He’s such a jerk. After he grabbed my boob, he tried to kiss me. I bit his lip so hard it bled all down his bright white shirt. He shoved me away and looked at me with so much rage I thoughthe was going to hit me, but then we heard voices in the hall, and Finn took off.
It was after school, and only the teachers were around. I could’ve gone to the admin office and reported Finn, but it wouldn’t have done any good. Finn’s dad is the CEO of one of the biggest tech companies in the world, and his mom is the president of a bank. They donate a ton of money to the school. There’s no way the school’s going to punish Finn for assaulting me and risk giving up his parents’ money.
Finn Kingsley is asshole number three at Devonshore High. He lives to drink, party, and have sex. He’s the wildest of the three assholes, or Three A’s, as I like to call them. Truthfully, almost every guy here is an asshole, but Finn, Parker, and Briggs are the worst. They get power from picking on the weak or anyone they deem not good enough to go here. I fall into the latter category. They know I’m not weak — or at least Finn does after having to get his lip stitched up after I bit it, which I’m sure he told the other A’s — but my financial status, in their puny minds, deems me unworthy of even walking the halls of Devonshore High.
“Parker, wait up!” a voice yells from behind me.
Finn races past me as I stand at my locker. His blond hair is longer than it was before winter break, almost to his shoulders, and he has a dark tan. He must’ve gone somewhere for the holiday. His family probably has their own tropical island.
I watch as Finn and Parker meet up and go down the hall. Parker’s tall, like Finn, but wider and more muscular. Finn is long and lanky. Parker has an athlete’s body. He’s on the school’s rugby team, which, around here, is a sport equivalent to football in most other high schools. I’ve been told rugby is actually a type of football, but I really don’t care. I’m not into sports. But at Devonshore, rugby rules. The guys on the team are treated likegods. It’s so annoying. I refuse to go to their stupid games and support those jerks.
Parker is one of our best players, and the attention he gets because of it makes him even more obnoxious. With his money, looks, and athletic talent, he could have any girl he wants but he’s been dating Scarlett for almost a year. I’m sure he cheats on her. There’s no way a guy like him would be with only one girl for that long.
“What are you looking at?” Charlotte says, startling me.
I turn and see her leaning against the locker next to mine. “Nothing. I was just distracted.”
“By what? A1 and A2?” she says, rolling her eyes.
She and I are the only ones who call them that. They’re our code names so we can talk about them without people knowing. Around here, you don’t dare talk badly about Finn, Parker, and Briggs. They’re the golden boys who can do no wrong. You talk shit about them, you become the enemy, and I don’t need more enemies.
“I don’t know why you let those guys get to you,” Charlotte says, opening the book she was holding. It’s a murder mystery, which is all she ever reads. She wants to work in a crime lab someday.
“I don’t let them get to me,” I insist, even though I admit those guys get under my skin, especially Briggs. He bullied me so badly sophomore year that I almost transferred to a different school. But then I decided to just ignore his harassment instead of getting upset, which made him lose interest. Bullies only have power if you give it to them, a little tip I didn’t figure out until the end of that year.
Charlotte glances behind me. “A2’s coming toward us. I gotta go.” She scurries off.
Charlotte’s afraid of Briggs, but I don’t know why she ran off like that. It’s not like Briggs is going to stop and chat. Hedoesn’t talk to Charlotte and me unless he’s insulting us, and that only happens when he has an audience, which he doesn’t now because everyone’s in class. The bell’s about to go off.
I grab my books from my locker, and as I close it, I feel a hand covering mine.
My breath catches in my throat as I’m shoved against the locker, my face slamming against the cold metal.
“Guess you’re smarter than I thought,” he says in his deep voice, pressing his body against mine. Invading my personal space is one of the many techniques Briggs uses to try to intimidate me. He hasn’t done it all year, so I don’t know why he’s doing it now, but I need to remain calm and pretend it doesn’t bother me.
“What do you want, Briggs?”
“I heard you’re in the running for valedictorian.”
Who told him that? And why the hell does he care?
I try to push away from him, but all my effort doesn’t even move him. The guy is strong. He spends hours at the gym and has a body to prove it. If I didn’t hate him so much, I’d be drooling over that body. Those broad shoulders. Arms lined with muscles. The guy manages to have a tan year-round, and it doesn’t look fake. As if that wasn’t enough, his face is perfect too — chiseled and manly, his jaw lined with stubble. He got the best of the best from the gene pool, which I find really annoying, because on top of all that, he’s filthy rich.
“Let me go,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Is it true?”
“Why do you care?” I turn my head and look back at his eyes. That was a mistake. I lose focus when I look at his eyes. They’re this royal blue shade I’ve never seen on anyone but Briggs. At first, I thought he was wearing colored contacts, but royal blue is the actual color of his eyes. It’s fitting, given that he thinks he’s royalty around here.
His six-foot-two frame leans down to my face. “I didn’t work my ass off all these years to hand over what’s mine to some piece of trailer trash.”
Is he serious? He thought he was going to be valedictorian? There’s no way his grades are that good. Or are they?
Out of the Three A’s, Briggs is definitely the smartest one. He takes all AP classes, like me, but I assumed he was barely passing, or that his grades were artificially raised because his rich daddy made a large donation to the school. At the very least, I assumed the teachers bumped up his grades because he’s an athlete. Did I mention Briggs plays rugby? He’s our best player — even better than Parker. He’s also the team captain. That makes him king of the school in the eyes of not only the students but the teachers. I know he gets special treatment because of it.
“My grades are none of your damn business.”
“You really think I’m letting you have this?” He grabs me, whipping me around and shoving me back against the locker.
