Rival (Briarcliff Secret Society Series Book 1) Read online

  He’s not close enough to tell.

  I say, “Does your fuck buddy want a coffee, then? It is her stash, after all.”

  “Such crass language from such a delicate flower.” Chase moves to a sit, setting the book beside him.

  I’m drawn to the movement, but we both hear the faucet shut off. He lifts his hand to his chin, holding a finger to his mouth. “Shh.”

  As if we’re doing something wicked behind Piper’s back.

  I’m oddly disturbed and turned on by the thought of getting into trouble with him, so I turn my back to Chase and finish the coffees. I make one for Piper, too, since it is her stash and it looks better for me if I steal and give at the same time.

  I say, as airily as I can, “I don’t care what you’re up to over there, or if Piper’ll be mad at you for it.”

  Chase’s stare holds steady, and even though I can’t see him, my body responds to his focus, growing achy and nervous.

  “Aren’t you curious as to what I’m reading?” Chase says behind me.

  My spoon clanks against a mug as I stir. “Your notes for the history project?”

  Chase's laugh becomes a growl: predatory and deep. “You could say it’s historic.”

  “Well, it’s nothing of mine, so I can’t say I’m intrigued.”

  Chase considers this. “Does that mean you might have something I want?”

  He says it with such a sexy curvature to his words that my kneecaps melt before I can yell at them to keep stiff as soldiers. “It’s a toss-up on what’s worse. Piper’s in-my-face despising, or this whole mystery façade you have going on that you think is so sexy.”

  It’s so sexy.

  “Aren’t you curious about what I think of you?” he asks, but the question mark lags, like he already knows the answer.

  “Pretty sure I’m already aware.”

  “I wonder how I’m progressing in your head,” he muses as if I haven’t spoken. “Piper puts on a show, you know, that’s completely unlike who she truly is. We’ve known each other a long time. Her opinion of you isn’t what you think.”

  Damn him for piquing my curiosity. I disguise it by handing him his coffee. “You’re not getting anywhere near my head, and the private thoughts of Piper sound like my personal nightmare.”

  Chase's finger curls against mine on the coffee mug’s handle, its stroke so light and delicate, my breath follows its touch. I can’t seem to pull my grip away.

  “There are some things between Piper and me that go unspoken,” he says, his finger still curved against my skin. “And there are … operations … at this school you will never understand. I’m looking out for her.”

  At my frown, Chase adds, “And I can’t seem but to want to look out for you, too. I wonder why that is?”

  His index finger moves, tracing my knuckle. Once my eyes meet his, he bites his lower lip. My attention drifts to his perfect Cupid’s bow.

  “Fine.” I pull my hand away, breaking his strange, hypnotic connection. “Have whatever kind of obsession you want. I’m gonna be late.”

  I turn before he can notice how pert my nipples are, how exposed and aching they’ve become without a bra to protect them.

  “How’s your new furniture?” Chase asks.

  Whirling to face him, I say, “How did you—?”

  The bathroom doorknob turns. “God, my head.” Piper sniffs as she steps out with a towel wrapped around her torso. Upon closer inspection, her eyes are swollen and rimmed red—like she’s been crying. “I need coff—Chase, what the hell? You’re supposed to leave before the rest of the dorm wakes up!”

  Chase shrugs, and with that movement, he deftly knocks back the full cup of hot coffee. He lowers the mug, entirely unaffected by the burning, caffeinated flames that must’ve flared up in his mouth. “Relax. No one will care.”

  “That’s not the point,” Piper says. Her eyes snap to mine. “What the hell are you standing there for? This is none of your damn business. Scurry back to your room, rodent.”

  Her crabbiness sets me straight. I take one final look at Chase, but he ignores my silent prompt to answer my previous question just as easily as he dismisses Piper’s name-calling.

  “Thanks for looking out,” I say to him, then force a fake smile for the both of them. “Have a nice day, you two.”

  I ease into my room, but I’m saddled with more questions, hormones, and want than any woman should have to experience before 7 AM.

  17

  By the time the clocktower tolls its bell for lunch, my shoulders ache so badly from carrying a backpack laden with books that I’m close to crawling the rest of the way to the dining hall.

  I tread through the hallways, thinking, This is it. This is the literal straw that broke Callie’s back.

  And there’s only one solution: use my assigned locker.

  I’m no dummy. A student’s locker is open season for their enemies, and there’s no reason to think it’d be any different at a private school. Maybe it’s worse here, since these kids have nothing to worry about outside of their cushy, padded future. It allows boredom to take over, and with monotony comes the devil’s work.

  I heft my bag higher on my shoulders and dip into the West Wing, happy that by my third day here, I’ve come to know the school grounds better.

  Locker 4323 is harder to find than I imagined, as the long, dark mahogany lockers (yes—they’re fancy wood), don’t vertically line the hallway. Instead, they’re formed into 3/4 squares, much like you see in fitness center changing rooms. I peer into five of them before finding mine, nestled in one corner.

  On the outside, my locker appears unharmed and lemony fresh. Not one scratch mars any of these doors. I doubt I’m in the type of area where students tag lockers with spray paint. No, these kids are crafty.

  I’d unintentionally memorized my locker combination when I received the Briarcliff Incoming Student Paperwork, having inherited a knack for numbers from my biological dad—according to my mom, since she insisted there was no way it could’ve come from her.

  My lips pull down in a wry twist. To this day, I’m stuck on the fact that Mom never gave me a name for him, but she gave me his penchant for numbers.

  “It’s not worth it, Calla,” Mom’s ghostly voice whispers in my head. “It was a one-night-stand. I don’t remember him, and he doesn’t remember me. Heck, I never told him I was pregnant…”

  Mom never hid the fact that nineteen-year-old Meredith Ryan didn’t make the best decisions in life.

  I shake off the sad reminder, spinning the combination. It unlocks with an innocent click.

  These lockers are much wider and taller than public school issued tin cans, and the door is heavy with quality as I pull.

  If you could see me now, Mom, with a walk-in closet for schoolwork storage—

  I scream as a wet, furry stink engulfs me.

  Passing students freeze at my distress. The ones at their lockers around me jump and scatter back.

  “Get them off, get them off!” I yell, but no one wants to touch me.

  Dancing backward, arms flailing, I fall into someone’s chest before I stop writhing. Strong arms wrap tight, and as I struggle, I think I hear, “Calm down, Callie. You’re fine.”

  I fight against the hold, freeing myself and spinning around.

  “I’m not fine!” I shout. “Someone put fucking dead rats in my locker!”

  I catch my breath and realize I’m shouting at Chase. He’s the one who caught me. The one who held me and murmured words of comfort.

  He also could be the one that did this. Or knows who’s behind it.

  Piper.

  Chase's face hardens as he takes in the scene. He snaps his fingers at the dawdlers, some laughing, others retching in horror.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” he says, so faint there’s no way they’d hear.

  But they do. And like proper, terrified sycophants, they scatter to the wind upon Chase's command.

  I trip back, my heel landing on so
mething squishy, and I yelp.

  “This is so overboard.” I can’t stop gasping. “You people are so fucked up in the head, you know that?”

  And I was too lost in the haunting of my lifeless mother to remember any caution when unlocking my damned locker. A mind-fuck of its own accord.

  “I didn’t do this.” Chase's voice doesn’t rise in tone.

  “I don’t care,” I seethe. “We both know who the mastermind is. I’m reporting her to Headmaster Marron so she can be the one to clean up these corpses—”

  Chase hooks my arm in an iron grip as I attempt to pass. “Don’t.”

  “Like I’m going to listen to you,” I hiss. “This has gone too far. There’s … God … there’s like seven dead rats here.”

  “Ten,” Chase says, his eyes flicking back and forth as he counts in his head.

  I wrench my arm away. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “Not to you,” he murmurs, his attention still on the poor rodents on the ground.

  “Piper needs to pay for this,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “It wasn’t her.”

  “Oh, no?” I’m on a roll now. “Do you know anyone else who’s chosen to make my life hell? Any other girl who’s thrown trash over my head, destroyed my room, and given me the name of a rodent? Anyone? Come on, Chase, even you can’t be this dense.”

  He crosses his arms, meeting my stare. “Piper wouldn’t touch a rat, even if she had one of those grabber tools for old people.”

  I’m about to argue, but sadly, in my brief time of knowing Piper, I can believe that much. “Then who did?”

  Chase's chin lifts, his intense scrutiny changing to one of languid survey. “Don’t know. Don’t care. All I can say is, it’s a mistake to report her to Marron.” Before he turns to leave, he says over his shoulder, “This is me looking out for you, by the way.”

  “Leaving me among a bunch of rat bodies?” I say. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  Chase’s strides don’t slow as I launch my retort. I don’t expect them to.

  Sighing, I turn back to my locker, pinching my nose at the smell. I use the back of one of my books to usher the rest of the tiny, mauled bodies out, and decide to leave my locker door open and empty so the stench can dissipate.

  “Gross,” I mutter to myself. “Gross, gross, gross.”

  Once the last of the furries leaves my space, something shadowed and bunched up in the bottom back corner catches my eye.

  I lean back—not in—just in case it’s alive. When I don’t see additional movement, I tentatively reach in and bat it out, just in case it really is alive.

  A rose falls onto the marbled flooring. Wilted white petals hang off a stem tied with an ebony bow.

  “Miss Ryan?” a voice asks from behind, and I startle to attention.

  Dr. Luke strides toward me, his stare roaming across the tiny, rotting bodies scattered on the floor.

  I step forward. “It wasn’t—” but can’t finish my sentence. Something wet squelches under my sole, and I yelp before leaping into his arms while kicking the corpse away.

  Dr. Luke’s arms tighten to catch me, then release as soon as my forehead hits his chest.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” I stutter, but he’s shaking his head.

  He says softly, “Don’t bother with detention today. Go to the headmaster’s office. Now.”

  I don’t argue.

  How can I, when there are a bunch of rotting rats at my feet?

  I do as Dr. Luke asks, but not before grabbing the rose and hiding it my bag.

  “If that heinous shrew wants me out of here,” I say, slamming my lunch tray onto the table. Ivy and the scholarship kids jump. Eden doesn’t react. “She needs to do better than becoming Briarcliff’s pest control Employee of the Month.”

  “I heard,” Ivy says as I slump down across from her.

  “Judging by the stares and pinched noses as I passed the dining hall’s tables, everyone’s heard the latest,” I say.

  “That was some twisted shit,” Mercy says beside me. “The whole school’s buzzing about it.”

  Eden lifts her attention from her food, her expression bland as she picks at her truffled mac and cheese. “Any idea who it was?”

  “Piper,” I spit. “It had to be her. Or her minions.”

  I don’t mention the rose, its presence the one uncertainty in an otherwise flawless argument. Piper may not have wanted to touch poisoned rats from the basement cellars, but one of Chase’s guys would. My money’s on Tempest, the one most likely to have killed kittens as a toddler.

  I twist in my chair and observe Chase and his buddies—these Nobles Ivy speaks of, lounging and belly-laughing as they enjoy their lunch, content in their own, isolated world. Thinking they’re better. Royals among peasants.

  Chase must’ve let his royal court out to play, because he’s strangely absent from the scene. Piper’s also gone, probably finishing detention with Dr. Luke, while I was given a reprieve from it by Headmaster Marron. He considered being reamed by him out a suitable substitute.

  “They think they’re invincible.” I seethe through my teeth. “Someone, at some point, needs to do to them what they do to us.”

  “Callie…” Ivy pleads, eyes wide when I turn back to her. “It’s in your best interest to just ride the wave until they get bored.”

  Mercy, Paul, and another person I can’t remember the name of, nod their agreement.

  Eden murmurs her dissent. She says, “Wake that inner beast, Callie.”

  I say, “I was threatened with expulsion because of them.”

  Ivy gasps. “But you’ve only been here three days!”

  “I had to sit through an entire twenty minutes of Marron’s tirade.” I gesture with my fork. “When he stopped yelling to take a breath, I managed to convince him I had trouble remembering where my locker was, never mind where the pest traps are in this building—oh, and the slight logical problem of me vandalizing my own locker with rat corpses.”

  “To put it simply, Miss Ryan, we’ve never experienced a vileness of this sort in all our one hundred and seventy years of education,” Marron had said. “By process of elimination, you’re the single variable we’ve added recently, and these ‘injustices,’ as you see them, keep happening to you, and you alone.”

  Injustices, I realized, when Marron’s computer went to screensaver mode and I saw the photo, that Marron will never believe Piper and her cohorts are behind.

  On the pixelated screen, Marron had his arm slung around Willow’s shoulders while holding a fishing pole. Willow grinned widely at him, strands of her auburn hair flying into her face from the wind. Sections of an expensive, white yacht and an exquisite, foreign coastline painted their background with white and turquoise dream colors.

  Willow must be his kid or a close relative, since she doesn’t have his last name. Either way, she’s besties with Piper. There’s little chance Marron would side with me over those two. I’m the unchartered variable within this mess.

  So why the hell am I targeted with these roses?

  “Ivy,” I say, “Did you know Willow Reyes is related to Headmaster Marron?”

  Ivy starts at the statement. She swallows then sets down her fork. “Shit, I didn’t think it’d matter, but yeah, she’s his daughter.”

  “That settles it.” I slouch against my chair, folding my arms. “I’m screwed. They can do whatever they want to me without any consequence. God, that pisses me off.”

  “From my perspective,” Eden says, keeping focus on her plate. Her hair becomes a curtain around both sides of her pockmarked face. “That also means you can do whatever you want without getting in trouble. Black ops were invented for a reason.”

  I blink at her. “You’re right. I can be as devious as them.”

  “Now, now,” Ivy says, placing her hand on the table between Eden and me. “I don’t think escalating this war is the answer. I swear to you, Callie, Piper has the attention span of an indoor Pers
ian cat. She’ll move on as soon as you stop reacting.”

  “Do you know what cats do to their prey?” I ask. “They bat them around, flaying them with their claws and teeth until their prey can’t strike back. Then, the cat shakes the animal until they break their neck. And the poor thing isn’t even dead yet.”

  After a beat of silence, Eden says, with her mouth full, “I’m gonna like you.”

  Mercy’s plate scrapes as she low-key shuffles her chair away. I ignore her, because if Mercy’s offended by my grotesque description of a cat’s meal, then she’ll have a hell of a time surviving outside of this preppy-ass school when she graduates.

  “I don’t want to be Piper’s mouse, Ivy,” I say.

  Ivy holds up her hands. “Fair enough.”

  I’ve lost my appetite and push my lunch away. Maybe I should’ve just let Marron expel me. Then I’d be able to go back to my old school and my old friends … who want nothing to do with me and are now #couplegoals on Instagram. Not to mention, I’d leave here with no luggage and a big, bold EXPULSION written on my transcript.

  If my aim is to go to a good college, then staying here and weathering this garbage storm is my only choice. With them.

  “I’ll be in my room until classes start again,” I grumble, and push to a stand.

  “Don’t go, Callie,” Ivy says. Her face grows serious as she thinks. “I know … let me take you on a tour of the boathouse down at the lake.” When she sees me wince toward a no, she adds, “It’s a nice day. You can shake off some of that negative energy before afternoon classes.”

  I waver at her words. Should I stew at the injustice in my room, or enjoy a gorgeous walk of the school grounds, something I’ve yet to make time for?

  “You win,” I say.

  Beaming, Ivy stands. “Excellent! Plus, there’s the added bonus of fresh air, beautiful landscaping, a bright sun in a cloudless, early September sky—”

  “Relax, Ivy,” I say, laughing as she rounds the lunch table toward me. “You had me at ‘cooling off.’”

  “Let’s go,” she says and weaves her hand around my arm to pull me through the aisle. “Before you change your mind. Bye, guys!”