Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,54

shouldn't be married in the first place?”

“Maybe you're so obsessed with me and all my weirdness because you're fucking jealous?” I retort, putting together a million insults, a million looks that I never bothered to interpret until now. Raz attacks my parents the first chance he gets. He attacks my love of art. My bat earrings. My rainbow pride shirt. The faerie mural on the front of my mothers' art studio.

Things he isn't allowed to have, to like. Because his father doesn't allow him to be who he wants to be. Raz lives inside strictly drawn lines, a box of his parents' making.

“Jealous?” he asks, throwing his head back with a laugh. Before I know it, he's swinging me around and slamming me into the row of gray lockers, getting in my face. His body is pressed up against the front of mine, a lean, perfect line of muscle and malice. He leans into me hard, crushing me against the metal wall behind us.

“Watch it, Raz,” Luke warns, her voice rigid but spiced with fear. She'll stand up to the Knight Crew, but she's not an idiot. She knows how fucking scary they can be sometimes.

“Crashed into Calix's car, fucked with me. What are you up to today, Trailer Park?” He shoves his mask back on his face as Sonja slithers up beside me like a serpent. She's always at Raz's side, like a sexy lesbian clone of the asshole himself.

“You must really like pain,” Sonja suggests, her perfume smelling of violets, lipstick a brilliant red that reminds me of the blood I cleaned off my face earlier. “A gazelle who prances before lions doesn't often last long.”

Calix moves up on my left side, putting his forearm up against the lockers, his face as blank and perfect as it always is. He drives me goddamn nuts, wearing a mask of his own making every fucking day of the year. The only difference today is that he wears two.

“Clearly, you're looking for attention. If that's what you want, we'll give it to you.”

“Make me a part of the Knight Crew today,” I say, and I swear I can hear Luke choking on her own disbelief. My eyes stay locked on Raz's red ones in challenge. There's a flicker of surprise there followed by sick pleasure. He moves back just slightly and then slams his palms against the lockers on either side of my head.

“You've got to be shitting me,” he laughs as Barron watches from behind him, snapping the red candy in his mouth in half. The sound gives me the chills.

“She wants to hang with us? Let her,” he suggests, his voice a perfumed poison, seeping into my ears and threatening to flip my own logic on its head. How can someone so awful sound so grotesquely beautiful? “But she follows our rules.”

“If you want to play with us,” Calix starts, pausing and then looking over his shoulder, his eyes trained on someone down the hall. His gaze narrows before he turns those flinty eyes back to me. It's hard for me to align my view of this dark-hearted asshole with the man that touched me yesterday with frenzy and passion in his possessive hands. “Then you can go tell Pearl exactly what we think of her.”

My heart leaps in my chest as Luke hisses under her breath, gaze flicking to the girl in question. I've never liked Pearl, but I also despise cruelty for cruelty's sake. Fear flashes through me like lightning, choking me.

“Are you kidding?” Raz says, cocky smirk falling in place on those sharp lips. He leans back and gives me a disapproving once-over. “You're asking a mouse to do a wolf's work. Trailer Park doesn't have it in her.”

“Just like I didn't have it in me to hit Calix's car?” I quip back, shaking with adrenaline but determined not to back down. If I were to put a pause on this day, sit down and really think about, I bet I could find a lot of deep psychological issues for my behavior.

But I feel wild. Reckless. Out of control.

The universe is fucking with me, so I'm fucking with it.

“Let her try,” Barron says, sliding a dark chocolate candy bar from his pocket. He snaps the end off in a very visceral sort of way, like each bite of food, each suck on a lollipop, each snap of gum, is a sexual act. He stares me right in the face as he does it, licking flakes of