Brutal Obsession, page 5
It’s my room that’s been affected.
Demolished.
The mattress has been stripped and yanked from the frame. Slices cut into it, rendering it useless. Pieces of foam and fluff litter the floor. The frame is cracked. All my clothes have been ripped out of my closet, the dresser, and spread around. Even the dresser is broken.
I step farther inside and rotate slowly.
The picture wall has been slapped with paint. Just one word. And not one that should even hurt that much, given the discussion my class just had. But it does hurt. It pricks my eyes like little needles. The red paint has dripped down, dotting the pieces of foam and carpet against the wall. None of the photos seem salvageable.
I force myself to read it again. To actually look at the word, the way the letters were formed. I let out a sigh and shake my head. I’m not what they think I am. I’m not anything, at the moment. I’m free-floating.
But to them? I’m a…
Whore.
5
GREYSON
I pop the puck into the air with the blade of my stick, passing it to Knox. He catches it on his, letting it sit for a moment, before sending it flying across the room to Steele.
Erik sits in the corner, his head bent as he works on… something.
Fuck if I know.
We’re all two beers in and getting restless.
It’s been a hell of a week. Practice every night has been kicking my ass more than usual, and Coach has repeatedly yelled at us to get our heads in the game. He blew his whistle tonight until he was purple, then finally ordered us to run two miles in the gym and get the fuck out of his sight.
Besides that, I’ve been watching Violet.
She walks to school with Willow Reed. Sometimes they drive if the weather is particularly poor. On occasion, Violet takes her time and pauses often to rub down her thigh or massage her calf. If it’s cold enough, she walks with a limp. Just slight enough for me to notice.
I hate that I want to watch her.
I’ve mapped out her schedule. The psychotic Monday and Wednesday classes. I switched into two of her classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She seems to not have anything on Friday. Not that I can suss out. But it doesn’t stop her from going to campus with Willow and taking a seat in the library.
Her friends didn’t abandon her after the video.
It was taken down too soon, I think. I didn’t admit to anyone that I was the one who posted it. As far as Knox knows, I shared it with someone who took it too far. And for his sake, I pretend to feel guilty about it.
There was a little argument between Jack and her. Jack didn’t bear the brunt of it—far from it. As these things go, he got accolades from his teammates. His anger isn’t justified, but it satiates the desire to grind Violet further into the mud. For a moment.
The school has moved on to the next big thing. A freshman caught kissing one of the residence hall directors, I guess. Erik briefly mentioned it yesterday. The director was fired, and the girl withdrew from school.
Fine.
I need to take it a step further. Or five steps further.
Violet cares about Willow. She cares about school… barely. Enough to graduate. She cared about dance, but that’s gone.
I could press on that wound. Make it bleed.
The puck comes sailing back at my face, and I snatch it before it can give me a black eye. Miles laughs at my glower.
“What’s up with Paris?” Erik suddenly asks. “She’s been blowing up your phone, Devereux.”
I already know what’s up with Paris. Small-minded girl with big dreams of marrying rich.
Miles scoffs. “She’s already talking about marrying the senator’s son.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Yeah?”
That’s me, obviously, although she hasn’t mentioned anything about marriage. I hope she goes down on one knee… or maybe two. Although when I think of a blonde on her knees in front of me, it isn’t Paris who I picture.
That’s how I know I’m in trouble.
“Didn’t take you for a guy to settle down, Devereux,” Erik says from his corner.
I glance at him. “I’ll tell them exactly how it is. It’s not my fault girls don’t believe me when I say I only fuck.”
Knox snickers. “Good luck shaking Paris. She’s a leech.”
I shrug and lean back. “That’s what makes her good at head.”
“Like Violet?”
I crane around and glare at Erik. “What?”
He smiles. “She’s gives good blow jobs. Surely you saw the video? I might just ask her, myself. If the rumors are true.”
This is what I wanted. But the thought of Erik putting his hands on her—or worse, talking to her? No fucking way.
I don’t realize I’ve shot out of my seat until Miles steps in front of me. He’s a few inches shorter than me, which doesn’t help cut off my line of vision from Erik. Who, unerringly, seems unperturbed by me.
Maybe that’s what bothers me about him. Why we don’t get along. Steele, Knox, Miles. Hell, even Jacob—the last of the starting lineup—seem to understand me without saying much. They have an aggression in them, too, that comes from somewhere deep. It’s not out all the time. Mine brims under the surface constantly, but they’ve figured out ways to keep it hidden.
Erik just glides through life like he doesn’t give a shit. And then he says something like that, and I want to tear his fucking eyes out.
Miles tugs my hockey stick out of my grip. He has to jerk it, because I have a death grip on the thing. And the puck in my other hand. I imagine smashing it into the side of Erik’s face over and over again…
“Take a walk,” Miles suggests.
Knox sighs and sets his stick aside. “Come on, Devereux. I’ll buy you a beer at Haven. And Erik? Stay the fuck away.”
Erik chuckles under his breath, but I’m already turning away. I shouldn’t have had such a visceral reaction to him talking about Violet Reece like that. Deep down, I’m mulling over what to do about it.
Turning the school against her is just a step. But I need to make her Public Enemy Number One, not the girl everyone wants to fuck. Right now, all the guys at school are picturing her blowing them, and that’s fucking infuriating.
Again, I see her with the blood on her head, trapped in that car. I can’t get that image out of my mind. It floats in front of me when I sleep, just flashes that interrupt regular dreams. Reminding me of what we did to each other.
I sigh and follow Knox outside. A few guys on the hockey team share a house. Fortunately, Erik’s room is in the basement. Knox, Steele, Miles, and I have the upstairs bedrooms. Jacob used to live with them until I came along, but he decided to live with others. Maybe to give me a spot, maybe because being around these assholes twenty-four seven can be annoying as fuck.
But it does help us play better. After only a few months, I’m able to read my teammates better than any Brickell team. Crown Point fosters a sort of brotherhood—and I have to imagine the dance coach tries to do the same with her girls.
How would I break us apart?
“You have a scheming face.” Knox nudges me. “You gonna talk out loud or are we going to walk in silence to the bar?”
“Violet and I are acquainted.”
“Shocker.” He raises his eyebrow. “Steele mentioned you got weird when he introduced you on Friday.”
I snort. “It’s a long story.”
Knox shrugs. “We can walk slower.”
“You’re a jackass.”
“I could be worse.” He grins. “Coach is going to kick our ass this week if you’re distracted. Which you are, so don’t try to give me some bullshit answer.”
Bonding. That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? Guys I can’t charm. Who see through my shit. And he does. So do the other guys. Including Erik, unfortunately.
“How loved is she?”
He tilts his head. “At school? Probably less now that she’s not on the dance team. But she’s got the whole sympathy going for her now. It wasn’t exactly quiet that she was on hiatus for a semester.”
I grunt.
“You want her miserable?”
“I want her alone.”
His eyes go dark. “Well, good fucking luck getting between her and Willow. They’re glued together. Have been since high school. Maybe middle school, I don’t fucking know. Reed and Reece—alphabetically, they’ll almost always be together.”
Huh. I knew they were close, but that makes a lot more sense. I look at him. “Maybe my problem isn’t that they’re close. It’s just that Willow and Violet are too focused on each other.”
He nods along to my words. “True enough.”
“So… we need to give Willow a distraction.” I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. I don’t normally do this. I operate alone. At Brickell, I didn’t have a lot of friends. I had a team that grudgingly admitted I was better than them. But here, I actually feel like I’m making the team better, and vice versa. That’s largely due to Knox and Steele welcoming me into the fold.
They might not if they knew who I was before—but that makes me all the more determined to push him toward Willow. Give him someone to focus on instead of me and Violet.
“I can do that,” he eventually says. “But how about we make it a bet?”
Things just got more interesting.
I grin. “First to fall wins?”
He extends his hand, and I slap my palm into his. Violet’s affection isn’t my goal. I don’t want her to love me. I don’t want her to like me. But it’ll keep Knox busy. He’s a competitive son of a bitch.
Love is overrated. I want to torment her until she breaks.
6
VIOLET
It takes me three hours to put my room back together, sans mattress and box spring. In fact, my room looks a whole lot bigger without the bulky furniture. My pictures are all gone.
When I first discovered it on Monday, I did three loads of laundry to get rid of the paint on my underwear, and I had to toss all the clothes that were ripped to shreds. But I didn’t want to deal with the furniture. I didn’t want to take down the photos. So I hid it from Willow for four days.
Now it’s Friday, a quiet day with no classes, and I have the mental capacity to deal with it.
Whoever did this had a lot of anger, which makes me think of Greyson.
And trust me, I don’t want to be thinking about him.
Willow gets home on the tail end of my cleaning spree, when I’m struggling to push my red-stained, gouged dresser out the front door. The only thing making me feel less guilty about putting it outside with a free sign on it is the fact that I picked it up at a secondhand store for twenty bucks.
She watches me struggle for a moment, then comes and helps me lift it over the threshold. We carry it to the street, and I lean against it.
She waits, clearly ready for me to spill.
I just shrug and turn around, knowing she’ll follow me all the way back to my room. And she does. She gasps softly when she steps inside.
My room is bare. Like, to the bone. The walls are blank, scrubbed paint-free. There’s a few pieces of clothing still in my closet. My backpack that I had with me hangs in the closet. Otherwise, nothing.
“What the fuck?”
“Someone broke in and destroyed everything. On Monday.” I don’t tell her that they wrote whore across my wall, and that all my memories are gone. I mean, they still live in my head. But beyond that…
“MONDAY?” she shrieks. She smacks my arm. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Because…” I don’t know. I haven’t cried this whole time. Not when I found it, not when I started to tear down the pictures. Or when I discovered my journal missing. I told myself that tears were useless and action could fix this. Make it better.
But now, with Willow witnessing the aftermath, the backs of my eyes burn. And they fill with tears. I blink rapidly, trying to keep the liquid from spilling out. But my shoulders hunch, and my chest gets tight, and the floodgates open.
I break down in the middle of the room, slowly sinking to my knees. I let it go, and the shuddering mess of emotions comes pouring out.
Willow sits beside me, her arm coming down around my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“It’s not your fault,” I respond. My voice is hoarse. I wish it was for a good reason, but I’m just exhausted.
“You can sleep in my room until we get you a new bed. Like a sleepover.”
I choke on my laugh and wipe under my nose. “Thanks. Just like old times.”
She nods emphatically. “Right? It’ll be great. Or we’ll get sick of each other in the middle of the night and one of us will move to the couch.”
“That only happened once.” I rub at my eyes and clear my throat. “Mexican food just does something to me.”
She snorts. “Trust me, I remember.”
Then she rises and holds out her hands. “Come on, you deserve a drink after dealing with this shit.”
I let her help me up. “I’m going to need to get new clothes, too.”
“Those fuckers,” she breathes. “What didn’t they touch?”
“The rest of the apartment.” I can’t even feel particularly bad about that—I’m glad they only targeted me. For whatever I did. I think, on some level, I might deserve it.
“Did you take photos?”
I nod and pull them up. She takes my phone and swipes through, her face getting more and more pinched as she goes. I wanted evidence, but now all I want is to forget it happened.
Fat chance of that.
“Definitely time for a drink,” she mutters. “Not that I’m a proponent of drowning our problems in alcohol. But the game is tomorrow, so it should be relatively tame.”
I nod along.
And then we get to Haven, and we both swear.
Five-dollar Margarita night.
“Well, at least we like margaritas,” I say.
She laughs. “Yep. Jess is on her way, too.”
We find two stools at the bar, and the bartender arrives shortly after. He’s a senior at CPU, but he doesn’t comment on the video. He just gives us a broad smile and takes our orders without comment.
Willow glances around. There’s a lot of underclassmen here today, which normally isn’t a problem. I don’t mind them here, being loud and distracting. It helps. I focus on the television hanging on the wall over the glass shelves of liquor bottles instead.
“Did you talk to your mom about him?” Willow asks.
I shake my head. “Haven’t heard from her since she dropped me off last week.”
She grunts. Willow knows my mother’s antics. Knows what to expect from her and what she’s become.
And what she’s become is a flake.
It’s okay, though. Once my dreams went down the toilet, I understood that her dreams went along with them. She spent a lot of time carting me to dance classes, recitals, buying pointe shoes and tutus and the outfits I had to have as a kid and teenager.
She wanted to see me succeed, too.
“My parents and sister are coming up next week,” Willow says. “I guess my sister wants to apply here and follow in my footsteps.”
I raise my eyebrow. Willow’s sister, Indie, is a wilder version of my best friend. At sixteen, she already has a reputation of dating too much, of sneaking out, drinking when her parents aren’t home. She smokes weed, too. Something Willow and I tried exactly once before my mother forcibly smacked some sense into me.
I still can’t smell it without my ass cheeks hurting.
“I think they want me to take her around to my classes and shit.”
I grin. “Good luck.”
Indie and Willow are almost too similar. Headstrong, chaotic. They argue and fight, and that’s their love language.
I don’t get it. I’m an only child from a single mother. It was just the two of us when I was growing up. We lived in an old Victorian house in a sprawling neighborhood. One of the last that didn’t actually have congested traffic or a commute.
We went to the best school in the county. We got a solid education. But besides Willow, I didn’t walk away with more friends.
Which is fine. It just means we’re close. I spent weekends at her house when my mom needed a break from me. Her parents fed me dinner, helped with my homework on occasion—her mom is a mathematician, and her dad is an engineer. They’re like-minded and whip-smart.
Willow gets that from them. It’s why she’s majoring in computer science. She’s going to take the tech world by storm when she graduates.
I picked business because I thought it would be easy. And then I missed a semester.
The bartender returns with our drinks. I take a sip of my watermelon margarita, and the sugar on the rim adds an extra sweetness. Willow clinks her glass against mine and winks.
On the other side of the bar, I catch sight of Greyson and Knox. My stomach knots.
I think of my trashed room, and I can’t shake the feeling that he would do something like that just to mess with me. But, he didn’t say a word about it in any of the classes we’re in—and we’re in a few together, unfortunately. In my environmental economics class, I can’t seem to get away from him.
I’m probably going to fail it because he keeps messing with me. Not that he does anything, but I can feel his stare on my back the whole time. It’s like my body is hyper aware and I can’t turn it off.
“Earth to Violet,” Willow says.
I jerk, spinning to face her. She squints at me, her expression etched with concern.
“I’ll be right back.” I slide off my stool, take another hefty gulp of my drink, and circle the bar. I don’t have a plan. All I know is that I’m pissed about the video and I’m upset about my room. I had true memories on that wall of my past life. Photos of me and Jack, sure, and the dance team. But I had prints of my ballet recitals, too. Things I’ll never get back.
