Chapter 4 : Brooding for Vanessa

Nash

I had never been accustomed to how the world worked. Nor had I taken kindly to the hands that I had been dealt in my life. My circumstances never quite added up no matter who had tried to figure me out. A psychological event that had stumped doctors for years as I was growing up. Not that it was my fault. No kid at the age of twelve should have to witness the death of the people they loved the most, and though my godfather had paid a handsome fee to have all the best doctors take a look at me, it was never enough.

I was fucked up. A case they couldn’t solve, or so they claimed. But in my eyes, it was because they didn’t want to deal with me. They didn’t want to face the fact that I wasn’t their next case to solve. I was a fucking human, and the bad shit that happened to me wasn’t normal.

It was the whole reason I had accepted my fate at this academy. The whole reason why I agreed to the brotherhood. I wanted revenge.

I wanted retribution.

“Things didn’t go as planned?” Brady laughed as I made my way back towards my bike. The black matte paint and chrome trim gleamed in the sunlight, showing off the years of dedication I had put into it. His words caused me to glare in his direction as I tried to simmer the boiling temper that threatened to rise.

“Shut the fuck up, Brady.” My talk with Vanessa not going as I wished only pissed me off further when Brady decided to open his mouth. “Don’t you have some bitch to be balls deep in?”

He shrugged his shoulders as he popped another wooden toothpick into his mouth, a smile on his face. “Eh, probably. Though I can’t decide which one I want to see right now.”

It was always the same with Brady. We may have been friends for years, but he was the fuckboy most girls tried to avoid but failed miserably at. He was also the one man who could talk to me the way he did without fear of me putting a bullet in his head.

Something I questioned often.

“You know you have to decide this year,” I reminded him. The calling we were supposed to take at the end of our senior year hung over his head. His determination to not follow through with our oath lingered on the forefront of his mind, and the rest of our men. He was supposed to take his father’s place in the knighthood, and without him following customs, it was beginning to be problematic.

However, Brady hated the vow he had to make. I remembered it like it was yesterday—him bitching when he found out freshman year what the oath he made really was. How he wasn’t going to just be able to do what he wanted. That he would have to be tied down, and that his father had a particular woman in mind.

Before that betrothal could be set, he promised his father he would do what was asked of him. But he wanted to pick.

That promise lasted all of a few days before he told me he wasn’t going to partake in the bullshit vows of marriage that they wanted him to take. That instead he was going to fuck his way through every woman on campus to make sure no man would want them, and then they wouldn’t be able to select.

So neither would he.

Too bad for him that plan backfired when one after another claims were made and he was standing at the forefront of senior year with his dad tired of his bullshit and forcing him to make his selection and saying he had no other choice.

I had graduated a year ahead of him, and though my selection had been made, it wasn’t done lightly. Our selection for a wife couldn’t just be done with haste. We had to pick someone who would be able to take a beating, someone who could hold their ground when shit got tough. And if he didn’t hurry, all the good ones were taken.

Or worse, he would be stuck with his father’s pick.

His smile fell, as he stared at me. No doubt, a glare of his own shone behind the dark sunglasses he wore as he pushed off from the wall he had been leaning on. “I already know my selection, Nash. Just like you did for years. The only difference was you haven’t made your selection known to the one person that it matters to.”

His mention of Saylor Haskle made me internally chuckle. There was no way he was serious about that girl. Plus, she was the one his father had handpicked for him and she was completely the opposite of Brady. Her stiff demeanor and hoity-toidy persona wasn’t a match for Brady.

“You’re telling me you’re actually going to go with your father’s pick?”

He shrugged again. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. Everyone will know when the time is right. And right now…the time isn’t right.”

A small chuckle of amusement escaped me as I shook my head. “You know that isn’t going to work out in your favor.”

Again, he turned his attention to me, spitting out the toothpick as his lips met into a tightly thin line. The aggravation of our conversation was clear and as much as I would have liked to keep taunting him, I didn’t see a point to it.

“Not all of us have the same luxuries you do, Nash. Vanessa isn’t like the other women we have to choose from and you know it. She’s different…”

“That might be so,” I nodded. “But I have more important games to play right now and my selection is set in stone. At least in the eyes of the brotherhood.”

He turned to look at the doorway where Nessa had disappeared through before he turned back to me with a shake of his head. “Vanessa Thomas is not the kind of girl you can play games with, Nash. In all honesty, I think you fucked up when you picked her. She will be your downfall.”

He wasn’t wrong. I had no doubt that she would be my downfall. However, the moment that she walked into JD’s bar last night, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was like a dark goddess walking into my life with the sole intent to drive a bullet through my heart. Her dark wash jeans hugged her curves in all the right places, and the way her thick breasts spilled out of her acid-wash tank top made my balls clench with desire.

I wanted her so fucking bad it hurt, and though she won’t admit it, she wants me. I know she fucking does. I can see it in her eyes, and the way she moves, that she wants me just as badly as I want her. I just don’t understand what’s holding her back.

Why she is so fucking resistant to my advances.

She wasn’t like other girls in this school. She was quiet and kept to herself. She didn’t care what other people had to say and she wasn’t begging to have a cock in her like all the other dumb bitches were. She was untouchable, or at least that’s what Brady had told me. God knows he spent a stupid amount of time speaking to Noah about her just so that he could relay that information back to me. Which is why he believed I was making a mistake. Because out of everything that Noah supposedly told him…Vanessa wasn’t someone who was easily taken.

And after last night…my decision was sealed. There was no way in hell any guy here would be able to make her scream the way that I could, and if any of them fucking tried, I’d put a bullet between their eyes.

Vanessa Thomas was mine.

And by New Year's, I’d have her begging on her knees before me.

“So what’s your next move?”

Brady’s question pulled me from my thoughts of Vanessa as my eyes met his once more. “I’m going to win her over.”

“Is that so,” he replied with a look of amusement as a smirk replaced his frown and he raised one brow. “Now that’s something I’d pay to see.”

And he would. Because I never gave up on anything, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to give up on Vanessa. I’d make her mine one way or another and watch her become my wife till death do us part.