Mated with My Ruthless Bully

Chapter 3

Sophia's POV

If my life were a physics equation, the variables had just been replaced with absurdist nightmare fuel.

My mom, beaming with a light I hadn’t seen in years, dropped her news. We were going to visit her fiance for the first time.

Cue the confetti. Or, you know, the internal screaming. I tried to brace myself.

Mom’s happiness was a rare and precious thing and I would rather chew glass than dim it.

I could stuff my own personal dumpster fire into a mental lockbox for one evening. How bad could it be? A little awkward small talk over pot roast? I could handle that. I’d survived a three-hour quantum mechanics lecture on a Monday morning. I was brave.

We pulled up to a house that looked less like a house and more like a monument to testosterone and old money and my stomach did a neat little somersault. Mom squeezed my hand with her eyes sparkling.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Soph? Our new beginning!”

Our new beginning, I thought, looks like it was designed by and for vampires.

The door swung open before we even knocked. He was a mountain of a man with a grip that could crush coal into diamonds and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He ushered us inside with a booming voice that vibrated in my bones.

But the real shock was Lucas!

Lucas Kane in all his infuriatingly perfect glory was wearing a simple black henley and dark jeans, looking effortlessly casual and royally pissed off. His eyes that had looked at me with such burning intensity last night, swept over me, his father, then on my mom and finally back on me!

The air vanished from the room and the world narrowed to the space between us, crackling with a tension so thick you could serve it as pudding.

His eyes didn’t just hold hatred.. they were pure loathing!

I saw his jaw clench with a muscle ticking furiously in his cheek. His hands which I remembered with a traitorous flush, curled into white-knuckled fists at his sides.

So Jake cheats.. I drink.. I make a spectacularly poor life choice with the school’s most notorious bully. And now he’s my future stepbrother? The universe wasn’t just messing with me.. it was writing a deeply unfunny sitcom with me as the punchline!

For a horrifying second, I thought he might actually snarl.

But then, the mask slid into place. It was so smooth, so practiced, it was terrifying. The hatred in his eyes banked, replaced by a cool detached indifference.

“Lucas, this is Laura and her daughter, Sophia,” Victor said, utterly oblivious to the thermonuclear stare-down happening in his entrance hall.

Lucas’s lips curved into a smile that was all teeth and no warmth.

“Laura. A pleasure.” He turned that frosty smile on me. “Sophia. We’re… acquainted. From school.”

His voice was a low and controlled and the way he said “acquainted” felt like a violation. It was a word that held the memory of his hands on my skin, his mouth on mine and the crushing disgust on his face this morning.

My cheeks burned. I wanted to correct him. ‘Acquainted’ is what you are with the librarian who checks out your books, not the person you had just f****d!

I couldn’t even finish the thought. I just nodded mutely, hoping the floor would open up and swallow me whole.

Dinner was a special kind of torture. The dining table was long enough to land a small aircraft on and Lucas sat directly across from me like a silent brooding sentinel of judgment. Our parents were lost in their own loved-up bubble, chatting and laughing.

Victor, clearly wanting to impress my mom, launched into the Lucas Kane Greatest Hits album.

“Lucas here is captain of the basketball team, of course. Undefeated this season. Top of his business class. Natural leader.” He puffed out his chest. “The boys in the pack… er, the team… they look up to him. He’s destined for great things.”

Lucas preened under the praise but his eyes never left me. It felt less like a conversation and more like a threat display.

“It’s true,” Lucas said, his voice dripping with a sarcasm only I could hear. “I’ve worked very hard to build a certain… reputation. To be someone of substance. It’s important to stand for something, don’t you think, Sophia? Not to just blend into the background.”

The insult was so perfectly veiled and so elegant in its cruelty. I saw Victor’s brow furrow slightly, giving his son a sidelong look of confusion while I just stared at my plate, tracing the pattern on the china with my eyes.

My mom, bless her heart, jumped into the fray like a knight in shining armor, armed with tragically outdated information.

“Oh, Sophia’s wonderful! And her boyfriend, Jake, is on the basketball team too! Isn’t that a lovely coincidence, Lucas? You must know him!”

The temperature at the table dropped about twenty degrees. Lucas’s gaze intensified, the grey of his eyes turning to flint. I could have sworn I heard a growl but it was probably just the house settling.. or my soul leaving my body.

Victor turned to me, genuine interest on his face.

“Is that right? Jake? Jake Thompson? He’s a good player.. agile and strong. You must be very proud.”

Three pairs of eyes were on me. My mom’s, full of encouragement. Victor’s, with polite interest and Lucas’s… Lucas’s were burning with a rage I couldn’t begin to comprehend. Why was he getting angrier? He was the one who told me to forget last night ever happened. He was the one who rejected me!

I swallowed around a throat that felt like sandpaper.

“Um, yeah. Jake’s… great.”

The words tasted like ash. Every compliment I’d ever given Jake now felt like a lie I was telling under the intense, hateful scrutiny of the guy I’d rebound-slept-with.

I kept it brief, mumbling something about him being dedicated, all while feeling Lucas’s stare boring into me as if he could see right through to the humiliating memory of finding Jake with Jessica.

When the world’s most awkward dinner finally ended, I thought I was free. But I was wrong..

Victor clapped Lucas on the shoulder.

“Now that we’re all going to be one family, Lucas, you’ll start driving Sophia to and from school. It’s the least you can do. Good chance for you two to get to know each other properly.”

Lucas’s face went perfectly and terrifyingly still. I saw the refusal warring with the ingrained obedience to his father. Finally, he gave a tight single nod.

“Of course.”

Our parents wandered toward the door, already wrapped up in their own conversation again and the moment their backs were turned, Lucas moved.

He didn’t walk.. he stalked. In two steps, he had me cornered against the cold stone wall beside the grand fireplace with his body blocking me from view. He leaned in close and the scent of him wrapped around me in a cruel mockery of the previous night.

His voice was a low venomous whisper meant for my ears only.

“Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. This changes nothing. You being here is a political maneuver by my father, nothing more. You will not speak to me at school. You will not expect anything from me. You will be ready and waiting outside the library at four PM sharp tomorrow and you will not make me wait. The only reason my tires will screech pulling away from that curb is because I can’t get away from you fast enough. Are we understood?”

He was so close I could see the flecks of silver in his stormy eyes. The raw animosity rolling off him was too strong of a force to not notice. I just nodded, my head moving in a quick jerky motion. I couldn’t have spoken if I tried.

He held my gaze for a second longer, ensuring his message had been received and branded onto my psyche, then pushed away from the wall just as our parents turned back.

“Everything alright, you two?” my mom asked, smiling.

“Perfect,” Lucas said, his face transforming back into that pleasant empty mask. “Just welcoming Sophia to the family.”

***

The car ride home was a blur. My mom chattered happily about the beautiful house, the wonderful dinner and what a fine, upstanding young man Lucas seemed to be.

I just stared out the window at the passing streetlights, each one a blurry streak in the night.

My chest ached with a fresh, confused hurt. Jake’s betrayal was a clean cut, sharp and painful.

But this… Lucas’s hatred was a mystery! It was corrosive and personal and I had no idea what I had done to earn it. I’d just been… me. And apparently, that was the greatest crime of all!

As we pulled up to our modest apartment, I clung to one tiny, desperate hope. Maybe tomorrow would be better. It couldn’t possibly get any worse.. right?