Brutal Boy by Selena
eleven
Harper Apple
The moment I park my bike on the rack on Wednesday, I know the Dolces are back. I can feel it in the air, a current of nervous excitement. The kings have returned to the castle.
I skipped the vigil on Tuesday night, partly because I didn’t want to see a bunch of fakes pretending to care when they never gave a fuck about him while he was at Willow Heights, and partly because I was afraid of what the Dolces would do if I showed I still did give a fuck. Nothing in this school goes unnoticed by those boys, and I wouldn’t put it past them to find Colt in the hospital and finish the job.
I will do something better than light a candle for him or go visit him. I’ll avenge him and all the other girls and boys in this school they’ve ruined. I’m ready to play my part as the lowly peasant who serves the royals, not a princess or even a lady who might grace the throne beside them, but a whore they’ll visit a few times on the side. I’m secure enough in my worth to play the part and know I’m only playing. They’re the ones who can’t see the value of a girl without a pedigree, or, as Royal said, a golden pussy.
It doesn’t bother me. I need a way in, and if this is it, so be it. I spent the past few days doing my homework, and not just the stuff for class. I’ve studied up on the Dolces, reading everything I could find on them online, most of it boring news articles that didn’t tell a quarter of what I know must have gone down in the past two years. Still, I know a little more than I did before. I’m educating myself, and I have no plans of stopping. I’ll find what Mr. D is missing, the key he needs to take them down. Then he can work on the parents. The boys are mine.
I’m so caught up in scheming that I almost forget reality. When I walk in the door, I’m quickly reminded.
“Sucky, sucky, five dollar,” a guy calls, making a lewd gesture at me while his friends laugh.
“Keep your five dollars,” I shoot back. “You couldn’t begin to afford me.”
They follow me down the hall like a cloud of bad body spray. “Hey,” one of them says, grabbing my arm. “We know you’re a whore. We want in on it. Name your price.”
I give a quick jab to his nose, not enough to break it, but enough to make him bleed. He drops his hold on my arm, stumbling back, looking so shocked its comical as he blinks past the pain. Adrenaline and sweet satisfaction courses through me. I missed the fight on Friday, and damn did I miss it. I stick around just long enough to see him touch his nose and see his fingers come away bloody. I’m a bloodthirsty bitch sometimes.
“That’s the price of touching me without permission,” I say, then turn and walk away.
I open my locker and get my books, ignoring the other comments and snickers as people stream down the hall past me. I wore Mabel’s clothes again yesterday and today, despite the girls giving me shit. After the video, I’m glad to have something concealing to wear. I get enough guys ogling my body as it is. About the only guys who have left me alone, to their credit, are those in the Dolce boys’ inner circle—DeShaun, Dawson, and Cotton.
As I close my locker, a bespectacled little dude who must be a freshman sidles up, clutching his books to his chest. “So, is it true?” he asks, licking his lips nervously.
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not,” I say with a sigh.
“Is it really you in that video?” he asks. “It’s hard to tell because of the angle, but if you pause it at just the right moment, there’s a pretty good profile shot with only a little hair covering your face.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out,” I say, imagining this asshole in his basement replaying the video over and over, watching Mr. Behr’s cock going into my mouth a million times over.
“Get lost, asshole,” says a big beefy guy, shoving the kid aside and throwing an arm around my shoulders. “So, here’s the deal, ho-bag. You’re going to come service me and my boys after school today, or we’re going to send the video to your mom.”
I snort and duck out from under his arm, stopping at the door to my first class. Every day, the same damn shit. It’s a relief to get out of the hall and into class, where the bombardment dies down to a couple lewd comments per hour. “Y’all just go right ahead,” I say with my most winning smile. “After she has a good laugh, she’ll probably invite y’all in and service you herself.”
Suddenly, the voices in the hall die down, and I see the three kings flanked by their three dukes heading our way, their eyes locked on me like predators who’ve singled out the weakest antelope from the herd. I sigh. Jesus fuck, it never ends.
My eyes meet Royal’s dark gaze, and tension crackles between us for a moment before I tear my eyes away.
“Well, if it isn’t big George Tanner,” Cotton drawls, strolling up to the guy who accosted me.
George Tanner looks bewildered and a little freaked out as he glances behind him to see the Fear Squad blocking his retreat.
DeShaun boxes him in on the other side, so he can’t make a quick escape. “Or should we call him Little George,” he says, rubbing his knuckles against the big guy’s scalp like he’s a kid. His words are taunting, but the look in his eyes is pure viciousness. “We all know your brain’s not the only thing the size of a peanut around here.”
“Are you fucking with my toy?” Royal asks George, his voice low and so incredulous it sounds like a death threat.
“N-no,” George manages, his hammy neck still clutched in DeShaun’s muscular arm. “I mean, I didn’t know! I’d never disrespect you, bro. I’ve got your back on the field every week. You know that. I’m your boy.”
“No, we’re his boys,” DeShaun says. “You’re a slab of meat who takes a pounding like a bitch every Friday night. If you were his boy, you wouldn’t have your hands on his girl.”
Royal doesn’t react to the mischaracterization of the situation, to DeShaun calling me his girl. He doesn’t seem to notice his boy is there at all. He’s glowering at George like a snake preparing to strike. “I’m sure you’ve heard since Friday what I do to people who touch my things,” he says quietly.
I start to edge backwards into the classroom while poor George begs for mercy, but Baron’s eyes fix on me, and he steps around Cotton to grab me and wrench me back into the hall. “What the fuck are you wearing?” he demands, fisting a handful of my blouse.
“You, too?” I ask, rolling my eyes. “It’s one thing for the fashion-obsessed Bitch Pack to give me shit, but why would you care? Or even notice?”
“Because it’s fucking noticeable,” Baron snaps, his eyes burning into me.
Duke steps over to us, looking me up and down. He swallows, his eyes going wide. “Are you wearing Mabel’s clothes?” he asks, his voice low.
Royal may be making a scene to make a point, but his brothers aren’t.
“What do you care?” I ask again, shooting them a defiant grin. “They barely fit me. There’s no way you could squeeze your ass into them.”
“Take. Them. Off.” Baron grits out the words, his fist twisting in the fabric until it strains around my ribcage. The motion brings us closer, until I’m almost flush against him, only his fist keeping our bodies apart. I stare up into his blazing eyes, and something snaps into place.
Guys might notice I’ve changed my look, but this isn’t that. I glance at Duke, just standing there gazing at me like a wounded puppy who just saw a ghost, or some such mixture of emotion. That’s what this is about. Not what I’m wearing, but their feelings about it.
“You cared about her,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Baron demands.
“Mabel Darling,” I say. “You didn’t just ruin her life. You liked her.”
I know Colt’s on the other side in the war between families, and I only heard his perspective, but it still rattles me to realize that it was more than them bullying her to the point of suicide. There’s a lot more to that story than he told me.
“Mabel Darling was a fucking cum dumpster,” Duke snaps. “Just like you.”
But they’re wrong about her, just like they’re wrong about me. They may not admit they have feelings, but they wouldn’t flip out about me wearing her clothes if they didn’t care. Hell, they probably wouldn’t even recognize her clothes.
“Understand this,” Baron growls, dragging me even closer, leaning down so we’re nose to nose. “We don’t ‘like’ Darling girls. They’re no more memorable than a used condom. Once you’ve cum inside them, they’re worthless. We threw her away like the trash she was. You’re no different, so don’t go thinking you’re special just because Royal wants to wreck your ass before he tosses you in the dumpster for good.”
His eyes glitter with a twisted malice, and I wonder if maybe he is the most dangerous one. I’ve seen Royal’s dark side, seen his eyes go ragey or hollow, and I’ve understood him. I understand murderous rage. I understand detaching from your body so you don’t freak the fuck out. I’ve spent enough time locked in closets to do some self-reflection.
This manic, sadistic gleam in Baron’s eye is beyond my scope, though.
I swallow hard and force my voice to come out light. “Never in my life thought I was special to you.”
But she was. Mabel Darling, a girl whose colorless wardrobe seems like an attempt to disappear long before she graduated. She did graduate, though, and she left behind more than her tormentors. She left three broken boys who are still tied to her in some way. Did Royal pull her out of the river because he loved her? Is that why he no longer dates high school girls? I’m not sure if it’s better or worse if they loved her, that their love was so toxic she wanted to die rather than endure it.
But I understand why she changed her name and vanished.
“Why are your hands on my little jailbird?” Royal asks, stepping up beside Baron. He doesn’t sound like he’s going to kill him in the next ten seconds, but his nickname for me sounds forced, like he’s straining to hide his annoyance. The bell already chimed, and the other guys have slipped into class, leaving me with the three Dolce boys. Our annoyed English teacher swings the door closed, giving us a sour look as she leaves us in the hall.
“My hands aren’t on Harper,” Baron says to his brother. “They’re on her clothes—Mabel’s clothes.”
Royal glances over me like he’s just noticing that I’ve changed up my look. Today I chose a pair of beige linen pants that are probably out of season for people who care about that stuff, and a pale blue blouse with tan flowers and too many ruffles, which is now clutched in Baron’s death grip.
“Are those Mabel’s clothes?” Royal asks, sounding genuinely curious for once, like he’s actually going to take my word on it.
“What about it?” I ask, trying to play it cool.
“Are you trying to piss off my brothers, or are you just that fucking stupid?” Again, he sounds genuinely open to hearing my answer.
“I didn’t know,” I say quietly, not dropping my gaze from his. “So I guess I’m that fucking stupid.”
I really must be, too, because I can’t summon the rage and hate I’ve felt for them while they were gone. Now that they’re here, in the flesh, looking at me with real emotion, they’re just boys again, not monsters. I don’t even care that they’re telling me what I can and can’t wear. It’s not like they’re telling me how to dress. I’m walking around in a painful reminder of what they lost, and I feel ashamed of it and angry at Colt for not telling me the whole story. I might as well have shown up to school in their dead sister’s clothes.
“Go change,” Royal orders.
I wrap my fingers gently around Baron’s wrist since he’s still holding my shirt. “No one told me. I’m sorry.”
He pushes me back against the wall, but Duke holds up a hand. “Wait,” he says, narrowing his eyes at me. “Where did you get those?”
I glance from one boy to the next, my mind racing. I may be pissed at Colt, but no fucking way am I making things worse for him, even if Dixie’s right and he knew what was coming if he fucked with me.
“I don’t want to say.”
“I didn’t ask what you fucking wanted,” Duke snaps, stepping forward and looming over me, his eyes stormy and dark. “Tell me where you got those clothes.”
“From the thrift store.” It makes sense. She left, and she’s never coming back. Why wouldn’t they donate her clothes, make her room into the guest room that it looks like, as if no one ever lived there at all?
“Which one?” His hands are balled into fists, and the vein in the side of his neck is popping.
I open my mouth to make some smartass comment about him deigning to set foot in a thrift shop, but then I decide I like my teeth where they are, so I shrug and answer. I give them the name of a cute little resale shop called Lexi Lands It where the clothes are a little more upscale than where I actually shop. Second-hand designer clothes are more likely to be found there than anywhere else in town.
The twins exchange a look. “Guess we have our afternoon cut out for us,” Baron says before turning back to me. “You better hope you’re not lying.”
He turns and walks off, and Royal shakes his head at me like I’m too pathetic for words.
“I’ll take her to change,” Duke says. “I’ve got class with her, anyway.”
“Fuck no,” Royal says flatly before I can even get a word of protest out.
“Aw, come on, I’ve already seen her naked,” Duke says.
“Remind me of that again and I’ll rip your eyes out of your head and strangle you with your optic nerve.”
“You’re going to throw her to us when you’re done with her, anyway.”
“And until then, you don’t touch her,” Royal grinds out. “You don’t even think about her.”
“Chill the fuck out, she’s just a piece of ass,” Duke says, raising both hands in surrender. “I’ve seen a million. I don’t even remember what she looks like.”
“She’s my piece of ass,” Royal growls out, staring down his brother.
I clear my throat. “As much as I enjoy being fought over like I’m one bone between two dogs, I should probably interrupt this little display of alphaness to let you know I don’t actually have a change of clothes.”
“I’ve got, like, ten pairs of panties in my locker,” Duke says. “And probably a couple other pieces of clothes.”
I start to tell him I’m not going to wear the clothes his hookups wore, but since I’m already doing exactly that, I don’t have much ground for argument.
“I’m not wearing her underwear,” I say, glaring at him.
“Are you sure?” he asks. “Because you wouldn’t know they were hers, right? When you were digging through the bins, hers would have been the nicest ones.”
“I didn’t get my underwear there,” I grit out. Not that I’m above such things. When you’re fourteen and no one will give you a job unless you want to whore yourself out to truckers, and your mom hasn’t gotten out of bed for two months, you eat out of dumpsters and wear secondhand underwear or go without. But I’m not going to tell these guys anything to make them think I’m more disgusting than they already do. What do they know about desperation?
Royal tells Duke to go back to class and then drags me down the hall and out a side door. Another building sits off to the side, a gym that I’ve never been inside, since I don’t have PE or play sportsball. I eye the wall, thinking it would be a fabulous canvas for one of Zephyr’s masterpieces. I wonder if he knows it’s here.
“Were you in the hospital?” I ask as Royal pulls me across a stretch of dead grass. “Is that why you were gone the past two days?”
“No,” he says. “But I missed the game on Friday, thanks to you.”
I roll my eyes. “I seem to recall you stuffing me in your car and driving me out there. I have a right to defend myself.”
“You tried to fucking kill me.”
“Then I guess we’re even.”
He pulls open the gym door and roughly pushes me inside. “I say when we’re even.”
“Well, thanks for bringing me my stuff.”
“I didn’t bring you shit,” he snaps. Which is probably true. If he was in the hospital, his brothers brought it.
We step inside the cavernous building where a group of basketball girls are practicing, the squeaks of their shoes and the sound of the ball hitting the floor and bouncing off the rims echoing off the high ceilings.
“What are we doing here?” I ask, jerking my wrist free of Royal’s grasp. Without answering, he strides across the room, right through the middle of the court where they’re playing. He knows they’ll drop everything for him. Of course they do. They all gape at him with expressions ranging from exultant to wary. But they’re all watching. He’s Royal fucking Dolce. I wonder if he ever gets sick of it.
With a sigh, I follow him. He unlocks a wooden door at the side of the gym, and I can’t help but wonder how he has keys to everything. But I don’t bother asking. At this point, I’m not surprised by much that they have access to.
He steps into what looks like a storage room and opens a few boxes, rooting through what must be gym uniforms. “Are you wearing a bra?” he asks without looking up from his search, like he has every right to know that.
“Are you wearing boxers or briefs?” I shoot back.
He glances up, frowning. The asshole doesn’t even know he’s being invasive. He sizes up my chest. “It’s hard to tell,” he says, scrutinizing me. “Your tits are so small you probably don’t need one.”
“My tits are not that small,” I protest before catching myself buying into his bullshit. “Not that it matters. Last time I looked, I was a lot more than my chest size.”
“You’d better be,” he says, flashing me a smile. “Otherwise you’d fit in the palm of one hand.”
“Jerk.”
“Thumbelina.”
We stare at each other for a second, and then we both laugh. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him laugh, and even though it’s barely more than a chuckle, it makes my chest fill up like a fucking helium balloon.
“Just tell me if you’re wearing a bra,” he says, turning back to the boxes. “Because if you’re not, I’m not giving you a white t-shirt. I don’t need every guy in this school popping a semi because they can see your nipples through it.”
“I’m wearing a bra,” I say, rolling my eyes. “And it’s funny that you care about them seeing my nipples, but you don’t care about them seeing your creepy porn video of me giving head.”
He throws me a white T-shirt with the WHPA crest on the front. “Do you want them seeing your nipples, too?”
“No,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest and scowling.
He pulls out a pair of grey sweatpants and holds them up to my hips before going back to the boxes. Finding another size, he hands them to me and leans his elbow on the top box in the stack. I can’t help but marvel at the extravagance of every single thing in his world. There must be twenty boxes of brand-new clothes here, just waiting to be handed out as PE uniforms next semester. I can’t remember the last time I wore something that wasn’t owned by at least one person before me.
“Look, Harper,” he says, then licks his lips and glances at the door behind me. “I…” He shakes his head, like he’s decided against whatever he was going to say.
“What?”
“Go change your clothes,” he says. “The girls locker room is the next door on your right.”
“You’re not going to watch me change like a pervert?”
“Do you want me to watch you change?”
I’m taken back to that day in Mabel’s room, which feels like weeks ago even though it was only days. How it felt to have Colt watching me, to tease him a little and know he liked it. But Royal is not Colt. Just thinking about his eyes on me makes me have to swallow past the butterflies in my chest.
“No.”
“I told you I have no interest in your dirty cunt,” he says, his voice hardening. “Why would I want to see it?”
“Riiight,” I say. “You like the dry, hard ones, made of solid gold. I’m too soft and wet for you.”
He swallows, but his eyes stay hard. “Stop talking like a whore.”
“Oh, but what else could I talk like?” I ask, batting my eyes at him and slipping my thumbs into the top of my pants, like I’m going to pull them down and change right here. “According to you, that’s all I am.”
He strides across the closet and grabs my arm, spinning me around and marching me out the open door. The basketball girls watch him march me to the locker room. “Get off my dick and go put some clothes on,” he growls, shoving open the door and manhandling me inside.
He doesn’t follow.
My heart is pounding in my chest as I change, and fucked up as I am, I can’t help but picture him watching me the whole time, even though he’s not here. Every time I get close to him, I feel like I’m balancing on a precipice, and if I fall, I’ll either soar like a fucking phoenix in a shower of sparks that light up the sky like fireworks and make every single person on earth stare in wonder, or I’ll plummet straight to the depths of hell.
When I’ve changed, I fold Mabel’s clothes, but even seeing them doesn’t bring me down to reality. I’m high, intoxicated by Royal’s power, his danger. My insides are full of quivering, fluttering butterflies, and my mouth won’t stop smiling even though I’m as scared as I am exhilarated.
My hands are shaking and my stomach feels funny, like the time when I was a kid and I picked up a plate off the coffee table, and I thought my mom and her boyfriend had eaten something with powdered sugar, so I licked it. Mom and the guy came running when I screamed, and they laughed their asses off for the next fifteen minutes while I freaked right the fuck out because I couldn’t feel my throat and thought I was smothering.
As disturbing as that situation was in retrospect, this one feels equally fucked up.
I step out of the locker room and find Royal surrounded by four girls in basketball uniforms all staring up at him like he’s the lovechild of an ice cream sundae and Brody Villines. They all burst into a squeal of giddy laughter at something he says, though his expression is somewhere between bored and annoyed. I swallow my ugly thoughts and start toward him, determined to keep myself under control.
I’m not some starry-eyed little fangirl going to hover around giggling at his every word, though I understand the rush they must feel when he gives them attention, and I have to admit, it’s a bit tempting to join them. Instead, I set the clothes into his hands and head for the door. I don’t need a fucking escort, and I don’t like myself very much right now. Too many unwelcome feelings bubbling up inside me.
“Harper,” he calls after me, but I don’t turn.
Fuck him. I did what he wanted.
He catches me halfway out the gym door and spins me around to face him. “As much as I enjoy looking at your ass, don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.”
“Fine. Then say what you need to say. I’m missing class.”
He examines my face for a second, then smirks down at me. “You’re jealous.”
“Not even a little.”
We stare at each other a long moment, my foot already out the door, the damp air sweeping into the gym where all the girls are standing around just watching us, like they have nothing better to do than gape at the girl in the blowjob video and the guy they all worship. By the end of the day, the rumors will probably say he made me change because I had cum on my clothes.
“You said you were wearing a bra,” he says at last.
“I am.”
“I can see your nipples.”
I look down. “Yep, it’s winter and I’m in a t-shirt,” I say. “Good thing I have my own little thermometers on my chest to remind me when it’s cold.”
The bra hides the color of my nipples so they don’t show through the white tee, but there’s not much I can do about the rest. You’d think guys would get over the fact that girls have nipples, since they have them too, but I guess it’s a big fucking deal.
Royal considers for a minute and then nods. “Don’t fight this, and I’ll go easy on you this week,” he says, shrugging out of his letterman jacket. Twin instincts to preen and recoil tug at my body from opposite directions. He swings it around my shoulders, and the smell of him engulf me like a mixture of warm grass in the sun and his iron grip pulling me down into the depths of the icy river.
I hear the rush of whispers in the gym behind him, the hiss echoing up into the ceiling above. Something about the moment feels so surreal, I detach from my body for a second.
“What are you doing?” I growl through clenched teeth. For a second, all I can think about is how they said they let Colt keep his letter jacket. I wonder where it is now, if he burned it like I would have if I had a constant reminder that I’d been part of a team, something I loved, and that I’d never be able to play again.
An ironic smile tugs at the corner of Royal’s lips, not making it to his eyes. “Didn’t you know, everything I do and say is scrutinized and psychoanalyzed until everyone’s sure I’m making point whether I want to or not.”
“I wondered if that bothered you.”
“Why would it bother me?” he asks. “I fucking love it. Look, it’s that guy who was kidnapped and rose from the grave like a demon to rule the whole shitty-ass little town, like that’s an actual accomplishment. I wonder what he’ll do next. Let’s lock him up, not in jail but in a cage at the zoo so we can come by and stare any time we want. Maybe stick a needle in his brain and poke around in there, too. I bet he’s super fucked up.”
“Are you?” I ask, sliding my arms into the sleeves of his jacket. “Or do you just do all that shit to shock people because you’re pissed that they treat you that way?”
“Everyone wants a ticket to the Royal show,” he says, pushing open the door and ushering me out with a hand on my lower back. “Gotta give the fans what they want, keep ‘em coming back for more. Empty seats don’t line pockets, and unlined pockets don’t grease wheels.”
I hear the soft chime of the bell, and Royal shoots me a grin. It’s not the bitter one or an authentic one, but an unhinged kind of smile that reminds me of one of his brothers. “Watch this.”
