by L.J. Shen
Poppy said nothing.
“We promise not to touch her lily ass if she tells us whether she’s bangin’ Vaughn or not.”
I’d gladly confirm to anyone else that I’d shag a hedgehog before touching Vaughn Spencer. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing the truth. They obviously wanted to hear that, and apparently, my lily arse was also a vindictive one.
“No,” Poppy said with conviction that filled my heart with joy. My sister was not faultless, but she was loyal to a fault. “You can’t mess with my sister. I won’t allow it.”
“Well, well, well,” Soren drawled, amusement dancing in his voice. “If we don’t have your little lapdog to keep us entertained, I guess that leaves you as the main show.”
I heard a huge splash, and the hiss of bubbles surfacing above water. I darted up from the swing, rounding the palm trees and running toward the pool. I found Soren crouching down at the edge, holding Poppy’s head underwater. Her arms flung wildly, trying to claw at his hand. She was desperate for air.
I was going to kill him. That much I was sure of.
Soren jerked Poppy back up by her hair. She gasped, water dripping down her blue face.
“Is she fucking Vaughn?” Arabella growled in my sister’s ear, baring her teeth.
“Eat shit!” Poppy screamed.
Arabella gave Soren a little nod. He shoved Poppy’s head back into the pool. Bubbles gathered around my sister’s head, like a crown.
“Maybe this’ll refresh her memory,” Arabella purred, perching her butt on the edge of the pool, lazily braiding her long, dark hair. I grabbed a telescoping pole, advanced toward Soren from behind, and flung the pole at his head like a sword. He fell onto the grass like a toy soldier. His wail rose from the green blades.
“Jesus fuck. The crazy bitch really did it this time!” Alice slapped her thigh.
She didn’t help Soren, though. She simply stood there, glaring at me. Ignoring her, I rushed to the pool and pulled Poppy up, hooking my hands under her arms. I dragged her to the grass next to a groaning Soren and turned her on all fours, slapping her back.
She coughed out spurts of water, crying and wheezing. Once Poppy turned around and sat on the grass, I spun on my heel, eager to deal with her so-called friends.
“What’s wrong with you?” I shoved Arabella’s shoulder.
When Alice stepped to her rescue, I slapped Arabella so hard she stumbled before falling on her ass. An audience of curious partygoers was forming around us. I didn’t care.
They’d taken it way too far. Their words, I could deal with. But nobody touched my family and got away with it. Nobody.
“You only have yourself to blame, Vampirina. You were the one eager to open your legs to Todos Santos’ royalty without figuring out who called dibs on them first.” Alice pushed me, poking my chest with her finger accusingly.
I threw my head back and laughed. “It happened because you girls can’t see that sucking people’s cocks publicly is not the same as dating them. Vaughn and Knight will never be yours. Not because of Poppy or me or Luna Rexroth. They won’t be yours because you’re rotten and unworthy of the air you breathe!”
I found a semi-friendly face at the party—Hunter, of all people—and he helped me carry Poppy back to my car. I buckled her up, got her home, hurled her into the shower, and nursed her back to health for the rest of the weekend.
Poppy never spoke to Arabella, Alice, Stacee, or Soren again.
She no longer cried about Knight or about moving back to the UK.
She was done with All Saints High and waiting to go home—just like me.
I kept my profile lower than the Dead Sea for the remainder of senior year—even when word got out that Vaughn had decided to take Arabella to Indiana and parade her in front of everyone at Daria Followhill’s wedding proposal. The invitation came out of the blue, but it garnered a lot of rumors about them being an item.
Afterward, I overheard Alice whispering to Stacee that Arabella had tried to kiss Vaughn during that trip, and he almost broke her nose fighting her off.
Why he took her with him across the country was a mystery I was going to have to live with. Did he really hate me so much that he was willing to bear the presence of my enemy just to prove a point?
Anyway, Papa was right. I needed to take the assistant’s job, suck it up, and move on with my life.
I’d been resilient and unaffected, even when Vaughn spent the weeks after his internship announcement looking for every reason under the sun to smirk at me tauntingly, trying to rile me up. I always knew when he was in the same room with me, even if I had my back to him, because it felt like clouds rolling in, bringing thunderstorms in their wake. He’d yet to offer me the assistant’s position officially, and so I’d yet to accept.
In the meantime, Vaughn had decided to burn the days until graduation by spiraling out of control. It was as if getting what he wanted—the internship—had destroyed whatever was left of his joy, instead of giving him something to look forward to. He seemed utterly miserable, even more than his usual morbid self, and he’d started skipping school for three and four days at a time, perhaps giving up on his high school diploma altogether.
One day I caught a glimpse of his father prowling the corridor of All Saints High like a demon. Clad in a sleek, black suit and a scowl that made no room for error, the man left no doubt that Vaughn was his flesh and blood. His gaze could wound you from across the hall, and heat spread across my cheeks when I remembered how I’d told Vaughn I was going to call the police on him, and he’d said his father owned everyone in this town.
It wasn’t a figure of speech, I’d later realized.
The principal had invited Vaughn’s parents for a discussion, but when Baron Spencer left the premises an hour later, a triumphant smile on his face, I didn’t think he was the one who’d gotten the third degree.
It made me so frustrated, I bit my inner cheek until warm, salty blood swirled inside my mouth. Vaughn did nothing to earn the unabashed love and support his parents offered him.
When Vaughn did attend school, he looked like he’d been dragged through every section of hell—bruised, beaten, with cut lips and black eyes. I’d heard he’d gotten into plenty of fights, and his face confirmed that. His welts opened if he spoke or moved the wrong way.
He’d stopped talking to people, attending parties, and, according to his friends, responding to text messages and phone calls. There were no more rumors about him getting blowies on school grounds or elsewhere, and the only people he seemed to still be communicating with were Knight Cole and Hunter Fitzpatrick.
I wanted to ask him if he was planning to offer me the assistant’s position anytime soon—or at all. Just because Papa said he’d discussed it with Vaughn didn’t mean he would follow through with the plan. But my pride, mixed with the fact that I really didn’t want to draw his attention to me when he seemed to have finally forgotten about my existence, held me back from asking.
All that changed the last week of school.
I came home after classes with the intention of swimming, then trying to work on the sketch for my next piece, which just wouldn’t come. It drove me nuts that I couldn’t nail down the way I wanted the assemblage to look. I was beginning to suspect Vaughn had not only messed with my head, but also with my creativity.
I dropped my backpack by the stairway, kicking the door shut behind me and double-locking it for good measure. I wanted to swim naked—not because of the stupid tan lines, as Vaughn said—but because I’d read somewhere that swimming naked reminded people what it felt like to be in the womb, and I desperately longed to feel that, a sort of connection with Mum.
I tugged at my shirt, advancing toward the glass doors, when I heard it.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
I spun sharply. The leak came from upstairs. Broken faucet? Bollocks. There went my afternoon. I’d be glaring at the back of a frustrated, grunting plumber
.
I took the stairs and stopped dead when my boot slipped over the marbled surface. I looked down. Blood. There were drops of blood trickling down from the second floor.
Shit.
“Papa?” I called, gripping the bannisters so I wouldn’t slip again, taking the stairs two at a time. “Are you all right?”
It wasn’t just drops. The stairs were smeared with blood, with traces of bloodied fingertips crawling up the white granite, like in a horror movie. It occurred to me that maybe I should call the police, but I was too panicked with the prospect that something had happened to Dad or Poppy.
I climbed up to the second floor and realized the blood prints led to the bathroom closest to my room. I flung the door open and immediately had to suck in a breath. The entire expanse of crème ceramic was painted red. Nearly every inch of it. Vaughn Spencer was sprawled in my bathtub, clothed in a black V-neck shirt and black skinny jeans, dangling one army boot over the edge and smoking a joint. He bobbed his head back and forth, his face covered in cuts—like he’d just fought a rabid housecat—and that’s when I realized he was listening to my CD player. I yanked the earbuds from his ears, my heart beating so fast and wild I felt nauseous with adrenaline.
“Spencer!” I cried.
He looked up, finished the remainder of his joint, and tossed it to the floor. The blood killed the ember with a vicious hiss. Vaughn exhaled a ribbon of twisted smoke into my face, slow and deliberate, forever a connoisseur of cruelty.
“Lenora.”
“Forgive me for being so dense, but could you please enlighten me as to what you are doing in my bathtub, bleeding to death?” I exhaled slowly, shaking with anger and, yes, fear, too. His dark shirt was soaked with blood, reminding me that he was human, after all. Something worse than the scratches on his face lay under there.
He needed to go to the hospital. Immediately. I yanked my phone out of my leather jacket’s pocket, but he shook his head.
“Stitch me up, Buttercup.”
“What?”
“I’ve seen your Tree in Fall piece. You know your way around a needle.”
My Tree in Fall assemblage was a lone tree I’d found in a Hampstead Heath park. It had been completely naked of leaves. It looked cold. I’d stitched a garment on it from scratch, then hung clothing items, like leaves, on its thin, bare branches. By the time I was done, the tree looked a bit like a ghost. I loved that it went from looking weak and helpless to fearsome and Goth-like.
I wondered how Vaughn had seen it, since I’d only posted it on my Instagram, and he didn’t have any social media accounts. But now wasn’t the time to ponder this question.
At any rate, Vaughn was right. Mum had taught me how to sew, stitch, and crochet.
That didn’t mean I was going to play the role of his devoted nurse, though.
I started dialing. Screw him. I wasn’t helping him beyond what the law required: tossing his ass into an ambulance.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said calmly.
I stopped, looked up, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The first words we’d spoken to each other in weeks, and he was already getting on my nerves. Vaughn Spencer had the uncanny ability to make me feel twisty, like if he didn’t touch me with his icy fingers, I’d burn. But I was also repelled by his behavior.
“I came here to offer you the assistant’s job, and I just might withdraw if you’re already being such a bad sport,” he drawled.
Wanker.
He’d left me hanging for weeks, and in that time I’d come to terms with my bitter loss to him. I found myself waiting to be approached. His plan had worked. Now he dangled it in my face, asking favors in return.
“Don’t make decisions with your ego.” My father’s voice pierced the red fog of my fury.
“I don’t want to be your anything,” I croaked.
It was the naked truth and most terrible lie I’d ever told anyone. I didn’t want to explore what I thought or felt toward Vaughn. I wanted to serve him a nice dose of pain, as he had me.
“Liar,” he said.
“Congrats on using your last name to get the gig.”
It wasn’t the right time for small talk, but if Vaughn dropped dead in my bathroom, the only part I’d hate about it would be testifying to the police and the paperwork that came with it. Anyway, he didn’t seem terribly bothered by his state, either.
“Eh, jealousy. Bitterness’ oldest companion. It’s not easy being a genius, let me tell ya. One is the loneliest number.”
“There are literally two of you, Mr. Shit-for-Brains. Rafferty Pope got the internship, too. In fact, I could be his assistant.”
God. Why hadn’t I thought about that earlier? Maybe it was too difficult to swallow being my best friend’s assistant, when we’d been supposed to intern together, side-by-side. But this made perfect sense. I could just text Pope and get it sorted. A Vaughn-free future was a phone call away.
Vaughn smacked his lips.
“The position for Rafferty Pope’s assistant has been filled, I’m afraid.”
“Says who?” I scowled.
“I saw to it myself. Now, about your first assignment…” His eyes sliced back to his bloody shirt.
“No. If you die, I’ll get your internship.”
“If I die, I’ll haunt your ass so good, you’ll be praying ghostbusters are real,” he deadpanned.
“You’ve been skipping school and getting into fights. Why?”
“Your face disgusts me so much, I couldn’t risk running into you.” He ran his icy blue eyes over my body. “And here I am. Irony’s a bitch.”
Disgusted or rattled? I thought, slightly pleased. Because if avoiding me was the reason he’d stopped showing up at school, that meant I’d gotten to him. I flustered him as much as he did me.
I groaned. “Let me see the wound.”
He raised his shirt, exposing bronzed abs and a muscular V. He had a perfect six-pack bulging out of his lean stomach, a narrow waist, and a dusting of dark hair arrowing south of his belly button. A gash sliced through the smooth skin across his side, just above the V. It looked nasty. Like someone had tried to cut him in half.
“Bloody hell,” I muttered.
“Correct, for a fucking change.” He yawned, flicking a gray flake of ash from his knee. He dropped his shirt, eyeing me with mild, amused interest.
“Well?” He raised an eyebrow. “This bitch is not going to stitch itself up. You may want to offer me some alcohol. Not just to clean the area, but to make sure I don’t yank your hair out when you close me up.”
“Just to make sure we have an understanding—I’m not doing this because of the assistant’s job, or because I’m afraid of you like the rest of our pathetic classmates. I’m doing it because I truly believe you’re stupid enough not to go straight to the emergency room, and I don’t want your death on my conscience.”
With that, I got to work. I went downstairs, bringing back a bottle of whiskey—the cheapest I could find—and my sewing kit. When I got back upstairs, Vaughn was listening to my CD player again. I yanked it from his hands, this time placing it on the counter across from the bathtub, where he couldn’t reach it.
My eyes narrowed. “Stop touching my things.”
“Better get used to it, Len. I’ll be touching a lot of your shit when we work together next year.”
I ignored his use of Len, which I hadn’t heard from him before, and tried to kill the butterflies in my stomach as I took a pair of scissors from the sewing kit and lowered myself on one knee, cutting the front of his shirt vertically.
“I didn’t accept your offer yet.” I kept my eyes on the damp, bloodied fabric that soaked my fingertips.
“Don’t embarrass yourself. The only reason you don’t let my ass die in your bathtub is because you want this position.”
I wish that were the case.
When his shirt was a pile of fabric beneath him, I plucked my black towel from the rack above my head and soake
d it in whiskey, bringing it to his side.
“Aren’t you going to ask how it happened?” He stared at my face as I worked, not even wincing when I put the alcohol directly to his open wound.
He was particularly chatty today, in a good mood—better than he’d been in weeks. I wondered if fighting was a defense mechanism. If physical pain took away from the mental decay that was nibbling at him every hour of the day.
“No,” I said simply. What if he’d committed a horrible crime? I didn’t want to be involved.
His glacier eyes skimmed my face. “They say you slapped Arabella at her pool party.”
“They need a hobby or a bloody pet,” I said dryly, half-glad the rumor had spread fast and caused an uproar, “if that’s what they’re talking about. I’m not opposed to slapping her again if she tries to mess with my sister, so you can pass the message along to your little girlfriend.”
I loathed myself for inadvertently admitting I knew he’d taken her to Indiana. It was clear they weren’t together, but that apparently didn’t stop me from wanting to hear a denial straight from him.
“You hate her,” he said instead.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious. I wish your superpowers included not getting stabbed and crawling into my house uninvited.” I continued cleaning his wound.
He ran his long finger along the edge of the bathtub between us slowly.
“You know about Indiana.”
I said nothing, but my heart jumped in my chest as I tossed the black towel to the floor.
“My parents called her Mystery Girl, because it was a mystery why I brought her.” His eyes clung to my face, gauging me for a reaction. He wanted me to ask him why.
Over my dead body, boy.
I cleared my throat. “I honestly can’t think of a better match.”