Havoc:Mayhem Series #4(67)

"No hug?" she taunts in a sap-sweet voice, and I sicken of her games.

"What do you want?"

"What, I can't want a hug from my cousin?"

Years on a farm have taught me never to turn my back on a dangerous  animal, but in this moment, it's all I can do. I turn away from her, and  I tug Luke with me. "Let's go."

"I'm going to make your life a living hell, you know," Danica promises, but I keep walking.

"You've already tried."

"I haven't even started," she threatens as she stalks my every step, refusing to let me escape from her.

I glance at Luke, at the impressionable look he's giving me, and I stop  in my tracks. I'm running. I'm literally speed-walking down the sidewalk  instead of teaching my little brother to stand up for himself. His  school is full of Danicas, full of Graysons, and Luke needs to learn not  to run.

I steel myself, and I turn around. "Okay, Danica, enlighten me. What are you going to do? Cry to your daddy some more?"

Her eyes flash with anger, but I know this battle has just begun.

"You think you're something special, don't you?" she snarls, and my response comes quick.

"No, I think I'm average. But Mike thinks I'm special, and that's all that matters to me."

Danica's laugh is a humorless white cloud of air between us, her  expression glacial as she says, "Do you think of me when you're being  his little slut?"

"I don't think of you at all," I lie.

"Not even when he fucks you?" Danica asks, not caring at all that there  is a twelve-year-old standing beside us. I don't answer, and she smiles.  "I guess you must be used to it, getting all of my old trash. My toys,  my dresses, and now my boyfriend. You can have him, Hailey. He'll never  make love to you in a way that he hasn't made love to me first."                       
       
           



       

"At least he can look me in the face while he's doing it," I snap,  remembering what Mike told me about having to do her from behind the one  time they did it on the tour bus.

Danica's whole face burns red as she hisses, "What did you just say?"

Her fists clench at her sides, and I know it's time to get the hell out  of here. I grab Luke by his elbow and spin us around, and Danica's  breath is hot on my neck when she screams in my ear, "What the fuck did  you just say to me, you bitch!"

When I turn back around, she's right in my face. "Say what you want,  Danica! Say it so I can fucking leave! You want to tell me how poor I  am? How ugly I am? Do it, because once I leave here, this is done."

"You think you're just going to live happily ever after?" she sneers.  "Hailey, I'm going to make your life on campus so miserable, you're  never going to finish school."

"How?" I ask just to get it over with. "What, are you going to sleep with my professors and get them to give me bad grades?"

"I have friends," she threatens with a smile.

"So, what? You're going to start rumors about me? About how I'm a whore? How I have STDs? What, Danica? Tell me."

Her jaw ticks as I guess her evil plan, and I roll my eyes.

"I used to go to high school smelling like manure with holes in my  clothes. My snow boots freshman year were tennis shoes with bread bags  tied over them. If you think I give even the tiniest shit what a bunch  of frat boys and sorority girls think of me, you're wrong."

"Oh, you poor thing," Danica mocks with an exaggerated pout. It twists  into a smile, and she taunts, "What did Mike think of my dress, Hailey?  The one with the blue flowers you loved so much."

My blood boils under my skin, but I force a smile back. "That stupid  video you sent him? He didn't even watch it. And even if he had, I'm  sure he wouldn't have liked it as much as the red dress I wore when I  starred in the band's music video."

White rage flares across Danica's face, and she hisses, "You're lying."

"I'm a terrible liar," I remind her, echoing something she's told me a  thousand times. "Look at my face. Does it look like I'm lying?"

One minute, she's studying me-my eyes, my mouth, my serious expression.  The next, blood is exploding against my teeth, the force of her fist  knocking me backward. I fall from the unexpected blow, and my brother  drops to his knees to help me. My rattled brain is still trying to  register what just happened, when he starts to rise to his feet, anger  rolling off him.

I latch on to Luke's elbow to keep him from getting involved, and when  I'm confident he's not going to throw everything my dad ever taught him  about not hitting girls out the window, I force my legs to lift me back  to my feet.

Adrenaline is pulsing through me so rapidly, my whole body is shaking.  I'm so angry, I want to cry. I want to scream so loud it hurts, and then  I want to fall apart on the sidewalk. Instead, I meet Danica's furious  glare, and I make sure she hears me. "You're the ugly stepsister,  Danica. You try so hard to be the princess, but you're hideous inside.  Your daddy is the only man who's ever going to love you."

Angry tears glisten in her eyes as she clenches her fists at her sides. I  wait for her to punch me again, but when it doesn't happen, I wipe my  sleeve against my bloody lip and turn away from her. "She's not worth  it," I tell Luke when he holds his aggressive stance, and he eventually  lets me pull him away.

I hope the blood in my mouth is enough. I pray my swollen lip was what  she needed. If she needed to knock me down, fine, she knocked me down-

"This isn't over," she calls after me as I walk away, and I close my  eyes, knowing that words will never be enough to stop her from wreaking  havoc on my life. It will never matter to her how many times she knocks  me down, because I will always get back up.

When I turn around and walk back to her, her eyes have dried, and her  face is vicious. The little girl I knew in Indiana is gone, possessed by  a coldhearted bitch who's spent the past few months manipulating me  like a puppet.                       
       
           



       

"You have something you want to say to me?" she barks, and I look her straight in the eye.

"Yeah," I say, channeling years of lifting hay bales and mucking stalls  and wrangling horses. I spit a mouthful of blood on the sidewalk, and I  fist my hand like my daddy taught me. "You punch like a little bitch."

When I pull back my fist, I pull it back far. And when I punch Danica in her startled face, I punch her as hard as I can.





Chapter 52




If my life was a fairy tale, I suppose I would have knocked Danica out  on that Thanksgiving afternoon four months ago. She would have fallen on  her ass, the hit would have been clean, and I would have stood over her  victorious, noting a look of surrender in her eyes.

Instead, there was blood everywhere.

Danica's nose crunched against my fist, and the scene that followed was like something straight out of a horror movie.

"Oh my God!" I gasped as I dropped to my knees beside her on the  sidewalk. She was bawling her eyes out, holding her nose as blood  streamed over her fingers. "I'm so sorry!"

"I think you broke her nose," my shocked brother said as Danica cried  hysterically, and my hands shook as I panicked, not knowing how to help  her.

"Get Mom and Dad!"

My brother ran back to the house, and I stripped off my favorite  hoodie-the Ivy Tech one that Mike rescued for me the first night we  met-and used it to try to stop the bleeding. I pushed her hair back from  her face, I rubbed her back, I told her over and over again how sorry I  was and how it was going to be okay.



We haven't talked in the months that have passed since that day. Danica  dropped out of school even before the semester ended, and I heard she's  dating a doctor now-the one who fixed her broken nose. My mom told me  he's a few years older than her, with a big house and a fancy Porsche,  and I guess he was enough to make her forget about rock stars, because  Mike hasn't heard from her either.

I'm watching him beat the drums now, a slow, easy rhythm as the guys do a  lazy afternoon sound check. Mayhem is empty save for the band, a few  staff members, and me, Rowan, and Dee, but outside, a line is already  stretched around the building. It's The Last Ones to Know's first big  show since their music video for "Ghost" released and the single went  platinum, and tonight, one of the few bands bigger than they are is  opening for them as part of the celebration, so the show sold out within  minutes.

While I spent the night in Mike's arms, fans slept on the concrete  sidewalk outside this building waiting to see him play, and a chill  dances up my spine as I watch him. He yawns and plays the drums with one  hand, and I smile, remembering that I didn't exactly let him get much  sleep when I came over last night.