"Well, I have a lot to say to you." Beck clearly didn’t care either.
"Not another word." Our teacher was right beside us now.
"Don’t you have a girlfriend to go talk to?" I cocked my head to the side.
"I thought I was just the girl who you fucked around with because you have a hard-on for my stepbrother."
"Oh shit." That one came from behind me as the sudden gasps and shock rang out through the room.
“Ms. Vos, that is enough. Get your things.”
I pulled my gaze away from Beck long enough to look up at her. She was pissed.
I shoved my stuff back into my bag and waited for her as she filled out a slip for the headmaster’s office. My heart felt like it was going to burst from my chest, but it had nothing to do with her or the possible consequences of my outburst.
I didn’t care about either.
I took the note from her hand and walked out the door without another glance his way. The slip crumpled in my hand as I tried to rein in my anger.
I didn’t know why I had expected anything different, but I didn’t think he would confront me in the middle of class. But that was exactly who he was.
He thought he was untouchable and would get out of this situation completely unscathed, and I guess normally he would.
But he was wrong.
Whatever the hell these boys were used to here was unacceptable. I refused to be a doormat.
I didn’t care what his reasoning was.
I didn’t care how he had justified it in his mind.
I heard the door open behind me, but I didn’t stop. I stormed down the hallway without a backward glance.
It wasn’t until I felt a hand touch my arm that I spun around. Beck was standing there with his hand outreached toward me, and I jerked away before he could touch me again.
"We need to talk."
"We don’t need to do shit." My back hit the lockers behind me, and I hated that there wasn’t any more space to put between us. I would have put the world between us if I could.
"You have to know that I didn’t send that video out."
I heard his words, but I didn’t believe a single one of them.
I shook my head as I stared at him. I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. There was no way in hell I would believe anything he said now, after everything that he had done.
"It doesn’t matter."
"Like hell, it doesn’t matter." He was angry, but I stopped caring about his anger. "I didn’t want for things to happen this way."
He ran his fingers through his hair, and there was an overwhelming part of me that wanted to reach out for him. I wanted to forget everything that had happened and replace his hands with mine.
But I couldn’t be so stupid around him. I couldn’t forget a single moment of what he did.
"Then what exactly was your plan, Beck?"
He looked up at me, and his eyes appeared desperate. "I…" He hesitated, and I knew that he didn’t have any sort of excuse for what he had done.
"When I first met you, this was exactly what I had planned, but things changed."
"Nothing changed," I practically growled at him. How dare he stand here and try to pretend like I was anything more than a pawn to him.
"The fuck it didn’t." He moved toward me, and I didn’t have enough time to react. That was what I was telling myself. I couldn’t have pushed him away if I wanted to.
His body slammed against mine with no fear of hurting me. There was no gentleness as he gripped my chin in his hand and forced my face to face his.
His touch was as brutal as the rest of him, and I tried to calm my racing heart as his gaze quickly searched my face.
I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, but he didn’t give me the
opportunity. His mouth was on mine in an instant. His kiss as brutal as everything else, and I had no choice but to allow him to kiss my mouth desperately.
The warmth of his hard body surrounded me, and it was pointless to try to block out the way he smelled or the way it made me feel like every memory of us was crashing into me. I didn’t fight against any of it. Not his smell, his feel, the overwhelming way he intoxicated me.
I let it happen, and I would deal with the consequences later.
Because after everything, he still felt too good. Even after everything he had done, I still wanted him more than I had ever wanted anyone else.
That thought made me feel sick and furious and somehow still desperate for him.
And that was completely fucked up.
He was the one who hurt me, but he was also the only one who seemed to make everything feel better. He was the only one who could make me forget.
Because I did forget, if only for a moment. I forgot about what he did and the fact that I had no one. I forgot that my mom was no longer here and my dad didn’t give a shit about me.
I let my tongue roll over his one last time. I let my lips press firmly into his. This kiss felt so different than our last. The last time I kissed him, I thought that I was falling for him. This time I knew that I would never allow myself to fall for him again.
I brought my hands to his chest and pushed him away from me with as much force as I could muster. He stumbled backward and looked shocked.
He looked like he had whiplash from my sudden change of emotion, but I felt the same from him.
"Don’t touch me again." I straightened my shoulders and swiped my fingers over my lips. I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist him if I continued to allow him to touch me. His touch was catastrophic, and I knew that it was specifically designed to destroy me.
I refused to get lost in Beck Clermont.
I refused to allow him to use me and fuck me over as he had before.
He thought he was a god, untouchable, indestructible, but I was going to prove him wrong. He was going to fall at my hands, he would plummet from this position the others at this school had afforded him, and I was going to take back every ounce of my heart he stole from me.
CHAPTER TWO
BECK
Ihad no idea what I was thinking.
I was fucking things up left and right.
I knew that she would be back at school eventually, and I had planned out in my head exactly what I would say to her.
I had practiced it over and over while my father had yelled at me. I almost felt as guilty about disappointing him as I did about hurting her.
His anger was raw and pure, and I knew that he was disgusted with me.
He believed what I said as little as Josie did. He believed that I had posted that video.
It didn’t matter that I was capable of it. That it had been my plan all along. I had planned to destroy her reputation in that exact way while infuriating her father and Lucas. I knew her father would blame Lucas for what happened. If he hadn’t done what he did to Frankie, none of this would have happened.
But that was wrong.
There was no way I would have ever left her alone regardless of what happened. She was too beautiful and so different from everyone else in this town. She didn’t care that I was a Clermont or how much money my family had.
It was something I loved about her.
Well, not loved, but I liked it a lot.
It didn’t matter how she had reacted when I kissed her today. She had turned to putty in my hands. It had felt like nothing had happened to ruin us.
That I hadn’t ruined us. It felt like the rest of the world didn’t matter, but I
knew that feeling was fleeting and naïve.
When the only thing she saw was me, I took advantage of that fact and made her see everyone else. I made her realize that we weren’t the only two people that mattered.
I made her grasp the fact that I wouldn’t be the guy to protect her from the rest of the world. Whatever she had thought of me before, I demolished it.