Brutal Obsession: Chapter 6

It takes me three hours to put my room back together, sans mattress and box spring. In fact, my room looks a whole lot bigger without the bulky furniture. My pictures are all gone.

When I first discovered it on Monday, I did three loads of laundry to get rid of the paint on my underwear, and I had to toss all the clothes that were ripped to shreds. But I didn’t want to deal with the furniture. I didn’t want to take down the photos. So I hid it from Willow for four days.

Now it’s Friday, a quiet day with no classes, and I have the mental capacity to deal with it.

Whoever did this had a lot of anger, which makes me think of Greyson.

And trust me, I don’t want to be thinking about him .

Willow gets home on the tail end of my cleaning spree, when I’m struggling to push my red-stained, gouged dresser out the front door. The only thing making me feel less guilty about putting it outside with a free sign on it is the fact that I picked it up at a secondhand store for twenty bucks.

She watches me struggle for a moment, then comes and helps me lift it over the threshold. We carry it to the street, and I lean against it.

She waits, clearly ready for me to spill.

I just shrug and turn around, knowing she’ll follow me all the way back to my room. And she does. She gasps softly when she steps inside.

My room is bare . Like, to the bone. The walls are blank, scrubbed paint-free. There’s a few pieces of clothing still in my closet. My backpack that I had with me hangs in the closet. Otherwise, nothing.

“What the fuck?”

“Someone broke in and destroyed everything. On Monday.” I don’t tell her that they wrote whore across my wall, and that all my memories are gone. I mean, they still live in my head. But beyond that…

“MONDAY?” she shrieks. She smacks my arm. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“Because…” I don’t know. I haven’t cried this whole time. Not when I found it, not when I started to tear down the pictures. Or when I discovered my journal missing. I told myself that tears were useless and action could fix this. Make it better.

But now, with Willow witnessing the aftermath, the backs of my eyes burn. And they fill with tears. I blink rapidly, trying to keep the liquid from spilling out. But my shoulders hunch, and my chest gets tight, and the floodgates open.

I break down in the middle of the room, slowly sinking to my knees. I let it go, and the shuddering mess of emotions comes pouring out.

Willow sits beside me, her arm coming down around my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“It’s not your fault,” I respond. My voice is hoarse. I wish it was for a good reason, but I’m just exhausted.

“You can sleep in my room until we get you a new bed. Like a sleepover.”

I choke on my laugh and wipe under my nose. “Thanks. Just like old times.”

She nods emphatically. “Right? It’ll be great. Or we’ll get sick of each other in the middle of the night and one of us will move to the couch.”

“That only happened once.” I rub at my eyes and clear my throat. “Mexican food just does something to me.”

She snorts. “Trust me, I remember.”

Then she rises and holds out her hands. “Come on, you deserve a drink after dealing with this shit.”

I let her help me up. “I’m going to need to get new clothes, too.”

“Those fuckers,” she breathes. “What didn’t they touch?”

“The rest of the apartment.” I can’t even feel particularly bad about that—I’m glad they only targeted me. For whatever I did. I think, on some level, I might deserve it.

“Did you take photos?”

I nod and pull them up. She takes my phone and swipes through, her face getting more and more pinched as she goes. I wanted evidence, but now all I want is to forget it happened.

Fat chance of that.

“Definitely time for a drink,” she mutters. “Not that I’m a proponent of drowning our problems in alcohol. But the game is tomorrow, so it should be relatively tame.”

I nod along.

And then we get to Haven, and we both swear.

Five-dollar Margarita night.

“Well, at least we like margaritas,” I say.

She laughs. “Yep. Jess is on her way, too.”

We find two stools at the bar, and the bartender arrives shortly after. He’s a senior at CPU, but he doesn’t comment on the video. He just gives us a broad smile and takes our orders without comment.

Willow glances around. There’s a lot of underclassmen here today, which normally isn’t a problem. I don’t mind them here, being loud and distracting. It helps. I focus on the television hanging on the wall over the glass shelves of liquor bottles instead.

“Did you talk to your mom about him?” Willow asks.

I shake my head. “Haven’t heard from her since she dropped me off last week.”

She grunts. Willow knows my mother’s antics. Knows what to expect from her and what she’s become.

And what she’s become is a flake.

It’s okay, though. Once my dreams went down the toilet, I understood that her dreams went along with them. She spent a lot of time carting me to dance classes, recitals, buying pointe shoes and tutus and the outfits I had to have as a kid and teenager.

She wanted to see me succeed, too.

“My parents and sister are coming up next week,” Willow says. “I guess my sister wants to apply here and follow in my footsteps.”

I raise my eyebrow. Willow’s sister, Indie, is a wilder version of my best friend. At sixteen, she already has a reputation of dating too much, of sneaking out, drinking when her parents aren’t home. She smokes weed, too. Something Willow and I tried exactly once before my mother forcibly smacked some sense into me.

I still can’t smell it without my ass cheeks hurting.

“I think they want me to take her around to my classes and shit.”

I grin. “Good luck.”

Indie and Willow are almost too similar. Headstrong, chaotic. They argue and fight, and that’s their love language.

I don’t get it. I’m an only child from a single mother. It was just the two of us when I was growing up. We lived in an old Victorian house in a sprawling neighborhood. One of the last that didn’t actually have congested traffic or a commute.

We went to the best school in the county. We got a solid education. But besides Willow, I didn’t walk away with more friends.

Which is fine. It just means we’re close. I spent weekends at her house when my mom needed a break from me. Her parents fed me dinner, helped with my homework on occasion—her mom is a mathematician, and her dad is an engineer. They’re like-minded and whip-smart.

Willow gets that from them. It’s why she’s majoring in computer science. She’s going to take the tech world by storm when she graduates.

I picked business because I thought it would be easy. And then I missed a semester.

The bartender returns with our drinks. I take a sip of my watermelon margarita, and the sugar on the rim adds an extra sweetness. Willow clinks her glass against mine and winks.

On the other side of the bar, I catch sight of Greyson and Knox. My stomach knots.

I think of my trashed room, and I can’t shake the feeling that he would do something like that just to mess with me. But, he didn’t say a word about it in any of the classes we’re in—and we’re in a few together, unfortunately. In my environmental economics class, I can’t seem to get away from him.

I’m probably going to fail it because he keeps messing with me. Not that he does anything, but I can feel his stare on my back the whole time. It’s like my body is hyper aware and I can’t turn it off.

“Earth to Violet,” Willow says.

I jerk, spinning to face her. She squints at me, her expression etched with concern.

“I’ll be right back.” I slide off my stool, take another hefty gulp of my drink, and circle the bar. I don’t have a plan. All I know is that I’m pissed about the video and I’m upset about my room. I had true memories on that wall of my past life. Photos of me and Jack, sure, and the dance team. But I had prints of my ballet recitals, too. Things I’ll never get back.

Not Jack, not the dance team, and certainly not ballet.

My muscles ache for it.

And that just makes me angrier.

Greyson spots me coming. He’s running his own version of court, Knox and him acting like royalty around a gaggle of impressed underclassmen. His lips keep moving, something about their upcoming game against the Pac North Wolves. He sips a beer between sentences.

I stop at the periphery of his circle.

“Violet,” he calls.

They part for me, suddenly realizing I’m there. Some girls, some guys. Seems no one is safe from the Devereux charm.

I scowl at him and step forward. “I know you did it,” I accuse.

His lip curls. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

I make my way closer, determined not to show him fear. I’m not afraid of him. I just need to remind myself of that… “The video,” I hiss. “And my room.”

He leans in. “Listen, gimp. Only in your wildest dreams would I be anywhere near your room. Is that what you want? Someone to fuck your mouth? Maybe a bit better than Jackie boy did, hmm?”

Gimp . That stings.

The people around us laugh, and that fuels him. I force myself to lift my chin and face him head-on. No use shrinking now, even though I’m woefully unprepared. I didn’t expect the barbs to come out so soon, so viciously. After all, I left this bar, drunk, with Jack, and blew him. It’s not a secret, thanks to him.

“How about this? You can go back to your seat with your little friend over there and drink your cheap margarita, and you fantasize about what I’d do to you… if you were worth my time. Or better yet? Just get out of my fucking sight.” He sneers. “You gave up your spot on the dance team. You’re essentially useless to this school, aren’t you? No more accolades, no more recognition. Soon enough, you’ll be invisible.”

I flinch.

His eyes light up, like he’s finally found something that scares me.

“Poor little gimp.” His voice is low and cruel. He’s found a wound and he’s going to press on it, drawing out the pain. “Can’t make it as a dancer, probably won’t get a job in whatever fucking career path you chose as a plan B. You’ll go back to living on your mommy’s couch and working twelve-hour shifts at a gas station until you rot of old age.”

“No.” I’m shaking. Trembling with anger. How dare he talk to me like that? “No, I’m going to succeed. And your demons are going to drag you back to Hell where you belong.”

He smiles. “If I belong in Hell, so do you.”

He takes his drink and sips it, then extends his arm. I watch his hand, watch the glass. Watch it happen in slow motion, but I can’t fucking do anything as he tips it over my head.

Beer hits me. It drenches my hair in an instant, soaks my shirt, and makes it stick to my chest. I take a quick step back, then another. The people part for me, not wanting to get splashed. It’s cold. My skin pricks, every part of me on fire at the humiliation. And the echoing laughs. There’s a whoosh ing sound in my ears that muffles everything.

I brush my hair out of my eyes, trying to hide my tremors. “This isn’t over.”

He nods slowly. “I hope not.”

I turn around and head back to Willow, then stop short. Knox is on my stool, giving her all his attention. There’s a chance she completely missed what just happened… and I don’t want to ruin her night. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Ruining things.

The beer has traveled to my jeans, dampening the waistband. My skin is sticky, my hair gross. I want to scream. That verbal spar didn’t go as planned. Didn’t happen the way I wanted it to at all. And if I want to retaliate, I’m going to need to take another look at that fucking nondisclosure agreement.

For the first time, I feel utterly silenced. I feel small . Unable to respond in the way I want to, knowing that if I insinuate anything about the accident, he could take everything from me.

I spin on my heel and march right past Greyson and his cronies, heading for the exit.