talk to her. I’d do my best to persuade her to follow me upstairs so we could talk where it wasn’t so noisy.

  But we are in Westover, and as petty as holding a grudge over not getting picked to play with in recess so many years ago is, I’ve dedicated my free time and reputation on tormenting her. There’s no way I can change any of that now.

  When I blink, I realize Mary is no longer standing in the middle of the room, frowning at her phone. My body moves before my mind can tell it where to go, but the house isn’t so big that I lose track of her for long. By the time I make it across the room, I see her tucking her phone into her back pocket as she climbs the staircase.

  Needing to watch her humiliation, I follow behind her, my drunken thoughts needing the reminder of who this girl is to get back on track.

  Softly, she taps her knuckles against the first door on the right. Kyle’s little brother isn’t home tonight, but that doesn’t stop someone on the other side of the door verbally granting her entrance, but as soon as she opens the door, her feet freeze before she can step a single foot inside.

  “Oh, God!” she shrieks, reaching for the doorknob. “I’m so sorry.”

  A round of laughs follows her as she slams the door closed. I have an idea of what she just walked in on, and I can feel my cheeks raise in a drunken smile. Undeterred, she walks deeper down the hall, knocking once again on the next door. This room is Kyle’s, and I know it’s going to be empty because he keeps it locked during his parties. He doesn’t care if people fuck in his brother’s room, his parents’ room, or the two guest bedrooms up here, but his room has always been off-limits.

  Except, the knob turns when she grips it. Cautiously, she pushes open the door. This time she doesn’t yell or apologize. She’s frozen in the doorway as her face runs the gamut of emotions. At first, she’s surprised, but then her brows furl before her chin starts to quiver.

  “Wh-what’s going on?” Mary asks, her voice quavering.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” a guy says.

  Kyle is going to shit a brick if he comes up here and finds people fucking in his room.

  “Did you actually think I’d want you, Bloody Mary?” That has to be Vaughn speaking.

  Not wanting to miss the show, I step closer so I can see what’s going on in the room. I anticipate seeing Vaughn wrapped up with some girl. At least that’s sort of what Kyle hinted at. Nothing says I don’t really like you and never did than getting a girl to a party so she can catch you with someone else.

  Vaughn is definitely in the room, and he’s with someone else, but instead of some no-name freshman, it’s Bronwyn on her hands and knees with his dick in her mouth. I blink twice, certain that I’m not seeing what my brain is trying to convince me is right before my eyes.

  But when I reach over Mary’s shoulder and shove the door open further, things go from bad to worse. Not only is my girlfriend sucking off a d
ick that isn’t mine, my best friend is plowing into her from behind.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I snap.

  All three participants, slow from hours of drinking, turn their heads in my direction at a snail’s pace.

  Vaughn and Bronwyn’s eyes fall on Mary, and my girlfriend has the damn gall to smile around Vaughn’s less than spectacular cock at the sight of her standing there in shock. Kyle doesn’t even bother to stop thrusting as his eyes find mine.

  His eyes are glazed, cheeks red from both the alcohol he’s been pouring down his throat all night and the exertion he’s putting forth to fuck my girl.

  My ex-girl, I should say. There’s no going back from this.

  I’m livid, beyond pissed. I’m not angry because I love her or anything. Bronwyn is actually a vile human being and always has been. I’m enraged because what she’s doing reflects on me. What kind of man am I if I can’t keep my girlfriend from fucking around on me, at a party I’m also in attendance at no less? I’m nobody’s fucking chump, yet here I stand watching my best friend drive his cock into her over and over. I’ll be the butt of every damn joke from here on out.

  How do I reign at Westover Prep when I can’t keep one damn girl in line?

  Mary chokes out a sob before she turns and hightails it away from the door. Only now does Bronwyn refocus and see me standing in the doorway.

  “Dalton?” she squeaks, too slow in her thinking to both acknowledge me and shove the guys away at the same time.

  The shove comes seconds later when her brain finally catches up to the situation.

  “It’s not—” she begins before licking at her swollen, spit-covered lips. “They forced me!”

  Fucking typical Bronwyn, blaming anyone and everyone she can to take the culpability off herself.

  Like she’s done a million times before, Bronwyn turns on the waterworks, but the emotions on her face don’t even begin to match her words.

  “He was going to find out sooner or later,” Kyle grunts, increasing his hold on her hips as he continues to slam inside of her. “Hold still. I’m close.”

  Vaughn hasn’t said a fucking word, and when I look in his direction, I find out why. Limp dick hanging to the side, he’s laid back on the mattress passed the fuck out.