Love Me, Baby: A High School Bully Romance (Silver Creek High Book 3) Read online

  LOVE ME, BABY

  __________

  A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance

  Silver Creek High, Book 3

  __________

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  Belladona Cunning

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 by Belladona Cunning

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written consent from the author, except for quotations in a book review.

  All places, people, and instances are merely coincidental and are in no way a direct reflections of persons living or deceased.

  A NOTE FROM BELLADONA

  You never know what life is going to toss your way.

  Just remember, you’re strong. There’s nothing you can’t do.

  The road less traveled may be tough, but it’s your road, your destiny.

  Make it your bitch!

  B.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  LOVE ME, BABY

  COPYRIGHT

  A NOTE FROM BELLADONA

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  BLURB

  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

  EPILOGUE

  OTHER BOOKS BY BELLADONA CUNNING

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BLURB

  Some secrets have deadly consequences.

  There are mysteries running amuck in Silver Creek.

  My family’s being the deadliest of them all.

  Except, my guys are more determined now than ever to keep me safe.

  Even if it costs them their lives.

  They were my tormentors. My bullies.

  Now … they’re my saviors.

  I can’t lose them.

  It will be a fight to the very end.

  But I refuse to fail.

  Then again, it may not be my choice.

  CHAPTER 1

  Callum

  Something’s not right. I can feel it in my bones, and with every inhale and exhale. My stomach tightens with nerves, and it’s not from the thought of what we’ll be doing later, either.

  No, this is a different emotion entirely. It charges the air, allowing a thick tension to settle in my bones. Even the streets have an eerie quietness to them, which, even in this small town, isn’t a good omen. It’s like nature knows something we don’t; as if she’s telling us we need to do something—but what?

  “Do you feel it, too?” I hear Ellis ask from the back seat.

  It shouldn’t surprise me he picked up on the noticeable difference exuding throughout the interior of my car. Even with the heat blasting on high, anyone can feel the noticeable, chilling shift. I can’t pinpoint when it happened, either, which bugs me. All I know is everything felt right, perfect. Until it didn’t.

  Plus, Ellis has always been in tune with his surroundings. It doesn’t matter if he’s sleeping, half blitzed out of his mind, or knocked unconscious—Ellis will always come out of it and scan the area surrounding us. Considering who his father is, he has to be that way. Ellis has been through more in his short life than any person I know, even Jessalyn. And that’s saying a lot because we still don’t know the fullest extent of her abuse. He’s treated as nothing more than a scrap of gum on the bottom of his father’s shoes, and it’s only the glimmer of light his mother shines into his world that keeps him grounded.

  “Yeah.” I exhale again, trying to release the ball of dread in my gut. It doesn’t work, though. Only makes it thicker and more constricting.

  I shift in my seat, taking one of my hands and lightly rub in circles on my queasy stomach. Only, it doesn’t stop. It continues to grow and grow. The pressure mounts to a fever-pitch, but I still can’t determine where it’s coming from. I try to think back to the exact moment when this feeling began encompassing me, but the only thing I can come up with is the point we dropped Jess off at her house. It was light then, almost unrecognizable. But the moment I pulled away from the curb, it rushed forward with a roaring force.

  “Maybe I should call her to see if everything’s okay,” Asher pipes up, and I can hear the same sense of dread lingering in his tone.

  With a nod, I pull up to the stop sign right in front of the school. I don’t know why, but there’s a part of me that makes me feel like I need to glance in its direction. My heart steadily beats inside my chest as my eyes skim over the structure besides us. My eyes scan over the brick and mortar, and I see something that piques my interest. There’s a lone light shining on the second floor, not enough to cause anyone to stop and notice if they weren’t looking for it, but it’s enough I can catch it. That’s when I notice there’s a car sitting in the schools parking lot, too.

  Something about seeing it and that light has red flags flying. No one is supposed to be at the school at this time of night. A security guard and janitor are the only two allowed in the school, walking and cleaning Silver Creek High’s hallways. And the guys and I have had our fair share of breaking and entering when it comes to SCH, so I know the car in the parking lot isn’t Jeff, the security guard, or Tommy, the janitor.

  Who could it be?

  “She’s not answering.” Asher’s words bring me back to the car, causing the knot to form thicker.

  I don’t know where my unease is coming from, but I can’t stop myself from snapping back, “Try again.”

  She could be in the process of getting out of that hot-as-fuck dress she wore tonight. What would make it better is if we got to do that; if we got to worship her body like the piece of sublime, tantalizing beauty it is. I salivated when I saw her in front of her mirror, swaying back and forth. The need to rip her dress up to her waist and sink balls deep became almost unbearable.

  All four of us know she’s having a hard time coming to terms with her feelings, and while we’re all waiting patiently, I find myself ravenous for a taste. It’s much stronger, this feeling. Different from the one I had for her freshman year. Every time I see her there’s this part inside of me that brightens, unfurls with a lightness I haven’t felt in years.

  She branded my soul with her mark, and I’ll proudly wear it for the rest of my life.

  If only I could get this feeling to go away. It’s agonizing in its presence—almost stifling.

  “She’s not answering texts or calls, Cal,” Asher chokes out.

  Don’t freak out just yet. There’s probably a good explanation, I inwardly chastise myself, inhaling a large inhale to clear my frantic mind.

  Maybe she’s in the shower, or getting something to eat, or just ignoring us until we get back. That sounds like something Jess would do, anyway. Her head’s been all over the place since before we left for her father’s tonight, and I know when the Whitney bomb dropped that she was feeling more out of it than usual. I just ha
ve to remind myself that she’s not used to this world yet. The world of fine dining, fake smiles, and knives behind our backs ready to plunge them into someone else’s.

  She’s innocent, even if she likes to think she’s not. Nothing she could ever tell me would make me think otherwise. Jessalyn may have had something taken from her, but she didn’t let its absence crumble her. She fought, rose above it—she became the bad ass I always knew she was capable of.

  Still, that doesn’t mean it didn’t rip me up inside when I learned the things I have. I crumbled, fell, and was nothing more than torn shreds of myself on the floor of my bedroom. No one said a word when she left—no one even uttered a syllable. It’s as if we were thinking about everything, we’d done to her until that point, and the guilt ate us alive.

  It’s the reason I know she’ll always hold that against me, more so than the other three. I was the ringleader; the person with the closest connection. People think Jess is this beast of a person, but she’s not. She does what she has to in order to survive. And I hurt her in the most precarious time in her life without rhyme or reason, even though at the time I believed I did. She won’t forgive easily, but my determination to make it up to her knows no bounds.

  I will have her for the rest of my life, and I don’t care what I have to do to prove my worth.

  “Quinn, why don’t you try,” I say, pulling away from the stop sign.

  The steady thrum of my engine hums through the interior of the car, rattling it. I watch from my peripheral as he holds the phone to his ear for several minutes, then pulls it away with a sour look on his face. He peers down at the phone as if it wronged him in some way, and I can honestly concur with that sentiment. Even when Jessalyn has a million things to do, she’s never far from her cell phone. Surely, she knows we’re calling and texting her by now.

  “No answer.”

  Dread settles in my bones like black mold, sticking to every available surface. I’m eaten up with it, worrying. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t seem to shake this feeling that something’s wrong. Most usually, I don’t go with my gut instinct, not since hearing what Jess had to say to us that night. But there’s something about this one time that’s clambering for me to take notice, asserting itself front and center, so I can’t ignore it as easily.

  I pull up to another stop sign, my house glaring at me from up the street. I twist around until I get my phone out. Ellis is doing the same, but instead of calling, I can hear the tiny pinging noise from the various texts he’s sending. I spy the time, noting it’s only been about ten minutes since we left her house. It will feel like forever if we have to wait the full thirty, and honestly, I don’t know if we’ll be able to. Not if we’re all feeling like this.

  I run through my contacts, then press dial when I get to hers. My mind whirls and whirls with possibilities as I hear it connect, then ring. The more times it rings, the more that knot tugs in awareness. Each sound seems to echo inside my ear, begging me to take notice, but every time there’s an excuse lying on the tip of my tongue.

  It isn’t until my gaze connects with the rear-view mirror, and I see Asher reclining in my back seat, that a flash of something runs through my mind. A memory of sorts that beckons me to remember.

  “I don’t care what you have to do. End it. You wanted your place—well, this is your chance. Do it or it’s all over.”

  I sit up on the couch, rubbing sleep from my eyes. Shadowing my father took a lot out of me today, seeing the ins and outs of the business I’ll be running when I graduate high school. He says it’s important for me to be hands on, because if I’m not hands on, then people will think they can do anything they want. They will believe they can decide without even asking me, even I do not find that acceptable.

  “Mom? Who are you talking to?”

  She gives me a smile, but even I can see it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She’s been like this ever since I started dating Jess, and no amount of begging will get her to tell me why. She always tells me it’s nothing, that she’ll get used to her baby boy dating, but even I know there’s an ounce of truth in that pound of lie she’s feeding me.

  “It’s nothing, dear, just a little business. Everything will be fine soon.” Her heels click against the floor as she leaves me behind, flopping back down onto the couch as I go over everything she said.

  There’s something going on with my mother, but I don’t exactly know what. All I know, for a fact, is that it’s bad news.

  “Cal,” Ellis slaps at my shoulder frantically. “Callum, what the fuck, man?!”

  My breath whooshes in and out harshly, forcing my chest to rise and fall with hurried pants of air. “W-What?”

  My eyes blink rapidly as the street in front of me comes back into view. It’s still deserted, so I don’t know why Ellis is snapping like he is. Scaring the shit out of me while I’m driving is not the way to get to our destination unscathed.

  “You blanked out there for a second. What’s wrong?”

  “I-I’m not sure.” I swallow hard, almost choking on the tightness in my throat. Damn, I need some water. Anything to wash away the dryness in my throat. “Maybe we should go back and check on her. I—there’s something not right.”

  All of them nod. I make an illegal U-turn in the middle of the road and set back off toward Jess’ house. The blood in my vein’s buzz with apprehension the closer we come to her house. We’re ten minutes away, yet it feels like a lifetime. I can’t describe the emotions cascading through me, but they are one right after another. It’s a frenzy zone inside my head and I can’t properly compute which string of thought to land on. I can’t think past the sound of my heart beating in my ears. Only the need to get to her sings above all others.

  That’s when it hits me. All the emotions I’m feeling and the looming despair I send. It’s the same feeling from that night when someone woke me up on the couch. The daunting, twisting sense of wrongness you just can’t ignore.

  I press the gas down to the floor, my car speeding down the silent streets. As I pull to a stop in front of her house, my brakes squeaking just the tiniest amount, it sounds like a blow horn in the utter quietness of it all. All four of us peer out through my driver side front and back window, trying to sneak a peek inside.

  Only, we can’t. I notice they have drawn the shades on every window in the front, and even the tiny window in the garage off to the right. The only car sitting in the driveway is Jessalyn’s, and that begs the question of where Debra’s is. During all the commotion earlier, I didn’t even take into account that it’s not there.

  “Where’s her mom’s car?”

  “Maybe she put it in the garage,” Asher says. “I can remember Jess telling me she does that sometimes when she’s in a mood.”

  But why would she now? She wasn’t trying to be incognito.

  “I don’t know,” I murmur, my eyes searching all over the house. “Why would she hide it inside if she was making so much racket when we were at the door? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Let’s go see then.” Ellis nudges me forward with his hand. “Jess won’t be too mad at us. And I don’t plan on having her yelling at me for anything other than my tongue being on that delicious cunt of hers.”

  I nod, contemplating. When anything sexual is involved Jess forgets about a lot of her anger. That’s one thing I like most about her. She’s not in her head like all the other people in this town, she allows her body to do the thinking for her.

  I grab the handle, then push open the door. I come to my full height as Ellis steps out after me, and Asher after Quinn. Shutting the doors, we make our way to the house. I unbutton my jacket along the way and a few buttons on the top of my button down. It makes it feel less constricting and also helps me think.

  Stepping up onto the front stoop, I prepare and smile and reach out to turn the door handle. It’s unlocked, which I will have a talk with her about later. It’s not something new between us, but since it’s so late at night, Jess needs to lock it. You n
ever know what crazy lurk in the shadows.

  I fire off a smirk over my shoulder, trying my best to dismiss the ball of dread settled in the lining of my stomach. I see matching grins on all the other guy's faces, but when I go to step forward, I almost run into the door. A front door that is unlocked yet does not open.

  “What the …” I try again, this time putting all my weight into it.

  Again, it doesn’t budge, not even an inch.

  “Get it open, man. It’s probably just wedged shut or something.” As much as Quinn likes to have everyone believe he’s a badass, even I can’t deny the worry evident in his voice. It’s the same uncertainty that has completely encompassed my body in a state of fear and paranoia.

  I go to try a third time, but something freezes the blood in my veins. My hand tightens on the doorknob until my knuckles blanch white. Horror cloaks my body within its robes, teasing and taunting me. It has all of us scattering around the house, our loud, boisterous yells filling the night air.

  We hear Jessalyn … scream.

  We hear a blood-curdling cry for help mere seconds before a loud, viscous thud.

  CHAPTER 2

  My body trembles in apprehension, knees silently knocking against the carpeted floor. My heart thuds a heavy resonance in my chest, threatening to pound its way through my ribs.

  There’s nowhere to run; nowhere to hide, except under this bed. He’s going to find me, eventually. I’m surprised he hasn’t yet. Typical me, hiding in the same place the girl from the movie ‘Prom’ did when her family’s murderer was in her house coming for her. Everyone always knows the first place to look for someone is under the goddamn bed. How stupid can I be?

  I have no idea what he’s going to do; no idea what his final plan is. I guess, out of all this, even with Debra lying above me, cut up and dead, that’s the part that I fear the most. It’s ignorant and childish if you think about it, but it’s the only thing I can focus on at a time like this.