Troublemaker Read online

  I’m here to take my punishment and to hopefully, hurry up and get it over with. I don’t want to be here. I need to start studying for my exams and trying to figure out a way to avoid flunking the math portion of my exams next week.

  That’s what I need to be doing.

  Hopefully, I’ll be able to get at least a little bit of homework done while I’m in study hall. I’m not exactly an expert bad-girl, so who knows? Maybe studying during detention is totally easy and it’ll be just the prep I need to help me succeed.

  Study hall is still in session when I arrive a few minutes early for my detention. I wait outside and lean against the stone wall. For just a second, I close my eyes. I feel stuck, trapped in my own life. What the hell am I going to do about next week?

  About my future?

  What am I going to do when I’m stuck at Harrison’s house?

  When I’m hanging out with him every day?

  When there’s no way to get away from him?

  I don’t even want to think about how much stress or anxiety weighing in at his house is going to bring me. It’s hard enough managing my weight with Emilia and Karen breathing down my neck all the time.

  How am I going to eat at Harrison’s house?

  Will Frank have special meals served for me?

  I don’t even want to think about it.

  Frank sucks, and my compliance with this situation sucks even more. He has this nasty, horrible plan for my life, and the truth is that I’m just getting tired of it. I feel like he’s dictated every aspect of my life. In turn, Harrison has dictated so much of my life. What I want is to be free from everything: Frank’s hold over me, my crush on Harrison.

  All of it.

  “Fancy meeting you here.”

  I groan inwardly when I hear his voice, and I look up to see none other than Harrison O’Conner standing in front of me. He’s too close for comfort: close enough that it’s obvious he’s invading my space. He knows it, too.

  We both do.

  And that’s his power. He has no problem getting in someone’s face and bothering them. It doesn’t matter that my arms are crossed over my chest or that I’m giving off don’t-mess-with-me vibes. He doesn’t care about that because he’s a dick.

  “What are you doing here?” I hiss at him. I try to be as bitchy as possible so he’ll just leave me alone. Somehow, I get the feeling I’m about as effective as an angry kitten.

  “I could ask you the same question,” he says carefully. He looks at the door to study hall and then back to me. “Was somebody a bad girl?”

  The way he says bad girl does bad, terrible, naughty things to my insides. His words make my stomach twist and turn, and they make my panties wet because when he speaks to me like this, all I can think about is writhing beneath him covered in sweat.

  Fuck.

  I’m in so much damn trouble.

  Instead of taking the bait and protesting that I’m innocent, I simply shrug.

  “So what if I am?” I say.

  “You don’t seem like the bad girl type,” Harrison looks slightly confused, as though he’s trying to figure out whether I have a legitimate reason to be waiting outside of study hall.

  I don’t.

  I don’t have a good reason at all. Soon he’s going to realize that, especially if he, too, has detention today.

  Suddenly, the door opens and all of the students who were in study hall stream out quickly. They’re all busy talking and laughing, and nobody so much as notices Harrison and me.

  He looks at me and then to the open door.

  “Shall we?” He gestures to it.

  “Um, yeah,” I whisper, gulping.

  Here goes nothing. I push myself off of the wall and enter the room. I go to the teacher at the front of the room. She takes down my name, and then she gestures to the desks.

  “Sit anywhere,” she says. “Hello, Harrison.”

  “Hello, Miss Amber.” Harrison sounds wildly confident and comfortable with the teacher. She’s a new instructor, or maybe a substitute. I’ve never seen her before. She’s tall and beautiful and she seems fierce and determined. She’s not at all like Mrs. Miller: the teacher who usually runs study hall and detention.

  “Have a seat, Harrison.”

  “Of course, Miss Amber.”

  To my dismay, and to my surprise, and to my total horror, Harrison carefully considers every desk in the room before choosing the one directly next to me. If Miss Amber thinks it’s weird, she says nothing. She picks up her phone and does something on it – maybe sends a text, I’m not sure. Then she pulls out a stack of papers and starts grading them.

  So this is it, then.

  I just sit here silently.

  Maybe I should do homework or pretend to read a book. I can feel Harrison staring at me, and I don’t know why. We all know that he’s not interested in me. Right? There’s literally no way that a guy like him would like me at all.

  Not that I want him to.

  It would probably be best for me, and for everyone, if Harrison O’Conner simply forgot I existed.

  It would make things so much easier when I escaped.

  That’s what I’ll think about while I’m here: getting away. Although, as graduation grows nearer, I’m not so ignorant that I don’t think Frank has a contingency plan in place. He has to know that I’ll try to run. He’s going to do something to keep me where I am, and I don’t know what.

  Nothing is going to ruin this guy’s life plan for his son. I mean, he basically brought a child bride and raised it to be Harrison’s picture-perfect wife.

  What would Harrison think if he knew?

  Is his father ever going to tell him?

  When I look at Harrison, there are so many things I want to say to him. There are a lot of things I wish that he knew, like why I’m so wildly uncomfortable around him.

  Like why I feel like I’m slowly starving to death and it has nothing to do with food.

  Being raised in the O’Conner household felt like suffocating. Even when Harrison’s mom was alive, it felt lonely. I was always isolated from other people. Despite the fact that I went to school, my playmates were carefully selected and limited. Most of the time, I was banished to my room to spend time with my dolls when Harrison had friends or girlfriends over. Even in middle school, I wasn’t allowed to date or have any friends who were boys.

  My entire life was carefully guarded.

  Can I really do this for the rest of my life?

  Miss Amber stands, grabbing her phone. She looks at the two of us, and seemingly decides that we’re harmless.

  “I’ll be right back,” she says. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Before we can say anything at all, she leaves study hall and we’re there.

  Alone.

  Together.

  “What’s your deal?” Harrison asks sharply.

  “What?” I look at him, confused. What the hell did I do to him? I haven’t even talked to him. I definitely haven’t bothered him.

  “You heard me,” he says. “What’s your deal?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think you do,” he says.

  “I mean, you’re free to think that, but it doesn’t mean you’re speaking any more clearly than you were a second ago. What are you talking about?”

  “You’re hot and then you’re cold. You look at me like you want to fuck me, and then you look at me like you’re terrified of me. You act like I’m a brother to you, and then you act like you don’t know me. What’s the problem?”

  Harrison is supposed to be a bully.

  He’s supposed to be this huge dickhead, and most of the time, he totally is.

  Not always to me, no, but he’s generally considered to be something of an asshole. Now his heart of gold is starting to show through because he’s actually asking about my feelings, and more importantly, it actually sounds like he cares.

  Shit.

  I’m in trouble.

  “I’m not terrifie
d of you,” I tell him. That much, at least, is true.

  “Then why don’t you like me?”

  “You’re kind of a dick, Harrison, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “I don’t think it bothered you before,” he says. “This is something new.”

  Why does he have to be so on the nose with this stuff? Why does he have to know me so well that he’s calling me out like this? It’s not fair.

  I want my secrets.

  I just shrug, not willing to tell him what’s been bothering me. I don’t bother to tell him what Frank made clear over the summer. I’ve had almost six months to think about Frank’s words and his promise. That’s plenty of time to realize that if I don’t find a way to act, then my life will become completely absorbed by Harrison’s.

  I don’t want that.

  I’ve never wanted that.

  “What are you afraid of?” He asks.

  Not gentle.

  Not sweet.

  Just blunt.

  Like him.

  I think about the time we were kids. We sneaked outside into the woods and we were going to jump across a little creek. I was scared, and I didn’t want to fall into the water.

  “What are you afraid of?” A much-younger Harrison asked me. “Don’t be afraid, Adalee. I’ll catch you.”

  And he did.

  He caught me, lifting me over the water, but this isn’t something that Harrison can save me from. Even if I were to completely open up to him and tell him what his dad said, it wouldn’t be enough.

  It would never be enough to save me.

  Chapter Four

  Harrison

  SOMETHING HAS BEEN eating away at her all semester, and this is the first time I’ve really had Adalee alone. Maybe I’m a jerk for pushing her, but I want to know what the fuck her deal is, and I want to know why she’s so weird around me.

  Adalee has been lost for a long time. She used to be completely put-together and carefree. She used to be calm and relaxed and fun. Lately, though, she just seems hardened against everything. She doesn’t smile very much, and she never laughs with her friends. She thinks I don’t see how little she’s eating, but I do.

  I just don’t know if it’s because of stress, or if it’s because she has an eating disorder, or if there’s something else that she’s keeping from me.

  I don’t want her to feel like she has to keep anything from me, which is stupid because we aren’t close. We haven’t been close for a very, very long time. Still, like a moth to a flame, I’m drawn to her. We have a weird sort of twisted connection that I can’t seem to shake no matter how much I want to.

  “What are you afraid of?” I ask her, and I know that catches her off-guard. She jumps back, just a little, before she quickly regains her composure.

  “That’s a really personal question,” she finally says.

  “Yeah? Well, we have kind of a personal relationship,” I snap. I’m so sick of her bullshit. Adalee and I grew up together. I mean, my dad took her in when she was orphaned. She was practically my sister growing up, but there was always something more there. Adalee was always beautiful. She was always the kind of girl I never thought I could have. It baffled me – and still does – why she didn’t date when we were younger. I don’t know why she doesn’t date now. It’s not a religion thing.

  There’s something else going on with Adalee, something she’s not telling anyone.

  I can’t exactly pinpoint what my problem with her is today, but I do know that I’m done waiting for her to decide she’s ready.

  She’s had plenty of chances to tell the truth, and she’s passed up every one of them.

  Now it’s time for her to open up.

  The time for secrets has come and gone. I mean, next week we’re going home to my dad’s. We’re going to be locked up together for two damn weeks. If she has something she wants to say, I’d like her to just fucking say it now.

  At least then I can be ready.

  Adalee stares at me. She blinks, piercing me with those bottomless eyes. Then she turns away.

  “Don’t talk to me, Harrison.”

  Not fucking good enough.

  I snap, standing up, and I grab her arm. Pulling her to her feet, I grab her shoulders and fucking shake her.

  “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want,” I tell her. I don’t know what the hell is coming over me, but I’m tired.

  I’m tired of this game she’s playing.

  I’m tired of not knowing what she’s thinking about me.

  I’m tired of not knowing whether what she’s saying is true or not.

  It takes all of my energy not to grab her by the throat, pin her against the wall, and fucking kiss her like I mean it. That would be too far. Hell, I’ve already taken it too far, but I can’t stop now.

  But Adalee doesn’t even react to me shaking her. She doesn’t look sad or hurt or surprised.

  She just looks...

  Well, she looks like she expected this.

  Why the hell does she look like she expected this?

  “Like father, like son,” she says, and those words shoot to my fucking core.

  “What?”

  “Oh, Harrison, you heard me.”

  I release her because I’m so shocked by what she’s saying. What the hell do those words mean? What do they mean right now? To us? To her?

  Like father, like son?

  Has my dad laid his fucking hands on her?

  “Adalee, tell me what that means.”

  Suddenly, I’m the one on the edge of my seat because I don’t know what she’s going to say next. Equal parts of me want to know and not know what words are going to pass her lips. All of time and space seems to stand perfectly still as I wait to hear what she’s going to say.

  Adalee just looks at me.

  Forlorn.

  She looks forlorn, but I don’t know why.

  She came to live with my family when we were just kids. I mean, we grew up together. We were close friends, at least, I thought we were. Everything sort of changed when we got to middle school. We started having different friends and pursuing different interests. She never really wanted to hang out with me after that, and I guess I always thought she was sort of weird for not dating or being interested in boys then.

  But as far as I know, she’s had a pretty damn decent life.

  I mean, she’s wanted for nothing.

  My dad has completely taken care of everything she’s ever wanted or needed. There’s nothing that Adalee could wish for that she hasn’t gotten.

  So why does she suddenly seem to dislike my dad?

  “Harrison,” she finally says. “There are a lot of things you don’t know.”

  She’s spared from having to say anything else because Miss Amber pushes the door to the room open and comes back in. She stops in the doorway when she sees us.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she says.

  Adalee and I quickly return to our seats, and I shake my head and get ready to paste my bad-boy persona back in place.

  “Not at all,” I say.

  Miss Amber obviously doesn’t believe us, and she shouldn’t. She absolutely walked in on something, but unfortunately, I couldn’t even begin to tell her what.

  There’s really nothing I could say that would explain away what just happened or why Adalee suddenly has a repulsion for my dad.

  Like father, like son?

  Is she saying my dad hurt her?

  Or is she saying he gets what he wants?

  If she means the latter, then she’s right. She’s very, very right. My dad is not the sort of man who lets anyone forget meeting him. If anything, he’s a little too memorable. My dad loves to leave an impression, and unfortunately, it’s not always a good one.

  That’s served him well in his business endeavors because people are scared of him. No one is going to cross somebody they’re afraid of, but...

  Well, I don’t want Adalee to be scared of my dad. I’m not scared of him. At least, not
in ways I’m willing to admit.

  I sneak a look over at her, but she’s staring at her notebook. She’s writing something in neat, tiny handwriting, and I try to make out what it is, but there’s no way to do it. Adalee is a good girl through-and-through. I still don’t even know what she did to end up in detention, but something tells me that there’s a lot going on that I just can’t see.

  And honestly, maybe I don’t want to.

  When we’re finally released from detention, it feels like a thousand hours of silence have passed. In reality, we were only locked up for an hour. It was still a long time, and now it’s almost time for dinner. Adalee and I head out of the room. She turns toward the front of the school building. I think she’s going to head over to the girl’s dormitory.

  “Can I walk with you?”

  The question escapes my lips too soon.

  Too fast.

  I didn’t even have time to think about my question. Adalee is just as shocked as I am because she looks up at me and her jaw drops to the floor.

  “Why?” She asks, and the question comes out almost wrapped in laughter. She releases a sort of chortle, as though it’s the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever asked her.

  “So you don’t have to be alone.”

  She sighs again and shakes her head, and then she looks at me like I’m a fucking idiot.

  “Harrison, if there’s one thing I’m really, really good at, it’s being alone.”

  Then she leaves, and I’m left staring at the ghost of what could have been, wondering where the fuck I messed up.

  Chapter Five

  Adalee

  “YOU SAID what?”

  Karen looks at me like I’m an idiot. Emilia gives me the same damn look, which is rich considering how much I helped her out recently with her own personal problems. She’s not exactly good in the romance department, but I’d like to think that I’m part of the reason she finally decided to suck it up and be brave.