Falling For My Bully Stepbrother

Krystal High

Chapter 001.

Lily’s POV.

“Go on your knees!!”

Betty Sterling’s voice cut through the classroom, sharp enough to silence the whispers around us. She stood in front of my desk with her arms folded, watching me with the kind of satisfaction that made it clear this was not going to end with one cruel joke.

I kept my head lowered, staring at the workbook open in front of me even though I had not read a single word on the page. My fingers were wrapped tightly around my pen, and I could feel the sting from where Betty had grabbed my hair a few minutes earlier, but I refused to touch the sore spot. Giving her the satisfaction of seeing me hurt was the one small piece of control I still had.

It had been a week since I arrived at Krystal High, and somehow, I had already learned the rules.

Some students mattered, and some did not; some could laugh at teachers and get away with it, and students like me were expected to keep our heads down and be grateful for the privilege of sitting in the same classroom.

I was the scholarship girl, the outsider, the one who did not have a famous last name or a father who owned half the city. I had learned that on my first morning, when two girls had looked at my shoes and laughed because they were not from some expensive designer store, and I had learned it again every day since then.

Betty was the worst of them all.

She had made it her personal mission to remind me that I did not belong, and because she was popular, beautiful, wealthy, and surrounded by people who wanted to stay on her good side, nobody ever stopped her. Even the students who looked uncomfortable whenever she bullied me quickly looked away.

I had tried telling myself that things would get better, but it wasn't.

“Did you hear me?”

Betty leaned closer, and before I could answer, she picked up the cup of cold coffee sitting on the edge of my desk.

The next second, the coffee came down over my head, soaking through my hair and running across my face, neck, and white school shirt. The classroom erupted in laughter, and I sat completely still, listening to the sound surround me.

Someone behind me snickered.

Someone else whispered that I looked pathetic.

I swallowed hard and reached for the tissues inside my bag, but Betty snatched them away before I could use them.

“Where do you think you are going?”

I looked up at her, trying to keep my voice steady. “I just want to clean myself.”

Betty smiled as though I had said something amusing.

“You can clean yourself after I am finished with you.”

A few students laughed again, and heat crept into my face, not from embarrassment alone.

Betty raised her hand.

I instinctively flinched.

Her palm stopped in the air when a voice came from the classroom door.

“Enough.”

The laughter died so quickly that the silence almost hurt my ears.

I slowly turned my head.

A boy stood in the doorway. For a moment, I forgot about the coffee dripping from my hair.

I forgot about Betty.

I forgot about every pair of eyes watching me.

He was tall, athletic, and dressed in a black-and-white basketball jersey, with a matching headband holding back his curly brown hair. A basketball was tucked beneath one arm, and his expression carried a quiet confidence.

Then his eyes met mine.

Ocean blue.

That was the first thought that entered my mind, so strangely clear that everything else seemed to disappear around it. His eyes were the kind of blue I had only seen in photographs of deep water.

I had never seen him at school before.

At least, not in the week I had been there.

His gaze moved from my soaked uniform to Betty, and something in his expression hardened.

“What are you doing?”

Betty immediately lowered her hand. “Nothing, Henry.”

Henry.. His name settled somewhere in my mind.

Betty suddenly looked nervous, which surprised me more than anything else that had happened that morning.

“I was just correcting her.”

He walked into the classroom, placed the basketball on the nearest desk, and stopped beside me.

“Leave her.”

Betty stared at him.

“But..”

“I said leave her.”

His voice was not loud, but nobody dared challenge it.

Betty's lips pressed into a thin line before she stepped away from my desk. Her friends followed, and the room slowly returned to its usual noise, although everyone seemed more interested in watching Henry than pretending they were not watching us.

I looked down at my ruined uniform, suddenly embarrassed by how I must have looked in front of him.

Coffee dripped from the ends of my hair onto my desk.

I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand and gathered enough courage to look at him again.

“Thank you.”

He did not answer.

He simply picked up his basketball and walked toward his seat as though I had never spoken.

For some reason, that made me smile. I never thought I would find my hero like those novel characters. For the first time that week, someone had seen what was happening to me and decided to help me.

That small act meant more to me than he could know.

The rest of the morning passed without Betty touching me again, although I could still feel her eyes following me whenever I moved.

At lunch, I discovered that nobody wanted to sit with me.

I carried my tray across the cafeteria, searching for an empty table while groups of students laughed and talked around me. Whenever I approached a table, the conversation seemed to change, and people suddenly found reasons to look away.

Eventually, I chose a table near the window and sat alone.

I pushed my food around with my fork, but I was not hungry.

My thoughts drifted toward my father.

I missed him more than I allowed myself to admit.

If things had been different, he would have been the person I called whenever I was hurt, the person who would tell me that none of those people mattered and that I should never allow their cruelty to make me believe I was worthless.

But my mother made it clear in a hundred different ways, from the insults she threw at me to the way she spoke about my father, as though loving him had been the greatest mistake of her life.

I lowered my gaze to my untouched food. "I missed your cooking, Dad"

Tonight, I was supposed to meet my new stepfather and his son.

My mother had been talking about them for days, constantly reminding me to behave, smile, and avoid embarrassing her. I had no idea what kind of people they were.

I only knew that my mother seemed desperate to make a good impression.

I sighed softly and glanced across the cafeteria.

Then I saw him.

Henry had entered with two other boys wearing basketball jerseys, their laughter carrying across the room as they walked toward a table near the center.

My shoulders relaxed without permission; seeing him there made something inside me feel safer.

Damn! What's this feeling?

He sat with his teammates, laughing at something one of them said, and for the first time, I noticed how different he looked when he smiled.

I quickly looked away when he turned his head.

My cheeks warmed. I focused on my food, pretending I had suddenly become very interested in it.

When the final bell rang, I packed my books slowly and made my way outside.

My mother was waiting by the car.

The moment she saw me, her eyes went straight to my uniform. “What happened to your shirt?”

I opened the passenger door and sat down. “Some students poured coffee on me.”

She looked at the stain with obvious annoyance.

“Do you know how expensive that uniform is?”

I stared at her. For a second, I wondered whether she had heard me. "Don't you hear me, Mom?"

She turned toward me, her expression hardening. “I do not want to hear excuses.”

My chest tightened; she had never cared about how I felt. My eyes blurred with tears as I lost control.

“Mom, they were bullying me!!”