Beastly (The Ever After Collection) (18 page)

“Yes,” Emma agreed, sarcasm saturating her words, “how rude to have someone intrude upon your plans.”

Collette snorted, teasingly bumping her shoulder. “Like you had any plans tonight. Heath works.”

Emma huffed. “So?” she demanded. “My life doesn’t revolve around him.”

Collette raised skeptical eyebrow.

Okay, so maybe it did. A little.

“You’re a lousy friend,” Emma complained, flicking Collette on the ear to make sure the redhead knew she was mostly kidding. “And for the record, I stand by that staying in and reading are legitimate Friday night plans.”

Collette laughed at that, but both were quickly distracted by a commotion on the other side of the gym. Luca had tripped over himself, apparently trying to get away from a forceful Lulu, and fallen down hard on his butt. Lulu, of course, took it as an opportunity to help him up, running her hands up and down his arms as she demanded to know if he was okay.

Collette tensed beside her, accidently cutting through the middle of a snowflake. Emma patted her friend commiseratingly on the back.

“If she touches him again, I swear to God I’m going to strangle her,” Collette muttered.

“Do what you will, but I am
not
helping you hide the body.”

An hour and a half later – and only one more attempt by Lulu to grab Luca’s junk – the snowflakes were taped to the walls or strung up on the ceiling where appropriate, the balloon archway was finished, and the dozen or so trees set up around the gym were covered in lights and fake snow.

There was still a bit of clean up yet to do, but Emma was exhausted, and according to the clock – it was already past six – and her grumbling stomach, it was time to leave. She was gathering up her belongings with her friends to do just that when Lulu rushed over. Emma just barely managed to withhold a groan.

“Thanks for helping, you guys,” Lulu said, addressing all of them and sounding completely sincere despite the way her gaze eventually settled on Luca. Her eyes glazed over a bit despite the fact that he was holding hands with Collette.

Collette cleared her throat, a furious red blush making its way up her face.

Lulu blinked. “Oh, um, I was just going to say that I think we may need a few more lights for that tree over there.” She pointed at one of the fake evergreens on the other side of the gym. “Do you see its barren branches?”

Emma looked, but frankly, no, she didn’t see them. The tree looked just like all the others speckled throughout the room.

“Luca, do you mind going to the prop room with me to see if there are some extra lights in there before you go?”

And then Emma
did
see. The excuse was so utterly transparent; it was obviously a ruse to snag some alone time with Luca.

The prop room was way on the other side of the school, down a rarely used hallway beneath a small flight of stairs. Emma seriously doubted they would find a string of lights down there. The drama department had a pathetically low budget as it was as their lackluster production of
The Wizard of Oz
in the fall had shown.

The dark, secluded room was the perfect place to get up to
other
things, however. Not that Luca would ever do those things with anyone but Collette.

And that was a visual Emma really didn’t need in her head.

Speaking of Collette, if Emma could see through Lulu’s lame excuse, she knew that her friend could as well. She eyed the girl nervously. Instead of glaring at Lulu, however, Collette’s pleading eyes were zeroed in on her.

And Emma immediately understood.

If Luca agreed to go with Lulu, the girl would throw herself at him. If Collette insisted on going with Lulu, she might murder her.
Real
murder, not imagined homicide with a dull pair of scissors.

Emma sighed, but begrudgingly spoke up. “I’ll go with you, Lulu.”

“Thanks, Emma,” a relieved Luca immediately intoned.

“Sounds great.” Collette was quick to agree. “Want us to wait around for you?”

“I’ll be fine,” Emma said, turning down her friend’s offer with a shake of her head. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Have a fun night
together
.” She stressed the word for Lulu’s sake.

Luca and Collette returned her sentiments and took their leave while Emma turned to face a pouting Lulu. “Ready?” she asked.

Lulu frowned, her expression so downtrodden that Emma might have actually felt a smidgeon bad for her. “Oh, well… you can probably handle it, Emma. Head down there and see if you can find those lights. If not, I guess you’re free to go.”

And just like that, that smidgeon disappeared. Emma pursed her lips at the order, but nodded in understanding anyway. Tossing her book bag down on the floor, she headed in the direction of the prop room.

It was half past six and with no other activates going on, the school was basically abandoned. Emma tried not to think of every horror movie she’d ever seen as she trudged down the darkened hallway. The motion-sensitive overhead lights helped chase away her jitters as they lit up her path with every step she took.

Even though the prop room was on the opposite side of the building as the gym, Maple Valley High was a speck of a school and she managed to reach the small staircase that led to it in a matter of minutes. Traipsing down the half dozen steps, she stopped to flip on the light switch – they weren’t motion sensitive here – before meandering down the hallway that the stairs led into.

There were only two rooms down the shortened, dead-end hallway: the prop room and the boiler room. Emma jimmied free the simple bolt lock – she wasn’t really sure the point of it – and opened the door on the left, taking a few steps into the prop room before remembering that it didn’t have
any
lights. The light from the hallway was too dim to allow her to really see into the room so she fished her cell phone out of her pocket and used it as a make-shift flashlight to look around.

It was a small, dank space with a cement floor and walls. There was even an old drain in the middle of the floor. It was also half-filled with various stage props and costumes, most of which were dusty from lack of use. After half-heartedly searching for a few minutes, Emma gave up on her quest to find lights and turned to leave the room.

Only to let out a piercing shriek and drop her phone when she spotted a shadow in the doorway. A burst of adrenaline caused her heart to pound furiously against her ribcage, and it took Emma a few moments to realize that it wasn’t a ghostly girl or grotesque monster standing in front of her.

Unfortunately, she didn’t feel much – if
any
– relief upon recognizing who
was
present in the doorway.

Gunther Kingston.

“Well, well,” he said, eyebrows raised to nearly his hairline, “I’ve had girls fall over themselves when they realize I’m in the room, but I don’t think my presence has ever garnered a reaction quite like that before.”

“You scared me,” Emma accused tightly, rubbing a hand over her heart where she could still feel it fluttering away against her chest. “What are you doing here?”

Gunther shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest and resting a shoulder against the door frame. “I heard Lulu ask you to come down here.”

It took Emma a minute to absorb that.

“And what?” she asked incredulously. “You just thought you’d follow me?”

Did he even realize what a desperate creep that made him?

Judging by his vague expression, the answer was “no”.

“I thought you might need help,” he said, and Emma didn’t think she’d ever heard such a half-assed excuse in her life. And she’d just got done listening to Lulu attempt to lure Luca down here.

“Well, I don’t,” Emma snapped before bending over to pick her phone up off the floor. “Now move, I was just leaving.”

When Gunther didn’t immediately step out of the doorway and instead pulled himself up to his full height, Emma decided she’d had enough and squeezed herself past him, refusing to acknowledge how her chest was forced to brush against his shoulder as she did.

Gunther, however, wasn’t about to let her get away so easily. He reached out and grabbed her by the elbow before she could escape. “Wait.”

She immediately yanked her limb from his rough grasp, surprised when he not only allowed her to do so, but also held his hands up near his head in a gesture of surrender. “I just want to talk.”

Emma released an unladylike snort. “Right,” she quipped, turning to leave, but he quickly maneuvered himself so that he was standing in front of her
again
.

“To apologize for being such a jerk,” he added. Caught by surprise, Emma froze. She stared at Gunther, truly curious about what he had to say in probably the first time ever. “I should never have asked you to prom in front of everyone like that,” he continued hurriedly, sensing he finally had her attention. “I know how shy you can be. I should have been more discrete.”

Emma waited, thinking for some asinine reason that there would be more. Like, an “I’m sorry for taking advantage of you when you were drunk” or “I’m sorry for attempting to molest you”, for instance.

But it didn’t take her long to realize that there would be no such apology forthcoming.

What he
had
apologized for by comparison was positively ludicrous, but if it would get him away from her, she’d gladly accept his lame attempt at contrition.

“Awesome, I accept your apology. Now move. Please.”

When he didn’t, Emma rolled her eyes. She attempted to go around him, but he quickly sidestepped her, an oddly self-satisfied grin glued to his face considering the circumstance. “So you’ll go to prom with me, then?”

What?

“What?”

Emma didn’t even care that her brain to mouth filter was short-circuiting. After all, that’s what tended to happen when people were confronted with one absurdity after another. She was honestly flabbergasted.

How in the world did accepting his stupid apology somehow equate to her going to prom with him in his demented mind?

Not only was she already going to the dance with Heath, Gunther had his own date: Maribeth.

But when had the asshole ever cared for anybody else’s feelings but his own?

“You’re going to the prom with me,” Gunther repeated, like
she
was the one being purposely obtuse.

“No-o,” Emma said slowly like she was talking to a particularly dense toddler. “I already have a date.”

Gunther stared at her like her rejection of him simply didn’t compute. “With who? That Heath kid?” He sounded incredulous.

“Yes, that Heath kid,” Emma snapped. “You know, my
boyfriend
.”

“Why would you want him when you could have me?” He seemed honestly confused, and quite frankly, Emma had had enough of the socially inept, egotistical asshole in front of her.

“I don’t know, Gunther,” she said, her words dripping with sarcasm, “Maybe it’s the fact that Heath is sweet, smart, kind and a barrage of other
awesome
things, and you’re just a simpleminded bully who’s too busy basking in his own supposedly good looks to rub his two remaining brain cells together and form a basic understanding of the word no!”

Gunther’s face reddened with every word that escaped Emma’s mouth until it was an impressive shade of purple. His jaw clenched tightly, causing the veins to bulge out of his thick neck. Somehow, however, the natural high of finally telling Gunther off blinded Emma to the signs of impending danger. “And another thing-”

She couldn't ignore it, however, when his hands suddenly shot forward and seized both of her wrists in a crushing grip, using his hold on them to pull her close.

“Ow! Hey, stop!”

But Gunther didn’t listen. His face was so near Emma’s that his breath tickled her nose as his dark eyes drilled holes into her brown ones. "I think I’ve been too lenient with you, Emma, so let me be perfectly clear. You can either go to prom with me or not go at all.”

Cold fear and hot anger clashed within her at his words, battling each other for dominance. Anger won.

“I’d like to see you try to stop me,” she hissed before yanking her arms away. Or attempting to, anyway. This time, Gunther refused to let her go.

His eyes flashed wildly as he dragged her even closer to him, covering her mouth with his. He released her wrists so he could squeeze at her waist instead. Emma tried to push him away, but he was like a statue. A statue with a probing tongue and roaming hands.

She was enraged when one of said hands groped the underside of her butt, the other slinking up under her shirt and trailing over the soft skin of her belly. Terror joined her rage when the same hand attempted to wedge itself up under the underwire of her bra.

Thinking fast, Emma bit down hard on Gunther’s tongue.

The tangy taste of blood flooded her mouth. Despite how disgusting the coppery liquid was, it was worth it when Gunther immediately shoved her away. She stumbled, but managed to keep her balance.