CHAPTER TWO #2
He returned his phone to his pocket. “That’s irrelevant now. But before you think of getting your hands on it to delete it, it’s not the only copy. So you better keep your mouth shut if you don’t want everyone to know the ‘perfect’ Blair Everett is not so perfect and innocent after all.”
I dug my nails into my palms, my chest heaving with rapid breaths as I looked back into his dark, bottomless eyes. I had to blink, shocked by how they looked. There was no light in them, just pure darkness. He would do it. I could see the truth in his gaze.
How had it come to this?
“This is not you, Zach. You’re better than this.”
He laughed again, and every muscle in my body went taut as he bent his head to look into my eyes. “This is exactly who I am. This is exactly the person you created. Monsters breed monsters. Now you just get to experience it firsthand.”
I could do nothing but stare at him, my heart pounding like a raging drum.
We stood so close to each other, but he could be standing on the other side of the world, and it would feel the same.
I didn’t know this guy. This guy was someone cruel, someone destroyed beyond repair, and if I’d had any hope of him forgiving me, that hope was now gone.
He was going to hurt me, and he wouldn’t think twice about it.
He pushed away from me, and only then could I breathe again.
He looked me up and down once again and chuckled.
“I haven’t even done anything to you yet, and you’re already like this.
This is going to be fun.” He stopped. “Oh, and by the way, happy birthday. Wishing you lots and lots of happiness.” He winked at me and moved for his room, leaving me dazed and pressed against the wall long after he was gone.
“Earth to Blair.” Aurora waved her hand in front of my face.
I winced and drew my gaze away from the shining surface of the pool, the music playing from my phone filling my ears again. Even an hour after seeing Zach, I couldn’t come to grips with how different he was. How cruel he’d become.
Despite the sun warming my skin, I felt cold from deep inside when I thought about the promise of revenge in his eyes. The certainty in his voice that I would pay. The pleasure he took in seeing me scared of him.
That video . . . Fear, disgust, and shame twirled inside me, and I felt like hyperventilating just imagining his reaction when he watched it.
I clenched my hands. It was still hard to believe he would go that far to blackmail me with that video. He’d come to my house to make me pay, and I couldn’t even tell Dad the truth. How long had he been planning this?
I reached for my cocktail on the table by my deck chair and took a large sip through the straw, gripping the stem to steady my hand. “Yes?”
“Did you hear anything we said?” Lana asked, her blue eyes peering at me from under the edge of her straw hat.
Nope. I’d checked out when they mentioned the guy from last night had a ten-inch dick and could last for an hour. I wasn’t interested in hearing more.
“I was just thinking about something.”
Aurora rolled her eyes. “Of course you were. You never give a shit about what we have to say.”
I leveled her with a scowl. “As if you care about what I have to say.” I’d stopped trying to tell them anything meaningful ages ago.
They had no interest unless it was about sex, fashion, or gossip.
I could never talk to them about how I truly felt, about how this world felt, how sometimes everything was too much.
Aurora examined her red nails, which matched her long red hair and the dark red lipstick she now wore. “Whatever.”
“What did you do while we were gone?” Lana asked me, adjusting the strap of her bikini.
She’d enlarged her tits a few months ago, and ever since then, she’d been wearing bikinis that could barely cover her nipples, as though to taunt us.
I’d caught Aurora staring at them in envy a couple of times even though she’d done the procedure herself last year and had another one scheduled next month, right in time for college.
“I fucked someone in the restroom.”
Aurora smiled, but I could see her envy in the smile. “Really? You don’t waste time, do you?”
Lana licked her lips. “Was he hot?”
He looked like Zach, so of course he was, I wished I could say. But then I thought about how Zach looked now, and I realized that wouldn’t be doing Zach justice. He’d become ten out of ten.
“Yeah, he was hot.”
“Did he last long?” Aurora asked, digging for anything that would make that guy any less good than the guy they had been with.
I didn’t remember, and I didn’t care. The sex wasn’t about him, or sex in itself at all. It was about Zach and the pleasure I’d imagined he was giving me. Two minutes or an hour, it was all the same to me.
“Yeah, he lasted super long,” I said just to annoy Aurora.
She crossed her arms over her chest, looking away.
I almost rolled my eyes. Aurora always needed to compete with me.
She always had to have more popular, better-looking, and richer guys than me, compensating for the fact that guys had always been more attracted to me.
When Aurora, Lana, and I were together, most guys only looked at me.
She couldn’t stand not being the center of male attention.
And I couldn’t stand her being so petty about it.
I took another sip of my cocktail and looked toward the room of our previous gardener. It was now Zach’s room. The curtains were drawn, hiding the room from view, and I wondered if he was there.
My body hummed with a strange sense of anticipation, seeing that we were living in the same place now and could see each other at any moment. I hadn’t even realized the full extent of him moving here.
I put my cocktail down on the table. “Something happened.”
Lana rolled to her side on her deck chair to face me, and Aurora raised her brow at me, asking me, “What?”
“Zach Curtis is here.”
Lana sat up. “What?”
“Yeah. He applied for the job of our new gardener, and my dad hired him earlier.”
Aurora gave me an incredulous look. “You’re joking, right?”
“Nope. He’s really here.”
Lana burst out laughing.
I frowned at her. “What’s so funny?”
“Isn’t it ironic? We always thought he would end up working some lousy, shitty job. But to think he’d come to work here, at your house?” She went into another fit of laughter. “Hilarious.”
I wanted to tell her there was nothing bad about working as a gardener—plus, the salary we paid was more than decent, and we provided accommodation—but it would just go in one ear and out the other.
Aurora tilted her head, smacking her lips together. “What a coincidence. I can imagine his face when he saw you. He saw you, right?”
“It’s not a coincidence, and yeah, he saw me.”
Lana’s laughter finally stopped. “What do you mean it’s not a coincidence?”
“He came here on purpose because he wants to get revenge on me for the locker room incident.”
Lana exchanged a look with Aurora. I knew what she thought. If Zach wanted to get revenge on me, there was no reason for him not to take revenge on them too. They participated in it, after all.
Aurora chuckled. “Zach Curtis and revenge? I never thought I’d hear those two words in the same sentence.”
Lana tilted her hat back, a line appearing between her brows. “Did he mention anything about Aurora and me?”
“No.”
Aurora rolled her eyes at her. “Why do you even sound worried? This is Zach Curtis we’re talking about. A pathetic loser who’ll piss his pants if you look at him wrong. I can’t even believe you’re taking him seriously. We eat guys like him for breakfast.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t see him, Aurora. He’s changed. He’s . . . he’s not the same shy guy who could be pushed around.”
She snorted and took her cocktail from the table. “As if a sheep can turn into a wolf. Puh-lease. In any case, what’s he going to do? Rip out your favorite flowers? He doesn’t have money or resources to pull off anything.”
He had enough resources to get that CCTV video. But I couldn’t say that. They couldn’t know about it.
“But I don’t get something,” Aurora continued. “Why did your dad even hire him?”
“Yeah, and why didn’t you kick his ass out of here already?” Lana added.
I took my time reaching for my cocktail and sipping it. “Dad didn’t recognize him. Zach . . . he came here under a different name. Also, he has something on me. He’s threatened to reveal it if I tell my parents what he’s really doing here.”
Aurora’s eyes narrowed. “What does he have?”
Yeah, no. They wouldn’t be hearing that.
“Nothing important.”
Aurora’s piercing gaze didn’t let up. “It’s obviously important enough if you can’t do anything about him.”
I arched my brow at her. “What I meant to say is it’s none of your business.” My tone said to drop it. “More importantly, you two can’t say anything about him to anyone.”
The light bounced off Lana’s platinum blond hair as she readjusted it over her shoulder. “You want us to keep quiet when you don’t even want to tell us what he has on you?”
“Yes. Just the way I keep quiet and don’t tell your parents you keep driving drunk and high among many other things.”
The corner of her lips twitched. “Fine. We’ll keep it quiet.” She looked around us. “Where is he now?”
Once more, my body hummed, and I could almost feel him watching me. A glance toward his room told me his curtains were still drawn together.
“He’s probably in his room or getting acquainted with the grounds.”
Aurora stirred her cocktail with her straw. “What does he look like? I bet he’s even uglier now with that huge-ass scar he must have.”
The lack of empathy and disgust in her voice almost had me grabbing for my cocktail and splashing it all over her face. Or Lana’s because she was laughing at what Aurora just said.
It was getting more and more difficult to overlook their nasty behavior, especially after what had happened with Zach.
I’d almost stopped all contact with them right then and there, but my parents interfered and made sure I kept hanging around them because any other outcome would’ve been a huge mistake.
In our world, you didn’t cut ties over ideals and goodness.
In our world, you built connections based on profit and the usefulness of a connection.
Anything else was downright naive and foolish.
It disgusted me just knowing they didn’t regret a single thing. In fact, if they could, they would do it all over again.
“Actually, he looks gorgeous,” I said.
Lana widened her eyes. “You’re shitting us, right?”
“I’m not. He didn’t change just mentally. He changed physically as well. He’s very attractive.”
Aurora ran her teeth over her lip. “I’d love to see that.”
I didn’t like the gleam in her eyes or the way it made me feel.
“I’m sure you do,” I muttered to my chin, not liking the idea of them seeing him either.
Though I was sure it would happen sooner or later, and if Zach wanted to get revenge on them too, it could happen even sooner than we could imagine.
The conversation shifted to other topics, and I could continue to pretend Zach’s promise of revenge didn’t affect me one bit.
But it did, and despite what Aurora thought about a sheep not being able to turn into a wolf, the version of Zach I’d witnessed earlier told me she was dead wrong.
He obviously hadn’t moved on. He’d decided to get revenge and had gone to great lengths to come here, and that in itself made him dangerous. What could a guy who held so much resentment do?
I just hoped I never found that out.