Shatter (Club Grit Trilogy)

Shatter (Club Grit Trilogy, #3)

Chapter One:

Chapter Two:

Chapter Three:

Chapter Four:

Chapter Five:

Chapter Six:

Chapter Seven:

Chapter Eight:

Chapter Nine:

Chapter Ten:

Chapter Eleven:

Chapter Twelve:

Chapter Thirteen:

Chapter Fourteen:

Epilogue:

Playlist:

About the Author:

Bibliography

This goes out to everyone who realizes that sometimes, you’re Emma, other times, you’re Becca, but inside of us, there’s always a little Kim.

I
F YOU’RE READING THIS, you probably already know that I’m the villain, that I’m the mega-bitch of Omega Mu Gamma, who almost ruined a freshman’s life, and you think that no matter what I say, I can’t prove you wrong.

You’re right. And I’m not going to try and pretend I’m something I’m not. I’m owning the mistakes I’ve made and I want to show you just how deep and fucked up the problems were at Omega House, in hopes that maybe it’ll shed some light on what I did. I don’t think that it excuses my behavior, but I think people are owed an explanation.

Even more unlikely, maybe you’re part of the group of fanatics that thinks that just because I’m some mysterious pretty girl who you either want to be or want to date, I’m innocent. You probably think that I’m the heroine of my own story, that somehow, I’m misunderstood, or that the facts were fudged, that I can’t be as bad as you’ve heard.

You’re wrong. I’m the antagonist of my own story too, but I’m still going to share it with you.

I guess we have to start where everything really started, or rather, when. It was Throwback Thursday at Club Grit, the most exclusive club in the Beverly Hills area. As not just a student at University of California, Beverly Hills, but as a member of the most exclusive sorority on campus, Omega Mu Gamma, Club Grit’s velvet ropes were always open and welcome to members of my clique. Every sorority has the hard working students that keep the house’s average GPA up, and while I’d been one of those girls for my first two years, during my last two, I partied it up, and there was no better place to go to drink or dance than Club Grit.

The limo had pulled up to the sorority house promptly at eleven thirty, and, like ducks in a row, the freshman pledges, who were technically part of the house, but who were under a probationary semester, as per tradition, were all in their clubbing uniforms: tight, well fitted dresses, high heels, and makeup and hair that looked more at home on a runway than on a college campus. That wasn’t my style, and it didn’t have to be, as an upperclassman.

How did Omega House pay for these limos, and for clubbing? Well, we’ll get to that a little later. But, for now, realize that life in Omega House wasn’t the way that it was for most people, let alone most students. There’s only one other kind of person that lives like us, and, as I’ve said, we’ll talk about that later.

In the limo, there were girls taking pills and taking shots (alcohol, not syringes, although, knowing these girls, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had whipped out some needles), and as usual, I had my clipboard with me. I have a bunch of them: black clipboards with red accents. Some have red edging, some have red hardware, and a few are painted red on the bottom. One of my relatives has a stationary store and they were popular, but came with cartoon characters on them, gothic cats and spooky girls. A little bit of Goo Gone and sandpaper removed the decals with ease, a new layer of gloss gave the clipboards new life, and I had my Louboutin-influenced clipboards ready to go on my first day of classes at UCBH, a day that now seems to be much further in my past than it really is.

The sheets on the clipboard are simple. There are rows, with spaces for names, and spaces for either checks or crosses. Checks are in black, crosses are in red, and obviously, checks are good, crosses are bad. At the end of every semester, girls that have a C average or lower in this merits/demerits system are supposed to leave. That’s the theory, anyway. In reality...the system isn’t exactly fair or perfect. Then again, how fair is it to judge people using what amounts to a really fucked up game of tic tac toe to begin with?

We pulled up to the club, and at the entrance, the bouncer needed only see the lavalieres around our necks to know who we were. They were our calling card, as they are at sororities across the country, but we were the only sorority girls at Club Grit. We always were, the way that our VIP table, the same one each visit, was always ready for us.

A waitress brought up a platter of shots. Sorry, a “bottle service girl” brought us a “round”. The seats of the VIP are black velvet, but under the black light, any lint is extremely visible. Of course, nobody goes to Club Grit to look for lint, but to party. As the girls, who now looked almost identical in the black light, the neon prints of their Lilly Pulitzer dresses all merging into an urban camouflage that made them stand out to the men on the dance floor, took shots, I sat and waited for them to disperse. The only two people who stayed by my side were Samantha and Becca. Samantha only stayed because she was friends with Becca, and Becca stayed because...we have a past. Nothing bad, just not the kind of thing you flaunt.

My eyes glazed over as Sam talked about the different guys she wanted to fuck in the back room. It got old quickly. It’d be one thing if she had the guts to do it, but she was all talk, little action.

Emma, a blonde freshman, bounced up to the VIP. She’d had more pills than she should have that. She had no idea how to just say no or to tell people she’d had too much, and I was tempted to give Sam a stern glare. Sam was responsible for Emma, because Emma was Sam’s Little, and Sam was Emma’s Big, but Samantha was the one that was giving out pills to the girls to begin with. “Hey, guys, I was wondering if you guys knew anything about that guy, the bouncer,” she said, pointing out a guy in black clothes with tattoos.

“I don’t think he’s a bouncer, I haven’t seen him here before,” I said with a frown. It was true: I didn’t remember seeing a bouncer with tattoos at Club Grit before. This one had a look that I would have remembered: not my type at all, but a distinctive look. Tall, with dark hair, piercings, and tattoos, he was the kind of guy that was hard to forget, but for me, extremely easy to resist. I’d never been into the bad boy, rock star type, and to be fair, I’d never expected Emma to be either, given the fact that her parents were so...well, wealthy. Maybe it should have been expected: what rich girl doesn’t want to take home a guy that’ll shock her parents into giving her attention? But that was a problem I didn’t have, a problem I’d never have.

“No, you’re wrong,” said Becca, brushing a lock of her caramelized brown weave with highlights so good they looked natural over her mocha skin. Her dress was mostly pinks and greens, which really stood out from her skin. A natural smattering of freckles covered her firm cheeks, brushing across the strong bridge of her button nose. “He’s new. I was talking to Jason earlier and he said they just hired on new staff.”

Samantha interjected, “Don’t go for it, Emma. Trust me. There are so many guys like him out there. There are some cute guys at Beta Rho Omega that run the door during parties. Go for one of them, not some townie. UCBH students stick together. Together.”

Emma pouted, and by pouted, I mean she put on the sort of duck face associated with girls “like her”, that are ditzy and not serious about anything. I rolled my eyes and said, “Fine. Go get him. But don’t come back without him. He better be good in bed.”

Emma said thanks and left us to talk in peace. “So, you were talking to Jason?” asked Sam, bumping Becca with her shoulder.

My eyes glazed over again. Becca and Jason, Becca and Jason. Becca hadn’t been any fun since she met that boy. She could have done a lot better than some bartender at Club Grit. I just spent my time making checks and crosses until Emma came back. “You smell kinda funky, honey...did you bang him against the dumpster or something?” asked Becca with a giggle.

“Ha. Ha. No. I wasn’t even gone that long,” said Emma.

“Honey, you never know!” teased Becca.

“Yeah, no success,” said Emma, reaching towards the drink tray.

I pulled the tray away from Emma. “You don’t need another drink. What you need is to get that number off that bouncer. Don’t make me look like a fool for giving you this privilege. I want you to come back to this table with his digits or you don’t get to come back with us at all. You’ll have to find your own way home. If you want another pill for confidence, that I can offer. You can wash it down with the champagne if you want.” Emma took a pill she had in her clutch and swallowed it, washing it down with our last glass of champagne, before leaving.

Emma didn’t leave with the sorority that night. Neither did Becca. I don’t know whether Sam did either, because I also didn’t go back home that night. Emma went down to the dance floor to try and seduce the bouncer. Becca went down to meet with her bartender boy toy. Samantha also went to dance, and she made an ass of herself, as usual. It was just me, sitting in the VIP by myself, with the trust black and red clipboard and one of those pens that has four colors, although I mainly used two: red and black, with blue for writing longer notes to save the black ink.

At least, it was...until someone came and sat next to me.

“Hey, shouldn’t you be with your friends?” said a deep voice. I turned: there was a man sitting on the couch next to me. My eyes ran up his long legs to his strong torso, examining everything from the cut and material of his suit to the way his muscles gently pressed against the well-tailored fabric, and then up to his face. He smelled of aftershave, yet his firm jawline was covered in a short layer of rough but even stubble, a salt and pepper mix of black and grey, with a few stray whites, but he wasn’t the DILF type. There was no way he was anyone’s father, but he had an authoritarian air about him. The way he said,
“shouldn’t you be with your friends”
now seemed more like an order, in retrospect, than a query.

I turned away and looked back at the dance floor. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.” It was hard to resist just flirting back with this mystery man, but I had a job to do here. The same way that all the sorority sisters were part of Omega Mu but only given they met certain conditions, I had a job to do to ensure my place in the sorority wasn’t forfeit. I wasn’t’ about to let a guy, even one that had animal magnetism that was undeniable, even to non-zoologists, distract me from the work. I made some haphazard checks and crosses and hoped to God I’d marked the right girls as being good and the right ones as being a nuisance.

“What, you’ve got homework to do or something?” he said with a chuckle, but he wasn’t peering over my shoulder at the papers, trying to read and understand what I was doing, not that it was that complicated. It wasn’t any of business, but he wasn’t prying like so many boys had tried to before. Then again, with his already greying hair, he wasn’t exactly a boy any more.

I turned back to him and furrowed my brow. “If you must know, I’m collecting data.”

“Data to open up your own nightclub?” he joked, but somehow, it felt like there was some sort of probing question in there, something accusing, as if maybe I was taking notes on the club.

“No. Notes on the girls I came with. They know it, and that’s why I’m here,” I said curtly, but this time, I didn’t turn away. I couldn’t pull away from his steely blue eyes if I wanted to, but this was like a staring contest, a contest of wills, and I didn’t want this stranger to think he had any power over me, that he could intimidate me in any way. I didn’t want him to think I was being cold because I was weak and had to put up walls, even if there was a grain of truth in the sentiment, and I didn’t want him to think that he scared me, because although there was a grain of truth in that too, he didn’t. He was different and almost alien, because guys like him didn’t usually talk to girls like me, they talked to refined older women or dilettante young models, but not to me, girls that are only different than the other girls on the dance floor because we wear a set of random Greek symbols on our necks.

“Is that why you’re always here?” he asked, but he didn’t wrap his arm around me like a younger guy would, he didn’t grab at my waist, my hips, or God forbid, my breasts. Instead, he just sustained eye contact, and kept talking to me in that firm but oddly soothing tone.