Her Shame: A Dark Bully Romance (The Forgotten Elites Book 1) Read online

  My turn to be surprised, I suppose. Maybe I misjudged him.

  As soon as I think it, I realize my mistake. Instead, my eyes narrow at him as I look him over myself … wondering just how much of that was a lie.

  But from the look on his face, I’m not so sure. He doesn’t look like he’s lying.

  He just looks … bored.

  “Well, that’s perfect,” the nurse says, planting her hands on the table in front of her with an enthusiastic thud. “We would love it if you could run a small music class for our residents! I’ll make sure we find you a space. For today, I’ll just show you around, help you get the lay of the land, so to speak.”

  She wastes no time popping back up from her chair and leading us to the door and out into the main facility.

  As she shows us through the winding hallways and various rooms, I study Sterling out of the corner of my eye.

  It’s like I see a different person each time I see him. For someone who doesn’t seem to care what people think, he’s got hidden layers too, and I get the feeling I’ve only barely scratched the surface.

  Still, Sterling’s ‘hidden layers’ do little to magically fix the rift slowly widening between us. I see it as a good thing, really.

  Better to keep my distance from boys like him.

  Boys with eyes that draw you in and make you want to stay. With lips that …

  No.

  None of that.

  I tell myself I’m glad that when the day ends and we’re dropped back off at the school we wordlessly part ways.

  This is better.

  This is for the best.

  I head back to Mason House and plop down in one of the overstuffed chairs in the sitting room and stare out of the window, trying to get my mind straight. It’s been something of a week already. Ridgecrest is both everything I expected it to be … and nothing like I expected it to be, all at the same time.

  I’m not left alone with my thoughts for long, however, before Bridget enters, followed by Warren.

  She stops and stands conspicuously in front of me until I’m forced to look away from the window and up at her.

  “Oh, hey,” I say, my voice still sounding like it’s focused on the other side of the glass. “Where are you headed?”

  Before she answers, my head starts to clear a bit and I narrow my eyes at Warren by her side. “Are you … allowed to be in here?”

  Warren laughs.

  “Sibling privilege,” he says with a shrug. “They don’t seem to care.”

  Just then Alaska appears and plops down in the chair next to me, and Bridget and Warren take the opportunity to sneak away before they’re asked any more questions. I crack open my English book and attempt to start studying but my mind is still milling over the things Chase said to me in class, and my chilly conversation with Sterling before volunteer work.

  They both seem so different, but in their own ways … they both tried to tell me the same thing.

  To not care. At least, not so much.

  What would it feel like to not care? Not let anyone dictate anything to me? I can’t even begin to imagine how that would feel …

  Ms. Adams, the house mother, appears at the entrance to the sitting room and motions at me several times before I realize she’s actually trying to get my attention. I’ve just started to scramble out of my seat when her next words make me pause.

  “You have a phone call.”

  There’s only one person that could be.

  And I already have a feeling I’m not going to like what he has to say.

  “Hi Dad,” I say as I lift the phone in Ms. Adam’s office to my ear.

  “Hello, Aubrey.”

  His voice sounds stern. His words curt.

  I flinch, my fingers starting to twirl the ancient, curled line of the phone cord.

  “I heard you received some sort of disciplinary punishment,” he says. “Care to explain?”

  My eyes flicker up to Ms. Adams, who’s pretending not to listen in from her spot perched at her desk. Her hands move the mouse, but she never clicks it. Her fingers never so much as twitch toward the keyboard.

  “It was nothing Dad, some guys caused a scene at lunch and the dean decided to punish all of us to make a point.” I can hear an embarrassing whine in my voice. Why do I always feel like I’ve done something wrong when I talk to him? Why does he always make me feel like I’ve done something wrong?

  There’s a short bout of grumbling on the other side.

  “Regardless, I hope you realize how high our expectations are for you at Ridgecrest,” my father replies. “You are to stay out of any and all trouble, no matter the circumstances. I don’t like this new behavior you seem to be exhibiting. We hear of one more toe out of line and you better believe that you won’t be going anywhere near Brown or anywhere else for a while. Not if we have anything to do with it.”

  His tense voice takes me aback. He was furious when they found out what happened with the teacher’s aide, but this is a new level of malice. There is a deep distrust in his voice.

  One mistake and I’m the girl who can’t be trusted.

  “I understand,” I say, but I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  Part of me hopes he hears it.

  “I certainly hope so. This better be my first and only phone call like this. I expect a model student to emerge in the spring. Study hard, we’ll see you at the end of the summer.”

  “See you then,” I reply, but he’s already hung up.

  I glance up once at Ms. Adams before whispering just loud quiet enough that I don’t think she’ll hear, “Bastard.”

  I turn around to see Alaska standing in the doorway. My little transgression has left me jumpy, so I nearly start out of my skin at the sight of her.

  “What was that all about?” she asks. She leans around me to look at the phone, as if it’ll somehow give her a clue about what was said.

  I, meanwhile, have to force the frustration out of my voice as I push past her and out of the room. I don’t do a very good job.

  “My dad, he’s pissed about the gym cleaning. Thinks I’m already derailing my time here. ‘Not one toe out of line’ he said.”

  “So, does that mean you’re gonna bail on this weekend?” Alaska says with a raised eyebrow.

  I glance back through the doorway at the phone.

  If it weren’t for that phone call, maybe I would have.

  But that phone call from my father just had the opposite of its intended effect.

  No. I’m tired of being pressed into this perfect little mold. It’s time to choose for myself.

  Especially if I’m going to get punished for things that have nothing to do with me.

  “No way, I’m totally in,” I say with a resolve that sounds even a little shocking to me coming out of my mouth.

  Alaska smiles. “Excellent, get ready to have a legendary weekend.”

  Chapter Eight

  Saturday afternoon rolls around and I’m leaning into the mirror, liquid eyeliner brush in hand, attempting to execute that perfect wing I’ve seen all the girls wearing.

  I never knew my hand could shake this much.

  I gently press the thin brush to my lid and carefully pull it outward. A thin black line juts out from my eye like a sideways stiletto.

  Not bad.

  I bring the brush to my other eye and repeat the same motion. Except this one looks more like a swoop than a perfect line. I carefully attempt to straighten the line. It looks a little better, but now the line is thicker than the other one. I move my hand back to the other eye and thicken the line.

  I lean back slightly from the mirror and look at my handiwork.

  Ugh, more “horror show” than “sexy cat eye.”

  Alaska walks into the room and, as I turn around, she stifles a laugh.

  “Do you want some help?”

  “Please,” I laugh back.

  I thought we’d have left for her parents’ lake house already, but it turns out a day at
the lake isn’t the same for Alaska and the rest of the students here than it would have been for us back at Sisters of Virtue.

  I knew it the moment Alaska re-emerged from her trip to the bathroom with makeup on like she was about to walk the runway, not do a cannonball of the end of a poorly upkept dock. I didn’t even need to hear the clink of her weekend bag to know her glamour wouldn’t be accompanied by drinking Capri Suns.

  Ridgecrest might be a ‘reform school’ by name, but sometimes I think Sisters of Virtue was far more strict.

  Just another reminder that this place is really only about keeping us tucked out of sight until we’ve decided to behave.

  As it is, however, it just means that I’m several years behind the rest of the girls here—Alaska included—on the art of applying black smudges to my eyes so I look a little less like a pre-pubescent potato.

  My thoughts must be plain on my face, because Alaska suddenly bursts out in another bout of giggles before grabbing me a makeup remover pad so I can wipe off the thick, failed liner.

  She grabs the eyeliner brush and carefully applies two clean lines with the steady hand of a finely trained sniper.

  “There, much better,” she says. “Now, what are you wearing?”

  My stomach drops. “Uh, I was thinking this?”

  And that brings me to the other half of my problem. The one that can’t be solved with black ink.

  I motion to my plaid skirt and plain white t-shirt that I’m already wearing.

  Alaska bites her lip. “Oh, I think we can do better than that.”

  She begins to dig through her wardrobe. She pulls out a black crop top with “Ramones” written on it and a pair of high waisted leggings so soft, they feel as if they were made with the skins of poached baby seals.

  Which given the caliber of the students here … I’m careful not to look too closely at the label.

  “Here, I think we’re about the same size, put these on,” she says as she tosses them to me. “Can’t have you looking like you’re actually trying to let Ridgecrest get to you. That wouldn’t do, you know.”

  I tentatively pull my t-shirt and skirt off and slip into Alaska’s clothes. It takes a second to tug myself into the tight leggings, but I manage. I spin around and look in the mirror.

  Wow.

  The fit of the leggings makes my thin frame actually look like it has curves. The short top shows off a thin line of my flat stomach, which has been sucked in so much by the pants that it creates the illusion of someone who might actually not eat that second tart every night at dinner. The clean black eyeliner makes my eyes look deeper, darker.

  It’s not like I didn’t own leggings back at home.

  I just hadn’t been allowed to bring them with me to Ridgecrest. Part of the devil’s work, apparently.

  Never mind that when I was ‘seduced’ before, it was in a school uniform very much like the one I wear at Ridgecrest.

  And never mind that compared to these, my leggings before were practically sweatpants. These hug every curve of my body. And by every curve, I mean every curve.

  The whole look makes me look like the girls I used to watch from a distance. The “cool” girls.

  The ones who didn’t know, deep down, that a place like Ridgecrest awaited them if they ever dared step a toe out of line.

  Alaska looks me over once and nods.

  “Thank god,” she says, with a relieved sigh. “I was starting to worry there was no shape to you under that uniform.”

  I blush a little, but she just rolls her eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, “still not my type. Now hurry, my cousin is almost here and I don’t feel like getting a modesty lecture if Ms. Adams catches us.”

  I grab my purse and follow Alaska out into the hallway. Before we make it to the front door, Bridget pops out from the sitting room.

  “Whoa, is that Aubrey?” she says, eyeing me up and down. “I’d started to wonder if they’d put you in the wrong dorm.”

  The two of us blink at her in silence for a moment, daring her to actually say what she’s insinuating.

  She doesn’t back down, however much she begins to squirm under the weight of our combined gaze.

  She nods toward the bag in Alaska’s hand instead. “Where are you two heading?”

  “Party at my family’s lake house tonight,” Alaska says, and then suddenly—and much to my surprise—she leans back and looks Bridget over carefully for a moment before adding, “you wanna come?”

  I shoot her a confused look, but Alaska doesn’t so much as look at me.

  She’s just fixing Bridget with a careful stare of her own that I can’t read.

  What’s she doing?

  Bridget just scoffs. “Yeah, I think I’m okay. You two have fun with that.”

  “Got better plans?” Alaska asks, still unmoving.

  Now it’s Bridget’s turn to squirm again.

  “I just don’t think it’ll be … my scene,” Bridget says with a smug smile as she turns and heads up the stairs. But something about the smile seems … forced.

  I wait until Bridget is out of sight before I nudge Alaska. “What was that about?”

  She, in turn, just gives me a genuine grin. “I knew she wouldn’t accept,” she says. “I just wanted Bridget to know we had plans while she did not.”

  I take a half step back and nod at her appreciatively. “You’re the devil himself, you know that?”

  “Thanks,” Alaska says, swishing her hair over one shoulder. “A girl can try.”

  And with that we head across the quad to the front of the admin building where we’re allowed to check out our phones for the weekend. Mine is—as expected—just as I left it. No phone calls. No texts. I was never very popular, and after how I ended up leaving Sisters of Virtue, I kind of see that as a good thing.

  No one to hound me about what happened to me when I left.

  Alaska, meanwhile, makes a whistling noise between her lips as her own phone screen lights up.

  “Shit,” she mutters. “Guess I know what I’ll be doing on the drive up.”

  A few students are milling around on the grounds, but most have disappeared for the weekend. The campus feels strangely still and quiet as we head away from it toward a waiting car.

  Parked in front of the admin building is Alaska’s cousin. She looks about our age and sports bright red hair that hangs around her shoulders and a shiny nose ring. I take a deep breath before I hop in the car after Alaska.

  “Hey Paris, this is my roommate Aubrey Alaska says. ‘I forgot to mention her when we talked on the phone. I’m surprised you even understood what I was saying, what with the house mother hovering so close.”

  She rolls her eyes. “At this point, we should learn how to speak entirely in code.”

  “Awesome, nice to meet you Aubrey,” Paris says. “You ready to hit it? We bringing anyone else?”

  “Clark should be coming, I think I see him,” Alaska says, writhing around in her seat to look out the back window.

  I turn to follow her gaze, and sure enough, Clark appears from behind the admin building, sporting a tight t-shirt and jeans. He jumps into the front seat.

  No sooner has the door slammed shut then Paris hits the gas, and we leave Ridgecrest behind us.

  We arrive at the lake house about twenty minutes later. It’s secluded, just a little cabin in the woods by the lake, no houses anywhere nearby as far as I can tell. Paris parks the car and pops the trunk.

  “Can you guys give me a hand with this?” she says as she walks around to the back of the car.

  “Sure,” I reply. I walk around to the trunk and see what “it” is. A huge shiny keg.

  “Woah, you came through, awesome!” Alaska says gleefully.

  I eye her while I unzip the top of her bag and gesture at the tangle of bottles shoved inside her own bag. “As if this wasn’t enough?”

  Alaska’s grin widens. “Not with the weekend we’re about to have.”

  “Yeah, tha
t TA I dated last semester has really come in handy for a LOT of things,” Paris says with a wink.

  It takes all four of us to hoist the keg out of the trunk and carry it over to the house. We breathlessly drop it on the porch.

  “That’ll work, how many people we gonna have?” Paris asked.

  “Like a dozen or so, tried to keep it chill,” Alaska says.

  “Cool, alright, I’m gonna jump in the shower before everyone shows up.” Paris says as she unlocks the cabin and leaves us to marvel at the inside.

  Well, I marvel. Alaska and Clark just stumble inside and throw themselves on the sprawling couches to moan about the aches in their legs from the long drive.

  The inside of the cabin is what wealthy people think “rustic” is supposed to be. Dark exposed beams accentuate the high ceiling, various forest animals—certainly not hunted by the inhabitants of this cabin—are mounted on polished plaques on the wall, and real fur throws are draped across every piece of exquisite designer furniture.

  But all that is nothing compared to the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on one of the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen.

  The lake sparkles far down below the hillside, the water shimmering in the afternoon light where it peeks out between the tall pines. I can make out hints of a winding path leading down to a tin-roofed boathouse at the edge of the water. Far beyond the lake the mountains rise in the distance, a blue-tinged hue cast over them as the last remnants of morning mist rise between their peaks.

  Alaska’s family might call this a “lake house” but it’s more like a “lake castle.”

  At some point as I’ve been marveling at the view, Alaska must have managed to hoist herself up off the couch because she suddenly reappears at my side, two bottles of liquor in hand.

  “A toast to the evening?”

  “Set it up!” Clark calls from the couch before letting out a groan of his own as he tries to hoist himself up to his feet as well.

  Alaska grabs four glasses from one of the cabinets and pours a generous shot of clear alcohol into each one. I reach out and grab one, the smell of the booze burning my nose.

  “To making our parents proud!” Alaska says cheekily as she raises her glass.