Page 23 of Destroying Everleigh

As soon as the words had left his mouth, I knew who he meant.Everleigh. I didn’t ask for context. Just sat beside him, my own stomach dropping as I sifted through my thoughts, attempting to conjure up all the bad things she could have done to break him this badly. But when he finally told me, that was still worse than anything I managed to think up on my own.

Shoving the horrid thoughts to the back of my mind, I pushed out a sigh. “What’s done is done. Right?” I asked, glancing over at him.

He nodded, wincing like he’d been having similar thoughts. But none of it mattered anymore. She was a whore. By the rawest definition. The girl I’d confided in, the girl I cuddled up on the couch with, the girl I let into my fucking heart. She was nothing to me now. Nothing but a painful reminder of what we all had and what we were forced to lose at her hand.

A timid snake with rounder hips than I’d remembered. Large brown eyes that I used to fantasize about while I jerked off at night. Fair skin that I wanted to paint red as I slapped her ass with her on top of me. But those were the last things I wanted now. Now, I wanted to hurt her just as much, if not worse, than she’d hurt us.

“Does Ash know how you felt?” he continued, watching my expression closely.

“About me loving her more than a friend?” I snorted when he nodded. “No. Let’s finish unpacking. I’m tired of talking about the little cunt. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

He didn’t say anything else, just started going through another box. My chest felt heavy after thinking about her so much. I’d refrained up until now from letting my mind wander back to that time. But it just reminded me even more that I wanted her to pay.

Once we were finished, we sprawled out on my bed. Exhaustion settled heavily over me, but I couldn’t go to sleep, yet. It was only six and if I didn’t eat something tonight, my stomach would be grumbling profusely. Plus, I’d wake up at like two in the morning if I crashed now. So instead, I stared up at the mundane ceiling, craving the burn of alcohol sliding down my throat. Drinking had become my favorite pastime, despite how much I hated when my father did it.

The room was painted so white it was blinding. Empty boxes decorated the wooden floor, making me grumble with the reminder that I’d have to take a trip down to the dumpster sometime soon. I couldn’t wait for the weekend to roll around. I’d probably hit up a bar, get trashed, fuck some nameless girl, and then crash. That’s been my routine for the last year, and I didn’t see any point in putting a stop to it.

I turned to look at Kash who was scrolling on his phone beside me. “When is that party again?”

“Not this weekend, but next,” he replied without sparing me a glance.

Frustration built inside me. It made sense, though. People weren’t typically ballsy enough to throw a party two days after school began. It would mostly be tame until the frats kicked into gear. Right now, they were probably too busy with their never-ending list of recruits, planning their hazes, and figuring out what sadistic shit to put them through.

A slow smile stretched across my face as a thought sprouted. “What if we started our own fraternity?”

Kash bristled at the idea. He’d be more interested in that kind of shit than me, so it didn’t have to do with the fact I brought it up, but what we’d have to do to get one going. “That would be crazy expensive,” he pointed out. “And do they even have a frat house left on campus?”

I shrugged. “If they don’t, we’ll just make one of the existing leaders step down and take their spot.” Violence wasn’t foreign to me. I’d dealt with a shit ton of it all through middle school and high school. I wasn’t a murderer, but I had no problem with making someone wish they were dead.

“Why are you suddenly interested in being a part of a fraternity?” he countered. “I tried to get you to join one at the beginning of last year and you shut it down.”

I rolled my eyes. “Because I’m not going to let some little rich prick haze me and control me. I’d rather run the damn thing.”

He thought about that for a moment but then blew out a breath, seemingly coming to a conclusion. “We can try. But it won’t be easy. This kind of shit takes a lot of money.”

“Then we need to find the right connections. We’ll let someone in who’s loaded. Once we’ve used him all up, we’ll discard him unless we find a reason for him.”

His lips twitched in response, apparently liking the sound of that. “I guess we can check in with the dean and see if there are any unoccupied frat houses lying about. That would make things ten times easier than having to torture some asshole to give theirs up and risk expulsion.”

I nodded in agreement. Maybe coming back to Brookhaven wasn’t such a stupid idea, after all.

I slid into an empty table at dinner, Kash moving to take the seat beside me as he usually did. The room was bustling with students chatting about, and it was a relief to find that I didn’t recognize a lot of them. Seems like a lot of our former classmates skipped town like we had originally. I glanced down at my steaming plate of nachos and took a chip between my fingers before biting into it.

I was about to mention something to Kash about a plan I’d been mulling over for the frat, but when he tensed, I followed his gaze instead, expecting to see Everleigh. But it was almost just as bad.

Crystal strolled in, arm in arm, with a girl I didn’t recognize. Her blonde hair was pulled into a neat bun on the top of her head, and she lookedclassy. That thought nearly made me choke. Crystal was the furthest thing from classy, having bounced on both Kash’s and Ashton’s dicks on more than one occasion.

“I thought she went to fucking Yale or some shit,” he muttered.

I swallowed, tearing my gaze away from the bitch that had hurt Kash just as much as Everleigh had. He’d pined after her for years until she finally relented once she realized Ash was off the market and wouldn’t cheat. He had been her second option, maybe even third, but I never liked her much, so she knew that wasn’t an option. I could have told him a million times that it was a bad idea, that she was after Ashton. He knew, but didn’t care. The poor lovesick fool.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, Everleigh strolled in behind them with her hand clasped in some dudes, presumably, her boyfriend. Crystal turned toward her, and for a moment, I expected a fight to break out, or some drama. But they just looked at each other before parting ways.

“I think that’s the hot girl Ashton was telling me about,” Kash said, nodding to the smoking redhead who had stepped up next to Everleigh. “Her name is Amber or something like that.”

“We could call her over.” I smirked, glancing over at my best friend.

He didn’t even have to think about it, he nodded almost immediately.

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