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

He was staring at me through those eyes that didn’t really see me now, protecting himself, but I knew I had him.

“You’re vain, Lucas Starling,” I said. “You’ve gotten too used to being the most handsome guy in the room, in the town. You know you can play on your looks and your charm and get pretty much anything you want out of a situation. But how’s that going to work if your nose is crooked and your face is all scarred and lumpy? I suppose your parents can pay for the best plastic surgery money can buy, but you never do know if things like that will turn out right, do you?”

He was rocking a little from side to side. He was definitely rattled.

“That’s why you’re so desperate to convince me you never left me to fend for myself in a bad neighbourhood tonight.” The triumph in my voice was a little scary even to me. “You think those other girls—those better girls—might not want anything to do with you once they see what you look like now. I might be all you’ve got so the stakes are a little higher when it comes to how you treat me now. Right?”

“See Callie, this is what I mean, you’re so insecure.” But he was grimacing like he couldn’t even sell that to himself, and I didn’t think it was just the pain.

“I’m not insecure, Lucas. I am just in a position where I don’t need to take your usual crap, so I’m not taking it.” I heard nearby footsteps, voices, and I got up off the bed. “And I think I’ll skip the molestation, actually. I don’t want to have any contact with you right now.”

I’d had some idea in my head of making a clean exit, but I collided with Lucas’s family on the way out.

“Sorry,” I said, backing into the room to allow them through. “I’m just heading out now, so you can have your privacy.”

“I’ll drive you home,” Lucy said.

“No,” I protested, “it’s fine, I’ll…”

She gave me a few seconds to continue failing to come up with any reasonable explanation for how I intended to get home. There was probably a bus, but I had no money on me and I wasn’t familiar with the timetable. Anyway, if I took as long as a bus would take getting home, my parents were probably going to have enough time to figure out I was missing and panic. Or, in my mother’s case, assume I was with Lucas and try to get in contact with his family, which would be worse.

“Come on,” Lucy said. “I’ve got to go pick up some things from home anyway.”

Her parents didn’t even call her out on having just been from home. I made a quick decision: Lucy was the Starling family member I was least nervous of, so if I had to spend a few minutes with her to get safely away from the rest, that was the best choice. “If you’re sure, then thank you.”

“See you another day, Callie,” came his voice, a lot softer, more careful, than when he’d been talking to me in private. It was for the benefit of his parents, for convincing them he was still a pretty good guy, and not for me at all.

“See you, Lucas,” I returned. I could play his game if he so desperately wanted it. “Try not to bother your parents too much with your chatter. Better let that pretty face heal.”

Chapter Fifteen

I felt satisfied with myself for how I’d handled things until I was walking out of the hospital alongside Lucy. The sun was well on the way to rising, casting a harsh light over my actions, and at just that moment Lucy glanced over at me.

“Thanks for coming to see Lucas. If I were you, I’d probably have just wanted to go home and get some sleep. He might not know how to show it, but it’ll mean a lot to him.”

“I’m happy if it made a difference to you,” I said.

“I’m sorry he’s given you such a bad impression of himself,” Lucy said. She found her way to her car and unlocked it. No open roofs for her. “He’s a bit out of control these days. He really needs someone to rein him in, you know, before it’s too late.”

Not that she was giving me any feeling that she was begging—it came across as more of a warning—but the only thing I knew was that it wasn’t going to be me. I felt like telling her that, along with just how often I’d seen Lucas step on her seat to get into the car instead of opening the door like any civilised person, but daylight was furnishing me with just enough shame to keep me nice. And if I wanted to make a proper break with Lucas, I probably shouldn’t start by doing anything to provoke him.

I deflected Lucy’s words just enough with something that had struck me as a bit weird while we were entering the hospital. “You two are twins, right? But you said before you had university classes to attend…?”

“Oh, yes,” Lucy said. “I finished high school a long time ago.” It occurred to me at that point there were a lot of reasons I maybe shouldn’t have asked the question of her in the first place, but it seemed too late now. “While I was doing my cancer treatment I was in no condition to go to a proper school, so my parents hired a tutor to homeschool me. Later on my mum was at home all the time anyway looking after me, so she took over the tutoring. She was good at it of course, but I was kind of sad, my old tutor was really nice. Anyway, I wasn’t able to do much in the middle of treatment, but when I was feeling better I would get into it really hard. I didn’t have anything else to do, once I was out of formal schooling I became a bit out of the loop.”

I’d always felt a bit isolated at school, compared to girls like Ashleigh who seemed to have more than any one person’s fair share of social life. It must have been worse for Lucy though, especially having a brother who still had all of those things and was probably not shy about rubbing them in to her. It seemed like the sort of situation where some person you hardly knew saying I’m sorry would just be annoying at this point, though.

“I had someone from school ask after you the other day, actually,” I told her instead. Maybe it would mean something. “I mean I didn’t have anything to tell them… I didn’t even remember you’d been sick until Lucas told me, our families were never close enough for me to hear about it a lot. So people you knew back then are still thinking about you.”

“I’m sure they are.” Lucy was making the sort of smile I wondered if she’d used a lot when she was in the midst of her treatment, trying to convince everyone she was okay. “But they don’t have a whole lot of time for me any more, that’s all I’m saying. I’m not hating, I understand, but it’s sort of hard to ignore at the same time.”

“I’m sorry I never saw you after you left our school,” I said, just because it felt uncomfortable to continue the conversation without saying something.

“We were never friends before I left, though,” Lucy said. “Our families weren’t even close, like you said. Oh, was that the right turn to take?”

I was finally starting to recognise some of the streets we were driving through. “I think so?”

“I guess you were already on Lucas’s radar back then, mind you,” Lucy continued. “I remember not long after we started at Sands, Lucas started bothering you all the time.”