Chapter 02 - Unexpected?

VINE

Drew said nothing.

He just stayed there, until his silence stretched long enough for the whispers to fill it. Long enough for someone to laugh again. Long enough for me to understand that no answer was coming, because in his eyes, I didn't deserve one.

My knees wanted to give in but I wouldn't let them.

But even as I held myself upright, my mind had already left the rink. It had already run ahead to tomorrow, to every hallway and classroom I might ever have to walk through with this hanging over me...because I chose him.

He stood, rising to his full height. But the one staring back at me wasn't the boy I had fallen in love with.

This one here, was sneering at me.

"Did you have to do anything...?" He asked coldly, "To realize I needed to level up from you."

My heart sank.

He didn't need to spell it out for me to understand. I was wolfless, I was currently not in school. I had no class. But Miriam had everything.

Then he came closer.

"I wanted to make sure everyone sees you for the filth you are." He said,

"A wolf less girl priding in her virginity like she's some Luna queen. Now that those little legs of yours have been spread apart, let's see if you'll continue feeling so high and mighty."

"She's sure a cocksucker!" Someone screamed. People laughed, until the entire place was a mixture of smears, curses and judgemental laughter.

My eyes went to the screen,

"...down there, Drew," I had shoved Drew's head in between my legs, as I shuddered with pleasure,

"Fuck me with your tongue!"

I froze. Because those words were mine. My undoing. My intimacy, twisted and used as a weapon against me.

Now I understand why he wasted several seconds before joining me in bed.

He'd put in so much effort to make me scream, just so he could tear me apart...

Make me feel like nothing...

Tell the world that the high and mighty Vine, had fallen.

Drew snatched my glasses from my face and crushed it with his feet. Then he picked up the frame and held it up for all to see.

Tears burned down my cheeks as my knees buckled and I collapsed to the ground, my arms trembling as I frantically searched for my shattered glasses.

"These? She fooled you all with these glasses. Books. Innocence. But it was all a charade to disguise a slut."

Instantly, my world blurred into a mesh of colour and shame as I crawled across the cold floor. My glasses were gone. My vision too, because the boy I loved had shattered both.

"Oh, what a shame. Baby, why don't we buy her new glasses? Without them, she's as blind as a bat." A familiar female voice mocked and I froze.

Baby? When did my best friend, Miriam suddenly refer to my boyfriend as baby.

Miriam came close enough for me to see her finger sparkled with the ring Drew would have put on me, her arms delicately curled around Drew's a smirk playing on her lips.

"Nobody knows you're Drew's girlfriend except me." She mocked in a voice only I could hear.

I looked at the display screen one more time and my throat tightened, my legs pitching stronger on the floor.

Drew might have tried to break my confidence but he didn't deserve to treat me this way!

"Is this..." My chest burned with heaviness, so deep, I could barely breathe,

"How you wanted to repay me after all we have been through?"

I asked, as the sudden realization dawned on me. This has been going on behind my back for a very long time.

"Shut your trap..." He said, his voice nonchalant as ever.

I could feel a heart-wrenching ache beginning to spread across my chest like a hot mace had been slammed into me hard.

He didn't seem to care for the harm he has caused me in this pack, and I couldn't just wrap my head around it.

If anyone had told me even in my dream that he would hurt me this way, yesterday, I would have cussed them out.

Just yesterday, Drew was nice. He worshipped my body, tracing every curve like I was his goddess.

And that's why it hurt me the most. I didn't expect him to do this to me.

"No, you listen to me!" My voice cracked as I cut him off.

I raised my chin and looked deeply into his eyes. Really looked at him.

"The last three months have been the darkest time in your life. Your father died and you needed a shoulder to lean on, and who did you call? Me." I pointed at the middle of my chest, right where it ached, "I was there for you. Cheered you on your darkest nights, games, deferred my admission just so you could secure yours but what did you do?...." I broke into fresh tears, sobbing hard.

"...You kept me a secret, now that you brought home the trophy," I eyed the golden trophy at the center of the stage, "you suddenly remember that I am wolfless?"

Something shifted in his gaze — his jaw loosened, his shoulders dropped an inch, like the boy I used to know was fighting his way back to the surface.

For one dizzying second, my chest untangled. He's sorry. He's actually sorry.

I waited, holding my breath, for him to admit his mistake. Tell me this was just some cruel joke gone too far so I would take him back.

Instead, the guilt in his eyes flickered — and died as he looked away.

"Fine," he said, voice flattening back into that cold, unfamiliar register. "I'll tell you the truth. Your life's already spoiled as it is, so there's no point holding back."

"Miriam and I planned this. In fact, it was all her idea until it became mine."

My gaze went to Miriam...

My compassionate and kind Miriam... Miriam who could never hurt a fly... Miriam to whom I spilled all my life's secrets.

Looking at her, I couldn't help but let the tears freely flow down my cheeks.

It was such an irony how one can be so two-faced.

The nerve of her to pretend that she cared about me while she took her time to creep into my mate's bed.

Every time I went to Drew's house, I'd told her, breathless with excitement and she'd smile and hug me tight.

And the whole time, she'd already been in his bed.

Yet, behind my back, she sharpened her knife with a smile…

And drove it into my back, till all that's left was a shattered mess.

A lone tear slipped down my cheek.

"I reject you, Vine Davis," he said coldly, then paused. "Get lost, loser."

Silence followed, cutting deeper than his words.

I met his gaze, fire rising through my chest. "I accept your rejection, asshole.”

Then I stepped closer, my voice dropping into a whisper that only he and she could hear.

"You both just made the biggest mistake of your lives."

Their brows furrowed at me, while Drew crossed his arms and looked at me with so much confusion in his eyes,

"How... How come you're not on the floor, writhing in pain of rejection?"