Broken Hill High (Broken Hill High 1)

Her head starts shaking and she goes to back up but there are too many people behind her. She has nowhere to go. “No,” she says to Jesse as we reach her. Her eyes flick to me before finding Nate’s and then going back to Jesse. “I stopped. I didn’t do it.”

“I warned you,” he tells her. “I thought I made it pretty damn clear that if something were to happen to Tora, that I was coming after you.”

She shakes her head again. “But… I didn’t do it. I told him to stop,” she says with wide eyes as Nate’s hand finds the small of my back. “Jesse, please. You’ll ruin me.”

Jesse’s eyes darken as he steps forward into her. “It will ruin you the same way it would have ruined Tora had he raped her?”

Her eyes flick back to me. “He didn’t though.”

“No, he didn’t because she got away. It was his intention though, and that’s because you put the idea in his head.” She continues shaking her head and looking around for some kind of way out of this. “You need to pay for what you’ve done,” Jesse tells her.

Her face goes ghostly white as she looks around at her friends. “What’s going on, Elle?” Phoenix asks her with narrowed eyes.

“Nothing. Nothing,” she says, frantic.

Phoenix turns on Jesse and raises her head to him. “What’s this all about?” she questions.

Jesse grins down at her and winks, making her cheeks flush and I laugh knowing how easily these guys can play these girls. “Your head cheerleader messed with one of ours, and now we’re going to mess with her,” Jesse explains.

“And how do you plan do doing that?” she says, acting as though her group of cheer skanks are untouchable.

“Oh, I’m not going to do anything,” he tells her. “You are.”

“What?” she grunts.

“All of you are,” he says. “Every single one of you is going to turn your backs on her.”

“I don’t think so,” she scoffs.

“But I do,” he says. “You see, it’s just how things work around here. You’ll turn your backs the second you find out that Parker fucked her.”

Elle gasps and looks as though she’s about to be sick while Phoenix’s eyebrows pull down. “What’s wrong with that? Half the girls on the team have already screwed Parker.”

Jesse grins and looks across to Elle before turning back to Phoenix with a wicked excitement. I see it in his eyes, this is Jesse Ryder going in for the kill. “But did they do it while Tyson was already buried balls deep in her ass?”

Holy shit.

Both Brooke and I gasp at the same time as the cheerleaders. Nate laughs while Jesse looks proud as fuck. Max double’s over, trying to control himself as Parker and Tyson high five over the top of him.

Elle looks as though her whole world has come apart, especially when all the other cheerleaders gape at her. Jesse watches her through calculated eyes. “Like I said, Elle. You mess with one of us and we will mess with you.” He then turns to Phoenix. “Let that be a lesson,” he warns.

She nods her head in understanding and with that, we turn and walk away.

As we leave, I can’t help but look back over my shoulder and watch how the cheerleaders turn on Elle, just as Jesse had predicted. Elle walks away with her head down and tears in her eyes as the cheerleaders look to Phoenix. And just like that, Broken Hill High has a new head cheerleader.

“That was incredible,” Brooke laughs. “Though you know as soon as she gets over this, she’s coming for you. She’s going to blame this all on you.”

“I know,” I sigh. “Let her. I’ll be ready. Though, I feel kind of bad for her,” I admit.

Jesse turns around and looks down at my empty drink. “That just means you haven’t drunk enough of those,” he tells me before he steals my cup and thrusts it towards some awkward bystander and demands he refills it. Naturally, the guy scurries away and barges through the line, desperate to get the cup filled in record time.

Jesse’s excitement is contagious, especially when he climbs up onto the table and screams out for the real party to get started. The music is turned up, drinks are passed around, and bodies begin grinding.

I stay by Nate’s side the whole night and at four in the morning both he and Jesse are laughing as they try to haul me back up onto the roof of their house. We creep along the tiles while I try my best not to fall and finally get back to Jesse’s window. Though I must say, I feel a lot braver doing this with alcohol going through my veins than I did when we were leaving.

Jesse slides the window open, gives us a cheesy salute, and literally dives through before landing with a thud on the other side. I slap a hand over my mouth to stop the giggling and watch as Jesse groans and gets to his feet.