Better Than Revenge (Sweet Secrets #1) (16 page)

Lilly guzzled down the rest of her orange juice before tucking the bottle under her arm again, grabbing her cup, and walking out of the room slowly so she didn’t spill her juice. As she walked her nightgown billowed around her small frame.

As if on cue, as soon as a Lilly was out of my room, in came a dizzy-looking Lena. She walked over to my bed, flopping down on it backwards and letting a loud groan escape from her mouth. “Forrester,” she whined. “Please tell me that you can make the world stop spinning.”

I chuckled to myself as I walked over and pushed the door shut so that Blake didn’t have to hide anymore. Now that Lena was in here though, I’m sure that my parents wouldn’t mind as much if Blake was in here as well. At least we weren’t alone. Also they couldn’t prove that he had slept in here.

“No, but I can,” Blake said in response to Lena’s question. He stood up from behind the bed causing Lena to sit up quickly.

“Damn you, Blake. You almost gave me a heart attack!” She swatted at his form, but he jumped out of her reach and smirked playfully.

“Use your nice words, Lena, or I won’t help you with your headache.”

Lena groaned again, clutching her head in her hands and massaging her temples gently. “Please, Blake. Dear God, make it stop.”

I laughed as I sat down on the bed next to her. “Happy hangover!” I joked.

“Shhhhh,” Lena shushed me, still cradling her head in her hands. “You’re way too loud. It feels like Mike Tyson is punching me in the skull.”

“Maybe next time you shouldn’t drink your body weight in beer,” Blake countered.

Lena flopped back down on my bed. “I come from a long line of alcoholics and I’m seventy-five percent Irish. I was born knowing how to hold my liquor.” She held her fist up over her head for a few seconds before letting it drop back down onto the bed.

Blake smiled and walked toward the closed door. “I’ll be right back, drunky. Try not to puke on anything, okay?”

“Ha ha ha. Stop it. You’re too funny,” Lena deadpanned, rolling her eyes.

Blake chuckled and left the room, leaving the door open behind him.

As soon as he was gone, Lena tilted her head and stared up at me. Her red hair was fanned out around her head and her brown eyes shone in the sunlight that was streaming through the open window. “Did you have fun at the party last night, Forrester?”

I scratched my chin, thinking about the best way to answer that question. To my satisfaction, it was then that Blake chose to return.

He walked in, closing the door behind him and coming over to Lena. She sat up as he handed her two pills and a bottle of water. “Take those.”

Lena brought her hand up to her mouth and tilted it back so that both pills dropped onto her tongue. She drowned the pills with a long swig of water before capping it and looking at me.

“What?”

“Did you have fun at the party last night?” she questioned again.

Blake sat down on the floor, rubbing his hand up and down my calf lightly. His touch was so soft and gentle that I could barely feel it.

“I guess I had fun.”

Blake scoffed. “Before or after Brianna smashed your head against the ground?”

“Before,” I admitted begrudgingly.

“Wait, back up. Brianna did
what
?” Lena furrowed her eyebrows together and stared at me with her mouth dropped open slightly.

“She attacked me yesterday at the party.”

“What the hell? What did you do to earn that?” Her expression was mixed with shock and skepticism.

“It’s a long story. Basically, I called her a bitch.” I shrugged nonchalantly as I took Lena’s water bottle from her hand and took a water-falled swig.

“She was standing up for you,” Blake cut in.

Lena slapped my shoulder. “Why would you do that? You know that I prefer being the one to smash my fist against Brianna’s cake face.”

I rubbed my arms for a second before slapping her back. “You can’t hit her. You’ve already been suspended. Besides, you were too busy snoring on the lawn chair.”

“Ohh, I can hit her. It’s not like we were on school property or anything. You should have woken me up.”

“You could barely stand!”

Blake chuckled quietly as if he suddenly remembered something funny. “She couldn’t stand up straight on her own, yet she was able to do a handstand while chugging beer for over a minute. How is that even possible?”

Lena smirked down at Blake. “I took gymnastics for almost five years. I can walk on my hands for five minutes straight.”

“I took gymnastics when I was eight.” I crossed my arms over my chest and grinned widely.

Blake looked up at me with doubt lining his face. His eyes caught the light, making them look almost clear. “Really? That’s hard to believe considering how you’re so inflexible that you have trouble sitting crisscross applesauce.”

I glared at him for his final comment, then I held my head high as I went on about my gymnastics career. “I took gymnastics for exactly three days.”

Lena and Blake stared at me for a moment; judging my face to see if I was serious. When they realized that I was, they both burst into fits of laughter. Lena clutched at her stomach as she leaned over the edge of the bed. Her curly hair bounced as she rocked back and forth.

“What happened to make you stop?” Blake asked, still chuckling softly.

“We started learning how to do cartwheels and my mom was scared that I’d break my neck,” I mumbled under my breath.

Lena laughed harder, her face going red to match her hair. Blake just shook his head, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Only your mom would ever do something like that,” he joked.

“Hey, at least I learned how to do a somersault!”

“Anyone can do a somersault, Vi.”

“I couldn’t!”

Lena laughed. “Did you ever learn how to do a cartwheel?”

I cleared my throat. “Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t.”

Blake poked my leg. “That means no.”

Lena threw her arms around my torso with a huge smile lighting up her freckle covered face. “I’ll teach you how to do a cart wheel.”

I laughed, and nodded. “Just don’t tell my mom.”

Blake smiled at my words. “You should be fine as long as you don’t break your neck.”

Lena’s eyes bulged slightly as she dropped her arms from around my shoulders and clutched her stomach. “Just not right now, I think I’m gonna puke,” she groaned as she jumped off of the bed and ran out of the room.

I looked at Blake and raised an eyebrow at him. “Aren’t you glad that I took that beer from you last night?”

He shrugged, “Honestly? Yes, I am. Because if you didn’t then I would have woken up with “sweaty-urine-covered-sock” breath and you wouldn’t have kissed me this morning.”

I laughed as he raised his voice to imitate me as he used my words from last night. “I definitely don’t sound like that.”

“That’s what you think.” He stood up, pulling me off of the bed, and lacing his fingers through mine before guiding me toward the door.

“Where are we going?”

“You’re going to check on Lena, and I’m going to see what that yummy smell is that’s coming from the kitchen.” Blake rubbed his stomach with his free hand, and as if on cue, his stomach grumbled.

Laughing, I shook my head. “You’re always hungry. I swear you have a bottomless pit for a stomach.” I don’t even know how he smelled anything from the kitchen. I couldn’t smell anything until I was at least halfway down the hallway, and yet somehow he had been able to smell the food from inside of my closed bedroom. I’m really starting to think that Blake has extra heightened senses. He can smell from closed off spaces, eat twice as much as a sumo wrestler, and he can always hear every little thing that someone says. If it weren’t for the fact that he had terrible vision, I may have come to the conclusion that he was some type of inhuman creature with sharp senses. Like a vampire or something. With my superhuman strength and Blake’s heightened senses, if we ever had kids, they’d have to be part time superheroes.

The feeling of Blake nudging on my shoulder brought me out of my mental reverie. “Go ahead, Vi,” he said as he pushed me toward the bathroom where Lena had escaped to.

“I’m perfectly capable of walking, you know,” I replied as I shook Blake off of my shoulders.

“Good, because I’m starving.”

I rolled my eyes as Blake ran toward the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Don’t run down the stairs! You could fall and break your neck!” I yelled jokingly at his quickly retreating back before joining my sick friend in the bathroom.

Chapter 20

After spending a majority of the morning holding back Lena’s hair so that she could vomit up oatmeal-like chunks of food, I had lost any appetite that I may have had. Brianna had come over earlier to start packing her bags and had already taken them over to her house, with the help of Anya and Ella. When she ran into Blake, she offered him a ride home, but to her and my surprise, he ignored her and had decided to walk home instead. Brianna had looked a bit peeved off when he ignored her, but just rolled her eyes at his back and muttered the word, “childish,” under her breath.

Throughout the whole time that Brianna was at my house, we tried our best to ignore each other. While she was upstairs, I was downstairs, and vice versa. That is, with an exception to the time I had ran up to grab something and caught Ella snooping around my room. At first glance I had thought that she was Lena, and I was about to ask her a question when Ella turned toward me, pushing my desk drawer closed. Her brown eyes were lined in black and widened as she looked at me. I was shocked to see Ella in my room, but it was even more surprising to see the vulnerable expression on her face.

She stood there silently, wringing her hands together and staring at her toes. She reminded me of a child who had just been caught sneaking dessert before dinner and was getting scolded by her parents. Instead of asking what she was doing in my room, going through my stuff, I held my hand out and asked if she had taken anything. Ella had refused to meet my eyes throughout the whole exchange, but she still shook her head no. Not wanting any unneeded confrontation, I just opened the door to my room and asked her to leave, which she didn’t hesitate to do.

About an hour later, Lena and I were hanging out in my room. She had found Ella’s cell phone lying on the ground next to my dresser and, using the fact that she was Ella’s older sister and that she had the right to look through her phone, she had proceeded to read out a majority of her text messages.

Bring me a bag of chips tomorrow for lunch. These people don’t have anything edible to eat in their whole house.

I chuckled and motioned with my hand for Lena to read aloud another one of Brianna’s text messages to Ella. This had been going on for about an hour now and I honestly didn’t feel bad about reading Ella’s text messages. If she hadn’t been snooping in my room, then she would have never left her phone, and we wouldn’t be reading her messages.

Technically I wasn’t the one reading them anyway. Lena is the one who’s doing all of the reading whilst I was sprawled out on the floor with both arms crossed under my head. I stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars that had been stuck to my ceiling since I was ten. The bottom of my shirt was rolled up just enough so that my belly button was visible, and the small of my back was pressed against the cold hardwood floor, sending little chills up through my spine. In the corner of my eye, Lena’s red hair was visible as it hung freely over the edge of my bed, bouncing whenever she spoke.

“Listen to this.” She cleared her throat and resumed talking in a voice that sounded eerily like Brianna’s.

I need a B or higher on my next history assignment so if you want me to stay quiet about you-know-what, then I expect a good grade. Oh, but don’t forget, my parents are coming back on Tuesday so I’m having a sleepover and you better be there.

Lena looked over at me, a frown evident on her heart shaped face. Her bowed lips curved downwards at the corners as she seemed to be thinking about something.

“First Brianna blackmails her, and then she invites her to a sleepover? What the hell?” I questioned as I thought about the strange text message. Why would Brianna even need someone to do her homework for her? I may always joke about how stupid she is, but she’s smart enough to get good grades in her classes on her own. As far as I know, she’s always gotten good grades, with an exception to physics according to Blake. She always made the honor roll, and in order for someone to join a sports team at my school, you have to have above a B average.

Lena puffed out a huge breath of air, before rolling her eyes. “Honestly, of all people, why would she ask Ella to do her work for her? She’d be lucky to get a C on an assignment with Ella doing it. I love her and all, but she’s not the smartest when it comes to school work.”

“She sounds like me.”

Lena set the phone down next to her and folded both arms under her head so that she could rest her chin on them. “I guess.”

“I wonder what it is that could be so bad that Brianna is blackmailing her about it.”

“Who knows? Gabriella’s just so stubborn. I told her in the beginning of the year that if she didn’t make the right friends, everything from last year would happen all over again.”

I sighed loudly. I was so tired of having Lena bring up what happened last year and then change the subject because she didn’t want to talk about it. “You could always just tell me what happened at your old school. You know that I won’t tell anybody, Lenny. I mean seriously, you and Blake are like my only friends. Who would I tell anyway?”

Lena stared down at me. She seemed to be silently evaluating my statement. “It’s a long story.”

I stood up, rolling my eyes exaggeratedly as I sat down on the bed next to her. “I have time.”

Lena sighed and then was silent for a moment. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“How about I ask you a question, and you tell me the answer?” I offered.

“Okay.”

“Why did you leave your old school?”

“I was expelled for fighting.”

I smiled. That sounded like the Lena I know. She’s always ready to start a fight, even if she knows the consequences. “Who did you fight?”

Lena scratched her shoulder, smirking as she spoke. “Eleanor Daniels. She was sort of like the Brianna of my old school. She had three close friends that she did everything with. They never went anywhere without each other. Gabriella treated her like a freaking Goddess. She did whatever Eleanor told her to. She even got her into trouble with the police a few times. Whenever Eleanor or one of her friends would do something, they would always frame Ella for it. And the worst part was that she always took the blame. I guess she thought that it would make them accept her as a member of their stupid little group, or something.

“She was so desperate to fit in that when they finally told her that she could hang out with them, she went crazy. She was a bitch to everyone, including my parents, her real friends, and even me. We were so close before she started hanging out with Eleanor and her posse. She started dressing differently; she even temporarily dyed her hair blonde. Whenever the two of us would go out together, she would pretend that she didn’t know me when she saw someone from school.”

I bit my lip to keep myself from saying anything. Ella had been nothing but a callous bitch to me since she had gotten here so it was hard not to judge her. I couldn’t even picture her being nice.

“One night while my parents were sleeping, I heard laughing coming from outside of the house. I didn’t expect it to be Ella, but it was. She was getting into the car with Eleanor and her other “friends”. When I called her, she let the phone go to voicemail. I was so scared and worried. I didn’t trust Eleanor at all.

“I waited around until almost two o’clock in the morning, when I finally got a call from her. She was crying and her voice sounded so…drowsy. I can’t even explain it. She begged me to come pick her up from some bar on the other side of town. She kept saying, “Hurry. Please, help me.” Lena bit her lip as she sat up next to me. “Then some guy’s voice came on the phone. He told me where she was and then hung up.”

“What did you do?”

Lena tucked her legs under her body and played with the hem of her shirt. “I went to go get her. Even if she was treating me like crap, she’s still my sister.”

“I’d do the same thing for Lilly.”

She nodded.

“What happened when you got there?” I questioned quietly.

“She was passed out in the men’s bathroom. Some guy was sitting next to her. She looked so scared and helpless.” Lena sighed and shook her head slowly at the memory. “Her head was slumped on his shoulder. He looked about twenty-one or twenty-two, and he was holding her up. He said that he had seen her earlier at the bar with some girls. He saw them lead her into the men’s bathroom and then they ran out. He came to check on her and she was passed out on the floor. I don’t know what happened, but he thought that Eleanor and her friends might have spiked her drink and then left her in the bathroom.” Her eyes bore into mine as she added, “If the wrong guy had found her there, anything could have happened.”

“That’s scary,” I spoke my thoughts. “So what did the guy do?”

“He waited with her until she woke up and offered her a ride home, but she said no, so he went in her purse and got her phone out. I was the last person who had called her so he called me.”

I raised my hand and placed it on her shoulder. “That’s why you beat up Eleanor.”

She nodded her head slightly. “It’s one of the reasons why. I was also tired of her messing with my little sister. The bitch got what she deserved.”

“It must have been a pretty bad fight in order to have gotten you expelled,” I pointed out.

Lena turned to me, a serious expression on her face as she said “I killed her.”

My hand dropped from Lena’s shoulder, and my eyes widened in shock. I didn’t know what to say. Surely she would have gotten more than an expulsion for murdering someone. When Lena cracked a smile, I realized that she was only kidding.

Lena smirked as she said, “I’m kidding. I did fracture her jaw though.”

“You suck!” I slapped her leg playfully and shook my head. “I seriously thought you killed her!”

Lena laughed. “I may be a lot of things Forrester, but I am not a murderer.”

“Breaking her jaw was a bit extreme though. I see why you got expelled for that.”

Lena raised a pointer finger at me. “Fractured,” she corrected.

I rolled my eyes.

“Her parents wanted to press charges, but for some reason Eleanor told them not to. I think she was afraid that if they pressed charges that Ella would come out with everything they had done. I mean, they
drugged
her for goodness sake! The worst part was that Ella barely even remembered anything from that night, so I couldn’t get the whole story about what happened.”

“Well then I guess it’s a good thing that you guys moved away from all of that, right?”

Lena’s bottom lips trembled slightly. “Yeah, because of that and the pregnancy.”

I nodded, remembering the story about the twins being given up for adoption. “So you could start off fresh.”

Lena nodded, wiping under one eye where a tear had leaked, and smudging some of her eye makeup. “Except, we haven’t even been able to start fresh. My mom has been suffering from severe depression since the adoption and she has to be monitored at all times. Last winter after we had given the babies up, she had tried to commit suicide. She overdosed on pain medication, but we got her into the hospital in time for her stomach to be pumped.”

I wrapped my arms around Lena’s waist and she rested her head on my shoulder, taking deep breaths to keep herself from crying.

“You know what sucks?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“What?”

“I have two little siblings out in the world who will never even know that I exist.”

I sighed, trying to imagine that feeling, but I couldn’t. “You what also sucks?” I questioned back.

“What?” she responded,

“If someone ever messes with them, they won’t have you to come and break their bully’s jaw.”

Lena smiled sadly. “Yeah, that too.” Then she corrected me again. “Fracture.”