The Alpha's Warrior Princess

Ch. 15: Sparks Are Flying

(April’s POV)

When I walked out into the pool area, I noticed Alex standing by the grill with Austin and Conner. He had his back to me and I was glad about that. They looked like they were having a pleasant conversation, so maybe he'll leave me alone for a while. A girl can dream, right?

As I moved onto the deck I looked around for a nice place to put my stuff down and noticed the area by the bar was pretty clear. It seemed like a good place to go and chill by myself for a bit. Especially with the music playing right there. It had plenty of sun and was relatively quiet, even being near the bar. And can I just say, who the f*ck has a whole a** bar by their Olympic sized swimming pool in their private home? I mean, what the actual f*ck does Uncle Teddy Bear do for a d*mn living? I shudder to think. For all I know, he's actually a Mofia Don and I'm now living in the lap of illegally gotten luxury.

Just sayin.

It wasn’t really crowded yet, so there were plenty of places available, but I liked being near the music. I love music and art. Sketching is actually a passion of mine, though it’s a secret one. Something I just want to keep to myself.

I know that sounds odd, but that and music are the only things I have in my life that haven’t turned into some sort of competition. Even with my baking, Mom somehow managed to get me involved in a competition once. Though I didn’t know about it until it was over and done with.

How? Well, long story short…. Mom was in the PTA at my school. The school I was in at the time had a kind of stuffy, Stepford Wives kind of vibe to it. Mom didn’t want to actually be in the Parent-Teachers Association. So, being that all the Karen’s (AKA: The other Mom’s) were royal B’s and with Mom being the type who never has an unkind word to say to, or about, anyone; she came up with this little plan.

See they were having a bake sale, a very boring, run of the mill, bake sale. Each Mom who volunteered was supposed to set up a table and bake their own goods for the sale. Their kids could help out, but it had to be homemade items. The proceeds were going to be used to go on school trips and stuff like that.

So Mom volunteered to set up a booth. Of course, queen B smugly decided to start bragging about how her booth always brought in the most money, so Mom, being a Storm family member and therefore unable to resist, took up that challenge and made a wager with ole queeny.

The bet was simple. If Mom won, she got a free ticket out of jail (AKA: The PTA), but if she lost she had to participate in every event till the end of the school year. Queeny happily took the bet. I, apparently, was Mom’s ticket out of Stepfordville. And we all lived happily ever after.

Of course, after the way Mom’s goods crushed her competition, all the other Moms started to pay more attention to her. Mom being the cheerful and forgiving type of person she is, she let bygones be bygones and made some new friends which she proceeded to bring back down to earth. And ole queeny wound up getting arrested for assault at the next bake sale when she threw one of our cakes at the Principal of the school for gushing over my German Chocolate cake and ordering two for a couple of upcoming meetings he needed to attend.

That single action caused a huge food fight to ensue. The police were called, and Queeny was hauled out of school in handcuffs. It was really kind of funny. Fortunately, after that, Queeny was so humiliated by the chain of events that her and her family moved away. Which was probably a blessing in disguise for her, seeing as how they moved out to the suburbs with all the other Stepford Wives.

But it was enough to put me off wanting to share my art or music with anyone. I made the decision to never do anything publicly again with my music and art that same day as the first bake sale. I also have never baked or cooked again for any reason other than pleasure after the second sale where the food fight took place. Seeing my hard work go in the trash, literally, was really upsetting. Though the principal did get his cakes. Free of charge.

Anyhow, that’s how I learned to keep the things I am most passionate about private. From time to time, I would share my passion for music with friends, but never have I ever sung for any sort of profit or competition. Same with my art.

As I was getting myself all set up to do some major sunbathing, I could feel eyes on me. I was used to that, though. I’m not trying to sound like I’m something special, because I’m not. Special, that is. Yes you are special! You just can’t see it. I just rolled my eyes at that. My inner psycho is always so d*mn insistent that I’m special. If she were a real person who knew anything about the world she would know that being psycho didn’t make you special, it made you dangerous. And lonely.

But back to my original point, which is that no matter where I go I can’t seem to not attract attention for some st*pid reason. It’s really annoying, actually. But I’ve learned to ignore it. So I sat my bag down and as I did I noticed two blue diamonds twinkling up at me. “I see yah, yah little cutie. You smell food, don’t yah? Maybe in a little bit, baby. When the grill is less crowded.”

My little carnivore. I don’t know where she even puts it all. She’s so tiny yet she eats so much. And yeah, I know. Talking to my kitten is crazy. Right?

Ahhhh, well. If you're just now realizing that I’m a bit touched in the head, yah ain't been payin' much attention.

I had just taken off my cover up and gotten comfy on the lounge chair. The song on the radio, or whatever, at the bar was one of my favorites, ‘What If’ by Kane Brown and Lauren Alaina. I closed my eyes and started to quietly hum along to the song. It was nice.

I was actually starting to relax when the sun suddenly disappeared and I peeked from one eye to see why. There he was, standing over me, holding out a t-shirt toward me, this weird look on his face I couldn’t really make heads or tails of the meaning of. As I opened the other eye he started to calmly speak, though there was this odd undertone to his voice that I had never heard before. “April, maybe you should put this on. I know a lot of these guys. Trust me, they will all be hounding you if you walk around here like that.” And he had the nerve to look all proud of himself.

Me? I was just annoyed.

Just who the h*ll did he think he was, anyway? The president. I mean it wasn’t an order, but it might as well have been. It was that strong of a “suggestion”. So I slowly sat up with a steady glare at his “suggestion”, got to my feet, stepped around his sorry a**, walked over to the pool’s edge, and simply dove in.

Swimming is something I do as part of my regular training. Now, in my opinion, one of my biggest character flaws is that when I do something I tend to go overboard with learning it. I will obsess over something while learning that thing until I’ve perfected it to a degree I can be happy with, never just simply satisfied with. I feel like it's a flaw because when I say I obsess, I mean I OBSESS. It's all I eat, sleep, and dream until I get it right. So when I entered the water it was with hardly any splash.

I loved the water, though. It was always so calming. So I stayed under for as long as my lungs would allow, my feet kicking smoothly, propelling me along just under the surface. When I came up for air I didn’t stop, my arms now moving through the water to pull me along at a good clip. I had every intention of hitting the back wall and simply turning to take another lap but in my periphery I saw the guys and I knew Alex was coming after me, as well. Though why, I couldn't fathom. Why the f*ck did he even care if other guys looked at me? It’s not as though he was interested in me. Right?

Just barely out of my periphery, I saw him stop but I kept on going, opening the distance between us. With him stopping like that, I figured if I could just get to the end of the pool it'd be okay. Then, instead of turning and taking another lap, I could just hop out and go back to my chair to get my things, then maybe go find my parents or Jake and hang out with them. Only as my hand touched the lip of the pool's edge, I caught sight of a watery figure dressed in a light yellow sundress. “Allison”, I thought. It had to be. She was becoming a huge thorn in my side.

As I wiped the water from my face with my free hand, she crouches down with a malicious smile on her face and in a catty whisper says “You think you're so slick, don’t you? Well, I’m on to you. I know you’ve set your sights on my Alex. Well, don’t bother. He’s mine! And if you continue to chase after him, I’ll make sure your skanky little a** winds up where all the other trash goes.”

“Oh? And where is that exactly?” I asked, making her smirk as she leaned in a bit more, which worked out great for me as I let her answer, her voice full of confidence, “Why. To the incinerator, of course!” I didn’t even bat an eye at the threat. I just smirked and in a flash I reached up with my free hand, grabbed the front of her dress, and yeeted her over my head with as much strength as I could without it looking like I’d gone all She-Hulk on her sorry a**.

She went a good five feet before hitting the water and as she was taking her little trip to waterworld, I was effortlessly hauling my a** up onto the deck of the pool and turning to sit with my legs still dangling in the water. She, of course, screamed her head off the entire trip.

There I waited as she sprang back up to the surface, sputtering water and making all these angry, nonsensical sounds as she slapped at the water's surface angrily. It took everything in me not to laugh when I saw that the clown make-up she always had pancaked on her face was running all over the place, making her look like some Picasso painting he had done in the dark, while drunk, and blindfolded, with his feet…. without a paintbrush.

When she finally stopped her sputtering she glared up at me so hard I could swear sparks were flying from her eyes. Unphased by her glare, I looked her dead in the face and very calmly and clearly stated “Now, you listen to me, and listen well, because I’m only going to say this once. I want to make two things clear to you, Allison. One: I don’t want “your Alex”, keep him! And.. “Your Alex” can have you, too.” I paused for a second to let that sink in a bit, but because Alex was actually right behind her at this point, he heard what I said too.

My heart broke when I saw the pained expression that filled his features, but I also didn’t understand it. I would think he’d be happy to know I wasn’t going to stalk him or anything. I had to look away, focussing back on Allison to the point that I blocked everything else out around me.

Pushing that all aside, I continued “and two: If you ever, and I mean ever, threaten me or anybody I care about again, you had better be ready to follow through. Because next time you won’t just be going for a swim, I’ll straight up kill you. So don’t f*ck with me!” With that, I got up and walked back over to grab my stuff. As I was walking into the house, I heard Alex saying to one of the guys “get this b*tch inside and let her parents know what just happened.” He was livid, I could hear it in his voice. I just kept on walking.