1. Cub
ONE
Cub
THIS STORY TAKES PLACE DURING CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE OF MAKING CHOICES, THE SECOND BOOK IN THE DUPLICITY TRILOGY.
S he’s trouble.
A viper without a conscience.
Worse than that, she’s a bully.
My bully.
The moment I lay eyes on the familiar woman across the dance floor at Club Mirage, the warnings fly out of my head. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been intrigued by Layla De La Rue. She’s the youngest daughter of the mayor of the small town where we were both raised. Rich. Beautiful. A bitch who is incapable of being happy, no matter how many blessings life tosses her way.
On the surface, she has it all.
Which is why the pain that clouded her russet-brown eyes fascinated me when I was young.
I’m white trash.
A penniless boy from the wrong side of the tracks.
Literally.
The train line that splits Inadale down the middle delineates between the haves and the have-nots. The De La Rue family rules over the haves. My family is ignored by all—wealthy and poor. My father is a fallen preacher, the scapegoat thrown to the wolves when the child exploitation ring being run out of the local church was revealed. He’s an alcoholic with an iron fist and a desire to dish out hurt in its varied forms to those closest to him.
Mum is his faithful punching bag now that I’m gone.
I’d like to say I cared, but I don’t.
She did nothing to protect me.
Our connection was severed for good after my patching-in with the Black Shamrocks MC when I turned eighteen. My parents dared to show their faces on the right side of the tracks long enough to wish me dead. They meant it. And I did my best to make their dream come true.
The problem I’ve always faced is complex.
With a background like mine, I’m a sucker for flashes of agony like the ones I occasionally glimpsed in Layla’s gaze. Back then, her turmoil was familiar. It awoke a desire to protect within me. A need that confused me thanks to her years of cruelty aimed my way.
It was confusing as hell.
It’s still confusing as fuck.
During primary school, we were friends. We attended the same church. Ran in similar circles, by virtue of my dad’s status as a preacher and the legacy attached to my mother’s last name. Although she’s a year and a half older than me, Layla was in my grade. She’d been sick as a pre-schooler and her recovery had delayed the start to her formal education.
I was enthralled by her fragile beauty, forever willing to drown in her kind eyes.
She was the only person who never teased me about my red hair and skinny limbs.
Once we reached high school, even before Dad’s crimes were exposed and her father’s role in them was hidden, it all changed. A switch flipped, and boom, I was the target of a hate campaign. Stolen school supplies. Ruined lunches. Vicious gossip campaigns. The harder I fought back, the more she escalated her efforts.
Slowly, Layla’s weaponisation of her social status morphed into violence.
The wealthier boys on my basketball team undertook the physical aspect of the harassment on her behalf. I knew she was behind my never-ending torment, and so did everyone else. My injuries were many and varied. Never acknowledged by my parents, instead they added their own bruises to the damage I received.
My friends drifted away, unwilling to put themselves in her sights as well.
The distance between Layla’s murmured orders and the resulting actions left her hands clean. Not that I ever complained to anyone. By then, the death knell to my reputation had been delivered by my father’s expulsion from the church and the ensuing whisper campaign that camouflaged the wider cover-up at play. I was persona non grata. A figure of ridicule. The easiest target the people of Inadale had for their own bitterness at the blame they shared.
Layla’s bullying eventually slowed when Lysander Mayberry took me under his wing.
We’d been peripheral acquaintances since his family moved to Inadale from Perth. Members of the same sports team who had the same subjects. Fellow gamers who spent too many nights conquering online universes together. It was when my only ally in Inadale, a fellow outcast, Nadia Appleton, became fast friends with Sander’s twin that the abuse I endured at home, in school, and online was exposed. With Sander and Anna, and the notoriety of their father’s motorcycle club at my back, the rest of the students began to keep a wide berth from me. It also helped that I’d basically moved in with the Mayberrys by the time I was thirteen, and that change coincided with Layla leaving Inadale.
Overnight, my life changed again.
A new nemesis.
A new scar to bear.
Somehow, I made it through high school in one piece, slightly dented but unbroken, to find my forever family within the ranks of the Black Shamrocks. The last five years have been the best of my life. I have purpose. I have hope. I have respect. I have too much to lose for a painful walk down memory lane with a girl who’s wrapped up in the torture that was my childhood.
“Lucas Hayes?” The pounding bassline of the song reverberating off the walls of the nightclub makes it hard to hear the sincerity behind Layla’s question. Her perfume, a flowery walk down memory lane that conjures innocence and resurrects historical yearnings, overwhelms my senses. Frozen in my chair, I close my eyes to block out the strobe lights and the stunning woman leaning too close to me. Stiffening when she touches my tattooed forearm, I hold my breath as she shouts over the music. “I’m right... it is you? Lucas Hayes from Inadale. We went to school together.”
“Yeah.” I shoot a pleading look at Sander. My best friend isn’t paying attention to me. His narrowed gaze is firmly fixed on the dance floor where his twin sister and her best friend are grinding on each other. The sensation of Layla running a fingernail over the dandelion tattoo etched on the inside of my wrist snaps me out of my stupor. Shoving against the table, my barstool screeches along the concrete floor. It teeters back and forth as I splutter, “Fuck this. Fuck you. I’m out.”
In my peripheral vision, I see my stool fall over a second after I push past Layla.
I’m the designated sober driver tonight, so I can’t go far.
Not that it matters, I just need enough space between me and the bitch feigning ignorance to gain my attention to decide if I want to wrap my hands around her neck so I can snap it... or if it’s to hold her still and force my kiss on her.