The Other Princess Page 3

  It only took about five minutes before some twat called out “home wrecking slut,” and Mr. Danvers threw a can full of pens across the room. “Put your books away. Anyone caught with phones, or any other device out will get a zero on the next five quizzes. Test me if you wish. One piece of paper. One pencil. On your desks now. It’s pop quiz time, and I hope like hell you all studied, because this counts as a big test since you couldn’t keep your mouths shut.”

  I aced the quiz, but Danvers did me no favors. By trying to keep kids from harassing me he ended up fueling their hatred even more. The rest of my day went just like that and worse. I actually got punched, kicked, and had my hair pulled throughout the day, randomly, and usually by assholes walking by me in the hall. No one had the balls to stand toe to toe with me. Once, my brother saw a junior boy shoulder check me, and he ended up pummeling the kid right there in the hallway. I didn’t bother sticking around to watch. It was just a shame the kid was a cowardly little asshole and didn’t get one hit in on Toby, because my brother deserved to have his own ass kicked for the way he had treated me the day before. It was rather hypocritical of him to attempt to come to my rescue when he’d destroyed me far more than any shoulder check from a random kid ever could.

  The best part of my day had come at lunch when I had an entire plate of spaghetti dumped on me along with the open chocolate milk container that had been on the tray that “accidentally” tipped as someone tripped on their way by me. When I looked up from that incident it was to see Jay siting at a table with his girlfriend watching, and seeming perplexed by the event. Perplexed. Like he was trying to puzzle out why people were treating me so horribly. I turned away from him and walked out of the lunchroom, leaving my own saturated lunch behind on the table as I went. I cleaned up as best I could in the bathroom sink, and continued on with my day, spaghetti stained clothes and all. What did it matter? I’d probably just get worse by the day’s end anyway.

  I had two months left of school for the year. It didn’t get much better. Every time my locker was cleaned off something new would be waiting for me the following day. The physical abuse tapered off after my brother got suspended for a third time for beating the shit out of a guy at school who touched me. I refused to speak to my brother though; no matter how many assholes he tackled in the hallway. He still didn’t comprehend the fact that he had caused more damage than all of them put together.

  Two months after it started, the night of my brother’s graduation, I sat in the stands with the rest of my family because they wouldn’t allow me to stay home. I sat there and watched as first Toby, then Jay, crossed the stage and accepted their diplomas. Then I watched as that lying cunt that started my descent into hell accepted hers too. Something changed between them all receiving their diplomas and when they came over to see family afterward. Jay looked ashen, like he’d seen a ghost. Toby was fit to be tied, and looked like he was about to blow every gasket that his supreme gear-headed-self was made of.

  “What the hell’s wrong with the two of you?” Jay’s dad asked before anyone else could. I was staring off over their shoulders to avoid any possible eye contact, as was my norm these days with all the men in my life.

  “Ever,” Jay’s voice was a pained rasp, and probably the only reason I broke my new tradition and glanced over at him. He actually had tears in his eyes. “Fuck, Ever, I’m so fuckin’ sorry. I didn’t know. I thought she had been telling the truth. I thought,” his voice trailed off. I didn’t know how he had found out, but apparently this was him finally feeling a hint of remorse for turning my life to complete shit. I didn’t want to hear it though.

  “What in the fuck did you just say, son?” My father asked on a growl. Jay’s punishment for how he handled my supposed betrayal was three extra months to wait for his bottom rocker and to be a full patch member. The club had gone easy on him, because he told them there was proof that I had actually said and done those things. His proof had been “eyewitness testimony” from the bitch’s friends. He didn’t bother letting the brothers know that though. Instead, they took him at his word that the proof was solid since he fully believed I’d been disloyal.

  Besides the troubles I’d had to endure at school, I had lost any the confidence that the brothers of the club may have had in me. Not that it was ever even the same level they had in my little sister, but it had been a hell of a lot more than they showed me now. Now, when I walked through the club, on the rare occasion that Momma-Luce made me attend things, the brothers would stop talking if I came within a certain distance of them. I suppose it was because I couldn’t be trusted with their words, even if what they had to say hadn’t been important enough to keep from even the lowly club whores. Yep, because of Jay’s absolute faith in his lying cunt of a girlfriend I was deemed lower than a whore by the club’s standards, and treated thusly. The only thing they didn’t do was outright disrespect me or put their hands on me when someone was around to witness it, due in part to my age, and out of respect for my father who was legally bound to keep me around until I was old enough to kick out. There was one man, PeeWee, who didn’t bother to keep his thoughts to himself. I didn’t bother telling anyone about the awful things he had to say to me though. No one would have believed me, and besides, even if they did they wouldn’t come to my defense against a brother anyway.

  “I’m so sorry, Ever! I’m so, so, fucking sorry. Please, you have to believe me.” That did it. That was the last fucking straw.

  “Just like you had to believe me?” I asked the question with venom-laced words, and I swear time stood still from how silent everything and everyone became around us. It was as if the whole world – or at least our bubble of it – was holding its collective breath and waiting. “You destroyed me with your words, you allowed everyone around us to continue where you left off, and it was all based on the lies of one of your whores. A whore over a friend. A whore over a sister. You believed a whore’s words over someone who never gave you one damn reason to believe they would ever do a fucking thing in this life, or beyond, to hurt you. Now, you beg for me to believe you?” I sucked in a huge, painful breath before I blew the last of my words out on a damning whisper that was louder than any yelling I could have possibly done.

  “You deserve nothing from me but my back. You will get nothing from me but these final words. You get nothing from me ever again except this goodbye. You get the same amount of respect from me that you’ve shown. You get the same loyalty you reaped, and nothing more. You are dead to me, Jason Donovan. I don’t have to believe a dead man’s words. Maybe that will help you sort your priorities in future, but it won’t matter even a tiny bit to me either way anymore.” I heard the gasp from his mother as I spoke, and I knew that my words, my disowning him, hurt her terribly. Once upon a time ago she had helped build up my fantasy of marrying her son one day. The crippling blow I’d just landed cemented the fact that we would never speak again, let alone have any kind of relationship in the future that would cement our two families together as our moms had once hoped.

  I walked away from the boy who once owned a piece of my heart only to shatter it along with the rest of my entire world. I said goodbye to the little boy who once helped welcome me into my new family only to be the one to put a permanent wedge between them and me. I heard the scuffling that followed in the wake of my words, but I refused to turn around and even appease my curiosity, because none of them were innocent in the hurt that I had endured. They all played their part in shunning me, in my world becoming a sad place that I’d thought more than once about escaping in a permanent way.

  My sixteenth birthday had been two weeks previous, and it had been a low point in all the mental beat downs I had endured. Prior to the incident in the school gym, Momma-Luce had been planning to throw me an epic sweet sixteen party. I had friends back then, more than just my best friend, Erin. The guest list was a good 25 deep before the MC brothers and families were added. I had to tell her to cancel the damn thing, because no one was coming.

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nbsp; Luce had refused to cancel until some of the brothers and old ladies started making excuses for why they couldn’t be there. That was when it finally sank in for Lucy just how bad things had become for me. I think seeing her heart breaking for me, and watching her cry when she got the third pone call in a row saying someone else from our ‘club family’ wouldn’t be attending is what drove me as low as I went that night. I sat there in the bathtub, water cooling around me, and a bottle of Vicodin in my hands. I was ready to swallow every last one of the 18 pills I’d counted out earlier. The thing that stopped me was that I looked down and for one brief moment I saw myself how they would find me. I saw my naked body floating in the tub, and imagined it was my sister that found me dead. I imagined Momma-Luce coming in and finding me. I imagined my brother or my dad seeing me naked and dead. I threw the pill bottle into the wall as I screamed out all the frustrations that I’d kept bottled up for so long. Happy fucking birthday to me. My life was shit.

  Luce had come running in the bathroom when she heard me screaming. She looked from me to the bottle that had come open and the pills that were spilled across the floor. “Oh God, no!” Her shrilly screeched words woke me up from the horrible mindset that had taken hold just before.

  “I’m not going to do anything. I just… I’m so angry,” I finally said to her. “Don’t tell them. It’ll be one more reason everyone hates me.”

  “I won’t tell them, but you’re going to see someone tomorrow. You’re going to tell them everything, get it off your chest, and promise to never think of this again. Do you hear me?” Her voice shook with the emotion she couldn’t contain. I nodded my head and then Momma-Luce damn near ended up in the tub of now-cold water with me as she tackle hugged me. “I’m here, baby!” She cooed the words into my damp hair as her arms secured me to her own frame. “I am here if you need to talk, cry, yell, scream. Please, don’t ever leave me like that. I love you, Ever! I would not survive losing you.”

  My anger broke into a million sorrow-filled tears that I cried out on my step-mom’s shoulders that day. She kept her promise to me and never told. I kept my promise to her and never tried that shit again. Although, it would have been a much tougher thing to accomplish as Momma-Luce took her job seriously and emptied our house of every substance I could possibly use to kill myself with. Even the Tylenol was locked up, the liquor was thrown out, and the cleaning products were locked away too. My father thought she had gone nuts, but with all the tension in the house already he didn’t bother her about it, and just continued on in his own oblivious way making me wonder how he functioned as the vice president of a motorcycle club when he didn’t even have the first clue about his own family.

  I ended up being pulled out of school two months into the next year, because I was still everyone’s favorite target. The damage had already been done, the fodder had been fed to the masses, and no amount of back peddling on Jay’s part after the fact had helped. They thought he just tried to make up with me after things went sour with Tiffany. I was still somehow labeled a home-wrecking whore even though I was a virgin who had never even been kissed. I was also the girl who missed out on dates, proms, and even being able to walk across the stage at my own high school graduation. Momma-Luce pulled me out of school and put me in an online school that allowed me to graduate early. I enrolled, also online, to University of Georgia – Savannah for my basic courses by the time I turned 17, and started an internship with a local tattoo artist who didn’t mind teaching me even though I wasn’t quite old enough yet.

  My life was far from perfect, but I wasn’t ready to give up on it any longer. That was mostly thanks to my Momma-Luce who loved me harder when no one else would. I smiled when I thought back on the time when she swore she wouldn’t be able to love me, because I was another woman’s child. Then she realized I was a child, and had no control over who my parents had been, and she loved me because I had no one. Momma-Luce ended up taking my brother’s place as my hero in the end.

  Chapter 1

  ~ Ever ~

  Declan Donovan is watching you like you stole the last of his favorite candy.” My best friend, Erin, wasn’t always dramatic; but when it came to men she most definitely ramped up her descriptions of things ten-fold.

  I laughed at her. “He’s probably just trying to figure out where he knows me from. It has been five years since he left for the Army.”

  “Oh, come on! I know he’s been gone for years, but he couldn’t possibly have forgotten you. You were always at his house with Toby and Jason when you guys were younger.” I cringed a little bit on the inside at the mention of Jason. We didn’t mention him often since the incident back in high school.

  “That may be true, but the last time I saw him he was 19 and I was barely 14. I have grown a lot since then.”

  “I’ll say,” Erin giggled. “Can you stop growing at some point and let the rest of us have some breasts too? It’s like you stood in line and hogged up all the good material before the rest of us caught on to which line in the body assembly factory was the most important one to get in.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Ugh.” My groan was drawn out with the exact amount of dramatic flair necessary for this conversation. “If I could trade you some I would. They definitely come with their own challenges like finding a cute bra in my size instead of granny-style things for older ladies with boobs that hang to their knees. Oh, and then there’s lying out on the beach having to make boob indents in the sand first so I can be comfortable with minimal squish factor. And for our final example of the day, I’d like to offer as evidence that letch over there eating with his family while staring at my boobs. His wife is pissed, his kids are disgusted, and he’s still locked in on my chest like nothing else exists. What’s worse is that they’ll all blame me for his disgusting behavior simply because of the body parts that I can’t help instead of blaming his lecherous bullshit ways.”

  Erin glanced over and pinched up her brows in disgust as she saw what I was talking about. The man’s wife finally smacked him back to reality causing his face to turn red in embarrassment when he finally noticed we were giving him dirty looks for his ogling. “Gross! I see what you mean there,” Erin finally agreed with me. We continued munching our food and tuned out the rest of the people in the food court as we did. I hated eating here, but I worked at the Hot Topic three days a week since the internship I was still under at Permanent Marks – the tattoo shop near home – was still an unpaid one. I got paid for my designs sometimes, but it wasn’t that much in the big scheme of things. Then again, neither was my pitiful little check I managed to bring home from retail hell every week.

  “Yo, Deck!” Both Erin and I snapped our heads up at the shouted greeting. We glanced into each other’s eyes before she shook her head.

  “I guess it was too much to ask that he wouldn’t be far behind big brother for a trip to the mall, huh?”

  “Jay! ‘Bout damn time you dragged your ass up here, man.”

  “Sorry, I found this hot little hunnie downstairs in that skinny girl shop, and…”

  “I don’t fucking need to know any more than that, you little shit.” I actually chuckled a little under my breath at Declan’s exasperated response to his brother’s man-whoring antics. I hadn’t been around Jay for more than ten minutes at a time since his graduation three years ago. I had also kept my promise to him, and refused to speak even a single word, despite the couple times he’d pleaded with me to forgive him. Those few times were also the reason I came up with every excuse under the sun not to attend club functions. Well, it was just one of the reasons. The fact that the club members still seemed to hold everything against me, even though I was completely innocent, was the other. No point going where you aren’t wanted.

  The only time I had to spend more than those couple minutes here and there near Jay was when my dad forced me to the clubhouse for some bullshit ritual the guys had in order to atone for wrongs committed against another person. Usually, it was reserved for brothers who had been
wronged by another, or by the club as a whole. They made an exception in my case since my dad yelled and screamed at them until it happened, and also because even the grown ass adults – who should have known better – let some bullshit high school bitch’s lies affect how they treated me. Jay bled for me and begged forgiveness once more for his actions and how they had hurt me. The brothers, likewise, did the same. Every single one of them, my father and brother included, had all stood up and asked forgiveness. I wasn’t sure I was capable of forgiveness even though I gave them all a final parting shot about it. “Forgiveness isn’t for you. It’s closure for me, and it’s definitely not the same as forgetting. What’s broken can never be repaired with a ceremony that is more for your guilty consciences than my broken heart.”

  Aside from that little ceremony – that was to make the brother’s feel better about their deplorable behavior, not me – I stayed away from most of the club gatherings, and when Jay came to the house I hid in my room or left altogether.

  “Earth to Ever, did you hear me?” Erin was saying as I found my way back out of my memories.

  “Hmm?”

  “I said that the Donovan brothers were headed this way.” She tipped her head subtly in the direction they’d been standing moments ago. Unfortunately, I had been lost in my thoughts a little too long, and it was already too late to duck out before they got to our table. Instead, I glanced up warily to see Declan’s bright smile plastered on his face.

  “Ever, I thought I was seeing things until Jay confirmed who you were.” He gave me a noticeably lingering once over. “You sure have grown up, girl.”

  “That’s what happens when you’re away for five years, Declan. Some of us grow up.” My answer was slightly snippy and I regretted it the moment I saw his brows furrow together. An action that was hard to miss since his hair was still cut almost military-style short. It wasn’t quite a buzz cut anymore, but it wasn’t much more than that. The short brown pieces had quite a bit of blond streaks interspersed. Were he a different kind of man I would think he went to the salon for that look, but being Declan I knew those streaks of light were earned in the sun. His darkly tanned skin confirmed my theory too. Skin, I might add, that was packed overtop what looked like a whole lot of hard muscle.