Tame: A High School Bully Romance (Savannah Heirs Book 2) Read online

  When they noticed me standing there, they cut off the sports talk and gave me a nod in greeting. They had five fresh beers in their hands and Luis passed me one before handing the rest out. I took it and popped the top off, taking a swig to wash out the taste of the stale beer from before. The cold liquid felt good sliding down my throat. Savannah was warm with just the right amount of a cool breeze right now, but soon the humid summer heat would set in.

  “So? How’s Mr. Fucker?” Luis asked as he sat down in the chair I’d just vacated, while Bonham took the other chair.

  They were both in their swim trunks and t-shirts. Luis had inherited his Spanish looks from his mother, so he was all bronzed skin and dark hair, with a constant five o’clock shadow dusting his face. He could spout off Spanish whenever the mood struck him, which was usually to impress some chick. Bonham was a pure Savannah boy with green eyes, blonde hair, and a fucking dimple in his chin that chicks creamed over. And even though I’d made sure Rachel’s mind had been diverted to me when I’d taken her into Mrs. Rodger’s classroom, I still couldn’t help but wonder if she’d prefer his boyish looks to my own.

  “Oh, you know. He’s still got a dick shoved up his ass,” I said, replying to Luis’s question.

  Bonham braced his crutches against the table and propped his foot up with obvious discomfort. He was doing much better, but it still felt like a kick to the balls every time I saw his face contort in pain. He must be having a bad day today. Actually, the only time I’d seen him not have a bad day since he’d been shot in the foot was when he and Rachel spent the school day together. She’d promised me that she wouldn’t play games with him, and I believed her, but I suddenly found myself wondering if maybe he wanted to play. Maybe seeing Rachel would put him in a good mood again.

  God, I hoped not. If I had to watch another girl that I liked choose one of my friends over me again, I might just fucking lose it. It didn’t even matter to me that I couldn’t keep Rachel for myself, but I didn’t want him to have her either.

  “What did he want?” Luis asked.

  “Just had to be an asshole to a witness,” I explained. “I explained to him what his testimony should say.”

  Luis gave me a cursory once-over. We hadn’t talked since I caught his mom shooting up at the club, and based on the dark circles under his eyes, I’d say he had a late night watching her. She’d given up on rehab ages ago. We were all just waiting for the call that she overdosed in some back room somewhere. It was crazy how someone so business savvy and ambitious could just give in like that and be willing to give up on her family.

  I liked smoking weed sometimes with Luis, but I never much liked the hard hitting shit. I couldn’t respect the people that let it dictate their life. So I was surprised as fuck when I saw Rachel back away from it that night. I’d purposely waited to see what she would do before she knew I was there. My money had been on her doing the shit right then. The temptation had to have been fucking crazy. But Rachel Fucking Nomar had surprised me. She was doing that a lot lately, and I wasn’t often surprised by people. Maybe Rachel refused it just to prove me wrong, but regardless, it made me like her that much more.

  “Where’s your girl?” Luis asked with a smirk, thankfully changing the subject.

  I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. They all knew I didn’t have “girls.” I had women. Lots of women. Most of them naked, praising me and begging to keep my bed warm. Aside from Stephanie Palmisano at school, my hookups were usually of the older variety. I liked them more mature, more sure of themselves, and a fuck of a lot more experienced than the prissy debutantes at school. College girls, dirty thirties, hell, even forty-year-old divorcees. I liked them all.

  “Who?” I asked, feigning ignorance. There were a couple ways I could play this, and pretending like Rachel was a nobody seemed like the best option.

  “Don’t who me. The hot blonde you brought to the club the other night. Rachel,” Luis pestered. I wasn’t sure if I was bristling because he called her hot or because everyone was now staring at me curiously, waiting for an explanation.

  “I think you mean my girl,” Bonham replied, and I watched his face light up.

  Oh, hell no.

  Luis smirked at him. “Oh, that’s right. I heard she went to Smith yesterday. Also heard she practically told Godfrey to fuck off,” he said with far too much amusement. “If we’re Heir Sharing her, then I call dibs next. That girl was sassy. You know I like the sassy ones.”

  I was mad. Furious. The idea of sharing Rachel felt almost as wrong as killing her.

  “She’s not an Heir Shared,” I said defiantly.

  Bonham and Luis exchanged conspiratorial glances, and once again, I realized I’d fallen into a trap. They were like a couple of chicks gossiping behind my back, and I didn’t like it. “Stop looking at each other like that. She’s been through some shit, and she doesn’t need you two fucking with her head right now,” I argued.

  “Wait a second. Rachel Nomar?” Rogue asked, arching his brow. “As in Rocco Nomar’s fucking daughter who was taken by JJ? The whole reason that the gang war started? That Rachel?” He looked at the other guys. “Why the fuck didn’t I know about this?”

  I shrugged. “Rocco tracked me down. Asked me to try to get her to talk. She won’t tell him shit about the guys that fucked with her, so he wants me to find out. I figured it was a good idea to have him owe me a favor. He seems like a good connection to have in my pocket.”

  “You should’ve talked to us,” Rogue said, shaking his head, clearly pissed that he’d been kept out of the loop.

  I was purposely trying to keep them out of the goddamn loop. That was the only way I could keep them safe.

  “Has she told you anything yet?” Bonham asked curiously.

  I shook my head. “Not yet.”

  “No? And when have you asked? Sometime between letting her beat you at poker and checking out her ass?”

  My lips pressed into a thin line. “You wanna fucking say something, Luis?”

  The shithead grinned and shrugged while he drank his beer. “Nah. I’m cool.”

  “Look, after what JJ’s guys did to her, she’s fucked up. But yeah, I’m thinking that agreeing to help her was a mistake. I’m going to meet with Rocco and call it off.”

  My answer seemed lame even to my own ears, and I looked up in time to see Scarlett’s eyes soften. Scarlett was a fixer. Her hopeless devotion to us meant that she wanted her best friends to all have bullshit happy endings—and not the kind you got from the shady massage parlor on the corner of Pecan Lane. But her desire to fix had bled over to include Rachel, too. Probably because Scar nearly ended up in the same hell Rachel was kept in.

  “She saved me, you know,” Scarlett said quietly, while twirling her finger around her brown hair. It was a tick of hers. She always did it when she was lost in thought, but this time I wasn’t wondering what she was thinking about. I was thinking about Rachel and the way her own damn hair seemed to scare her. “When the car flipped, she grabbed hold of me.”

  No, I hadn’t known that. And why the fuck did it make my chest swell with pride? “She’s been through some tough shit,” I replied simply.

  It wasn’t my story to tell—not that I knew much, but it didn’t take a lot to imagine what had happened. I saw the way she flinched when she wasn’t in control. Noticed how she acted skittish when touched. Our game wasn’t just some fucked up foreplay. She had been with Johnny Jack’s men for weeks. She had a toxic relationship with her sexuality, and there was only one reason she struggled with it. Who knew what those assholes did to her? But I loved that she was strong enough to work through it and demand to feel pleasure. I also fucking loved that she chose me to practice on.

  The problem was why did I suddenly care so much? Caring was dangerous, and I knew better than to do that outside of the four people sitting at this table with me.

  “Well, y'all looked pretty damn comfortable,” Luis replied with a cheeky grin. He liked to goad me about my conque
sts probably because we had the same twisted view about relationships.

  “They did disappear for a bit yesterday. She came back into the lunch room looking thoroughly fucked,” Bonham added while reaching over to slap me on the shoulder. “I didn’t think you had it in you. You both seemed comfortable together—and by comfortable, I mean eye-fucking each other.”

  I shrugged his hand off. “Really? Because I was pretty sure it was you two who were eye-fucking,” I said with irritation.

  Bonham grinned. Goddammit.

  Aside from the cocky look on his face, like he was proving something to everyone at the table, he was dead wrong about one thing. Being with Rachel Nomar was far from comfortable. It was like fire in my veins. I glanced at Scar again, running my eyes over her, because looking at her was a habit. She seemed like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how.

  “Spit it out, Scar,” I said with a sigh.

  She darted a glance at me before grabbing Rogue’s hand like it was a lifeline. “Just...don’t do your usual Godfrey thing with her, okay? I don’t know her well, but five minutes alone with Johnny Jack and his guys was enough for me. I can’t imagine how she survived weeks with those people.”

  She was strong. That’s how she survived. It’s how anyone survived. I didn’t say that though.

  “You saying I’m not good enough for her, Scar?” I asked, taking another swig. I might not be able to dance along the boundary of our friendship anymore, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t push her buttons.

  “I’m saying that you need to be delicate. Don’t treat her like the other girls you fuck and forget. She’s had enough shit happen to her.”

  Ah Scarlett. Always saving abandoned puppies on the side of the road and looking out for the runts of the litter. That was the thing though. Rachel wasn’t a puppy. She was a goddamn tiger. And she didn’t want to be saved, she wanted to fight. She wanted our game.

  Maybe Rocco wanted his tame little doll of a daughter back, but I liked her just the way she was. She’d made a choice back at that hospital. She could have retreated into the tortured, withdrawn woman I saw that day she woke up, or she could fight and prove the odds wrong. Prove me wrong. And that’s what she was doing.

  I liked the way fire would come into her eyes. I liked the way she looked at me—like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to kiss me or knee me in the balls again. It was fucked up, but I thrived on the spontaneity of her reactions.

  “Alright,” Rogue finally said, drawing me out of my thoughts. “That’s enough.”

  Everyone looked over at him, but his eyes were on me.

  “What?”

  I tried not to watch the way his hands splayed possessively over Scarlett’s bare midriff beneath her bikini top. Tried not to notice how her hand was stroking his thigh. Tried and failed.

  “Cut the shit, Godfrey. I know you didn’t go do a job for your father already before showing up here. The timeline is bullshit,” he said, calling me out.

  I inwardly cursed. I was so caught up in trying to keep them out of it and trying to figure out what to do about Rachel, that I hadn’t even come up with a plausible lie.

  I set down the beer bottle and shook my head, blowing out a breath. “Look, it’s not—”

  “If you’re about to say that it has nothing to do with us, then don’t bother, because anything to do with you concerns all of us,” he said, cutting me off. “Or if you were about to say it’s not a big deal, then fine. If it’s not a big deal, you should have no problem telling us the truth.”

  I hissed out a breath, suddenly furious. Not at him, per se, but the whole fucked up situation. I didn’t want to drag them into my shit again. Especially now that Scarlett was part us.

  “This time, I have to handle it on my own,” I told him.

  Instead of getting pissed, arguing, or just being a dick like I expected, Rogue just tapped Scarlett on the hip, motioning for her to get up. She hopped up, and Rogue got to his feet, so I did the same since I sensed a stare down. As soon as I was up, he stepped up to me, invading my space. “You’re gonna handle this alone,” he repeated, his tone flat.

  “That’s right,” I replied, digging in my heels.

  Bonham and Luis began to argue, but Rogue cut them off with the wave of his hand. Rogue liked to think he was in charge, but we all knew he was just the most vocal about calling the shots. At the end of the day, it was the behind the scenes shit that got us where we were. And I was all about being the puppeteer.

  “We thought we could cut people out before,” he said, looking over at Scarlett like the lovesick bastard he was.

  Excluding Scarlett had been hard, but look at what happened the moment she got involved again. She was taken then used against us, and ended up in the hospital. Everything we’d tried to prevent happened anyways, and it was all my fucking fault. “You can pretend like you’re in this alone if it helps your conscious, G. But you and I both know that we’re in this together. We’re always in this shit together. And whatever this is, it involves Rachel Nomar now. So why don’t you bring her by tonight? We were gonna have a party to celebrate Bonham’s last day of physical therapy.”

  I turned to Bonham, watching him scowl. His therapy might be over, but his struggle was going to be an ongoing battle. A lifelong consequence of my fucked up family. I mulled over Rogue’s words. I knew what he was really saying without saying it. I could come clean, or the three of them would figure the truth out anyway. But maybe taking Rachel out in public would appease my father and show Eddie I was working to get her close. Maybe it would buy some time so I could come up with a real plan.

  “And then we want to know what your father really said.”

  It was really fucking irritating that they saw through me so easily.

  “Fine,” I said through a clenched jaw. “We’ll see you tonight.”

  I cast one last look at the table, feeling a swirl of responsibility for my best friends. It was sappy shit, but they stuck by me no matter what, even when it was dangerous, even when they could easily walk away, and even when I’d given them an out. They didn’t want an out. It wasn’t even up for debate.

  I didn’t deserve them.

  I walked out of Rogue’s house feeling shit that I didn’t want to feel, but I pushed it all away to focus on one move at a time. I had to convince Rachel to sneak out with me tonight.

  And if I knew anything about that little gangster princess, nothing with her was ever easy.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rachel

  I half expected Dr. Taffy to pull out a damn toy doll and ask me to point to where the bad men touched me. I had serious doubts about this woman’s therapist qualifications. But it was a way for my dad to feel like he was helping me, I guess.

  Dr. Taffy had been coming over twice a week every week, and I had to admit, her last little challenge got me thinking. I wasn’t ready to actually admit it to her, but I liked the new direction my healing was taking. Claiming my sexuality and taking my power back had brought me Godfrey. And two orgasms.

  But honestly, I wasn’t even sure if she was actually licensed. I wouldn’t put it past my dad to have brought someone in simply because she was connected to the family. My dad was very into keeping everything in-house. Apparently, that included Dr. Taffy. I still rolled my eyes every time I heard her name.

  “And how did that make you feel?” she asked, her voice as sugar-sweet as her surname.

  This time, I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my eyes at her. We were in my dad’s home office—the one he didn’t actually use. This one was just for show since it was in the main part of our house. His real office was in our basement, which could only be opened with a scan of his fingerprint.

  “Sixth time,” I mumbled from my spot on the couch.

  I had to sit sideways, with the armrest against my back, because Dr. Taffy insisted on sitting on the couch next to me, instead of at the desk like a normal fake-therapist. I wondered if she pressed the boundaries of personal spac
e as some kind of test or if she genuinely didn’t understand the concept of backing the fuck off.

  “What’s that, sugar?” she asked, pushing up the tortoise-shell styled glasses on her nose.

  The woman always wore shit with obnoxious prints. Today it was a blouse with flamingos and palm leaves, like she was a retiree in Florida. To be honest, it took away from her natural beauty. She was probably somewhere in her forties and was aging well, but damn, she needed a personal stylist because everything she wore was gaudy. The only thing I liked about her style was her confidence. She commanded a room, even despite the godawful stuff she wore, and that confidence was a trait I wanted for myself. I just wished she didn’t annoy me so much.

  “I said that was the sixth time you’ve asked me about my feelings in the last hour. I think you need to brush up on your therapy questions,” I told her dryly. “Whatever website certification you’re working with must have been cheap.”

  She pursed her thin lips together, which only highlighted the flaky, bright-pink lipstick she had on. She always had a face full of makeup on. I was pretty sure she fancied that if she could fix his daughter, he’d fall desperately in love with her. I should probably tell the delusional woman that my dad was way too preoccupied with the paper that spit out of his counterfeit printers.

  “Do you lash out at me because it makes you feel better?” she replied.

  Her tone had grown darker, like pointing out my flaws made her feel better. Or maybe I was just cynical now. Maybe I saw the worst in her because I didn’t want to see the worst parts of me. Hell if I knew. I wasn’t the therapist in our relationship, though the more she spoke, the more I wondered if we should attend couples counseling. The image of us sitting and talking about our problems made me laugh.

  “I lash out at you because these talks bore me,” I replied honestly.

  The girl I was before Johnny Jack captured me would have never said that. I never used to be bold or outspoken or put my foot down. I hated what happened to me, but I was starting to love my new hardened persona. I also grudgingly loved her challenges. It was unconventional, but it seemed to work for me. Maybe she was a better therapist than I’d originally given her credit for. She recognized early on that I liked to be challenged, so she’d started giving me these little tasks throughout the week just to see if I was capable of doing them. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me face one of my greatest fears head-on: reclaiming my sexuality.