Boys And Their Toys: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Troubled Playthings 1)

I was so stunned by the suggestion a laugh burst out of me.

“Glad to amuse,” Lucas said. “Unlock the car so I can get the top off. Women and cars tend to look better that way, you know.”

If he was trying to get a reaction out of me, I wasn’t going to give it to him. “No,” I said. “I’m going to work now. Come see me on Sunday if you want.”

But here I was stuck, because I knew as soon as I pressed the button on my key fob to unlock the car he would be right in there.

“Look, I’m not going to let you go to work on your own when people are threatening you like this,” Lucas said. “Someone needs to go and show that lot there’s someone who will come and stand up for you if they keep giving you crap.”

For a moment, I couldn’t work out what angle he was taking. “Do you mean that damage on the car? That was done here, by some of our classmates, and if you weren’t arranging all these expensive things for me and then completely ignoring me at school they wouldn’t feel like they could get away with doing that kind of shit.”

“If you feel like I’ve been ignoring you, today is your lucky day,” Lucas said. Gleefully steering away from the main point of what I’d been saying. “Come on, let’s go.”

I couldn’t imagine the horror I would have waiting for me from Dane and whoever else happened to be at the office if I had to walk in with Lucas in tow. Especially if I ended up telling them he wasn’t really my boyfriend.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “I mean, it’s pretty well documented at this point that you don’t actually care about me.”

Lucas shifted into another model-perfect posture. “I care, Callie. I just don’t feel some stupid need to prove it by telling you exactly what you want to hear.”

He certainly didn’t, any more than he bothered to do what I wanted him to do… or, more importantly, not do what I didn’t want him to do. And that led into the question I couldn’t ask: why had I not just told someone about all the shit he was doing to me? My parents, or Tamara, or one of the counsellors at my school… there had been plenty of options available to me all along, and some of them had even given me perfect opportunities.

But it came back to what had stopped me at the time, and what still stopped me now: to get anyone to listen, I would have to make some pretty serious allegations. They were the sorts of things that would follow Lucas around for the rest of his life. I could say all I liked that I wanted to keep things from getting to the level of official complaints, but once I involved others the choice might be taken out of my hands.

But if I wanted to handle it in my own way, that meant I had to actually face the situation, find a way to engage with Lucas properly. And I was only going to be able to do that at a time when he was willing to engage.

I made a show of sighing, and handed my key over to him. “Do your worst.”

It didn’t take him long to have the car in its top-down configuration. Once he was done, he opened the door properly to put himself in the front passenger seat, and tossed the keys back to me.

“Where’s your car today, anyway?” I asked as I climbed in. “Don’t tell me you’ve already smashed it and you’re here to see if you can get me to drive you around for the next week.”

“Nah,” Lucas said, studying me in a way that made me feel like he had some kind of panties X-ray vision. “Stayed over at someone’s house for a party last night. Steven drove me there and brought me to school today.”

And yet he looked just as put-together as he did any other day. “Did Steven iron your uniform for you this morning as well?” I asked.

He smiled with half his mouth, which was still more than I could face without a little shiver. “You think I still look pretty good today after a night out, huh?”

“I didn’t even know there were overnight parties happening,” I said, trying to focus on getting the car started without having any incidents that would give Lucas more ammunition against me.

“I’ll get you an invite next time,” Lucas said.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I’ve been to a few parties before, but when I’m working almost every day of the week it’s just more exhausting than it’s worth.”

I was trying not to pay attention to Lucas, but I saw him nodding as if this was exactly the response he’d expected from me. “You work too hard.”

I pulled out of the school carpark with Lucas watching me drive with an amused expression. Perhaps I was actually too careful for him.

Then once we were off school property, Lucas shifted his arms and legs all at

once, a movement too graceful to be completely casual, and when he was done moving his hand was resting on my knee.

I jerked my leg, an instinctive movement to throw him off, and his nails dug in. The little bite of pain startled me into stillness. I automatically made the movements to keep us driving towards the Stacks Brothers offices, my thoughts circling around and around themselves. Once again, it had hit me what a bad situation I’d gotten myself into when it was already too late.

Well, I was in control of the car at the moment. There was nothing stopping me from parking up somewhere and demanding Lucas get out or behave. But without the context of everything else that had already happened between us, it would just make me seem like a jerk.

His hand squeezed: firm, but not painful this time. His eyes were on my face, his chin up like he was daring me to say something.

And the worst part of it was, my thoughts were primarily turning over whether it would now be appropriate for me to ask him about Jillian. No—the worst part was that I was pretty sure it wasn’t, yet. Well, I should see that as a good thing. It would keep me on task.