Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
But they were steady again, and I saw them every-fucking-where. I saw them at school, parks, at the mall my dad owned, and sometimes even outside the servants’ apartment. To be fair to Help, she never made out with him in public. Not even a kiss. They sometimes held hands, and that alone made me want to go on a killing spree. I didn’t understand the burning hatred that flared every time I saw Dean. How it had transferred from her to him all of a sudden.
Trent and Jaime were desperate to keep us all together. We were the Four HotHoles. We ruled the fucking school. Together, we were invincible. Individually, we were each just another big-headed jock. I saw where they were coming from, I really did, so we still all hung out together. We sat together in the cafeteria. We nodded hello in the hallway. But we didn’t talk to each other much, and the subject of Emilia LeBlanc was tacitly taboo. She was like Voldemort. No one was to mention her name, and Dean pretended like she didn’t exist when he was around me. I tried to pretend she didn’t exist too, but of course I couldn’t.
Because she was fucking everywhere.
I thought about her even when technically I didn’t think about her. I thought about her when I worked out and when I hung out with my non-friends and when I played video games. When I studied and when I fucked girls—Jesus Christ, especially when I fucked girls—until at some point, I stopped fucking girls altogether because it reminded me that one day, one day soon, if it hadn’t already happened, Help was going to fuck that douchebag Dean.
I couldn’t let that happen. It didn’t make sense even to me, but I just couldn’t. She was mine. It sounded irrational, but that didn’t make it any less true. I didn’t have to slap my name on her ass when she walked into class that very first day. The way I teased her, taunted her. I was normally too busy with the shit that was going on in my life to bully people. Everybody knew that the new girl belonged to me.
I never in a million years would have dated her or even taken her out. She wasn’t worth the trouble. No girl was, and especially not her. Still, she was mine to play with. Case in point, from the very first time her eyes landed on me, she looked at me like she was already mine.
Swallow. Blink. Sigh. Blush. Look away. That was her routine every time I passed by her, even now.
But Dean didn’t care.
The fucker just. Didn’t. Care.
Maybe that’s why I did what I did toward the end of the school year. Help was going to celebrate her eighteenth birthday in a week, and even though Douchebag Dean (the name had real ring to it) never talked about her in front of me, I knew he was going to take her to a spa weekend somewhere fancy along the coast. It was all so stupid. Help wasn’t a spa girl. He should’ve known that.
If I were her boyfriend, I would have taken her to watch the cherry trees bloom. Or give her new painting supplies because the girl wanted to be a real artist and open a gallery or some shit. Not that I was her stalker or anything, like Jaime was with Ms. Greene before he started banging her. Emilia wore her weird personality like a billboard, proud and loud. From the way she dressed to how she was always covered in paint and doodled cherry blossoms everywhere.
Dean, he just liked the idea of her. Pure and innocent, with her sweet Southern accent, pretty dimples, and boho style.
But I knew her best.
I was in the weight room when Dean and I had our second conversation about her. It had been weeks since I’d planted my fist in his face, but my fingers still itched whenever he was close. This time we were in gym—an advanced weight-training class only open to seniors. We had to bench press together because we were both late and all the other machines were taken. I was spotting him while he pressed a set at one eighty. He was lifting more than his usual, and I could’ve sworn he looked a little juiced up.
He grunted like a beast with every push of the weights. My fingers floated below the bar, in case his body failed him. I wondered if he knew Help wasn’t the type of girl who was into veiny, muscled-bound knuckleheads.
“So you’re taking her to a spa,” I said. Straight to the point. I didn’t have time for fucking chitchat.
He rolled his eyes, his face sweaty and red, and let out a sigh. “It’s her birthday. Would you rather I ignored it?”