BAD WICKED TWISTED: A Briarcrest Academy Box Set (115 page)

Dark and twisted,

Music with skin.

I saw you there,

Across the way.

Play your song,

Laying it bare.

Sit on a couch, watch a vampire show,

Kiss and make love til we blow.

Fall in love under the sky,

I’ll take it all, the comet too,

We’ll fly.

Violin Girl in my dreams,

I got it bad it seems.

Dark and twisted,

Music with skin.

I saw you there,

Across the way.

Play your song,

Laying it bare.

I saw you there,

I saw you there,

I saw you there …

Violin Girl,

Will you be mine,

Be mine.

Be mine.

Silence fell when he ended the song.

Sometimes in your life you just know things, and I knew with certainty that he loved me beyond measure.

He took me back in his arms and wiped my tears. “That song is the first song to the rest of my life.”

I bit my lip.

“V, don’t cry. It was supposed to make you happy.”

“I love you so much.” I melted against him. “Kiss me.”

He kissed me for a long time.

“We should go,” I whispered against his mouth a bit later.

“First, I want you to come, V. Right here before we go out there and blow them away with our music.” He slid his hands inside my panties, his fingers working me, sending tingles over my body. I shivered at the need coursing through me.

“I will never get enough of you,” he growled.

“What about you?” I gasped out.

“Ride my fingers, V, and when this night is over, you’re mine in about a million different ways.”

I nodded. Whatever he wanted. Him.
Us
.

I tossed my head back against the wall while his lips and fingers took me to the brink faster than I’d ever been. I clutched his shoulders and held on while he ravaged my skin, my lips, my soul. My body ached to relieve the need I read in his own eyes, and I tried to touch him, but he wouldn’t let me. “Just you, V. Just you. Always.”

Heat gathered in my spine.

I cried out his name when I combusted, and he groaned with me.

We collapsed against each other and I wasn’t sure who was holding up whom.

He smoothed back my hair. “V? I want to tell the world that you’re mine. I want to shout it out. Is that crazy?”

I smiled softly. “No.”

“You make me a better man. I promise you, right here, I will love you until the day I die. I will do everything in my power to make sure you’re happy. Forget Hollywood, forget music. If there’s no you, I’m lost anyway.”

“We’re going to have it all and more. I’m due.”

“Due?”

I pressed a gentle kiss to his lips, feeling the last vestiges of my doubt fade away. “Fairy dust.”

“Just so you know, I’m not a fairy, but fairy dust is pretty cool.”

—Sebastian Tate

WE STRAIGHTENED OUR clothes and went back to the banquet. After the speaker and meal were over, we took the stage like we’d practiced the week before. She sat on a stool between us. Protected. As it should be.

I took the microphone, gazed out over the crowd, and poured on the charm that came easily to me.

“I’ve been told that so far we’ve raised half a million dollars tonight in donations. How’s that for a successful party?”

Lots of clapping ensued with a few catcalls. A few guests took up chanting—mostly the kids who sat the closest to the stage. I grinned and Spider took a big bow, rolling his hands out to the crowd as he strutted around in his blue mink like a peacock.

I raised my hand and spoke over the applause. “You may not know this, but LA is my hometown. From my heart, thank you for coming out and supporting this great cause. It’s an honor to be here tonight on this stage with the sponsor of the event, Miss Violet St. Lyons.” I cleared my throat. “We have a very special treat for you. V has agreed to play a song with us tonight.”

I took off my mink, tossed it on a stool, and turned back to a cheering crowd.

Spider started in with his bass guitar, the sound deep and melodic. Rich with a twist of grunge. The notes rang clear and slow as V kicked in a few bars later, cutting into me like a knife, the prick of pain in the music personifying
her
.

Elation lit me as I turned to watch her play. There she was, just a simple girl on stage cradling a violin, her music enough to make the hairs on your arms stand up.

She wasn’t leaving. She believed in us. She loved me. I loved her.

We played the song and the audience went nuts. Sometimes in your life you just know things, and my gut knew with certainty that that song would blow up the charts and that tonight wouldn’t be the last time V performed with us on stage.

The song ended, and I took a deep bow, grabbed V’s hand and dashed off stage.

It wasn’t the end of our set, but I had to kiss her. I fused our lips together and everything else faded away.

It was the beginning of a thousand stage exits we’d take together.

THE END

AT THE BRIARCREST Academy five year reunion, a rock star, an heiress, a former Hello Kitty lookalike who did
not
wear pink, an Englishman, a prima donna ballerina, a pre-med student, a sexy genius, a gym owner, and a slew of high society people converged in the gymnasium of the prep school in Highland Park, Texas. It was a virtual kaleidoscope of the rich and famous. Limousines, high-octane sports cars and foreign imports dotted the parking lot. More champagne was consumed that night than at any other reunion, guests would later claim.

It was the party of the year—according to Emma Easton, the organizer and local resident who’d never gone to New York and become an actress, but had instead found herself stuck in her hometown, twenty pounds heavier and married to Matt Dawson, the father of her four children.

When Sebastian Tate strolled in the place with a gorgeous violinist on his arm, she peed herself. Literally. She’d never expected him to be the one who made it big and she berated herself for not being true to him. Her husband had recently given her the clap, and when he showed up to the party with the secretary he was banging, they got into a girl-fight with lots of hair pulling and cheek slapping. Emma left the party early with a ripped dress and a pee stain on the back.

When Sebastian saw Emma for the first time in five years, all he felt was a big fat nothing, except regret that he’d wasted a lot of time and energy thinking about her. In truth, she’d done him a favor. If things had been different and he’d ended up with Emma, he likely would have never left Texas. Her betrayal proved that sometimes bad things can turn into the best things in our lives.

Sebastian and Violet danced most of the night, in between laughing with their friends. Magazines and tabloids everywhere had announced that she’d just signed a movie deal for ten million dollars and he’d agreed to star in it. They’d also come out publicly about their relationship. As far as his love for the spotlight and her tendency to hide, they’d learned to balance each other out. They kept a low profile, and V was collaborating with the Vital Rejects on their next album. One year later that album would win the Vital Rejects two Grammys: Song of the Year for the song Sebastian wrote for Violet and Record of the Year.

They continued their work with the orphanage and would later open another facility where most of the kids came from Sebastian’s old neighborhood. You’d often find the couple hanging out by the pool, stargazing, or playing with their dogs.

Blair left the gala that night thinking she was on top of the world. Apparently blackmailing perfectly nice people and being a bitch seemed to work. Later that week, she’d fallen madly in lust with an eighteen-year-old waiter who worked at Java and Me. They got trashed and drove all night to Vegas where they got married in an Elvis Presley wedding chapel. He divorced her three months later. There was no prenup.

One night she went to the movies and watched Sebastian star in Violet’s movie,
Very Twisted Things
. It moved her so much that she repented of her sins and joined a cult of women who only wore white, shaved their heads, and hung out in airports.

Wilson ended up marrying his sexy neighbor, Mrs. Milano who wore sparkly gold bikinis everywhere she went. Without grandkids of his own, he’d often dog-sit for Violet and Sebastian.

Harry deeply regretted being a sorry agent to Sebastian. Once
Very Twisted Things
hit the big screen it would earn Sebastian an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He wouldn’t win that year, but he did get to pick and choose his roles after that. Music and V, however, always came first.

Geoff went back to New York. He’d loved Violet since he was twenty and losing her to some rock-and-roll dude was depressing. He dated Paris Hilton for a while, but no one stirred his heart. One afternoon while at his Hampton beach house, he saw someone caught in the riptide and dashed out to save her. Turned out she was a bassoonist with the New York Symphony who lived in the Upper East Side and wore cardigans everywhere. It was a match made in Manhattan. They married and lived happily ever after.

Spider and Mila … their story is yet to be told.

The End

This scene was written for
Shh, Mom’s Reading Book Blog
and fans of
Very Bad Things

Leo and Nora and Baby #1

(Takes place before the events in
Very Twisted Things
)