As for my parents, they loved me, were concerned about me, would die for me, blah blah fucking blah. If my mother knew what went through my head, what had really happened that day at the Parisian gallery auction, she would commit coldhearted murder.
But that was my job.
And I was going to enjoy it.
“So you’re telling me you don’t think Lenora Astalis is hot?” Knight wiggled his brows, pushing off the lockers and matching my stride.
I eyeballed her again. She balanced her textbooks on her hip as she walked toward the lab, not hugging them to her chest like the rest of the preppy damsels of All Saints High. She wore a black denim mini skirt much shorter than my fuse, fishnet stockings ripped at the knees and ass, and army boots that looked more haggard than mine. Even septum and lip rings couldn’t taint her shy appearance. She popped her pink gum, staring ahead, either ignoring my existence or not noticing me as she brushed past.
Her beauty—if you could call it that—reminded me of a child’s. Small, button-like nose, big blue eyes dotted green and gold, and narrow pink lips. There was nothing wrong with her face, but nothing overtly attractive about her, either. In the sea of Californian, shiny-haired, tan-skinned girls, with bodies made of glitter, muscle, and curves, I knew she wouldn’t stand out—positively, anyway.
I arched an eyebrow, shouldering past him to class. Knight followed me.
“Are you asking if I’d let her suck my cock? Possibly, depending on my mood and level of intoxication.”
“How fucking charitable of you. Actually, I wasn’t asking that at all. I wanted to tell you Lenora, like her sister, is off-limits for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I threw him a bone, keeping him humored. Hell would freeze over before I took an order from Knight Cole. Or anyone else, for that matter.
“You can’t break any of the Astalis girls’ hearts. Their mom died a few years ago. They’ve had it rough, and they don’t need your nasty-ass self shitting on their parade. Which happens to be your favorite pastime. So this is me telling you I’ll fuck you up if you touch them. Specifically, the morbid-looking one. You feeling me here?”
Lenora’s mother died?
How had I not heard about it when Poppy moved here?
Oh, that’s right. I cared about her existence a little less than I did about Arabella’s stupid parties.
I knew the mother never moved with Edgar and Poppy, but I’d guessed they either got divorced or she stayed with the talented kid in England.
Mothers were a touchy subject for Knight for more reasons than I could count. I knew he’d take it as a personal offense if I deliberately smashed Good Girl’s little heart. Lucky for him, I had very little interest in that organ, or the girl who carried it around in her chest.
“Don’t worry, Captain Save-a-Ho. I won’t fuck them.” I pushed the door to my class open and blazed inside without sparing Knight another look. Easiest promise I ever had to make.
When I plopped down and glanced toward the door, I saw him through the window, running his thumb across his throat, threatening to kill me if I broke my word.
My father was a lawyer, and semantics were his playground.
I said I wouldn’t fuck her.
I never said I wouldn’t fuck with her.
If Lenora deserved a public spanking to make sure she stayed in line, her ass was going to be red.
And most definitely mine.
The opportunity to corner Lenora Astalis presented itself three days later. I’d skipped Arabella’s party, and wasn’t surprised to hear Lenora hadn’t showed up, either. But her sister, Poppy, was there—dancing, drinking, mingling, even helping Arabella and Alice clean up puke and cum stains afterwards.
Lenora didn’t strike me as a party girl. She had the strange gene, the one that made her stick out like a sore thumb wherever she went, even without the Maleficent wardrobe. I could tell because I had it, too. We were weeds, rising from the concrete, ruining the generic landscape of this yacht club town.
The first day, I’d ditched my last class and tailed her car after school to see where she lived. She drove a black Lister Storm—a far cry from her sister’s Mini Cooper—and got honked at five different times for failing to take a right turn on a red light. Twice she flipped the other driver the bird. Once she actually double-parked to rummage through her bag and hand a homeless person some change.
By the end of the journey, I couldn’t help but smirk to myself. Edgar Astalis had put his girls in a castle by the ocean, with high, white-picket fences and drapes firmly shut.
Nice. Predictable. Safe.
Just like his useless little daughters.
I made a U-turn and drove back to school, where I found Poppy at a marching band rehearsal with her lame-ass accordion, her Prada bag hanging lazily on the back of her chair while her back was to me. I fished out her house key, went downtown, made a copy, and returned just in time to slip it back in before she scooped up her bag and went for milkshakes with the band.
The following day I shadowed Lenora, making a note to see if anyone else was there. Poppy took every extracurricular activity available, including band, peer tutoring, English club, and hiking. (She was exactly the kind of teenybopper to make a big fucking deal out of everything she did, including walking.) Edgar Astalis was busting his ass at that art institution he’d co-founded, sunrise till sundown, and was nowhere in sight.
The black sheep, the sweet lamb, was all alone in the afternoons, waiting to be eaten by the wolf.
On the third day—today—I went for the kill. I knew Lenora’s routine by now, and I allowed her forty minutes of basking in her own ignorance while I sat in my banged-up truck, my army boots crossed at the ankles on the dashboard, as she went about her afternoon. I sketched a sculpture on my sketchpad in long, round strokes, a half-smoked joint hanging from the side of my mouth.
When the clock hit four and my alarm buzzed, I got out of the truck and made my way onto the Astalis property, unlocking the door and waltzing in like I owned the place. I strolled through the entrance, past the living room with the marble-on-crème accents and antique furniture, and toward the double glass doors. Sliding them open, I glanced down at the kidney-shaped pool, spotting Good Girl.
She was doing laps underwater, moving in small, graceful strokes. I moved to the edge of the pool, lighting up the rest of my half-joint and squatting down in my torn, black skinny jeans and frayed, black-turned-gray shirt my mother hated so much. I loathed being rich by proxy, but that was another story Lenora was never going to hear, because today was where our communication would end.
Next time I had to make a point, it would be with actions, not words.
Sending a cloud of smoke upward, I watched as Lenora’s head popped out of the water, appearing in front of me for the first time since I walked in.
She hadn’t taken a breath the entire time, I realized.
She was no longer that kid in the South of France who didn’t know how to swim. She’d learned.
And she was completely naked.
Her lashes were curtained with fat water drops that cascaded down her cheeks. She parked her elbows on the edge of the pool, checking the time on her Polar watch. That’s when she noticed in her periphery that something—someone—was blocking the sun. She squinted up, using one hand as a visor.
“What in the bloody hell are you doing here, Spencer?” She pulled backward from the impact, like my existence had exploded in her face.
“I’ve been asking myself the very same question, Astalis, since I saw your Good Gone Bland ass in my domain and figured you lost your way to the nearest faerie world you’re engrossed with.”
It was peculiar how, although we hadn’t officially been reintroduced since she came here, we still remembered each other in all the ways that mattered. I knew she read fantasy books and listened to The Smiths and The Cure and thought Simon Pegg was a comic genius. She knew I was the type of asshole to break into her house and demand shit, and that I’d been watching her.
This confirmed my initial suspicion. She had noticed me at school, just as I’d noticed her. Neither of us found it wise to acknowledge the other. Not in public.
I puffed on my joint, taking a seat on the diving board and slowly lifting her towel robe with the tip of my finger, like it disgusted me.
“Tsk-tsk.” I shook my head, watching the reflection of my evil smirk through her shiny, blue-green-gold-whatever-the-fuck-they-were, hypnotizing, Drusilla eyes. “Swimming naked? Good girls don’t give a shit about tan lines. It’s not like you’re going to get dicked in this school. That’s something I’m afraid I won’t permit.”
“That’s something I won’t be asking your permission for,” she deadpanned, pretending to yawn.
“Doesn’t work that way, Good Girl. When I say jump, they ask how high. And come tomorrow, everybody’s gonna know you’re damaged goods, so stock up on those batteries, because real dick is not in the cards for you.”
“Fancy.” She slow-clapped, whistling sarcastically. “Top of the food chain now, right, Spence?”
She used the nickname I hated so much. She’d heard about me at school, knew about my legion of followers. Good.
I cocked my head. So what if she pretended not to give a shit about how popular I was? “Careful. You’re not even on the vegan menu, Lenora.”
“Bite me anyway.”
“Only to draw blood, baby.”
“Dying in your hands would still beat talking to you, Spencer.”
Lenora leaned forward, trying to snatch the robe from my finger, but I was too fast. I threw it behind my back and stood up, finishing my blunt and throwing it into her pool. She smelled of chlorine and cotton. Virginal, pure, and not loaded with teenage hormones and expensive perfume. I was sure Edgar Astalis, who owned half the galleries in London, Milan, and Paris, had a pool boy coming at least twice a week. Maybe the pool boy could give Good Girl the Vitamin D she wasn’t going to get at school.
“What do you want?” she snarled, her lips thinning even more than their usual lackluster shape.
Really, Lenora wasn’t anywhere near the realms of gorgeous. Take Daria, my neighbor, for example. She was a classic, beauty-pageant hottie. Or Luna, my childhood friend, who was mouthwateringly stunning. Lenora was merely pleasant to the eye—and even that, only from certain angles. Right now her eyeliner ran down her cheeks, making her look like Itthe clown.
I smiled. “To catch up, silly billy. How art thou? Still collecting garbage?”
“Assemblage.” She braced the edge of the pool, her skin turning whiter around the edges. A gust of wind breezed through the backyard, and the blond hair on her arms prickled. She was uncomfortable.
So was fucking I.
“I’m making art out of old, unwanted things. The only difference between you and me is that you use exclusively stone and marble, the things your heart is made of.”
“And that I’m good.” I ran my tongue over my teeth, smacking my lips together.
“Excuse me?” Her cheeks pinked, matching her already-red ears.
It was the first time I’d seen Lenora Astalis blushing since she came to Todos Santos, and even this wasn’t from embarrassment, but anger. Maybe she had changed, but not enough to give me a decent fight.
“You using garbage is not the only thing different about us. I’m also talented, and you’re…” I gathered the ash from my joint and poured it onto her towel. “A prissy nepotist who looks like Bellatrix Lestrange.”
“Screw you,” she hissed.
“Hard pass. I like my lays pretty.”
“And airheads,” she snapped.
“Yes, you are.” I shook my head. “But you still don’t stand a fucking chance with me.”
It was a low blow, and I’d promised Knight I was going to keep it clean, but something about the situation made me want to go the extra mile. Her defiance, no doubt.
I walked over to one of their many knitted, turquoise loungers, lying down with my hands tucked under my head, staring back at the sun.
“Dayum. Getting windy out here, huh?”
She was stuck in this pool until I decided to leave, or else I’d see her naked, and I was fully planning to outstay my welcome. I thought I heard her teeth chattering, but she didn’t cower or complain.
“Get to the point, Spencer, before I call the police.” She swam to the other side of the pool so she could get a better angle of me. Splashes of water washed over the gray stone edges of the pool.
“Please do. My family owns this entire town, including the boys in blue. In fact, I’m pretty sure your father is going to have a heart attack if you drag him onto my father’s shit list. Your uncle, too. How is Harry Fairhurst doing, anyway? Still sucking up to my parents so they’ll buy his below-average paintings?”
I wasn’t exaggerating. My father, Baron “Vicious” Spencer, was the biggest asshole alive to anyone but my mother and me. He owned the mall in this town and ran an investments firm that turned a profit larger than the budget of an average-sized European country each quarter, so he was richer than God. He also employed a vast army of people from the neighboring towns, donated to local charities, and sent ludicrously generous gift cards to the law enforcers of our town each Christmas. There was no way the police were going to touch him or me.
Even Lenora’s father, Edgar, and her uncle, Harry, were under my father’s thumb. But unlike her, I had no plans to use my family’s connections to get what I wanted.
Of course, she didn’t know that about me.
She didn’t know much of anything about me—other than the one crucial thing I wished we could both fucking forget.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your little power trip, but could you spit out why you’re here and get it over with before I catch pneumonia?” she demanded in her posh, English accent, slamming her palm onto the patio.
I let out a dark chuckle, still staring at the sun and ignoring the burn. I wished that giant fireball were as good at burning memories as it was burning retinas.
“I thought the English prided themselves on having good manners.”
“I thought the Americans were straight shooters,” she quipped.
“We are.”
“If you want to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I was all three.