Wicked Blue Bloods: A Highschool Bully Romance - Crestwood Academy Book 1 Read online

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 2019 by Devyn Forrest

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Devyn Forrest holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Connect with Devyn

  Chapter One

  The truck ripped across the mountainous roads, flirting with the edge of ragged cliffs and the frigid night air made the windows fog white. My fingers clenched the steering wheel and my heart surged in my throat. I knew before we hit that it would be over — all of it.

  Three tires screeched as one of them exploded. My lips parted, giving a wild, ravenous scream. There was a feeling of impossible, never-ending floating—my arms hovering in the air and my stomach tearing itself open. I no longer had any idea of up versus down, right versus wrong. Maybe hours later, maybe just seconds, and then the front nose of the truck tore through an enormous oak.

  Everything turned dull— black. Wet with blood dribbling down my forehead and across my lips and between the crack of my breasts.

  What happens to your body when you go somewhere else? Does it matter if you were ever beautiful or the state it was in?

  Wild thoughts ran rapidly through my firing brain. I couldn’t control it. And then—all at once—

  I woke up.

  I blinked above me, at the weird crack in the ceiling that had been there since we had moved in. I was only eight-years-old. That was right after Mom had nabbed her first nursing job at Ridgewood Hospital and we had gotten out of the rickety apartment. I rubbed my eyes and sucked in a breath, disoriented and still a bit lost from my dream. Since everything had happened, those dreams came to find me in the middle of the night almost weekly—ripping through any beautiful teenage fantasy I was having and reminding me of well...

  Just how shitty everything had gotten.

  I heard Mom hustling around downstairs. It was mid-October, although who could tell in Southern California. The seasons dribbled together and the sun never stopped shining. I knew Mom had had a late-shift last night at the hospital. She worked in the ER frequently, which meant she had been on-call that night.

  The night it had happened.

  Sometimes, I wondered what went through her head on that drive to the ER, knowing I was hidden somewhere among the white-washed halls of that hospital, unconscious and bleeding out...

  I kicked my long, slender legs out from under the blankets and padded toward my closet, drawing out a little yellow dress, a bra for the breasts that had just made themselves worthy in the past six months and some underwear. It’s weird that I had almost died and then gotten tits. Life kept you on your toes.

  I had showered the night before and swung a brush through my thick dark locks as I glanced at myself in the mirror. I blinked and my eyes trailed to the scar that was stitched across my right collarbone— a constant reminder of that horrible night.

  “Honey! Breakfast is ready.”

  Mom’s voice was sweet and syrupy, despite the fact that she probably hadn’t slept in some twenty-four-hours. I rushed down the steps to find her standing at the stove. She was slender and beautiful, cut-from-a-catalogue mother, only thirty-six-years old and in the prime of her life. At least, she should have been. She held a coffee mug near her lips and gave me a secretive grin. Only her eyes looked a bit heavy, showing her fatigue, and that sadness that I knew would never really go away.

  “There she is. Thought I’d never get you out of bed.” She grinned and took a sip of her coffee.

  “Isn’t there some research about teenagers needing ten plus hours of sleep?” I asked, reaching for a piece of toast and then slathered it with peanut butter. My anxiety from the dream fell away slowly.

  “Maybe they should just go the extra mile and let you learn from bed,” Mom joked.

  I arched my brows. “You know, I really think I could swallow Calculus better if I did it surrounded with three pillows and my old teddy bear.”

  “Right? Who needs a social life?” Mom laughed.

  “Bedsores could be an issue, but I think I can fight it,” I returned.

  Just then, a horn beeped from the road. My eyes flashed toward it, seeing Eric’s little Honda skate up near the mailbox through the window. I had learned to drive the previous year, but I refused to do it, now—which meant my handsome, rag-tag long-time best friend, Eric Thomas, picked me up every morning.

  “There he is. Your knight in shining armor,” Mom smiled.

  “As if,” I said, rolling my eyes. I didn’t babble on about my feelings to Mom that often, but I had mentioned once that although Eric was perfect, I could never love him. When she heard that, her response was, “Sometimes we need those people around— the ones who put us above everyone else. Even if romance isn’t what we’re after.” She was always full of so much wisdom.

  I kissed Mom on the cheek—something she half-shrieked about since I reeked of peanut butter—and then rushed out to the road, catching my backpack on my arm as I went. Sunlight swept across the front window of the car, reflecting back so I couldn’t quite make out Eric’s face. But when I popped into the passenger seat, he sat beaming at me. His dark eyes were somber and his black curls were wild like a hippie from a much different time in Southern California history.

  After a pause, though, Eric arched his brow. “You look—rough, man.”

  I swatted him on the bicep. “What the hell?”

  “You just look like— I mean. The dreams. They’re getting to you, aren’t they?” He asked.

  I blinked down at my lap. Why did Eric always see all the way through me? I shrugged, buckling my seatbelt—something I always did now. “It’s not a big deal. I mean, I have to get used to them sometime, right?”

  Eric paused, gripping the steering wheel hard so that his fingers turned bright white. “You know what I think? I think fuck school today. Fuck Ridgewood. Let’s bail.” He grinned.

  I scoffed. The truth was, though, I didn’t want anything to do with it. I didn’t want the shitty plastic lunch or the gossip or the boring-ass language classes or the ogling eyes of all the idiotic, pimply teenage boys checking me out.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” Eric said. He thrust his foot on the gas pedal and the car surged forward. I reached for the volume on the radio and blasted it as loud as it would go, playing Ariana Grande so loud that her voice tore through my ears.

  Eric was right. I was fucking upset and I couldn’t hack school. Not today. God, maybe not ever. It had been a little over a year since the accident and it
felt like I would never be able to return to whatever ‘normal’ life I’d had before.

  Eric drove us toward Crestwood Hills, the thick-with-blood-money town located just beside Ridgewood Hills. I hesitated, wondering if I should tell Eric not to head that way. Crestwood made me and all the other Ridgewood residents sick to our stomachs. The money was old—as old as the west coast, at least (with loads of families said to be direct lines to the overly rich, ancient European families in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway). And many Ridgewood folks worked for Crestwood’s upper class, as servants, maids, cooks, gardeners, and pool boys. Whatever. The class divide was so stark that when Ridgewood people went into Crestwood, Crestwood people normally crossed to the other side of the street so as not to associate.

  It was already after eight-thirty in the morning, which meant we had missed most of our third period. Eric kicked the car to a halt outside a little cozy breakfast place in Crestwood. A place that had ten-dollar avocado toast and a super-artsy, yet still tirelessly rich barista at the counter. It smelled like fucking heaven.

  At the table, Eric ordered us both cappuccinos with a hard expression, letting the older barista know not to ask any questions. It was pretty clear we were supposed to be in school—but Eric was brash and sometimes arrogant, demanding the world to do his bidding. Of course, around me, he turned to butter. We met when we were only three or four when our moms had dropped us off at the same all-day babysitter. My first memories of him involved eating dirt and daring one another to taste worms.

  I never did it, but of course, he did.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Eric asked, hovering over his cappuccino.

  “No.” I shook my head and took a sip, allowing the sugary, milky liquid to skate across my tongue. “Really, there’s nothing to say.”

  “You have to tell your mom it’s bugging you so much,” Eric stated. “She’ll understand.”

  I drew my eyebrows together and looked at him. “And worry her with another thing? Yeah, right. She told me a story about the ER the other day—something about a guy who almost lost a leg? I think I can handle a few night terrors. Especially if you make us play hooky afterward.”

  We sipped our cappuccinos into the late morning and then walked around Crestwood for hours, ogling the stunning mansions that spanned the edges of the cliffs and overlooked the Pacific Ocean. As time dripped into the late afternoon, the light changed and we walked down toward a few of the public beaches, taking off our shoes and slipping our toes along the sand. Eric told me about his recent infatuation with a girl in our art class—a girl who I didn’t think deserved any of his affection at all. But I listened anyway, grateful that he had someone else to fantasize about. It was like Mom said. I just couldn’t give him what he wanted.

  “It’s weird being over here,” I stated, watching the sun drip toward the ocean horizon. “You can see Crestwood Academy over there perched high on that cliff.”

  “Rich assholes,” Eric muttered. “You know they’re just going to ride their daddy’s coattails forever until they inherit their huge trust funds.”

  “Just like their daddies before them,” I agreed, half-laughing, yet feeling the strain of it in my gut.

  “Not like they’re any smarter than us. Or better, really,” Eric scoffed. He kicked at some sand, making it flash in front of us. “Remember that asshole, Kieran, who showed up at a Ridgewood party last year? I think it was Sarah’s house. He picked a fight with Michael over something stupid.”

  “Right. Michael’s mom had been Kieran’s maid when he was little,” I said, remembering, although the memory was sloshy with alcohol. When Kieran, who was six foot three, dark tousled hair and sharp cyan eyes that were completely hypnotic—arrived at the party, a hush had overtaken all the teenagers at the party. Why the hell had the governor of Crestwood’s kid come all the way to Ridgewood to crash one of our parties?

  The gossip was that Michael’s mom had fucked the governor years before, disrupting Kieran’s childhood and his parents’ marriage.

  Of course, I didn’t know this for sure. No one did. Gossip and rumors swirled above our heads in Ridgewood and Crestwood, both keeping us alive and tearing us apart. And it wasn’t like Kieran’s mom and dad got divorced. People didn’t do that in Crestwood.

  “We should show them they’re not so fucking great,” Eric decided then, rubbing his hands together.

  “Calm down, man,” I said, laughing as a wicked grin splayed over his full lips. “You’ve got that look in your eyes.”

  “No. I mean it.” Eric gave me this severe look. One that told me he wasn’t messing around. “It’s late, almost six. When it gets dark, we should go up there.”

  “And do what exactly?” I asked, my eyebrows lowering.

  “I still have all that spray paint in my car,” Eric informed me in a hushed tone.

  “You want us to graffiti Crestwood?” I asked incredulously.

  “Are you scared or something?” Eric asked.

  “Of course not,” I said, my heart hammering. Fire spit through me. “I’m never scared.”

  “Then do it. I dare you,” Eric challenged. He leaped up from his perch on a large, glittering gray rock and beamed at me. It suddenly felt like we were kids again, just ten-years-old before all the damn chaos of our complicated lives started unfolding.

  “I dare you back!” I countered back.

  “Deal. We’ll do it together. It’s going to be fucking epic!” Eric said, fist-pumping the air as we continued walking along the beach.

  Chapter Two

  I guess that’s how it all started or always did, with a dare. As Eric and I snaked up the tiny mountain drive that led up to Crestwood Academy, I called Mom to tell her I would be out late with Eric and not to worry. Of course, she was at work and couldn’t pick up. She had probably slept through the day, enduring her own set of nightmares while I had wandered around Crestwood, slurping milkshakes and playing hooky. A wave of guilt passed over me, but I dismissed it just as quickly, reaching for a can of spray paint and rushing through the perfectly-manicured grass outside of Crestwood Academy.

  Of course, it was perfect. It looked like a postcard. The entire school consisted of several buildings and were built from old stone. The grounds themselves had manicured lawns that sprawled across the vast space which lead up the Cliffside. Everything about this place was magical. On the outside of the largest building, it had Crestwood Academy imprinted into the stone’s face.

  It may have looked beautiful from the outside; however, it was filled with some of the evilest people in the world as far as I was concerned. The idea had been bred inside of me since I was born. “Crestwood is evil. They treat us like slime beneath their shoes. Don’t give them the time of day and don’t ever let them bring you down.”

  This had been something Dad had said right before everything had happened.

  Eric and I didn’t make a sound. We snaked between the shadows of the enormous redwoods, our eyes centered on the vast fortress of Crestwood Academy. Everyone knew that only the best of the best attended, which included prime scholars, up and coming artists, pristine tennis players and of course, all the teenagers of Crestwood who could afford the ridiculous price tag without batting an eye. The tuition was in the hundreds of thousands per year, without a scholarship ride. This amount was so difficult for me to imagine that it almost made me laugh.

  Jesus Christ. Imagine having that amount of money just to toss around? I thought to myself.

  Of course, we had always been just below middle class and struggled. Even with Mom’s nursing position, it wasn’t always easy to stitch things together. “As long as we have each other,” Mom would always say. “Family is all you need.”

  Eric and I picked the wide brick side of the fortress, which faced the beautifully manicured rose garden and flowing fountain. Above us sat a bright moon that peered down upon us. It seemed that the majority of the staff in the school had left for the day, with only a few glowing windows amon
g hundreds. I wondered if they didn’t have anything to go home to. For whatever reason, this made my heart feel bruised for a minute—even though I knew they didn’t deserve my sympathy.

  I stood like a statue for a moment, blinking at the blank stone wall. I felt Eric beside me— watching me and wondering what I might do next. Always, when art took hold of me, it was a bit like a hand wrapping itself around my neck and directing how I breathed, what I said or what happened next. I knew I was damn good— I had won a decent amount of awards back at Ridgewood High. But what sort of thing did a wall at Crestwood deserve to prove that us Ridgewood students were just-as-good—or maybe even fucking better?

  It came to me then and my lips flickered into a grin. Eric called me out on it, saying, “There she goes. I’ve lost her.”

  I didn’t have time to answer. I was crafting an enormous painting, using as many of the paint cans as I could. I built the outline of a scrappy-looking person with a Ridgewood t-shirt on, clinging to the hair on top of the big, bulbous head of the well-known, long-time headmaster of Crestwood Academy. Beneath the Ridgewood figure, several Crestwood people looked on, shocked at what they saw. As I continued to work, the painting grew more and more detailed. I filled in the light of their eyes as I made little wrinkles on the sides of people’s cheeks and forehead. The old headmaster’s face was the most fine-tuned of all with sagging cheeks and sad little beady eyes. I grinned as I made the finishing touches over an hour later, knowing that when he looked at it with his old decrepit eyes, it would probably destroy him.

  He was kind of like the poster child of the horrible things Crestwood did to Ridgewood.

  Now, with the head hanging down from the fake-Ridgewood person, I made a nice cartoon cloud with the words inside: “EAT THE RICH!”

  “Brutal, man,” Eric laughed beside me, his eyes glittering. “I can’t believe you fucking went there.”

  I shook the spray paint can in the air. It seemed mostly empty. “I think we are done,” I told him. My heart thumped with excitement. I took several steps back, gazing at my work. It was maybe the best painting I had ever done in my life and certainly the most violent.