Chapter 6: Their Kind

Brie's POV

“Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths.”

It was the only thing I kept reciting to myself. My car was parked outside of the Peak mansion, just as grandiose and obvious as I remembered. If anything, I thought it had gotten worse since I was last here. It was obvious that they liked to flaunt the money they had.

I stood by my notion that rich people were weird.

“You ready?” Vic asked.

She had changed from her school uniform and wore a pair of jeans shorts, a grey band tee, and Converse. Her brown curls remained in a high ponytail, and I was in awe at how every single curl remained unfazed by the California heat.

“Let’s just get this over with,” I signed.

She laughed and got out of the car. I smiled and followed suit. My attire was less cool than hers. Not having enough time to stop home, all I could do was arrive in my athletic tights and t-shirt. I wasn’t in the business of impressing anyone and I was sure that this would be a sh*tshow anyway. My outfit was the last thing on my mind.

“You could’ve just come upstairs and borrowed some clothes,” Vic said as if reading my mind.

She had insisted that I change, but what was the point? Yes, we were invited but I was no fool to think after this one party we would just magically fit in.

“Why? No one here is our type anyway,” I teased.

“You’re right, we’re way out of their leagues,” she signed back.

After the years we’ve had, there was literally no seeing any of them in a better light. We could be cordial and graduate together, but I would never consider any of them a friend let alone more than one.

I wasn’t the most well-versed in the dating world before I got here but I wasn’t socially unaccepted either. Even though the lack of friends was a hurdle I had to overcome, it saved me from wasting it on those who clearly didn’t deserve it.

We approached the steps, and this time the door was already open. There was no waiter to greet us, but the pristine white furniture was the same. What changed, however, was the amount of white furniture. There were more paintings—two obnoxiously white love seats—and a large, white rectangular table in the middle of the floor. The plasma screen TV rested upon the wall like a holy grail. Not another soul was in sight.

What are the odds that tonight of all nights they gave the staff off?

“Stop overanalyzing, I see it in those calculated eyes of yours,” Vic reprimanded.

She was more open-minded to this than I would have imagined. The night she saved me she cursed the whole ride to my house. I thought it had been because she was angry that I ruined her life. That was until she started cursing the Peak name for their negligence and lack of care for anything other than themselves.

After my run-in with the police, I couldn’t agree more.

We continued walking through the house toward the haunting sliding doors. The last time I crossed those, I wasn’t aware of how traumatizing my life would become afterward. I was just a walking cliché, a new girl in town, and a shiny new toy. Everyone knows what happens to new toys…they become old, fast.

Vic slid the doors open and was the first brave soul to walk outside. I followed closely behind like the timid mouse I had somehow become when I moved here.

Dammit Brie, where’s your backbone? Grow a pair, you’re not a baby and Vic isn’t your bodyguard. Stand up for yourself.

Those were the triad of words that I could never seem to listen to. Advice that would always fall on deaf ears when it came to me.

“Oh goodie, you guys made it!”

The sheer shock and joy on Logan’s face took me by surprise as he approached us. The faint line of abs displayed on his chest, the blue and green lines striking through his swim trunks, and his hair wet from the now open pool behind him.

Open. Pool.

How had I not seen it before? Bodies of water are normally my first instinct to look at. It’s yet another fear that I would have to face tonight. One that had slipped my mind in the haze of panic.

“The invitation didn’t say it was a pool party, so I apologize for our lack of dress code,” Vic said.

I hadn’t told her about my swim phobia yet. The only person who knew was—

“Last minute change. Elle convinced me we should take advantage of the beautiful day,” Logan clarified.

F*cking Noelle.

“You two want a drink?” he asked.

He was a polite host. I exchanged a look with Vic before shaking my head no. He raised a brow to Vic who accepted.

“I’ll be right back,” Vic whispered.

I simply nodded. I didn’t want her to leave me, standing there like a sitting duck while Noelle was still here, but if she didn’t see me then she wouldn’t know I was here.

The eyes, however, pinned me in my place and kept me rooted in my spot. Everyone looked, everyone wondered, and I hated it. Why couldn’t they just act like I wasn’t there? I wasn’t a sideshow attraction trying to gather everyone’s attention.

I took a step back and then another. My foot went to take one more, hoping that eventually the shade and shadows would envelop me, but the warmth touching my back proved to be neither. I swung around, my eyes coming face to face with haunting green ones.

I froze. I hadn’t seen those eyes since the gym, but somehow before registering the rest of his features, I knew who they belonged to.

“We meet again,” the anonymous man smiled.

If smiles could take souls, then mine would have left my body and followed his. It was years' worth of money invested in those perfectly straight and, like the living room of the Peak house, obnoxiously white teeth. Either he came from money, or he was blessed with some impeccable genes. Could be both.

“Still haven’t earned your name yet?” he asked.

I wanted to speak, wanting to tell him that I didn’t talk to strangers. Hell, maybe I even wanted to flirt back but I couldn’t. My brain had stopped functioning once again and I couldn’t regain control no matter how hard I tried.

“Lynx, there you are.”

There it was the voice that kickstarted my overdrive and forced me to take a step away from him. Noelle.

“Please don’t be him, please don’t be him, please don’t be him,” I silently chanted in my head.

Noelle appeared out of the corner of the house; her bright pink bathing suit two sizes too small for her already petite figure. She had a smile on her face—one that I hadn’t seen before. If I didn’t think she was the devil incarnate then it could’ve been described as happiness—genuine happiness.

She handed a cooler to the anonymous man. Lynx was his name.

I took another step away from them. Where was Vic? Why wasn’t she back yet?

I felt my heart rate spiking. The walls around me were closing in and I couldn’t escape fast enough.

He was friends with her. He knew her. He accepted a drink from her.

He was just another wolf in sheep’s clothing.

He was another one of them.