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

“They’re twins, right? Lucas and Lucy? It must really change someone to have a person who is basically the other half of you that close to being gone forever. I bet it must have changed him forever after she was sick. It’s probably why he has so much trouble getting close to people.”

I tried not to let Tamara see my jaw had dropped. Another thing about Tamara was that she had this tendency of hitting on exactly what was going on in a particular situation… without actually being aware she was doing it. I hadn’t decided yet whether I liked or hated that about her.

Was that really what was behind Lucas’s distance? He was too afraid to get close to someone else who might run the risk of leaving? I had no idea what I was supposed to do about that. It wasn’t like I was looking to get into a long-term relationship with Lucas, I just didn’t want him to steamroll all over me like he was with… whatever we were doing at the moment.

“Are you going to see him again soon?” Tamara asked.

“I have a feeling he’s going to want to hang out tomorrow,” I said. “Just a feeling, not plans or anything.”

“Well,” Tamara said, “I’d rather not hear too much about your feelings, if it’s okay with you.”

I wasn’t disappointed when Lucas was nowhere to be seen as I climbed into my car that afternoon, I was just surprised. I’d thought I was getting a grasp on some pattern of behaviour I could rely on with Lucas, but it just went to show you couldn’t jump to conclusions when you were trying to learn how someone like him worked. It was a lesson for me.

It was a good t

hing, anyway. I really didn’t need Lucas showing up at work with me and causing more havoc. It still made me feel queasy whenever I thought about how Lucas had let those men I had to work with see me in a state only suitable for the bedroom. I had hardly been able to look Dane in the eye the whole time I was in the office the day before, and I didn’t know what I might do the next time I saw Bill.

Anyway, that afternoon Dane wanted me to come with him to an almost-complete build to go over some numbers. It was always a bit of a pain figuring out the address of a house in a totally new suburb that wasn’t even on GPS yet, and a lot of the places had messy roads and nonexistent parking opportunities what with all the builders clogging things up, but I actually loved those trips. They kept me thinking about what was really important about my job, where I hoped to be in a few years from now—doing work that was practical, tangible, rather than my current abstract fiddling around with numbers that anyone could do, really.

And, though I tried not to let any of the guys on-site notice, I loved visiting the houses.

This one was a custom build for a client who had already purchased the property instead of a bog-standard package put together to sell after, and the difference was apparent as soon as I pushed my way in through the wide front door. The smell of fresh wood easily overpowered the fresh paint. There were real timber floors under my feet, not some dicey laminate shit that would look good for less than a year. Real marble benches, not just the stuff that looked ‘about right’. It was a house that had been put together by someone who gave a shit about what it would be like to live in it for ten years to come.

It was the sort of house I hoped to own or at least live in some day, if I kept my head down and kept at my job. I did appreciate that my parents had managed to keep a roof over my head between them for my whole life, but at the same time I knew they’d settled a bit, had not done everything they could have done to give us all a really nice life. I didn’t want to have to accept the same level they had, and I definitely didn’t want to have to accept whatever level some man I might get paired up with in the future would decide for me by the level of his own efforts—which was what I suspected had happened with Mum sometimes. What I thought might have broken her. Any man who got tangled up with me would learn, pretty early on, that I worked in an industry dominated by men. That I had the same expectations of a career and personal success that any man might.

I greeted a few of the guys I knew who were working around various parts of the house, then made myself known to Dane, who had happily parked himself up in the front sunroom serving as the foreman’s office. The official foreman, Elliott, was standing over Dane sitting in his own chair with a stretched smile.

“Callie,” said Dane, slumping in Elliott’s seat as if he was already exhausted, “great to see you. Now I think you know who all the teams are around here, so if you could just go around and see who has some paperwork we need to get copies of.”

I hated it when he acted like I was some servant designed to do menial tasks. He could easily have gotten off his arse to pick up those papers before I arrived.

Dane was about to give me some more instructions when my phone rang. With an awkward, “Excuse me,” I stepped out into the hallway to answer. I didn’t have the caller’s number saved so I seemed to have a mystery on my hands.

“Callie. Where are you?”

It was a short mystery. I had been hearing that voice in my dreams, murmuring into my ear as his fingers did things to me that set my body burning just thinking about them.

“Lucas,” I said, “how do you have my number?”

“Your parents gave it to me while you were in hospital that one time,” he said, as if it were some ancient history I might be expected to have completely forgotten about by now. “I explained I needed a contact number to sort out the new car, they didn’t seem to think there’d be any issue with my having it.”

I should have known my parents would find a way to screw me over again. Well, my mother, realistically speaking. I decided to let it drop for the moment and focus on what was bound to be the next issue. “What are you talking about, where am I? I’m at work, obviously.”

“No you’re not,” said Lucas, “or I’d be able to see you right now.”

I sighed. “Are you outside—no, I know the answer to that, obviously. I’ve gone out to one of our sites. If you needed something you should have let me know earlier.”

“No, I shouldn’t have,” Lucas said, and then he hung up on me. No time to waste on things like goodbye with that one.

I returned to Dane and got the rest of his instructions for me, and then hurried off on my errands.

I was lost in the methodical task ahead of me and the refreshing scent of the new house, so when some time later I stopped because Lucas had appeared in front of me in the hallway I was passing through, I didn’t immediately work out what was wrong with this scene.

Blissful ignorance didn’t last long, unfortunately. “Lucas!”

“The hardest part was actually working out which new housing development you’d be at,” he said, his big smile telegraphing just how pleased he was with himself. “Once I got here, I just had to do a couple rounds of the places on offer and your ride stuck out like anything—even if you did put your roof up again.”

“Yes,” I said, “you’ve made me a target, thanks so much for that.”