Havoc

“No, I think I’m average. But Mike thinks I’m special, and that’s all that matters to me.”

Danica’s laugh is a humorless white cloud of air between us, her expression glacial as she says, “Do you think of me when you’re being his little slut?”

“I don’t think of you at all,” I lie.

“Not even when he fucks you?” Danica asks, not caring at all that there is a twelve-year-old standing beside us. I don’t answer, and she smiles. “I guess you must be used to it, getting all of my old trash. My toys, my dresses, and now my boyfriend. You can have him, Hailey. He’ll never make love to you in a way that he hasn’t made love to me first.”

“At least he can look me in the face while he’s doing it,” I snap, remembering what Mike told me about having to do her from behind the one time they did it on the tour bus.

Danica’s whole face burns red as she hisses, “What did you just say?”

Her fists clench at her sides, and I know it’s time to get the hell out of here. I grab Luke by his elbow and spin us around, and Danica’s breath is hot on my neck when she screams in my ear, “What the fuck did you just say to me, you bitch!”

When I turn back around, she’s right in my face. “Say what you want, Danica! Say it so I can fucking leave! You want to tell me how poor I am? How ugly I am? Do it, because once I leave here, this is done.”

“You think you’re just going to live happily ever after?” she sneers. “Hailey, I’m going to make your life on campus so miserable, you’re never going to finish school.”

“How?” I ask just to get it over with. “What, are you going to sleep with my professors and get them to give me bad grades?”

“I have friends,” she threatens with a smile.

“So, what? You’re going to start rumors about me? About how I’m a whore? How I have STDs? What, Danica? Tell me.”

Her jaw ticks as I guess her evil plan, and I roll my eyes.

“I used to go to high school smelling like manure with holes in my clothes. My snow boots freshman year were tennis shoes with bread bags tied over them. If you think I give even the tiniest shit what a bunch of frat boys and sorority girls think of me, you’re wrong.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Danica mocks with an exaggerated pout. It twists into a smile, and she taunts, “What did Mike think of my dress, Hailey? The one with the blue flowers you loved so much.”

My blood boils under my skin, but I force a smile back. “That stupid video you sent him? He didn’t even watch it. And even if he had, I’m sure he wouldn’t have liked it as much as the red dress I wore when I starred in the band’s music video.”

White rage flares across Danica’s face, and she hisses, “You’re lying.”

“I’m a terrible liar,” I remind her, echoing something she’s told me a thousand times. “Look at my face. Does it look like I’m lying?”

One minute, she’s studying me—my eyes, my mouth, my serious expression. The next, blood is exploding against my teeth, the force of her fist knocking me backward. I fall from the unexpected blow, and my brother drops to his knees to help me. My rattled brain is still trying to register what just happened, when he starts to rise to his feet, anger rolling off him.

I latch on to Luke’s elbow to keep him from getting involved, and when I’m confident he’s not going to throw everything my dad ever taught him about not hitting girls out the window, I force my legs to lift me back to my feet.

Adrenaline is pulsing through me so rapidly, my whole body is shaking. I’m so angry, I want to cry. I want to scream so loud it hurts, and then I want to fall apart on the sidewalk. Instead, I meet Danica’s furious glare, and I make sure she hears me. “You’re the ugly stepsister, Danica. You try so hard to be the princess, but you’re hideous inside. Your daddy is the only man who’s ever going to love you.”

Angry tears glisten in her eyes as she clenches her fists at her sides. I wait for her to punch me again, but when it doesn’t happen, I wipe my sleeve against my bloody lip and turn away from her. “She’s not worth it,” I tell Luke when he holds his aggressive stance, and he eventually lets me pull him away.

I hope the blood in my mouth is enough. I pray my swollen lip was what she needed. If she needed to knock me down, fine, she knocked me down—

“This isn’t over,” she calls after me as I walk away, and I close my eyes, knowing that words will never be enough to stop her from wreaking havoc on my life. It will never matter to her how many times she knocks me down, because I will always get back up.

When I turn around and walk back to her, her eyes have dried, and her face is vicious. The little girl I knew in Indiana is gone, possessed by a coldhearted bitch who’s spent the past few months manipulating me like a puppet.

“You have something you want to say to me?” she barks, and I look her straight in the eye.

“Yeah,” I say, channeling years of lifting hay bales and mucking stalls and wrangling horses. I spit a mouthful of blood on the sidewalk, and I fist my hand like my daddy taught me. “You punch like a little bitch.”

When I pull back my fist, I pull it back far. And when I punch Danica in her startled face, I punch her as hard as I can.

Chapter 52

If my life was a fairy tale, I suppose I would have knocked Danica out on that Thanksgiving afternoon four months ago. She would have fallen on her ass, the hit would have been clean, and I would have stood over her victorious, noting a look of surrender in her eyes.