Page 29 of The Sweetest Cruelty: Hudson (A Sawyer Brothers Story #1)
Gnawing my bottom lip between my teeth, I remained silent. I could feel my brother’s eyes drilling into my helmet.
“Why don’t you just fuck her and then send her back to her daddy crying?”
Phoenix’s words were not welcome. They were too crude to be associated anywhere near my Molly. Wait? My Molly?
“You could give her the best three minutes of her life,” Nix added with a shit eating grin, the cheeky fucker.
Flipping him off, I volleyed, “Eat shit. At least I’d last three minutes.”
My dipshit of a brother was still banging on. “Or you could rip the band-aid off and admit you like her. Take out your vendetta on the source of all your pain, aka the principal himself and… leave the poor girl alone? She’s done fuck all to you,” Nix sniffed.
Yeah, not gonna happen.
“Molly Miller could be good for you.”
My expression must have said it all as Nix raised his hands with a wide-eyed mock surrender motion. “That’s just my opinion. ”
“Yeah, well opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they usually stink.”
Dropping his hands by his side, my brother quirked me a look, those dark eyes drilling into mine. “What are you so afraid of, bro? You can’t say you aren’t attracted to her.”
“Will you get off my dick already? Wanting to bang someone and make someone your girl are two different things. Who the fuck says I even like her as a person?” I growled, banging my helmet against Nix’s in anger.
“You do. I’ve seen the way you look at her. It’s more than just the usual eye-fuck shit. Yes, Molly Miller has tits and ass that could wake a dead man but there’s more to her than that. She has substance.”
Substance? I sucked in a breath; I couldn’t be dealing with Nix’s piss poor version of fucking Cupid. He was being a provocative jerk on purpose to get a rise out of me, and it was working. Jealousy surged through my veins as he spoke about Molly’s tits, as did the need to smack him in the face.
Out of all my brothers, Nix was always the fastest to read to me. He must have seen from my expression how pissed off I felt at his observations.
The big guy stepped back and held up his hands in mock surrender. “And your face just highlights my point. Look, taper the anger. If you want to live in denial, that’s on you, man.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, thanks for sharing, Buddha.”
Taper the anger. I knew if he made any more cunt-like comments, I’d punch him in his rock-hard stomach, even though it would probably shatter every bone in my hand. So, I decided to put some distance between us.
I heard his childishly singing, “Molly and Hudson sitting in a tree.”
‘Observant fucker, aren’t you?” I muttered under my breath as I jogged ahead, Nix’s chuckles yanked on my last fricking nerve.
“Like a kid in a candy store,” I heard him shout.
As we joined the others and prepared to start practice, my eyes landed on ‘the source’ as Phoenix had called him, Principal Miller.
He was talking to Coach. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.
I wondered what they were saying. It had to be something about me as they kept glancing my way.
I felt like flipping them both off, but managed to restrain myself.
Had Molly said something about what had happened in the pool? Maybe she’d told her father that I had rescued her from a fate worse than death. As I rolled my shoulders and glared across the field, from the stern look on his face, I would say not .
Fuck. Why was he there, talking to Coach instead of running the fucking school from his big dick office? The guy wasn’t hugged enough as a child, that was clear, and of course, I could relate.
I hated that Miller’s lectures always made me feel I was one step closer to becoming a failure. Just like my old man had always told me I would be. That’s why on the surface, I pretended that I was anything but. Even my brothers didn’t see the whole me.
My mom’s battered body resurfaced before my eyes, but I forced that agony back down into that void inside me where it belonged.
Fuck Principal Dick. What? He was called Richard, and so my name for him totally worked.
Bottom line, the prick had it in for me, and if he could get me dropped from the team, he would. I needed to show him that I wouldn’t go down without a fight.
And the way to do that. Fucking with his daughter. That seed of anticipation when I’d first decided to hate his kid hadn’t developed much further than being a dick to her.
I knew I needed to do more than that but how when she was fucking AWOL? She had also ignored my text messages.
I needed to spend time in her company to work my magic. Molly was a junior, and I was a senior, which didn’t help. That meant we had no classes together, and it was a big school. There was no guarantee that we’d run into each other during recess. Well, not unless I orchestrated that.
And then I remembered my idea about asking her to tutor me.
That would kill two birds with one stone. It would ensure I kept my grades up, as well as more contact time with Molly.
A river of satisfaction washed through me at that thought.
I purposefully pushed away any idea that the feeling of excitement was due to my being in her company.
Phoenix was wrong, yes, I wanted her physically, but that’s all it could ever be.
My first impression of Molly the day we met in the library was that she was the real deal.
But I now knew that I had been fooling myself.
Stick to the plan. Revert to type. You’re the devil, just like your old man. Use her for your own ends and then walk away.
Yep. Sweet Molly could help me with my studies, and being the gentleman I wasn’t, I wouldn’t give her the chance to say no. The thought of Principal Miller’s face when he found out we were study buddies would be fucking priceless .
And I, for one, could hardly wait for the fallout.
MOLLY
My mother’s approaching birthday had been on my mind, and after a hard conversation with my father, he suggested I stay home for a couple of days.
I embraced his decision as I wasn’t in the mood for the bullshit of school.
Not when I felt so shitty that I would never have the chance to give Mum the present I made for her.
Mum’s gift was a hand-carved wooden sign that said To the Beach .
I’d made it in Design Tech at school as a project and had gotten an A star for my efforts.
Mr Findlay, my DT teacher, was impressed with how much heart I’d put into the piece.
I’d even painted and glossed it so the finish was crisp and shiny.
It was for the garden of our home in Surrey.
My mother loved the beach, and we had discussed moving closer to the coast one day.
As my father was at work both days, I welcomed the peace. My time at Harbor Heights had gotten off to a shaky start, and having time to myself allowed me to regroup my thoughts and think of a way forward.
On the afternoon of day two, I was bored of having too much thinking time.
I’d been messaging Lisa and catching up on what was going on at what would have been my High School.
Lisa told me that Melanie Walker threw up in David Marshall’s mouth at the weekend, which was disgusting and funny at the same time.
Melanie’s parents owned an off-licence, and so she had easy access to alcohol.
David was a geek at primary school. He always sat at the front of class and had been the source of bullying for years.
I guess it followed him into secondary school.
Cassius sent me a string of WhatsApps, saying how the village wasn’t the same without me. When he started getting needy, I pulled back, as the contact with my friends just reminded me of the distance between us and made me feel sad rather than happy.
Eying the shoe box where I stored Mum’s more personal items, I took a deep breath.
I hadn’t looked inside since arriving in America, but I knew her birthday present was there.
I felt a wave of sadness that it was hidden away when it should have been on display, but I couldn’t stomach putting it in this garden.
A place that was still foreign to me. Everything was so plain out there.
Dad wasn’t into gardening, and there were zero plants.
In the UK, our garden was covered with stunning flowers and presented a sea of colours.
We even had a veggie patch. Our success at growing anything large enough to eat had been hit and miss, but how I’d loved planting those seeds together.
Fuck! Would that knot in my chest ever leave? I touched the Tree of Life pendant around my neck. God, how I missed her.
After spending the rest of that day, clutching a photograph of my mother to my chest, I knew I needed to busy myself instead of wallowing. Mum would have been thirty-six, so fucking young but she wouldn’t have wanted me to be sad.
Whilst I was rearranging my bedroom, I saw a text from Hudson. My phone had been beeping most of the day with messages from my friends in the UK and Aunt Patricia, saying they were thinking of me on what would have been Mum’s special day.
Although they were sent to help, the messages were hindering. Reading them, hurt like hell.