HARPER

The gym was filled with clusters of students in different corners, chattering and laughing while we waited for the gym teacher. That man must hate his job because he was always late, without fail.


Since I didn’t have any friends, I was absentmindedly throwing a basketball through a hoop, over and over again. I’d just thrown it again and I was watching it in hopes that I’ll complete the hat trick I’d started when a hand caught it right before it could graze the net.

My eyes followed the strong muscled arm and landed on the face of my arch nemesis, Kingsley.

“Great, you can have it,” I rolled my eyes and turned to leave the court area.


I’d barely taken a step when a death grip pulled me by my hair and slammed me against the basketball pole. I could hear the metallic vibrations ringing in my head and through my ears from the harsh impact and it took everything in me not to scream maniacally.

“Tell me, why is this greedy whore’s name next to my father’s?” he shoved a card into my face, huffing angrily.


It took me less than a second to put two and two together.

The greedy whore in question was my mom, and the card he was so pissed about was the wedding invitation for both our parents, something I knew without reading a word of it because I’d helped Mom pick out the card.

Despite knowing that I didn’t have the upper hand, the fact that he’d insulted my mother pissed me off and I wanted to insult him as well. An eye for an eye or whatever.

“I don’t know if you can read Kingsley, but that’s a weddi—“

He cut me off with a slap so hard that my entire face went numb and I could barely keep myself from staggering.

“Don’t try that smart-mouth shit with me right now,” his eyes were bloodshot with rage and I knew he’d give me hell for going back on our agreement.

Ever since I’d learnt that death was a possible punishment for getting on King’s bad side, there was a certain fear that gripped me whenever he was this angry at me.

“I remember giving you a warm welcome to hell if you were to let this gold-digging plot work, and stupid as you are, you did,” he squeezed the invitation into a ball.

“At least now I know not to take a stuck-up Bitch’s word next time,” he hissed before shoving the invitation into my mouth, “and I don’t want to hear a word out of you while you’re taught a lesson.”

His sinister smile was nowhere to be found, that’s how angry he was.

Even while knowing that I shouldn’t mess with him, I spat out the invitation he’d stuck in my mouth and defended my mother.

“There’s no gold-digging plot at play, and you will not disrespect my mother,” I told him through gritted teeth.

That’s when the smile returned.

The only difference was that I’d never seen this smile before, it was devilish, dark, and filled with the sickly amusement of an insane person, much like the joker’s smile.

Instead of replying to me, he grabbed me by my hair again with an even more painful grip than the last and dragged me towards the pool. I kept trying to get his hands off me especially seeing as the gym had gone quiet and all the students were following us towards the pool.

He walked around to the dirtiest part of the pool since our gym teacher acted like he hated his job, he didn’t care if the gym was cleaned properly or not, and this particular corner reeked of urine and looked absolutely disgusting.

“This,” he shoved my head into the pool while still gripping my hair, “is what happens when you fuck with me.”

It took a few seconds for it to dawn on me that that bastard had buried my face in water.

Soon, I was flailing my hands and struggling for air but he didn’t budge, in fact, he pushed my head further into the water and held me so firmly that I couldn’t move a muscle. My eyes were stinging from the dirt and my mouth tasted like bile from the irritating things filtering into it.

I was already starting to feel dizzy and dead in the head when he pulled me out.

On instinct, I opened my mouth wide and practically tried to swallow all the air around me while coughing and slapping my chest frantically. Laughter scattered around me as well as mocking whispers here and there, but I couldn’t focus on anything but the need for air.

“I want you to look death in the eye, hold its crooked hands and be near the gates of hell,” King spat in my face before lifting me and dunking my entire body into the pool.

Then, he roped one hand tightly around my neck and the other was used to press my head under the water and keep me from moving.

And nothing, no amount of frantic strength or screaming underwater made him budge.

I’d barely recovered from the last drowning feeling of having my head dunked underwater, so it felt like death was indeed looking me in the eye this time around. My muscles felt like jelly, my nose was completely blocked because of his grip around my neck, I couldn’t breathe out of my mouth and each time I tried I ended up swallowing a heap of nasty crap.

Each time I shut my eyes, I felt like I was already dead and being called beyond by demons, so I kept them open out of fear despite the unbearable sting of the dirty water.

Tears were running down my face and I felt a fear like no other grip me when I began to lose consciousness.

Seconds before I passed out, he pulled me out and dumped me on the floor while I coughed up all the dirt I’d swallowed and cried while gasping for air. He hovered over me with a smile so evil that dread crept up my skin.

This was the third time he’d put me through a near-death experience and I was shaking with disbelief and rage.

“Welcome to the family, sis,” his smile turned into a sickening laughter as he walked off.

The embarrassment that slammed into me when I looked down and saw my pale, disgusting skin while students taunted me was near crippling. I mustered the little strength I’d gathered and ran to the nurse’s office as fast as my poor legs could carry me.

On getting there, I noticed that no one was on any of the sick beds and the main office was left open and empty. I spotted a coffee dispenser which seemed like heaven since I was cold and shrunken from being nearly drowned so I walked into the office and picked a paper cup.

I was holding it under the dispenser and waiting for it to fill up while my eyes scanned the office out of boredom.

My eyes landed on a pile of files and the topmost one read, Kingsley Hawthorne. That fucking deranged bastard.

That piqued my curiosity and I lifted the coffee to my lips and grabbed it off the shelf. I settled into a chair and flipped through it while cussing him out countless times in my head. Even his file was a reflection of his fuckboy title seeing as he mostly came to the infirmary to get condoms and lube instead of drugs.

I was about to fling his stupid file across the room when I caught sight of an intriguing section, allergies.

Sincerely, I didn’t expect him to have any, but when I turned the page, I was taken aback at the fact that the almighty Kingsley had an allergy. And not just that, he had one of the most ridiculous allergies I’d ever come across.

I blinked severally to be sure that I’d read it right, and apparently, I had.

Well, well, well.