Pretty Little Savage: A Dark Enemies to Lovers College Romance (Sick Boys Book 1) Read online

  Pretty Little Savage

  Sick Boys Book 1

  Lucy Smoke

  Copyright © 2020 by Lucy Smoke

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, places, or events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Editing by Heather Long and Your Editing Lounge

  Cover Design: Dee Garcia at Black Widows Designs

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Authors Note

  Prologue

  1. Dean

  2. Avalon

  3. Avalon

  4. Avalon

  5. Avalon

  6. Avalon

  7. Dean

  8. Avalon

  9. Dean

  10. Avalon

  11. Avalon

  12. Dean

  13. Avalon

  14. Avalon

  15. Dean

  16. Avalon

  17. Dean

  18. Avalon

  19. Avalon

  20. Avalon

  21. Dean

  22. Avalon

  23. Avalon

  24. Dean

  25. Avalon

  26. Dean

  27. Avalon

  28. Avalon

  29. Dean

  30. Avalon

  31. Dean

  32. Avalon

  33. Avalon

  34. Avalon

  35. Avalon

  36. Dean

  37. Avalon

  38. Dean

  39. Avalon

  40. Avalon

  41. Avalon

  42. Dean

  43. Avalon

  44. Avalon

  45. Dean

  46. Avalon

  47. Avalon

  48. Avalon

  49. Avalon

  50. Dean

  51. Avalon

  52. Dean

  53. Avalon

  Epilogue

  THANK YOU FOR READING!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Lucy Smoke / Lucinda Dark

  Authors Note

  Hey there, awesome person who picked up this book!

  Thank you for buying Pretty Little Savage. I just wanted you—the person with great book taste—to know that I both loved and hated writing this book. I rewrote the beginning more times than I can count—and I mean that quite literally. I lost count when I got up in the double digits. But now it’s done and it’s in your hands. Before we start Avalon’s journey, however, I wanted to issue a quick warning.

  Sick Boys is not a series for people who can’t handle a little darkness. Both our hero and heroine have very human flaws and both will see a lot of bloodshed and pain before the end of this series. I do not consider this book to be a bully romance, though you may see some similarities. Because of my own experience in the past with bullying, I have elected not to label any of my present or potential works as bully romance. What I will say is that this is a college age, new adult, enemies to lovers MF romance.

  This book deals with some darker themes. If you are sensitive to or offended by any such themes that are common in dark romances or you are easily triggered, this book may not be the best fit for you. Please keep that in mind and read responsibly.

  “If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.”

  Silvia Plath, The Bell Jar

  Prologue

  Avalon

  I put my foot to the gas, and floor it. The wavering pointer on the speedometer jerks up and then inches over, slowly but surely making its way to the 100mph mark and then beyond. The headlights wash over the dark backwoods road. The longer I stare, the harder it is to see until I realize it isn’t that the road is hard to see, I’m just crying.

  Sobbing, actually. Big, heaving sobs wrack my frame as tears slide from my eyes. They slip down my cheeks, dirty little things, leaving me with a salty taste in my mouth that’s tinged with a metallic edge. Tears and blood. How? Because I’ve bitten my lip so hard that I can feel where the skin has broken and blood seeps from the wound onto my tongue.

  “Fuck him…” I whisper. I lift my fist from the steering wheel and bring it down hard. Hard enough that it sends a ricochet of pain up my arm. “Fuck them,” I amend, because it wasn’t just Dean Carter. It was all of them. All for one and one for fucking all. They would back him, I had no doubt. So fuck them all. “Fuck them. Fuck them. FUCK. THEM.” I scream until my lungs hurt.

  It hurts. Fuck, everything hurts. The worst pain imaginable. Like being shredded open and left, gasping, in a pile of trash. That’s essentially what he’d done. Never in my life had I ever let anyone make me feel like I was just as dirty and disgusting as my mother—not even the bitch herself. But he’d done it. And why did I feel this way? Because I’d gone and gotten stupid. Oh, I told myself I was being smart but the second I gave in, the very moment I spread my legs, deep down, I’d known. I up and drank the dumb bitch juice he’d been handing out.

  Had it been obvious? I wonder. Had I just not seen the signs? I didn’t think it was fucking possible for a girl like me to be dickmatized, but I’m not stupid enough to believe that doesn’t have any bearing on the betrayal I now feel. God, I can’t fucking breathe!

  The sex had been amazing. It’d been filthy and rotten and for some fucking reason, when I’d been in his arms, I hadn’t been Avalon Manning, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. I’d just been me without all of the past shit to ruin it. And he’d just been a guy—as annoying as he could be, as controlling and as much of an asshole as he was—that I liked.

  Liked—as in past tense. Because, the fact is, I’m not in love with him. To love him would be to ruin everything that I am. Because I’m not a girl that loves. I’m a girl that fucking destroys, and oh, Dean doesn’t know it yet, but he’s made one of the biggest fucking mistakes of his life with me. The snake of pure, unfiltered wrath breaks free and slithers up and around my throat. It blurs my reality as I lift my foot off the gas and just let the stolen ride be.

  Eventually, the Mustang comes to a slow stop in the middle of the road. Darkness in front of me and darkness behind—much like my past and like my probable future.

  Here I am … sitting in a stolen car in the middle of nowhere with blood and tears on my face. I laugh. It’s fucking funny as shit. Stupidly funny.

  I laugh so loud and long and hard that my stomach begins to cramp. Something feels loose in my brain. Like whatever had been keeping me semi-sane has snapped and broken. The barrier is gone now and it. Feels. Fucking. Satisfying.

  My eyes slide to the side and I reach for the seatbelt as they land on the glove box. I unbuckle myself, moving slowly as if my limbs have minds of their own. I press the button and it opens. My fingers find the handle of the gun I’d seen stashed in here the first time I’d ridden in this car. It’s easy to pick it up—too easy—and though the gun feels heavy in my grasp, it feels right too. I lift it and point towards the windshield. I picture the guys. One by one. Standing in a line in front of the twin beams of light pouring from the Mustang’s headlights.

  What would I do if given the chance to kill him? Could I do it? Could I pull the trigger?

  Right now, I feel like it’d be all too easy to blow not just his but each of their fucking brains out—because if it wasn’t for the other tw
o, I might never have met Dean Carter in the first place. My finger finds the trigger in question and smooths over it, but I don’t press down. Instead, I lower the weapon, and after a moment, I put the gun back in the glove compartment, close it, and snap my seatbelt back into place.

  No, I’m not going to kill them. I’ve got better things planned for them. More torturous things. What I am going to do, however, is go back. Not to Eastpoint, but to the place where it all began. There have been far too many people in my life who seem to think they have power over me and it all starts there.

  First the past. Then the present. Only then can I finally face the fucking future.

  Rules to live by. To look forward, I have to go back. Just once. Just this once. I put my foot back on the gas and this time, when I floor it, I know exactly where I’m going.

  Those boys—those sick, twisted, disgusting, perverted assholes—think they can sweep into my life and drag me through the carnage of hell. What they don’t yet realize, though, is that I was born there and I know exactly how to not only survive, but to fucking rise.

  1

  Dean

  16 years old…

  Money is the ultimate weapon. Money and power. What many people don’t know is that all wealth is stained in blood. True power doesn't come without corruption. People fight, bleed, and die for money and power. No matter who you are or where you come from, it is the one undeniable factor of the future and what it holds. Because money is power and power is blood. And I want both.

  Warm red liquid drips from my right nostril as I pant, my chest rising and falling. My father stands to the side, his cold eyes watching. Always fucking watching and waiting—either for me to prove myself his failure or his heir. There is only one choice. I refuse to be the first, so I must be the second.

  Taking the other man's neck in my grip, my muscles contract in my biceps as I smash his face into the concrete ground. Once, twice, three times until he coughs out a groan beneath my grasp, the pain he must be feeling making the noise a broken imitation of what should be a long and labored sound. Only when it hits my ears do I release him and take a step back. I don't flinch when he coughs again and this time, blood spews from between his lips, landing on the top of my brand new shoes. White splattered with blood. That seems to be the symbol of my family—of all the families of Eastpoint.

  Off to the side, Braxton and Abel stand alongside their fathers, their faces expressionless. They, too, will face their trials soon. This one, though, is mine. I’ve known the gruesome requirement and the expectations of me as the future leader of the Eastpoint heirs since I was a child. I will not fail and I will not falter.

  A tooth lands next to my foot as the man on the ground hacks and moans, his pain a visceral thing that I can practically taste. A part of me wonders if I should like it as much as I do. Another part of me doesn’t really give a shit.

  "Dean." That single word from my father tells me that it’s time. Time to stop playing with my prey. Time to end this. Reaching down, I lift the man by the front of his already torn shirt. If it's odd to anyone in the vicinity that a sixteen year old can be so much bigger or stronger than a grown ass man, no one—least of all the man himself—makes notice of it.

  "You know what we want," I state. "All you have to do to stop this is give it to us."

  The man shakes his head. "I don't—"

  Never let him deny. The first thing my father taught me when dealing with traitors. Get their confession and then kill them. No chances to lie. No chances to grasp onto the sliver of their lives we owned and tear it back. Show nothing but complete lack of mercy. I slam my fist into his face and feel the breaking of cartilage against my knuckles. New blood pours freely from his nose where it only trickled from mine. The man whimpering in my fists had only managed to land one hit, but I can tell that that single hit has angered my father.

  I’m doing everything right. I do not show hesitation. I pummel the man with my fists until sweat beads at my brow and slides down my face. I let blood coat my knuckles and stain my clothes. Yet, still, I can feel his disapproval radiating from across the room.

  I don't have to look at him now to know that his arms are crossed over his chest and his dead gaze is piercing right through me.

  "Please," the man gasps, his hands latching onto my shoulders as he tries to get his feet under him once more.

  I kick his knee and send him sprawling. "Just say the words," I order.

  He whimpers again as I grind my foot into his groin and press down. Hard.

  "I'm sorry!" he bursts out, tears sliding from his eyes. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Okay? You want to hear me say it. I will! They offered me so much money. I c-couldn't … it wasn't because I'm not loyal. I am! I swear it! I’m working for you. I always work for you. They’re nothing. I’m doubling for you—I’ll bring you any information you want."

  I look over my shoulder. Nicholas Carter nods once. There is nothing this man has that we want. Reaching back, I touch the cold metal of the gun strapped to the holster against my lower back. As soon as the man sees it, he scrambles back, looking from side to side as if anyone here can or even would help him. A part of me wants to look at Braxton and Abel—I want to know their reactions. But I don't. As soon as I do something like that, I know I won't be able to pull this off. I might enjoy a little bit of the violence. I might crave something to quell the rage inside me. But I don’t particularly want to see what they think of me as a killer.

  This is what we were born for, I tell myself. The words are an echo of my father's. We live the lifestyle of the rich and powerful and we need to pay for it. This is our restitution. Lest we never forget that we are on top for a reason. Not to become the chaos but to rule and control it.

  I step forward and put the gun to the man's forehead. His cries and pleas are like white noise in my ears. There are no clear words. No comprehendible anything. Just static. I take a breath and without another thought, I pull the trigger.

  2

  Avalon

  14 years old…

  The trailer smells like shit when I wake up. With mold in the walls and bugs crawling through the green carpet, it always does. I get up and change for school. Patricia’s soft snores filter out from the living room as I brush my teeth and hair and hurry through the morning routine. Some people look at me and assume I’d be like any other teenager, more than happy to play hooky or get out of doing homework. But not me. I don’t mind school. I’ll do just about anything to get out of this hellhole and away from her.

  Patricia is like a broken doll. Her face cracked or caved in. Her skin marked with age and from too much sex and drugs. Mother or not, she's dead inside. A rotting corpse that just doesn't know how to fucking quit. I’ve never believed in God a day in my life, no matter what the religious freaks at school preach—and there’s always a horde of them down here in the South, well meaning churchgoers who want to save everyone—but sometimes, I pray that He’ll fucking send a lightning bolt, a hurricane, something to strike her down. It never happens, though.

  Other kids got moms who at least tried. Sure, they failed. Maybe they were mean. Maybe they hit their kids, but at least they acknowledged they had one. Sometimes, I wonder if Patricia even remembers that she gave birth to another human being. It’s kind of difficult to reconcile the woman lying stretched out on our futon for a couch with her tits hanging out and stinking like last night’s puke and booze with the traditional idea of motherhood.

  I stop just inside the main hull of the trailer, and the scent of vomit and dust collecting in front of me makes me wrinkle my nose in disgust. She obviously never made it back to her room when she stumbled in the night before. Her emaciated hand hangs over the edge of the futon, her fingers brushing against one of the many liquor bottles that litter the floor. A white filmy dust coats the old, scarred coffee table.

  A scowl forms over my face. Where the hell had she gotten money for cocaine?

  I march across the living room and kick her hand, not caring if
it hurts or leaves a bruise. She’d do the same to me if our situations were reversed. Actually, she’d do worse. "Hey!” I lean down and snap my fingers in front of her face. "Wake up."

  A low moan leaves her dry parted lips as her snoring stops and her eyelids crack open the scantest bit. "Avalon?"

  My scowl deepens. "Get up. I've got to go to school."

  She doesn't so much as wave her hand as she lifts it and lets it flop back down in a useless gesture. "So go."

  I clench my fists and kick her hand again. "No," I growl. "You have to come to my school today. We have parent teacher conferences. I told you about it last week.” I don’t necessarily want her there, but neither do I want the school to look into why my mother hasn’t answered any calls or why she doesn’t show up for scheduled meetings like the one we have today. Because she’s too busy fucking around, being drunk off her ass, or high as hell.