Touched by the devil, p.42
Touched by the Devil, page 42
part #3 of Boys of Preston Prep Series
Gone.
29
Sebastian
I just want to stop seeing it.
Every time I blink, every time my attention drifts, that look on her face comes drifting back to me. The way her chin wobbled, jaw locked tight. The way she looked at me, so wide-eyed and gutted. How still she stood, how quiet.
Worst of all was that flash of understanding in her eyes, and the way she didn’t even look surprised. She didn’t argue. She just accepted it—just like that.
I kept pushing, digging that knife in deeper, hoping she’d just… fucking kick back. Pissing off Sugar is supposed to be something I’m good at. It would have been so much easier, being under the fire of her fury. It would have still hurt, but it wouldn’t have been this.
This agonizing, hopeless throb of guilt and loss.
It’s better than the alternative, though. That’s what I keep telling myself. It’s not a fun time, constantly assaulting myself with scenarios of the many and varied ways Heston would hurt her. He’d go for the simple stuff first. Get her kicked out of Preston. Maybe fuck up something with her mom—as if I’d care about that. But after the simple shit, he’d get his hands dirty. He’d touch her. I know he fucking would. If she’s lucky, that’d be all he’d do. But it’s not Heston’s style. He’d probably manipulate her—it wouldn’t be easy, I should know—but he’s good at what he does. It might take him weeks, months, years, but eventually he’d find something to rip away from her.
That’s the only thing that’s keeping me breathing.
“What. Have. You. Done?”
I turn at the sound of Vandy’s acerbic hiss. Except it’s not just Vandy. Georgia and Aubrey each flank one side of her tiny frame, and Elana and Caroline make a solid wall behind them.
I’m fucking cornered.
Just what I need.
I try to slip into the lie—this reflection of myself who isn’t a twisted, gnarled thing, as if such a thing exists. “Nothing the six of you couldn’t see coming,” I reply tonelessly, wiping the sweat off my forehead. The scrimmage kicked my ass. I’ve done my best to stay conditioned, but with the downtime from the concussion, I’m not keeping up with the other guys, and it’s seriously fucking with my ability to get lost in the game. The pace on the field is brutal. It probably doesn’t help that I’d spent most of last night getting absolutely tanked, alone in my bedroom at home. “If you don’t mind, I smell like a jockstrap and I think we’d all be better off if I took a shower.”
“No,” Georgia says, her voice shaking with anger. “Not until you explain yourself. I don’t know what the hell you said to Sugar earlier, but she is completely fucked up over it! She won’t even talk about what happened, beyond saying you dumped her.”
I run my hand through my hair, trying to maintain my aloof expression. “Look, you guys know me. I don’t do relationships. Sure, maybe I had a moment of temporary insanity with Sugar. She was a challenge. She put up a fight. You know how I love a fight.” I briefly consider whether or not a wink to Vandy could actually sell this, but realize she may castrate me if I did. “I couldn’t resist, but you also know that, as soon as I’ve beaten my opponent, I’m ready to move on. Everyone knows I don’t do rematches.”
My eyes dart between them, wondering if any of them bought a single line of the bullshit coming out of my mouth. From the hot glare coming back at me, the answer is unilaterally no.
“Bass,” Georgia seethes, “I swear to god, if you don’t fix this…”
“Then what? Because there’s nothing to fix. I told her it’s over. I’m done with her. It was fun while it lasted, but let’s face it. Sugar is way too high maintenance for me. She’s…” The rest hangs on my tongue, bitter and sharp. I can’t bring myself to say that she’s too broken. Too damaged. I wouldn’t mean it the way they’d think, anyway. There’s just no way I’m making it worse than I already have. There’s no way I’m letting him get to her. “She’s not my type.”
Georgia and the other girls gawk at me, mouths gaping like fuming fish.
Part of me is relieved they don’t buy it. It’s a frustrating push and pull. I need everyone to believe it—I need Heston to believe it—but the second they do, it’d probably gut me.
More than I already am, of course.
I take their silence as an opportunity to bail, turning my back on them to stalk across the campus. I think these might be the times it gets bad. Walking. Thinking. Being able to slip into my head. I thought being back on the field would make this easier, but I was wrong.
Maybe it can’t get any easier. Maybe that’s what I deserve, knowing that Sugar is walking around out there fucked up over it all. Maybe I just have to walk around like this sad, pathetic shell of a person who doesn’t have a shred of control over his own fucking life because his brother is a bored, sadistic piece of shit. Maybe that’s justice.
I’m just passing the Devil’s Tower when I hear, “You’re weak, you know.”
I pause, shifting the weight of my bag on my shoulder to face Afton. She’s leaning against the wall. I didn’t even know she was out here. Honestly, I’m surprised she cares at all.
“You callin’ me names, Cross?”
“I’m calling it like I see it. You’re weak and pathetic.” Her eyes rake over me, disdain dripping from her voice. “I defended you to her, did you know that? The first day of school when she left the room upset about you touching her? I defended you. I told her that you were a good guy. That whatever had happened between you must have been a mistake, because Sebastian Wilcox would never intentionally hurt someone.”
I fist my hand around the strap of my bag, looking away. “Then you were wrong.”
She shakes her head, lips pursed angrily. “You fucked up, Bass, and I don’t think there’s any fixing it.”
I take a deep breath and meet her gaze, trying to convey a message. “You’re right. There is no way to fix this—with her, or with you.”
She arches a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you need to do what’s right here, because I sure as hell can’t.” Not any more than I already am. “If you want me out of the Devils, that’s fine.”
“I never said anything about—”
“Official or not, you’re the Queen Bee of the Playthings. They’ll do what you say and follow your lead.” I haven’t forgotten how quick Heston was to target Vandy just for being my friend. Looking at Afton now—thinking of all my brave, fucked-up, beautiful girls—I add, “It’ll be best if you all stop calling me a friend. In fact, don’t call me at all.”
She stares at me hard and long, and when I can’t take the scrutiny any longer, I turn and walk away. Walking away from Sugar was bad enough, like ripping open a part of myself and plucking out all the good bits, one by one.
Tossing away the rest is like a pitchfork to the heart.
It doesn’t get better from there. It turns out that Sugar Voss has made an impression on my friends. Everyone is pissed at me. The Playthings. The Devils. I’m met with cold shoulders and hot glares everywhere I turn. If I thought my boys would have my back, then I’m just shy of being mistaken. Unlike the Playthings, they don’t look like they want to rip my balls off.
They also don’t look like they want to defend me much, either.
And they shouldn’t, is the thing. It hurts, having to cast them all aside—knowing if I didn’t, they’d do it for me. But knowing that Sugar’s carved herself out a place here, has inspired their loyalty after only a few months…
I’m glad she has that.
She deserves it more than I do, anyway.
Even Dr. Ross, who I swear knows more about the inner workings of teenage drama than she’d ever admit, gives me a dark look when I enter the classroom the next morning.
Sugar’s already in her seat, and I’d been preparing myself for this all night—if getting wasted in my room again can count as preparing—but it’s still like feeling a knife buried into my chest, just seeing her sitting there. Without a word, I walk down the aisle, passing her desk, and drop heavily into my own.
She jumps at the sound of my seat squeaking on the floor, but visibly clenches tight, pitching forward.
The whole class is like that.
I still get all these wild, nagging impulses to reach for her hair. I’ve spent the last couple weeks playing with it in class, even having halfway learned to do a braid while Elana looked on, snickering at how lumpy and twisted it looked.
My knee bounces throughout the lecture, and I wish I could just get all these hard parts over with. Seeing each other in classes, the halls, pretending like we aren’t both being singed from the inside out.
Sugar begins packing her bag long before the bell rings, and when it does, she’s out of her seat like a bolt of lightning, not even waiting for the other girls at the door. I take my time, listlessly shoving my shit into my bag and sliding from my chair.
Reyn doesn’t even wait around for me.
The rest of the week goes like that. I go to class, people glare at me, Sugar avoids me, I eat lunch with the lacrosse team, I go back to my dorm and get drunk until three in the morning, when I finally manage to nod off to sleep, only to wake four hours later and do it all over again.
On Friday, I’m on my way to lunch, cutting through the Arts wing, when I pass the weekly art exhibit. The twins are adjusting a piece on the display, bickering and huffing like they always do. I slow my roll, because let’s face it, it’s been a hard few days, and getting a little love from my biggest fans would help a lot. I stop to inspect the photo being hung—a closed eye covered in glittery eyeshadow and thick, rainbow-colored eyelashes.
“It needs to go up on the right,” Micha says, hands on his hips. Michaela shifts the frame up and down. “Nope, too high. Now it’s too low.” He throws his hands up. “I’ll just do it myself.”
“I can adjust a frame,” Michaela snipes, rolling her eyes at her brother.
The move forces her to look over his head, locking eyes with me. I give her a grin, expecting a smile in return, maybe a little blushing, but instead I get a hard glare.
“I think it looks great,” I try, digging my hands into my pockets. “Who took this? Michaela?”
“Oh,” Micha says, whipping around, eyes narrowing, “it’s you.”
“Yep. Just admiring your work.”
The twins exchange a knowing look, then turn back to the frame.
“Do you need any help?” I reluctantly ask.
“No, we’re all good,” Micha says, waving his hand at me dismissively.
Awkwardly, I reply, “Okay, cool. Well, I think the photo looks great—whoever took it.” Neither of them look at me, and I think maybe for the first time in my life, I’ve been rejected by a freshman. That didn’t even happen to me when I was a freshman.
Ouch.
“Well, good luck with the exhibit. I know you guys worked hard on it.”
“Mmhmm,” Michaela says, using her thumb to adjust the picture again.
Clearly not getting anything out of those two, I start to walk off.
But then Micha calls, “Hey!”
I turn. “Yeah?”
“I thought you were different from your brother,” he says, lips pressed into a tight line, “but I guess I was wrong.”
Double ouch.
I continue on my way, letting the insult settle around my shoulders. I never thought I was like Heston. The idea was laughable. But the school, the Devils, even the twins all think I’m a manipulative asshole who’ll do anything to get in a girl’s pants and then break her heart.
Maybe I’m a better actor than I thought.
Resigned to another night of getting shitfaced alone in my room, I enter the dining hall and grab a tray. I pretend I don’t feel the laser beams on my back as I carry it across the room and sit with the other guys on the lacrosse team. I keep acting like the food I’m shoveling in my mouth doesn’t taste like ash, and the wise-cracking jokes I share with the guys aren’t a cover-up for the fact I feel like shit.
And I know Sugar’s not feeling great. Every time I manage a passing glance in the hallways, in Dr. Ross’s class, I can clearly see she looks like hell. It’s not just the purple smudges under her eyes or the fact I haven’t seen her smile in days. It’s in her hunched, defeated shoulders, and the way she sits with an empty chair between her and the others. It’s how she wraps her arms around her body and keeps her hair loose, using it to shield her face.
It’s in the way that, when she sits in front of me in Dr. Ross’s class, she tries to make herself disappear. That wall I broke down is firmly back in place, but this time even more fragile than before. I thought when I punched her that night, when I heard her scream, it was the worst thing I’d ever seen or heard.
I was wrong.
This? The silence?
It’s so much fucking worse.
I want her to fight back. Kick me in the balls. Shove that knife in my heart and end me.
“Fuck,” Michael Watts says, looking at his phone. “Coach added an extra scrimmage tonight.”
Peter Norton groans. “My arms are still sore from yesterday.”
The guys start bitching, but the screech of a chair dragging on the cafeteria floor, and then a figure dropping into the empty seat next to Sugar, draws my attention to the Devils' lunch table. Carlton eases himself in the chair and gives Sugar a small grin.
My first response is what the fuck? My second is to sit back and watch Sugar pull out her blade and castrate him in front of the room. He leans into her and says something way too low to hear. I wait for her to tell him to fuck off.
She doesn’t.
She ducks her head for a moment but then grins at him. She fucking grins. And then she nods her head in approval of whatever it is that asshat is saying. Since when does Carlton say anything worth smiling over?
For the first time in days, something penetrates this shell of gnarled numbness I’ve become, and I barely even think about what I’m doing. I push back my chair, plotting the ways I’m going to make him pay for even looking at my—
“Bass.” A body steps in my path. I peer around them. “Bass!”
I blink and see that it’s Emory standing in front of me. “What?”
“Hey,” he says, giving me a weird look. “We need to talk.”
Impatiently, I try once again to peer past him. “About what?”
“Tonight,” is all he says. “Seven. You know where.”
He gives me a meaningful look, one that suggests he’s aware I was just about to beat down a fellow Devil. He’s never approached me directly like that. Most Devil communication goes through the standard process. The fact that there’s no envelope, and he’s telling me about it plain as day in front of my teammates, means this is not a formal meeting.
Just fucking great.
“I’ve got practice.”
“I don’t care,” he says, turning to walk off. “Be there.”
I watch him go, and then glance back over at the table, catching Sugar looking at me. We hold one another’s gaze for a long beat. My heart pounds in my ears and I wait for her to do something, to show some kind of reaction, but she doesn’t.
She just turns away.
“Is that how you want to do this?” I ask, tearing off my gloves. “Is that really how you want this to go down?” My helmet is next. I throw it across the field. Peter Norton looks around at our teammates, hoping they’ll do something. They won’t, because they’re all a bunch of pussies. I step toward him and shove his chest with both hands. “Are you really going to foul me like that?”
I know I’m overreacting, but it’s like I can’t control it. I need to get out this anger before I blow completely. This isn’t even the first altercation this practice. It’s the third. But lacrosse, being out here on the field, just isn’t hitting the same way it used to. No matter how hard I run or how many of these motherfuckers I tackle, the wild, burning thing in my chest just isn’t going away.
It doesn’t make any sense. This was supposed to be it. I was supposed to come out here and get lost in the game and leave the field feeling… well, if not better, then at least not fucking worse.
“Hey!” Gus Meyers shouts, grabbing me by the shoulder. “Chill the fuck out, Wilcox.”
I look down at his hand and then slowly raise my gaze to his ugly face. Fear flickers in his eyes at the grin I give him, full of teeth, and he drops his hand, taking a step back. Touching me was a stupid fucking move on his part and he knows it.
“Wilcox!” my name echoes across the field through the bullhorn. “You touch another one of my players and you’re done for the season!”
Pete, Gus, and everyone else on the field waits to see if I believe Coach Pickford. Or maybe they’re waiting to see if I care. I thought I would. I figured once I got this back, even if I’d carved my own heart out by fucking Sugar over so, so well, that I’d be able to immerse in the violence of it.
Now, it all seems pointless and tedious.
“Fuck it,” I say. “Fuck all of this.”
I walk off the field, passing the glares of the coach and the other guys on the bench. I exit the field, yanking my shirt off and wiping off my face. When I look up again, I see Ben standing nearby, hands shoved in his letterman jacket’s pockets.
“The fuck do you want?”
He shrugs. “Just making sure you go meet Emory.”
I scoff, stepping up to him. “Or what? You think you can make me?”
“I think Meyers is right,” Ben replies, not looking intimidated in the least. “You need to chill the fuck out. You’re acting crazier than usual.”
I can take Ben. He knows I can take him. But where’s the fun in that, anyway?
“Whatever. Let’s just get this bullshit over with.”
He escorts me across the field, like some kind of fucking hall monitor. When I get to the tower, he doesn’t come in with me. He stands by the door, jerking his head at the knob in a stupidly persistent gesture.
I take a deep breath and head downstairs, stepping through the low entrance. The first thing I see is the couch where Sugar and I…
