Pretty Reckless (All Saints High, #1)

by L.J. Shen

But when she stood there and yelled at me, her hair up and her neck exposed, the only thing I could focus on was the fact the sea glass necklace was no longer there.

My mother can hole her up in the ballet studio fifteen hours a day, but youth shapes art, and she’s been artless for so long, her craft has wilted.

“You can run, but you can’t fucking hide, Sylvia. And when I catch you—and I will catch you—you will regret the day I was born, five minutes before you, because I’m going to make ruining your life a full-time job, and I’ll be putting in some extra hours, too.”

And I’m officially done with people who don’t choose me or see me.

Gus is bright red now, and despite everything, I feel sorry for him. For me. For all of us, really. Vanity cost us every single thing we achieved for ourselves. Our athletic career. Friends. Family. Our love interests.

“We all have embarrassing secrets. Every single one of us. We’re just happy it’s not our diary on display.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been fucking Vaughn Spencer since the beginning of the semester. Sorry, Bly—” The slap comes before she can even complete the sentence.

Harper is not his, okay? I can’t say more than that, but Penn’s been sticking around because he is good, and responsible, and my best friend. Not because he should’ve or had any responsibility to. I outstayed my welcome in his life, even when it was so painfully clear that his heart wanted something I could never give him.”

“Hey, guys, I have a confession, too.” Knight steps forward, rubbing the back of his neck. “My dick is not six inches long. It is actually a full seven and a half inches.

“I owe you two truths. One, I’ll give you now, Skull Eyes. But the other…” He takes a deep breath. “The other you’ll get if you decide to stick around. If Lady ends up with Tramp.”

He’s the only thing I see, and maybe it’s always been this way.

At any rate, Ioanna cast a spell on me. She said my heart will be broken until I find the one. That I’m going to walk around with holes in my shirts to symbolize what I don’t have until I experience true love. But until then, I will be miserable. Naturally, I thought it to be bullshit. But then weird things started happening to me every time I didn’t wear the holed shirt. One time, I almost got run over. The other, the money I stole from my mom mysteriously disappeared from my pocket. A dog bit me, my bikes got stolen…so I started cutting holes in all my shirts as a safety measure. I had no choice. I got a lot of mouthfuls from my dad about it, obviously, but it worked.”

Going to stay, Daria? Fight or flight?” Fight. Always fight.

I take a deep breath, pressing my index to his lips on a smile. “Thank you for sharing this with me.” “Dar…” I raise myself on my tiptoes and kiss his lips.

“My dad’s gonna kill you if he finds out,” I whisper. “Still worth it,”

“It’s done. So much dirt has been spilled tonight, yours is a drop in an ocean of sins. Don’t get on that plane tomorrow. Don’t fucking do this to us.”

“I’ve loved you in secret, and I’ve loved you openly in front of both our worlds, and if you think I’ll stop loving you if you put an ocean between us, you’re dead wrong.”

“Your dad killing me might be inevitable, but there’s no need to make it happen prematurely.”

I laugh as he starts moving inside me without a condom or a care in the world. I’m on the pill, but he doesn’t know that. I’m having crazy thoughts. Like maybe he is doing this on purpose. Like maybe he wants to chain me down to this place. Like maybe I should stay. And it makes my heart laugh through the tears because it’s too late.

I caress his face, his jaw, his lips. I will miss you. I study every inch of his beautiful face. I will never forget you.

His hands roam and mine caress. This was so much more than first love. It was first hate, too.

And when he empties inside me, I don’t even mention what we did was irresponsible and wrong. I know he is doing it to keep me in his messed-up, desperate way...

How did it happen? Let’s see. This morning, I woke up with my dick still smelling like the girl I love. Instead of going to the bathroom to brush my teeth and take a piss, I launched straight into her room to wake her up with an orgasm and my face between her legs, only to find out she wasn’t there anymore.

The stack of suitcases by her door was gone, and so was the girl herself. The only things she left behind were her new and ugly drywall, the sea glass necklace I gave her, and a rusty, tin heart turned human, which she manages to somehow, against all the odds, break a thousand fucking times, over and over again, to a point where I’m still not sure how it is beating.

“A concrete wall?” the doctor asks. Is he a wallanitarian or something? Why does he give a fuck about the wall?

My thoughts drift to the house I’m coming back to. A house that is going to feel so empty without her.

Good, Skull Eyes. Fucking perfect. Watch me rip out all my shirts and walk around shirtless for the remainder of my life.

“I wish you’d stop saying that, sir, since I feel very strongly about your daughter and not in a sisterly way.”

After all, I have a hole in my shirt the size of Penn’s heart.

I see now, with a clarity I’ve never had before, the Melody Followhill that I wished to meet my entire childhood. The one who is not only an accomplished ballerina, an amazing teacher, and the talk of the town, but a simple girl—maybe even like me—struggling to do the right thing by her family.

“You called me Mom.” “I did.” I choke on the words. “I did. You are. You are my mom.”

Everyone’s got a story, and we all have chapters we’d rather not read aloud.

A generic brown piece of cardboard with one word written on it in black Sharpie. Talk? I nod, feeling the smile finally spreading across my face, letting loose. Yes. Fuck. Yes.

I’ll go wherever Daria goes. Even if it’s straight to hell.

She might as well file a restraining order because I’m not letting her out of my sight.

The last thing I tell her before she pulls away is the truest thing I’ve ever said in my life. “I missed you.”

I took off the blood cape, and now she can clearly see my black shirt, and the hole inside it, and how not okay I am.

“If you want to hear the second part of my secret, you have to promise me something.” “And what is that?” “Yourself,” I say quietly. “You were right, that day you told me you were trying to be mine but I never offered you myself. But now I am. And if you want my everything, you need to give me something. Let’s start with a promise. A real one, this time.”

“I promise,” comes the weakest, faintest voice I’ve ever heard. “I promise I am strong and good enough for you, and I want the rest of your secret. I want all your secrets. This past semester was horrible without you. How did I ever even live without you in my life? Bizarre.” She rolls her eyes.

“First, I want you to tell me you haven’t slept with anyone else since I’ve been gone.”

“I haven’t even held another’s hand. Even when I jacked off—it was to you. Hell, even my morning woods belonged to you.”

She laughs, shaking her head. I missed her voice. Her laughter. Her.

“She said only true love would get rid of the curse. And it will have to be requited. And real. And for life. Most of all, she said it couldn’t be just any girl. It needed to be a girl who can become a Scully, like us. But I was five, and dumb, and on pain meds, so what I heard was Skull Eyes. So I laughed and laughed and fucking laughed some more until she hit me with a broomstick. But wanna know what the weird thing is?”

“When I saw you all broken and upset and finally mustered up the courage to talk to you, there really were skulls in your eyes. Like white marbles, bang, in the middle of your pupils.”

“Every time you called me that, you really called me the love of your life?” she asks quietly. I smile.

“Now she is following. Where have you been this semester, Skull Eyes?” “Waiting for you.” It’s her turn to grin. “Where I always knew you’d follow. In South Bend, Indiana. Notre Dame.”

“It’s been said that if a male and female student hold hands and walk around the two lakes on campus in the shape of the figure eight, they will get married.”

“Is this a proposal?” “Nope”—I grin—“but it’s a promise you’ll be getting one before we graduate. Sound good?” She nods. “Sounds…the best.” I let out a sigh of relief. Okay. Good. Fuck.

“Game over. You win. You conquered me even though it was me who marched into your territory unannounced.”

“All right. Take two. This time, I hope like hell that you’ll get the hint because there’s so much more on the line. According to traditional folklore around this neck of the woods, if two people of the opposite sex kiss under the Lyons Arch, it leads to marriage. You following this, Miss Followhill?”