A Dose of Pretty Poison: Chapter 1

The fire burns hot in front of me—the level of heat where it turns a light shade of blue—and all I can think of is throwing her into it.

Right, I should probably explain who she is.

Her parents would call her a nice girl.

My brother calls her his ex.

But me? I call her Satan. It’s fitting, especially when she’s the reason my brother was almost sent to prison.

He was only defending her honor. After a night full of drinking and having a good time, some creep wouldn’t stop coming on to her. Cam told him to back off a few times, but his efforts were futile. When the guy wrapped his arms around her and tried to pull her away, Cam had enough.

One perfectly executed punch was all it took to knock the guy flat on his ass, but no one planned for the way he slammed his head against the curb on the way down—or the intracranial hemorrhage that took the charges from simple battery to aggravated assault. All the provided witness statements were in his favor. Everyone saw how belligerent the guy was being, as well as his lack of common decency for women that want nothing to do with him. However, none of them saw exactly what happened after they left the party.

None except his ex.

We all thought it would be simple. That she would provide her statement and the police would drop the charges. After all, he was just protecting his girlfriend. But when Cam went to her house to find out why she hadn’t done it yet, she dropped a bombshell on him that none of us saw coming.

Perfect little princess didn’t want to get involved.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, she broke up with him because she “can’t be involved with a violent criminal.”

Cam was devastated.

My parents hired a lawyer.

And I started thinking of all the ways her death could look like an accident.

“Laiken!” Cam shouts, his face only inches from mine, pulling my attention back into the now.

I jump and nearly fall off the bench. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He breaks out into a fit of hysterics, laughing so hard he’s struggling to breathe. I cross my arms over my chest and shake my head at him.

“You know, now that I think about it, I wish you were given jail time.”

That’s a lie. I love my brother. He’s that one person who has always been there for me. We’ve stuck by each other through some shit, and I’m just as protective of him as he is of me. Call it joint sibling rebellion in a religious household—there’s no way to make it through alone. You need to have each other’s backs.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t fuck with him when given the chance.

He flips me off and laughs when I pretend to grab it. “As if you didn’t cry the hardest when you found out I was only getting two years of probation.”

“I told you,” I insist. “I was still drunk from the night before. I was crying because I remembered that Taco Bell exists.”

Cam smirks and looks back at his friend Aiden. “You believe a word of this shit?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know, man. Taco Bell to a drunk chick is like free porn to us.”

The two of us stare at him in disbelief as we try to figure out what the hell goes on in his brain. Cam and I glance at each other, and I raise my hands in surrender.

I’m not touching this one.

Cam must have the same thought because he just shakes his head and mutters something under his breath before dropping the topic entirely—just in time for more of his idiotic friends to show up to our celebratory bonfire.

Because not having to wear an orange jumpsuit for the foreseeable future is something to celebrate, dammit.

“Whoop, whoop!” Owen calls as he walks toward the back of the yard.

He’s carrying a six-pack on each shoulder while Lucas and Isaac follow behind him. Having been on the same hockey team with Cam since they were younger, I’ve grown up around these guys. But that doesn’t mean I like them. To be honest, there’s only one of his friends I don’t find completely revolting.

“Congrats, man!” Owen tells Cam as he hands him one of the six packs. “My present to you.”

At six foot four, Owen looks intimidating. The tattoos on his arms along with the muscle he’s built from going to the gym every day, it’s easy to think he’s some rebellious badass. In reality, he’s a total teddy bear—a ladies’ man, but the kind that cuddles after a one-night-stand.

“Because that’s what he needs—to get drunk and assault someone else,” I drawl.

All of their attention turns to me and Lucas coos. “Don’t worry, Baby Blanchard. If he gets locked up, I’ll be your new big brother.”

I stare back at him pointedly, waiting for the catch—because nothing that comes out of his mouth is ever from the goodness of his heart. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” He smiles. “And on a completely unrelated note, how do you feel about incest?”

And there it is.

Lucas has been hitting on me for years. He’s shorter than the rest of the team, so in his man-brain, he needs to overcompensate for that by being completely obnoxious. He’s cute, in that looks like a preppy rich kid kind of way, but I watched him chase Cam around the yard while he tried to piss on him. They were eight, but that kind of thing sticks with you.

Rolling my eyes, I don’t even need to say anything, as Cam predictably comes to my defense. He takes one of the bottles from the six-pack and holds it upside down by the neck, swinging it as if he’s practicing.

“Are these beers for drinking, or for breaking over Lucas’s head?”

Owen looks between Cam and Lucas, and his grin widens. “Look at that. You don’t even need to be drunk to want to assault someone.”

“Fuck off,” he snaps back, but the way he chuckles shows he isn’t actually mad.

Feeling extra lonely and co-dependent, I slip my phone from my pocket and text my best friend.

It only takes a minute for her to respond, much to the relief of my codependency issues. Can anyone really blame me, though? Sitting by myself while my brother’s friends fail at trying to flirt with me isn’t my idea of fun, surprisingly.

Thank fuck.

While the guys get lost in a conversation about hockey plays and opposing teams, I slip away and head for the driveway. It’s not that I’m not comfortable being alone around my brother and his friends. They’ve all been coming around for as long as I can remember. It’s just that once I hit puberty and grew an ass with a pair of tits to match, they started treating me differently.

I’m not just Cam’s little sister anymore. I’m the hot former head cheerleader they can’t manage to get into bed, no matter how hard they may try. Although, I don’t know how you could want to sleep with someone and still call them Baby Blanchard.

Vomit.

The second Mali gets out of her car, I throw myself into her arms.

“My hero,” I swoon with a fake southern accent.

Mali and I have been best friends since we were in pre-school, when she told me my bow was pretty so I took it off and gave it to her. She’s the epitome of a ride or die. My call-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-get-rid-of-the-body kind of person.

She grunts from trying to hold us both upright. “Yeah, yeah. I’m your favorite person. Your whole world. But didn’t we learn that this is a bad idea from the time we fell and you skinned both your knees?”

I find my footing again and pull away. “We were nine. This is hardly the same thing.”

“I’m just as weak now as I was then.”

“Now that’s the first true thing you’ve said since you got here.”

The back of her hand hits my arm, but it lacks malicious intent. “I should just go home and leave you to fend for yourself.”

“Don’t you dare,” I growl. “That’s just mean.”

“You could come with me.”

My lips press into a line. She and I both know exactly why I won’t be doing that—something she just loves to fuck with me about.

Bitch.

“I hate you.”

She chuckles and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Aw, babe. That’s so sweet.”

We make our way back toward the fire, finding Aiden trying to balance a full beer on his head. When he seems to be doing a little too well, Mali sneaks up behind him and screams. He startles, and the beer that was still halfway full tips forward and pours beer all over his lap.

“Oh, what happened?” she says with a fake pout. “Did you have an accident?”

He glances down at his pants and sure enough, it looks like he pissed himself. He throws his head back and groans while Mali goes over to Cam and gives him a hug.

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he answers sincerely.

“You must be so relieved. Hell, even I’m relieved.”

My brows furrow. “Why are you relieved?”

She looks at me as if it’s obvious. “Because if they locked him up, I’d be the only one left to deal with you. Duh.”

Cam strokes his chin, thinking. “Now that you mention it, maybe I should have let them send me to prison.”

“Har har,” I clap back. “You’re such a comedian.”

My phone vibrates on my lap and being as the only other person to ever text me is sitting to my right, I know who it is before I even look at it.

My ex, Craig.

Just seeing his name on my screen is enough to make me nauseous. You’d think he would have understood that I have no intentions of answering him by the first ten messages I ignored, but nope. There must be some kind of brain eating amoeba in the water around here.

One that only affects men.

“Not going to answer that?” Mali questions.

I drop my phone back into my lap and shake my head. “It’s not worth my time. He’s only texting me because he’s back for the summer and wants to look like he’s still hot shit in front of his friends.”

She nods approvingly. “That’s the queen I’ve always known you are.”

My breakup with Craig was anything but pretty—it never is when the guy will fuck anything that walks. Everyone thinks they want the hot quarterback in high school, but I’ve been there and done that. Trust me when I say it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The whole high school fairy tale where the quarterback and the cheerleader are meant to be together is just not for me. Give me the option and I’ll choose the hot hockey player any day of the week.

As if fate is solely controlled by the inter musings of my mind, a familiar truck roars as it pulls onto the grass beside the driveway. The rumble of the engine grabs all of our attention, except for Mali. Hers stays laser focused on me.

“Is that a chick in his passenger seat?” Isaac asks.

Owen squints. “Looks like it. I didn’t even know he was fucking someone on the regular.”

Remember when I said that there was only one of Cam’s friends I don’t find completely repulsive? Yeah, it was Hayes sex-on-legs Wilder. And by I don’t find him completely repulsive, I mean I’m disgustingly and embarrassingly in love with him. What can I say? There is no happy medium with me. But even the possibility that he brought a girl with him makes my stomach sink. To be forced to watch him hold her and kiss her and whisper things in her ear? I’d rather throw myself into the fire.

“Must be serious if he brought her with him,” Aiden muses.

Mali nudges me, probably to see if I’m okay, but I shake my head. I’ve gone the last three years without anyone finding out I low-key wish he would be more than just my brother’s best friend, and I don’t plan on that changing—girlfriend flaunting or not.

“All three of you are fucking morons,” Cam says as the girl hops out of the truck. “That’s his sister.”

Relief floods through me like a tsunami while Mali whines. “What the hell did he bring Devin with him for?”

“Damn, Mal. We don’t have to worry about you rolling out the welcome mat,” I say with a snicker.

She narrows her eyes at me. “She’s annoying, and she clings to you like a goddamn koala. The position of your best friend is taken, thank you very much.”

Her possessiveness makes me laugh. “Come on. She’s not that bad.”

“She is, you just don’t see it because you—”

I swing the heel of my foot into her shin, effectively shutting her up before she blurts out the only secret I’ve ever successfully kept from my brother.

“Ow!” she yelps. “That hurt!”

But I can see the smirk hiding behind her facade. Messing with me about anything involving Hayes is her all-time favorite hobby. When it first started, she even wrote a secret admirer letter and slipped it into his locker. She learned that was going too far when I stopped talking to her for a week straight.

I’m thinking she might need a refresher course in the boundaries.

“Aw, you really are just as weak as you were when we were nine,” I tell her.

Before she can respond, Devin comes over and sits on the other side of me.

“Hey Laiken,” she mumbles.

Devin always has been shy. She was a gymnast growing up and never really had time for friends outside of those who trained with her. But her hopes to go to the Olympics died with a broken femur in the middle of a national competition, leaving her with a ton of free time she’s never had and doesn’t know how to fill.

“Hey, Dev,” I greet her sweetly. “How’ve you been?”

“Good,” she answers. “School sucks, though.”

“That’s right. I keep forgetting you didn’t graduate with us.”

Mali scoffs quietly beside me, but I don’t acknowledge it. Devin exhales. “One more month. I can’t wait.”

“I bet. The only good thing about that school was getting to check out Mr. Taylor.” I glance over at Mali. “Someone used to masturbate to the thought of him.”

A bark of laughter shoots out my best friend’s mouth. “Funny you should mention masturbation. Hey, Wilder!”

My breath gets stuck in my lungs, and I look over to see Hayes walking toward us. As if his mere presence wasn’t enough torture, his biceps flex as he carries two bundles of firewood.

Fuck me.

“What’s up?” he asks Mali.

If I didn’t know her for as long as I have, I’d be worried about what she’ll say next, but Mali is anything but stupid. She may test the boundaries at times, but she knows that telling Hayes anything about my feelings for him would end our friendship.

At least until I got over the humiliation and sting of rejection.

“When’s the last time you man-handled the ham candle?”

Okay, that may be even worse.

He freezes and looks at her like she’s gone insane—honestly, she may have. “What?”

“You know, polished the banister. Shucked the corn. Had a threesome with a couple of no shows.”

The more that comes out of her mouth, the deeper I want to crawl into myself.

“Jesus Christ, Mali,” Cam groans. “Just say jerked off!”

She scrunches up her nose. “That’s so dirty.”

“Right, and calling it a ham candle is so much better,” he counters.

Pursing her lips, she half shrugs, and I’m hopeful the conversation will end there, but she’s not about to let me off that easy.

“So?” she presses, looking at Hayes.

Don’t answer it.

Don’t answer it.

Don’t fucking answer it.

“This morning,” he tells her, as if it’s the most normal question in the world. “Why?”

Mali smirks. “Just wondering. What about you, Cam?”

“Okay,” I interject. “I do not need to know that information about my brother, fuck you very much.”

“How do you think I feel?” Devin asks.

She has the same look on her face that people have when someone mentions their parents having sex—simultaneous horror and disgust. Meanwhile, I can’t get the image of him jerking off out of my mind. I’m guessing that was Mali’s plan.

Evil bitch.

“Oops. Sorry, Dev,” Hayes says, and then brushes off the topic as if it never happened.

Something I wish I could do right now.

I wonder who he was thinking about when he came.

Fucking hell.

After congratulating Cam, Hayes goes around to each of the guys and does their little bro-handshake. When he’s done, he sits down and looks at me. Between the heat of his gaze and the images that are playing on a loop inside my head right now, I have to press my thighs together to bring myself back to reality.

“Potter,” he greets me.

I roll my eyes, momentarily over him. “For the last time, Harry Potter didn’t live in the attic. He lived under the stairs.”

“Who lived in the attic then?”

I’m about to say no one and put an end to his incessant need to make fun of my bedroom, when Mali answers for me.

“Mrs. Rochester.”

He raises a single brow. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

She sighs, as if not knowing classic literature is a disservice to humanity.

“She’s a character in the Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre,” she explains. “Basically she’s a mad woman who lives in an attic. Some even call her a demon.”

Hayes smirks and turns his attention from her to me. “Well, that’s fitting.”

“She’s insane!” I argue, but that was the wrong thing to say.

He lights up like a fucking Christmas tree. “Even better!”

I shake my head slowly. “You’re dead to me.”

He puts a hand on his chest. “But I’m your favorite.”

“Who the hell said that?”

Looking around, he glances at all the other guys and then comes back to me. “The competition isn’t very fierce.”

Okay, fair point, but I can’t let him win that easily.

I consider my options and decide to go with the one guy he likes the least but tolerates for the sake of the team. “Isaac. You’re my new favorite.”

Hayes’s jaw drops as Isaac holds up his beer bottle. “Cheers, dude.”

As desperate as it makes me sound, I secretly yearn for these fake little arguments we get into. It’s the only time we ever really talk, and pathetically, the part of me that doodles my first name with his last will take everything she can get. Needless to say, she and the me that hated his guts from age thirteen to fifteen don’t get along.

“Wait a damn minute,” Lucas argues. “Why the hell is he allowed to mess with Laiken but we aren’t?”

Hayes chuckles, and it takes everything I have not to get lost in the sound of it. Meanwhile, Cam tosses another log into the fire and sits back down.

“Because Hayes knows his boundaries. There’s a difference between messing with her and hitting on her.” There’s a momentary pause before he adds, “And I like him more than I like you.”

Lucas finishes chugging the rest of his beer and tosses the empty can at Cam, only for Isaac to intervene.

“Careful. Haven’t you heard?” He looks Cam up and down, as if he’s a rabid dog. “He’s a violent criminal.”

Everyone chuckles and Cam flips him off. Anyone who knows my brother, knows that he would never intentionally hurt anyone. Not without a really good reason, at least. He may joke around with his friends about it, especially now that court is over and the fear of going to jail is gone, but I know it bothers him. People in this town literally watched him grow up, and yet now at least half of them think he’s a sociopath.

Fucking Satan.

My phone vibrates, and being too wrapped up in my thoughts, I open it before I can stop myself. A text from Craig stares back at me.

For the love of fuck. “Isaac!” His head snaps toward me at the tone of my voice. “Did you really tell your fucking brother that I have my phone on me?”

Hayes bites his lip to conceal his smile. “That was short lived.”

Isaac looks like a kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Is that bad?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath. “If you were going to give him a play by play on me while you’re here, you should’ve just brought him.”

“Do you want him here?” he asks excitedly. “I can call him. Guarantee you he’ll come.”

“No!” Mali and I yell in unison.

Isaac frowns. “Oh, come on. He missed you while he was at school, and he’s really sorry.”

“For which time? When he ditched me at a party to go fuck someone else, or when he meant to send me a video of us and accidentally sent me an amateur porn of him and his lab partner?”

He stares back at me, dumbfounded.

“Oh, I know,” I continue. “It must be for the time he screwed another girl on my bed and left me the condom as a present. Besides, it’s not even like we recently broke up. If he was sorry, he should have apologized seven months ago.”

Everyone stays quiet as his mouth opens and closes a few times, not saying a word. After a moment, Cam breaks the silence while inspecting his empty bottle.

“Maybe you should get him here,” he says like it’s a decent idea.

“Easy, badass,” Hayes warns. “You just got put on probation like five minutes ago. Let’s wait a bit before we violate it, okay?”

Cam looks between Isaac and Hayes. “No promises.”

“Didn’t ask for one,” Hayes answers, because he knows better than that. “Now, who’s up for some beer pong?”

Everyone nods in agreement while he gets up to grab the table from the back of his truck. Meanwhile, Devin looks at my beer as I take a sip, and she grimaces. I can’t help but chuckle.

“What’s wrong, babe?”

She drops her head. “I don’t really like beer.”

Mali snorts, muttering of course you don’t under her breath. For the second time in twenty minutes, I drive my heel into her shin. She does a good job at concealing the grunt she lets out from the pain.

Devin may not be anywhere near as close to me as Mali is, but I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable around us simply because Mal is a possessive little shit who never learned how to share.

“Come on,” I tell her, standing up and putting out my hand. “We can make you a mixed drink. You can sip on that.”

That seems to cheer her up, and she smiles as she puts her hand in my own. As we start to head toward the house, I notice Mali walking on the other side of me. I raise my brows at her.

“What?” she asks innocently. “If you’re making them, I want one too.”

Just like that, any bit of tension between us dissipates. It always does.

“As if I wasn’t going to make you one anyway.”

She wraps her arms around my shoulders. “This is why you’re my favorite.”

We’re almost to the house when I look up and lock eyes with Hayes. He’s carrying the folded-up table in one hand and beer pong kit in the other, but all I can focus on is the way he smirks as he passes by.

Isn’t it unfair for one person to be that good looking? I mean, isn’t everyone supposed to be created equally? Because I don’t think God got the memo when he made Hayes. Either that or the vial labeled LOOKS HOT ENOUGH TO MELT ICE spilled and emptied everything it had into the pot.

I swear, that man was put in my life for the sole reason of torturing me.

“You’re drooling,” Mali coos.

My hand flies to my mouth, but I should’ve known she was full of shit. “I changed my mind. No drink for you.”

“Aw, come on,” she whines. “It’s all in good fun.”

“What is?” Devin questions.

I throw a hand over Mali’s mouth as she goes to answer. “Nothing. Mali is just in rare form tonight.”

Opening the fridge, I grab the few things I need—cranberry juice, pineapple juice, orange juice, and most importantly, a bottle of Malibu. It’s essentially a bay breeze, but the orange juice adds an extra bit of flavor. Plus, then you can get away with adding more rum to it.

“Mal, do you remember the night we drank entirely way too many of these things?”

She cringes. “How can I forget? We couldn’t even drink juice for three months afterwards without wanting to upchuck.”

I chuckle as I start to pour in the Malibu.

One ounce.

Two ounces.

Three ounces.

When I still add another splash, Mali hums. “I guess you’re planning on repeating that tonight then.”

“Eh.” I shrug. She’s not exactly wrong. “At least then I can blame the shit that comes out of your mouth tonight on you being drunk.”

“That’s no fun. What if you end up with your soulmate tonight?”

“Mali Elizabeth,” I growl.

Devin glances between the two of us curiously. “Wait, what am I missing?”

Fuck.

“Nothing. Like I said, Mali is just extra sassy tonight,” I repeat while staring at the perpetrator and hoping she can hear the death threats in my head.

Mali hums as she takes a sip straight from the Malibu bottle. “I’d rather be sassy than horny.”

I throw my head back and groan. “Mal!”

Seriously, I’m going to start taking best friend applications if she keeps it up.

Every part of me hopes, prays, and begs that Devin does not catch on to what she meant by that. And I don’t pray often. When your parents force you to go to church throughout your whole childhood, your rebellious stage ends up including that in the pile of rejected expectations. But as if I’m getting punished for not going, I literally watch as it clicks into place for her.

“Oh my God,” she gasps. “Do you have a crush on my brother?”

“No,” I answer, at the exact same time Mali answers with, “Yes.”

My head whips toward my almost former best friend, and I glare at her. “Dude, did I do something to piss you off or did you just wake up and choose violence this morning?”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh please. She figured it out.”

“Right, I’m sure she would have put the pieces together even without your lovely context clues.”

“You’re never going to get what you want if you don’t ever tell anyone you want it,” she tells me in a softer tone, and now I get what she’s been doing.

I finish putting away all of the ingredients and take a deep breath before turning around.

“Okay. Yes, I have some feelings for Hayes. But I’m not stupid enough to think that anything will ever happen between the two of us, no matter how much someone tries to meddle.” I throw a look toward Mali. “It’s a pipe dream—fun to imagine but never going to come true.”

They both go quiet, not sure of what to say, and I’m okay with sitting in silence for a minute…

Until I hear the sound of Hayes’s tailgate closing right outside the open kitchen window.