Break for me a dark high.., p.1
Break For Me: A Dark High School Romance, page 1
BREAK FOR ME
TIAKI ACADEMY
BOOK ONE
LAYLA SIMON
Copyright © 2024 Layla Simon
All rights reserved.
Developmental Editing: Nicole at Emerald Edits
www.emeraldedits.com
Cover Photograph: Michelle Lancaster @lanefotograf
www.michellelancaster.com
Cover Model: Charlie Di Stefano @charliedistefano_
Cover Design: Katherine Hayton
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Also by Layla Simon
About the Author
PREFACE
Content notice: this story contains scenes with dub/non-con, gun play, drug use, physical assault, arson, abduction, somnophilia, attempted suicide, overdose, and includes references to stripping/sex work, molestation, child abuse, parental death, postpartum depression, suicide, and murder
CHAPTER ONE
EVIE
If there’s one thing worse than my landlord surprising his girlfriend with a shared lap dance at the worst (and only) strip club in town, it’s when I steer them into a private room to find out she’s a grabber.
Breast and bum are fair game according to the club rules and boy, does she take advantage. The lady isn’t playing with those pinches, either. Bruises are already forming on my cheeks.
No, not those. The other ones.
“Never again,” I tell Robyn as I leave the room, pulling a twenty out of my string and searching in vain for anything more. “I don’t care if they request me. Send them another girl.”
“Because you’re the booking queen now?” The duty manager arches one thinly stencilled eyebrow like she’s Cruella fucking Deville. “You don’t want the dance, fine. You’re off for the next week.”
An aggrieved sigh doesn’t budge her decision. Neither does wheedling and at quarter to midnight on a Sunday, that’s the full extent of my armoury.
“Sorry,” I manage at such a small volume it’s a surprise she hears me at all. “I was just venting.”
“Vent on your own time, which you’ll now have plenty of.” She turns back to the whiteboard calendar with our upcoming schedule, drawing a line through my name and writing Angel there instead. A girl who’s so consistently late that working with her makes the rest of us feel like we’re doing unpaid overtime.
I open my mouth to try another protest, and she points the marker at me. “Don’t push it, girl, or I’ll scrub you for the next month.”
My lips clamp together with frustration as I follow her instruction, slipping past to enter the changing room. My last stage appearance was at ten-thirty and with Robyn out to teach me a lesson, there won’t be any further income tonight.
The mirror in the changing room doesn’t have any good news for me, either. My green eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep and my reddish curls have grown so long the weight pulls them straight. I need a cut, but it’s hardly top of my priority list. There’s only enough money on the electricity meter to last out the day.
I open my locker, tugging a short dress over my G-string and pasties, then donning a light jacket for the ride home. My cash goes into the front pocket, which zips shut. I need to find a new job—bonus points for no landlords—but I don’t know another that would pay me anywhere near as well.
Even restricted to two nights, I still outearn what I used to with forty hours on checkout at the supermarket. That’s the main reason I’m still working here after a year. Theoretically, I shouldn’t have been employed until last month when I turned eighteen, but the great thing about a cash-under-the-table gig is no one blinked at my obviously fake ID.
It’s also clear no one ran my provided tax number up the flagpole. Otherwise, they’d have found out I’m eighty three… and dead.
My head is a mass of numbers as I let myself out the back door, raising a finger as a guy wolf-whistles, not bothering to turn to see who it is. As I near the bus stop, my phone rings. My brother’s number shows on the tiny screen. “Yep?”
“You left work, yet?”
Ant sounds terrible, his vocal cords breaking worse than a tenth-year. Add to that the fever he was running as I left hours earlier, and a sinking feeling engulfs me. I know where this is going.
“Just about to catch the bus.”
His voice drops to a gravelly rumble. “Could you drop by the old warehouse? This flu knocked me on my arse tonight.”
If it is flu. We both know it’s far more likely the last maintenance dose he got from the docks was so cut to shit it didn’t have the desired effect.
It’s been an age since I last collected anything for my brother. The only reason—and I stress the word only three times during our conversation—is that I’m fetching something to tide him over until we work out how to access a treatment program for him again.
Not buying him poison to inject straight into his veins for fun.
He waits out my lecture, then feeds me directions over the phone that I follow to the letter.
Which is how, twenty minutes later, I end up straddled between a kayak stolen from the public jetty and the metal ladder mounted by the old docks. In the transition from one to the other, my stiletto caught in the kayak apron, and these are my best heels. I’m not losing that baby without a fight.
My thigh muscles strain as I try to pull the vessel close enough to unhook my shoe, the current surprisingly strong right here by the riverbank.
The moment I think I’ve got it, my clammy hand slips on the metal rung. My balance shifts wildly, pitching me forwards, gravity tugging the phone from my bra as I pinwheel my arms, adrenaline pumping.
A flurry of movement that ends with my phone splashing into the river while the kayak and my shoe float serenely away.
For long seconds, the loudest sound is my pulse thumping erratically in my ears as I cling to the rusty ladder. When I recover, I scramble onto the wharf, kneeling on the wood, obscenities flying from my mouth.
The few choice curse words aren’t enough to settle my exasperation as I get to my feet, lips curling in disgust at the slippery moss coating the service jetty.
I adore my brother. Ant is the only family member I have left, the most important person in my world, but right now I’d happily strangle him. My ‘cheap’ phone is still a fortnight’s wages and I doubt the fishes will appreciate it the same way I did.
The view from here at night is spectacular, but I don’t have eyes for the fancy glass and steel houses built into the lakeshore cliffs or the city lights sparkling off the water. My interest extends to the drab and long neglected industrial building in front of me.
Silvery moonlight shines off the broken bottles and discarded needles strewn between me and the concrete window that is my destination.
If I thought running in heels was bad, hopping over the uneven ground in just one shoe is a hundred times worse. After a night of dancing, my tendons already hate me.
I tug the hem of my dress down as I bounce across the yard, then give the secret knock on the window, wrapping my jacket a little tighter, though the summer evening is still balmy, even with the breeze blowing straight off the lake.
“Smack?”
“Yeah, a bundle,” I answer, waiting for him to confirm the total before I count the cash out, scowling for show, secretly happy it leaves me with twenty bucks, enough to afford a burger on top of the bus ride home.
The money gets handed through a doggie door. A pretty name for a hole blowtorched from the base of the metal door, covered on his side with a slat of wood. I move along to the next window like it’s a drug drive thru, tapping my fingers on the metal slider until it clanks aside, and he tips the goods into the waiting receptacle.
As I reach for them, an explosion tears the quiet night apart.
I drop, ears ringing, flashes in my vision. Instinct overtakes logic as I cower, shoulder and knee pressing against the hard concrete wall.
Bursts of horrendously hot air puff through the slot above me, caressing the crown of my head. The ringing in my ears is replaced by a stuffed-to-bursting sensation, like they’ve blistered and if I jam in my fingers, they’ll pop and leak clear fluid.
Shouts gradually pierce through the dampened hum. The sounds of wood hitting plaster. Cackles of laughter and voices calling to each other, their tone high with excitement.
A
I cautiously straighten, risking a peek at the dispensing window.
Empty. My brother’s expensive habit has disappeared.
A loud crash echoes through the building. I hear footfalls running in multiple directions, probably dealers or junkies taking the hint and scarpering before they can incur a penalty.
One man inside whistles, the sound irritating my eardrums as they try to resume normal service. When I hold my nose and blow, they pop, releasing most of the pressure. An overload of fresh sounds pour forth to flood the gap.
A man screams. Then yells. Then pleads.
I’ve dealt with the hardened gentlemen who populate this establishment before. I don’t want to meet the person who could make them beg.
But I also can’t leave. Not without what I came for.
Ant is already in a state. He’ll be useless for days if he can’t get his dose, which means he can’t go out thieving or jacking or whatever-the-hell-he-does to earn his money. We are very much a don’t-ask, don’t-tell household.
We’re already scrambling. If I lose the baggie, we might never recover.
Steeling my backbone, I peer through the slot, scanning the floor.
Bull's eye. The bag sits on the bare concrete floor. So far out of reach, it might as well be on the moon.
I glance around, but there’s no handy stick resting nearby, and my arms would need to be a foot longer to reach the package. I hop a few steps sideways and kick out the wooden covering to the doggie door with my bare heel.
My body’s slender. I can probably fit.
Without giving myself time for second thoughts, I kneel and push my upper body through the gap, wriggling my shoulders through one at a time, forearms pulling against the grease and dirt encrusted floor. The scent of motor oil from the explosives fills my nostrils until I gag.
The baggie rests against two large filing cabinets, a metre to my right. Beyond that, my view is obscured.
I twist and stretch, my fingertips first scraping across the plastic like the world’s worst tease, then slowly, slowly gaining purchase until I drag it an inch closer, another inch.
Too late, my injured ears hear the faint shuffle of movement.
A steel-toed boot stamps down on the bag, crushing it against the floor.
CHAPTER TWO
MADDOX
“Take the east side,” Zane yells while my ears ring from the explosion. Dust and debris rain down on us as we boot in what’s left of the door and charge into the old warehouse, scarves across our lower faces to filter the smoke.
The destruction is incredible, filling me with a sense of power, invincible almost. The makeshift C4 came from a dodgy contact and until the moment it tore the night apart, I thought it was probably fake.
Now I’m amped on the noise, eyes filled with blind spots from the flash. I sprint through the lower level, whacking a softball bat against the wall, against stacked crates, against the calves of a running man, cash spilling from his pockets.
A fucking dealer.
I slam the bat into his lower leg again as he falls, shrieking at the pain. My next blow doesn’t connect, hitting an inch beside his head while his eyes bug out in fright.
The pleas start, but I couldn’t give a shit. The only begging I respond to comes from humans, not this cockroach growing fat on the desperation of his customers.
A parasite would earn more pity.
I stamp a boot on his face, making him curl in pain, then aim another kick at his ribs, feeling the satisfaction as they give under my reinforced heel.
The guy should thank his lucky stars I don’t knock every tooth from his mouth, crush every bone in his face. Grind him to pieces against the old concrete and stone.
“Score,” Wilder shouts as I move away from the battered figure. He runs straight at me from the smoky gloom, tossing a dark object with so little warning I fumble the catch.
It’s a gun.
A piece of 3D printed nonsense that smells like burned plastic and looks like a toy, but when I aim the revolver at the wall above his head, it fires.
“Fucking hell,” he screeches, brushing flakes of concrete from his tousled hair.
I laugh until he waves a second weapon in my direction, and I have to jump away from the barrel’s aim. “Don’t do that. It’s dangerous.”
He scoffs at the advice, whooping as he dashes into a cloud of black smoke pouring from the corridor near the entrance. The explosion must have caught, the fire spreading, but there should be precious little in this old storage warehouse to burn.
I take off in the opposite direction, slowing to duck under a connecting door already sagging on its hinges; possibly due to age and disrepair, possibly due to us.
The new room is empty, both of people and thankfully of smoke. I kick aside a couple of empty boxes, stalk across to the outside wall, and stare through a slit cut in the thick metal door, noticing others dotted farther along.
It takes me two seconds to understand the layout and props to whoever dreamt this setup into being; it’s low-key genius. Customers kept on the outside, dealers safely on the inside with a concrete wall between them to lessen the impact of any complaints.
I tuck the gun into my waistband and crouch, testing each drawer in a large filing cabinet, drag marks on the floor showing where it travelled to its new home. That’s when I hear a weird noise and stop what I’m doing, head tilted, eyes narrowed to thin slits as I try to place the sound.
The angle of the cabinet hides me as I stand and peer around the edge. A girl worms her way through a rough cut hole in the door, arms hauling her into the building that everyone else is fleeing.
A second later, I see the reason. There’s a baggie of narcotics lying on the floor.
Just as she gets a grip on the plastic, I stamp my foot down, pinning it until I snag it off the floor and hold it aloft, shaking it in the scant light from the windows.
“Lose something?” I tease, expecting her to see me and immediately reverse direction. But the girl must have a death wish because she stays in place, even when I click the LED light on my army knife, shooting the beam directly into her eyes.
She’s stuck.
I laugh with delight, stuffing the bag into my jeans pocket. With my free hand, I grab her around the upper arm and haul her inwards. She squirms and batters at me with her soft hands, giving a cry of pain when she finally pops free from the door.
There’s a long streak of darkness along the side of her dress. Hopefully dust and dirt rather than blood. I’m a vigilante, not a monster. I didn’t come here to hurt strange girls.
“What the fuck are you wearing?” I say, letting go to shine my light the length of her body. Not a great distance. A little over five feet from head to toe, ninety percent of that consisting of smooth, supple legs. “You always steal drugs in your shortest dress?”
“Give me those.” She gets to her knees and snatches at my pocket for the baggie, blinking in dismay when I beam the light into her face again. As she struggles to her feet, her chin juts upwards in defiance. “I paid for them. They’re mine.”
“Finders’ keepers.” My light moves to her arms, covered in a thin jacket that covers her while still leaving nothing to the imagination. “You a hooker?”
“I was at a club,” she says through gritted teeth, folding her arms over her chest when I keep staring. “I need that medicine.”
“Medicine?” My face goes slack with surprise a moment before a new burst of laughter erupts from me. “That’s a good one.”
Her face is stony. Completely unamused.
“Push your sleeves up. Show me your arms.”
She shoves them in front of the light, exposing the unblemished skin on the inside of her elbows. “No track marks, sir.” The word is edged with insult. “Can I have my bag now?”
I stare at her, enjoying the altercation enough that I consider handing the package across. A few foils won’t tip the balance one way or the other.
But there are other ways to extend my fun.
“Against the wall,” I tell her, enjoying the flash of irritation in her eyes. “Time to frisk you.”
“I’m wearing a skintight bodysuit,” she snarls back. “Where exactly am I meant to hide something?”
