Falling for the Bad boy

Chapter Eight

Alyssa

I stood rooted to my spot as I tried to come up with a reasonable explanation as to what was happening. Maybe I was being delusional and simply hallucinating? Or perhaps, somehow, I'd managed to cry myself into a state of shock where anything and absolutely everything could be possible. Because tell me why, I just had to be surrounded by literally the very same people I didn't want to see.

“Alyssa?” My blood ran cold at the sound of my name. It was from one person and if someone had told me a time would come where the sound of my name on his tongue would no longer give me butterflies, I would have laughed my head off right at that person. I guess fate did have it's many ways of f*****g you over. “Is that really you?”

I pressed my eyes shut, trying my possible beat to tune him out, but it didn't work. The more I tried,the more memories of us started to surface in my mind.

“Please look at me.” No matter how mad, how heartbroken I was, I doubted I could stay away from him. And right now, as I turned to face Bennett, I realized that very action just might be the cause of my death one day. “Alyssa….”

Bennett trailed off and I let him. I wanted him to speak, I wanted him to tell me why he did it. Or at least, tell me I was misunderstanding. Maybe it was all a big prank, a skit. Bennett had mentioned sometime in the past that he wanted to go into context creation, maybe the activities of that night were simply for practice and it skipped his mind to inform me about it.

Lies. You know they're all lies. My subconscious screamed in my head. They were lies, I was currently feeding myself lies. I needed all the comfort I could get because if the look in Bennett's eyes meant anything, it was a clear confirmation of my fears coming through.

“Alyssa.” Bennett called out again and surprisingly the sound of my name on his lips struck a chord in me, a rather furious one. “Alyssa, I…..”

“Alyssa, what!” I cut him off immediately. Despite the rage that was slowly building in my chest, it was a surprise how soft and tiny my voice actually was. “What is it? What do you want to say?”

“Alyssa, I'm sorry.” What was he apologizing for? All he had to do was tell me it was a prank or something silly. “I'm really sorry….”

“Why are you apologizing? You didn't do anything wrong.” A heavy weight dropped to my feet as Bennett looked away. “Incase you're confused, this is the part where you say this is a skit, a prank or something. Come on Bennett!”

“Oh Alyssa.” Someone purred beside me. It took me a while to realize who it was. It was Emily, and for a split second, I literally forgot she was there. I watched closely as she sauntered towards Bennett, before draping an arm around his shoulder. Surprisingly, he made no move to adjust it or take her hand off of him. “There's no way he's going to say that. If there's anything I know about our dear Bennett here, it's the fact that he doesn't lie.”

She wasn't wrong, Bennett never lied to the people he loved, but he'd been lying and deceiving me for years, so did it mean?....

“He doesn't like getting caught after lying.” A gruff voice resonated beside me and it didn't take me long to put two and two together. Cameron was still here. With a leveled gaze on Emily, he added. “That's what you meant.”

“She wasn't talking to you.” Bennett snapped at his stepbrother. “And no one invited you to this conversation anyway.”

“Now you can speak?” Cameron quirked his eyebrow, a bored expression on his face . “ What happened to your voice when your girlfriend was asking for an explanation?”

Girlfriend. That word used to be my pride and joy, now it was nothing short of mockery and jeers.

“You shut your mouth!” Bennett snapped, taking a menacing step towards Cameron. Cameron followed suit, dropping two steps in. “You shut your dirty, filthy mouth!”

“Or else what?” Cameron fired back. “You'll drag Emily to your usual hotel room just to f**k her senseless?”

A gasp slid past Emily's lips but she was in the least bit surprised. From the corner of my eyes, I watched her lips curl upwards into a sinister smirk. And that wasn't all.

Apparently, Cameron's statement and Emily's gasp didn't go unheard. My palms felt clammy as slowly, a crowd began to form around us, a slow and steady influx of students circling us. In no time, the four of us, Emily, Bennet, Cameron and I were in the middle of the crowd in the hallway.

“I promise you, Cameron.” Bennett pointed a finger towards his brother. “You don't want to go down this path with me.”

“No I don't.” Cameron quipped. “Right now, I think the only person you should be talking to should be Alyssa. She deserves an explanation as to why you're a pervert who can't keep his d**k put!”

“If she actually let him hit, maybe he would have." A string of ooohs and ahhss rippled through the crowd at Emily's opinion on the whole matter. “You can't really blame the guy now, can you?”

“Really Bennett?” I turned to him again. “Is this what this is about? Is that why you did it?”

“I, I.” It was a surprise seeing the always bright and bold Bennett being so cold. “I don't know, but, you need to know, I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“Yeah right.” I chuckled, my laughter holding not an inch of humor in them. “I'm sure you were balls deep in Emily's p***y just because you cared about me.”

“I called you after that night, Alyssa.” Bennett spoke on. “I didn't mean for you to walk in on that. If Cameron hadn't brought you there, you would have never found out and….”

“Are you really serious right now?” I couldn't believe his audacity. “That's what you're going with? You're not even going to try to acknowledge your fault in this entire situation?!”

“You shouldn't have found out.” Bennett's voice went low almost instantly. I searched his face for any hint that he might have pulled a fast one on me, but the stillness of his eyes proved I was wrong. So very wrong. “You never should have found out.”

“How about, you, never should have cheated?!” I shot back. Ever since he'd started speaking, I'd been trying my best to reel in my anger, but right now, I'd be damned if I cared about the consequences. “If you didn't cheat, none of this would be happening!”

“I didn't have to cheat?” Bennett scoffed. “We've been dating for two years. Literally the moment we got into uni and in the space of that time you didn't for once offer that we have sex.”

“You said it didn't matter.” I croaked, a huge lump forming in the base of my throat. “You said you loved me.”

“How long was I supposed to rely on that?” There was no way this was Bennett. It just couldn't be. “I thought I could take it but I was only delaying the inevitable.”

“And you chose Emily?” I never thought I would do this. Never in my entire life. But here I was comparing myself with some other girl. “You chose her over me. Why?”

“Don't put it like that darling.” Emily cooed, before butting in into the conversation. “I was simply at the right place at the right time.”

“We met at a club.” Emily pressed on. Obviously, she was going into details no one asked her and I could bet my entire existence she was doing it on purpose. A flash of light from behind Bennett caught my eye, and as I watched a student hurriedly stuff his phone into his bag , upon being caught, it dawned on me. He was recording me, all of this and had probably been doing that right from the beginning.

I trained my glance back at Emily and suddenly it made sense. The school had a blog site that contained every information you could find about the school's social events and their students. At least that's what it was supposed to do anyway. These days, it was basically a gossip site , tea as they called it and no matter how bitter Emily's words might be to me, the million other students in this college would lap it right out of her palms like the hungry dogs they were.

“We were both surprised to see each other there.” Emily continued, like she'd been waiting for me to finish my monologue. “He was dead drunk and obviously needed a shoulder to cry on, so I did that and added a bonus. I gave him a ride too.”

Whoops and catcalls drowned her voice immediately, before it slowly died down into nothing again.

“How long?” A tiny part of me knew knowing would kill me, but I wanted to know anyway. At this point, I was already as good as dead so what was the point? “How long has this been going on for.”

“It doesn't matter.” Bennett muttered at the same time Emily yelled, “Six months after you started dating.”

I stared at the both of them as they stood side by side and wondered how I'd missed it. For so long how they'd been able to hide a full fledged relationship or whatever it was under my nose for that long.

Tears burned at the back of my eyes as I scanned the crowd. I didn't want to stare at either Bennett's or Emily's ugly face, but if not them then, who? Like the universe had been patiently waiting to answer my question, the moment I moved my head a couple more times, I locked eyes with my best friend.

I was this close to running towards her until a huge pang settled in my chest.

She knew about it and only God knew how long she was aware too.

No. No.

Slowly, I found myself sinking to the ground. It was all over. There was nothing I could do.

“Hey!” Someone snapped beside me. It was Cameron “What are you doing?"

I said nothing as I stared at him through my blurry vision. I was already halfway down when low laughs reached my ears. They were laughing, all of them. They were laughing at me.

“Get up.” Cameron snapped at me again, calling my attention to him. “Wipe your tears. Do it now.”

The speed at which I did what he asked needed to be studied because the moment the words came out, it felt like my limbs were programmed to do just like he asked.

Carefully, I wiped out the tears that gently streaked down my face. My glasses were foggy but they were still manageable. Before I could figure out anything else, I watched Cameron stretch out his hand to me.

“Come on. Let's get out of here.” And I did. I let myself be pulled away by Cameron and with each step we took away from the crowd, I couldn't help but feel Bennett's gaze burning a hole at the back of my head.