I will destroy her.
With a slight shift in my posture, all eyes at the table are on me. “Listen up.”
Carter leans on his forearms, a wild grin spreading across his face. “‘Sup, brother?”
I match his expression and nod to Gemma’s table with her sad little girl squad of two.
“Open fucking season.”
The handful of football team members whoop and break out in chatter. Devlin quirks a brow and glances between me and Gemma.
“We’re going to play a game.” I rifle through my wallet and slap a fifty down. “Place your bets now.”
“What’s the game?” asks one of our bulky defensive line players.
I wait a beat, tilting my head and smirking. “Break the prude. Anything goes.” I point across the lunchroom. “First to get Gemma Turner—with proof—wins the pot.” I prop my elbows on the table and rest my chin on my laced fingers. “Destroy her. No mercy.”
Laughter breaks out and I settle back to survey what I’ve set in motion. Carter lets out a howl and drums his palms on the table. They act like a pack of jackals let loose on the hunt. Money is laid down and big claims made over who’s winning.
But I already know who will win.
It’ll be me.
I’m going to break Gemma Turner by making her mine.
Eight
Gemma
This school has gone fucking crazy in a matter of days.
Carter Burns followed me from my car one morning, leering at me the whole time. I arrived at my locker to find a small mailbox super-glued to it beneath a sign that said Peak Point Blow Job Requests, C/O Gemma Turner. Carter gave another guy a high five and told me he liked his cock sucked extra sloppy.
People slut-sneezed and called me a Coyote Girl—whatever the fuck that was—as I went from class to class, their snickers trailing after me as I rolled my eyes.
A pretty girl in second period sat on top of my desk yesterday and showed me her Instagram post. It was a still image taken from the video of my kiss with Lucas, except instead of Lucas she photoshopped it so I was kissing her instead. She got the lighting spot on. The caption had my actual phone number and said txt Gemma Turner 4 a good time with a slew of saucy emojis. The photo had over 250 likes and several comments within minutes. My phone buzzed in my bag and dread speared through me.
Players from every team at school howled as they flicked the edge of my uniform skirt, phones at the ready to snap a photo. The third guy that tried that met my fist in his gut and my sturdy boot on his toe. Lucas had seen the whole thing from several feet down the hall, leaning against a locker with an unreadable look. I flipped him off and stormed to class.
It was only lunch, and I was ready to kick the wall. This was insanity. How could teachers let this kind of shit fly?
I hadn’t found any faculty around during these incidents, and a large part of me was too stubborn and prideful to go crawling to the administrative office to file a formal complaint—even if it meant stopping the torment.
The last time the principal’s office got involved in one of my problems, there had been a humiliating investigation that I didn’t want to relive.
“Are you going to eat, or keep doing that angry pacing?” Blair asks.
She’s my sole ally.
Blair tucks her blue-gray hair behind her ear and takes one of the protein bars I emptied onto a bench in the courtya
rd where we’re spending our lunch period.
We’re not hiding. We’re just…getting a break from the shit that’s been my constant since Monday. I’m desperate for the week to end so I can escape this psychotic hell hole for a couple of days.
I drop beside Blair on the stone bench. It’s cold against my butt and I wrap my leather jacket tighter around my body.
“Who decided skirts were a good uniform choice,” I groan.