Touched By The Devil : Enemies-to-Lovers Standalone Romance (Boys of Preston Prep Book 3) Read online

  “I’m improving,” I say, just wanting her off my back.

  “How?”

  She wants details. “No more dizziness, no puking. My light sensitivity is…” Shit. Total shit. “…a lot better. I’ve stopped fi—playing lacrosse and altered my conditioning.” I peek up at her to make sure she didn’t catch the slip. I haven’t been in a fight or played lacrosse in two months. She just doesn’t strictly know about the fights.

  “How’s your vision?” She’s taking notes on a sheet of paper. I lean forward, curious, but she shifts away.

  “Twenty-twenty.” I flash her my best panty-melting grin.

  Ah, she’s a tough one. She barely reacts. “Uh huh. Any school issues? Memory loss? Irritability?”

  Memory loss? I fucking wish. That’d make my life easier. But even with a head injury, I’m not lucky enough to have the one symptom that’d actually help.

  “Doc.” I level her with a look. “I’m fine. Seriously. I’m following all the rules. I’ve never felt better, because I’m in peak physical condition.” I drag my lip through my teeth, eyes roaming down her tight doctor body. “If you don’t believe me, you can check me over again.”

  She gives me another look, this one full of disbelief, but puts the pen and paper away. Crossing her arms, she says, “Although I’m not sure I’m buying that you’ve completely slowed down, I do think you’re recovering nicely.”

  My eyebrows lift. “Does that mean I have the go-ahead on lacrosse?”

  A line forms between her eyes and matches the one set between her lips. “I think you need to take it easy for one more month—”

  “Another month!” I start.

  “—then we’ll test again, and if everything looks nice and healed, I’ll release you to the team.” I make no attempt to hide my annoyance and she continues, “I know you don’t realize it, Sebastian, but your brain health is very important. Even though you don’t care about bashing your head in all the time, the rest of us want to make sure you have a happy, healthy, productive life.”

  I wonder who’s included in the ‘us’ she’s talking about here. My dad? Eh. My mom? Yeah, she’d probably care if she could, but she can’t. Heston? I choke back a laugh. He’s the reason I’m in this situation in the first place. The truth is, the only people who truly give a shit are the woman standing in front of me right now, and a handful of Devils.

  “Thanks for the vote of encouragement, Doc,” I say, reaching for my shirt. “I’ll give it one more month.” Despite being a huge fucking bummer, this isn’t technically a huge problem. I’ve been working more and more down at the garage on Jasmine anyway, and the Devils take up some of my time. As long as I get back on the field by the first of February, it’ll be fine.

  It has to be fine.

  “How’s she doing today?” I ask, casting a wary glance at the ceiling, toward Mom’s room on the second floor. I can’t hear anything, which is always a good sign.

  Liesel, our head of housekeeping, follows my gaze. “Well, your brother was here earlier.”

  I shift my shoulders, popping the joint. “Fuck.”

  “It wasn’t as bad as all that,” she assures me in her thick accent. “He didn’t even go up to see her. Lucky. Nasty piece of work, he is. Always picking on the poor woman.” Liesel shakes her head disapprovingly. She’s in her fifties now, but still has the same stern face I remember when I was kid. She’s the complete opposite of my mom. Liesel’s got pure steel running through her veins. She comes to work every day in sharp, structured blazers, and doesn’t stick around long enough to know just how far beyond ‘picking’ Heston likes to take things.

  I mutter, “Tell me about it.”

  “It might help if you stuck around this year,” she tells me, yet again, shaking a finger in my face. “Mothers need their children.”

  I can hardly contain my laugh. “Yeah, sure.” Maybe Mom needs me, but Heston? What a riot. “Can’t, though. I’m going back today.”

  Liesel throws her hands in the air, muttering something sharply German under her breath as she walks away.

  If she knew the deal, she’d probably understand. I don’t live at Preston because I want to. I live there because it’s the only way I can give my mom some measure of peace.

  You’d think our property—a converted golf club of eight total buildings—would be sprawling enough to keep Heston and her from ever needing to be in the same room. He could take the pool house. He could have lived in the cottage at the back of property and had himself a grand old fucking time. He could have even probably scored the entire length of the main house’s basement, which has two kitchens, four bathrooms, a pool, and enough space to comfortably entertain both the swim and football teams.

  But no, not Heston. His top priority when it comes to accommodations is having someone close enough to torment. I almost feel bad for the people he’s going to college with—a new, exciting spread of victims for him to play with. Almost. I’m currently too engaged with worrying about his current victims to give it much thought.

  My mom’s rooms are separate from my dad’s, and for as long as I was old enough to notice, always have been. It’s a sweet setup consisting of its own living space, but I can’t stand the way she holes up in there.

  When I climb the massive staircase and walk my way to the heavy double doors, I take a moment to prepare myself.

  She’s not dressed, but that’s no surprise. The blinds are still closed and it’s smoky, the stale scent of cigarettes hanging thick in the air. She’s sitting in the chaise in her silk robe, trying to gather her hair up. Putting herself together. Trying to make it seem not so bad.

  “Sebastian!” Her attempt at a smile is watery, ruined by the tracks running down her cheeks. “I was hoping you’d come see me before you left. It is today, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I say, pathetically touched that she managed to keep track of time. “I’m about to head out.”

  She covertly wipes her cheeks, trying another bright smile. It hurts to watch, these moments where she tries to pull herself together like a brave little toaster. “I’m glad, because I—I got you something. It’s here, see? Open it, see?”

  I gingerly hold the envelope she thrusts in my hand, but can’t focus on anything but her wet eyes. “Mom, why are you crying?”

  She flaps a hand. “Oh, you know how I get. It’s not important.” She pushes at the envelope, imploring, “Open it!”

  “It is important,” I argue, but know better than to push by now. She probably spends half of her life crying. Depressive episodes like hers don’t come with a reason. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop asking.

  Sighing, I tear open the envelope, revealing a gift card to the local pet supply store. I know instantly why, and it’s more of a gesture than anything. I probably have enough money in my bank account to buy the pet supply store—like, the entire business.

  She meets my smile with her own—this one a touch more organic. “You be sure to feed those poor little kitties, now. Make sure they’re getting enough. Don’t skimp!”

  “I won’t,” I promise, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “The cats are going to be just fine.”

  “And send me some pictures!” she demands, eyes going bright at her own suggestion.

  My mother frets like no other. The second I made an offhanded comment about the feral cat colony at school, she was fretting. She probably never stopped. That’s the thing about my mom. She can’t take care of anything—can barely take care of herself—but goddamn. She tries so fucking hard. A ceaseless thread throughout my life is the question of how someone with so big a heart managed to create a complete fucking sociopath like Heston. Sometimes I think he just left his soul with her, doubled it up, made it too big to handle all these harsh things in life. Sometimes I blame him for it—her sickness—and I know it’s not fair.

  He only deserves the blame for making it worse.

  It hurts to leave her, but in a way, it’s also a relief. This is the deal. If I live at school,
Heston will leave her alone. He won’t talk to her. He won’t even look at her. He won’t poison her thoughts with his toxic tongue, driving her deeper and deeper into the darkness.

  As I pull out the drive, I just remember her brave little toaster smile and tell myself it’s better this way.

  I unload Jasmine and carry my bags back to the dorm, and it’s not so bad. A stark contrast to the rest of my family, I’ve never been a huge fan of manors and mansions and estates, anyway.

  That being said, I did manage to upgrade rooms to a single—Hamilton Bates’s old suite—which allows me some extra amenities, like a separate living area.

  “Hey, man,” Carlton says, sticking his head in the open door. “How was the doctor?”

  Fucking Devils and their phone tree. How sad is it that a secret band of eleven fuck-ups, criminals, and sad sacks are a better family to me than my own flesh and blood?

  Very.

  “Fine. I didn’t get the all clear yet, but I should before the season starts.”

  He nods, seeming satisfied with this. And then he looks around. “Christ, dude. This place is looking rough.”

  “What?” I turn to the room, scratching idly at my jaw. “Nah, it’s not rough. It’s just—”

  “Messy,” he finishes. “Yet somehow also weirdly empty. How do you even do that?”

  I flip him off. “It’s a bachelor pad. Don’t be jealous you’re still sharing a double with Ben.”

  “You need a couch. And a rug. And possibly an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner. How the fuck does the resident let you keep it like this? I get chewed out for a messy closet.”

  I flash him a grin. “Money, power, influence—”

  “The fact that he’s super gay and you have that face.”

  I shrug, not bothering to deny it. I’m cute as fuck, so sue me. But Carlton does have a point. There are empty pizza boxes on the floor—no table yet—and socks strewn everywhere. It doesn’t look like someone lives here, so much as someone’s been… squatting. I rub the back of my neck, looking over the room. “I guess I’m not really here much.”

  I don’t need to say why.

  Liesel used to say that my mom has the downs, but I have the ups.

  It feels like I can’t stay still. Being down this long because of the concussion has been a first. I don’t have anything to ease this electric, turbulent thing flowing through my veins. The second I step through this threshold, I get the itch to leave, find something to do. I’m not the kind of person who sits in his room, fucking around. I go out, I fuck, I fight, I find something to get into. These days, that list keeps growing shorter and shorter.

  Carlton must sense this, because he suddenly says, “So there’s this meet-up tonight. Under the Peach Street bridge. Midnight.”

  I perk instantly at this, my frustration melting away. “Oh yeah? You taking the ‘Vette?” I’d helped Carlton find this sweet ’68 Corvette that needed a lot of work but is on its way to glory.

  “I probably won’t race it, not until I upgrade the engine, but I’m going to show it.” He leans against the door. “You should bring the Shelby.”

  Jasmine. My Ford Shelby. God, she’s the most beautiful thing in my life. I do like showing off my girl. “Yeah, okay. We’ll have to get around Buster.” The ancient campus security guard is notorious for being slow and tired but can still put a wrench in any good plan. “How about we just meet down there.”

  “Good idea.” He holds up a fist for me to bump before wandering off down the hall.

  Carlton’s the one who got me into the car meet-ups. They’re a mixture of street racing, burnouts, and car show. He found out about them through his side hustle—selling weed and pills—because it’s a good place to push product. He invited me down because I was idle. Bored. Angry. Fucking painfully restless. Unable to fight due to the last concussion, I had to pull back on my workouts, and other than a few hook-ups here and there, I’ve had fuck-all going on.

  The meet-ups are pretty last minute, passed through word of mouth around the community. Carlton’s usually the first to know, since everyone wants him there with his merchandise. It’s not at all unlike fighting. The whole set up is illegal and a complete, sloppy rush. Once the crowd converges, the roads are blocked, and mayhem explodes. It’s a massive adrenaline rush, and it’s not the same. It’s not physical enough to even come close to the fighting. But sometimes, when my hands are on the wheel and the smell of rubber burns my lungs, I can almost feel this dark, angry thing burning itself out of me.

  But the best part, by far, is that my brother has no fucking clue this world even exists. It’s the one thing in my life he hasn’t tainted yet.

  If I have anything to do with it, he never will.

  2

  Sugar

  “Are you sure you have everything packed?”

  I lug the suitcase down the front steps and try to hide the impatient, antsy thing crawling under my skin. It keeps screaming ‘go, go, go’. It’s a miracle I don’t just fucking evaporate from the force of it. “I don’t need much,” I say to my mom, trying to paint my impatience as upbeat optimism. “We wear uniforms every day.”

  The house behind us looks as cluttered and toppling as I always feel. I won’t miss it. ‘Safe as houses’ people always say. Those people have obviously never seen this shit shack. It’s squat and old. Drafty. All at once too loud and too quiet. Sometimes it feels like the faintest wind could knock it down, reduce it to rubble. I’ve spent the last eight years bracing for it, bones aching, muscles protesting, just wishing for one moment where I can finally relax.

  The truth is that I want to bring as little as I can from this place. It’s a ridiculous fear, this worry that the hostility and constant, pressing unease might infect wherever it is I’m going, like an offensive smell. But I want to start Preston Prep fresh, with as little baggage—literal and figurative—as possible. I’d applied for the scholarship on a whim, thinking there was no chance I’d get it this late in the year. Even my own family thought trying was foolish. Why would a small-town girl like Sugar Voss want to go to a snobby, rich-kid school like Preston?

  To get away from him.

  The screen door opens with an abrasive whine, ominously heavy footsteps following in its wake. I ignore it—him—and walk toward my car to open the passenger door. The springs creak even worse than the screened door, and a piece of rusted paint comes off in my hand. But it’s drivable, and it’s the only thing left in this house owned by my father. Aside from my camera, it’s the only thing from this place I’m determined to take with me.

  “Time to leave already?” he asks, voice deceptively casual. “Figured you’d back out, you’re such a chicken-shit.”

  “Now, Doug,” my mom says, her tone exasperated. “Sugar’s going to be just fine. She had perfect scores on her entrance exam, and she wants to go.” In a lower voice, she pleads, “Please don’t. Not today.”

  I can almost hear the impatience in her own voice, too. It’ll be easier for her when I leave. She won’t have to put up anymore token protests. She won’t have to deal with my burns or cuts or bruises. She’ll be able to care about me from a distance, where I won’t cause trouble between them. It’ll be a nice life for her. Doug doesn’t treat her the way he treats me.

  I push back the seat and reach for my bag, shoving it through the small gap. Even though I can’t see him, I can feel him, sense him. Always have. It’s not the house that makes this place unbearable. It’s this. The persistent wait. The knowledge that it’s coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Not that I haven’t tried. There was a time I put in an effort—struggled to tiptoe around, make myself small and convenient and whatever version of well-behaved was ‘in’ that week. I used to think I had some control.

  I used to be an idiot.

  My stomach balls tight. I fight against the seat and suitcase, flustered by the sound of his footsteps getting closer.

  I feel his breath on my neck.

  My skin crawls. Crawls.
Every instinct in my body surges toward flight, but I know better than that now, learned long ago that it’s worse when I run from it. His breath washes across the skin of my neck like hot acid. “Here,” he says, voice deceptively even, “let me do that.”

  I hope you fucking die. “I’ve got it.”

  “Do you?” He takes the suitcase from me and slides it in the space. Because I knew it was coming—it always does—I’m already rigid and cringing when his hand clamps around the base of my neck, digging in hard. From the outside, it probably looks normal. But his hand squeezes, and if it were on the other side of my neck, he’d be strangling me. It hurts. But worse than the hurt is the way being touched makes me feel. I gnash my teeth to bite back my scream, body thrumming with something uncontrollable.

  It didn’t used to be like this. Before this summer, Doug used to have to put in the effort of hitting me to get this kind of reaction. Oh, and he was good at it, too. The more tolerance I built to his blows, the worse it got. He ramped it up so well.

  Now—after what happened that night on the docks—this is all it takes.

  One. Fucking. Touch.

  I should run. Fight. Twist away. But he knows I won’t, and so do I. Because it’s taking everything in me to just breathe. I can’t contain my shudder when he hisses in my ear, “I know you’re running away because you think you’re better than us, but you’ll be back. Crawling on your hands and knees after how those rich brats will treat you. You’re nothing, you hear me? You’re trash. No one wants you.”

  He finishes by giving me a teeth-rattling shake. Tears spring to my eyes and my jaw clamps shut, but I keep quiet and still. Even though my neck is screaming in protest, this is nothing. He’s done worse. So much worse. I’ve spent the last eight years wishing Doug away and it never happened. Not once. Catching my breath, I jerk back, elbowing him hard in the ribs.

  “You little fucking bitch,” he spits, but it gives me room to slide in the front seat and slam the door. Taking one last look at my mother, I crank the engine and peel out of the driveway as fast as I can. The tires squeal, and I stop caring about how it looks to the neighbors.