Tricked Steel: A Friends To Lovers Standalone Romance Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by MJ Fields

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Jersey Girl Designs

  Edited by C&D Editing

  Proofread by Julie Deaton

  Photographer: Miguel Anxo

  Model: Sergio Carvaja

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Prologue

  Seashore Academy

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Also by MJ Fields

  About the Author

  Thank you

  Synopsis

  Patrick Steel

  They call him Tricks.

  To me, he was the first man I ever felt I could trust.

  He annihilated all the stereotypes about men rooted in me, even when he so easily fit the mold.

  He wasn’t my type, not at all.

  I hated men …

  In my last life, anyway.

  Savvy Sutton

  I call her Savanah.

  It isn’t her name, but it made total sense.

  She didn’t know who she was, yet she held on to the lies she so desperately wanted to believe in, to save a part of herself.

  She tried to fight her attraction for me, and I made damn sure that didn’t happen.

  Then … she tricked me.

  Sometimes, the greatest love stories grow from lies.

  Prologue

  “I am not free while any woman is unfree,

  even when her shackles

  are very different from my own.”

  ~ Audre Lorde

  Savvy

  Sitting in the principal’s office, located inside the high school wing of Seashore Academy, I already feel like I’m trapped within the strong hold of societal norms. Within only moments, I will be sucked into the system known and accepted by those programmed by a patriarchal society and main stream media, to believe is the only way to become a valued member of the human race.

  The walls are figuratively closing in on me as my mother’s partner, Liberty Smith, demands that they waive the rules of admissions by giving me every standardized test in his arsenal that would deem me worthy of this place. Tests that she and my mother have slammed as blatant misrepresentations of intelligence, created by mediocre minds, not geniuses or intellects.

  I’ve been taught my entire life that schools like this were created to aid in not only the dumbing down of society but to crush our individual ability to find our true passion, our purpose. Institutions that feed young minds only the things in which “the man” wants us to learn as they spoon feed information to spit out when it’s requested of those taking it in on demand.

  I was taught that institutionalized learning was the “Roundup” in the garden of growth; the poisoning of free thinkers by the upper five percent, through a robotic style of teaching and learning experiences.

  In what should have been my freshman year, we had lived in the same place for enough time that I became curious about institutionalized learning. So curious that I told my mom and Liberty that I wanted to experience it firsthand.

  “Free minds don’t have to be taught to learn. You’re learning in spite of a classroom, not because of one,” my mother had said, as if those words were magic, or a secret that only a girl as unique as me, one without rules, one forever free, could understand.

  At the time, those magic words, that secret that was supposed to make me feel like something special, did the opposite. I didn’t feel nearly as free as I looked out the window, as the girls and boys walking by our rented trailer, to and from the bus stop, appeared. It felt a lot like bullshit.

  Also bullshit was that Mom and Liberty stopped wanting to travel. Then they stopped wanting to go for hikes. Then they stopped wanting to check out the community garden that I had started in our little mobile home park. A garden we had planted for us and our new “friends.”

  Then the garden died, and—

  “Savvy, could you give us a minute?”

  Liberty’s voice pulls me back to the here and now, and I look up from the gold-framed nameplate.

  “That won’t be necessary, Ms. Smith,” Whitaker, the principal, says, still standing, because he hasn’t sat down once since Liberty bullied her way into his office.

  “Savvy,” she says sternly, a once foreign tone that I’m now getting used to.

  I stand and walk out of the office, not saying a word. And I don’t stop beyond Whitaker’s heavy office door, needing to get the hell out of this place. I continue, pushing past doors until I’m out of the office. Then, down the empty halls never traveled until today, I find the exit, as if being led to it. Heart beating faster, a thin sheen of perspiration dampening my palms, I use them to push open the intimidating front double doors, inhaling the fresh air as deeply as I can. The autumn wind blows, almost as if knowing I need more than the breath I desperately took.

  I continue down the stone stairs as another gust of wind blows leaves in an angry swirl of oranges and reds, fighting the inevitability—that they will soon turn a brittle brown, and then to dust.

  It’s not long, definitely not long enough, when Liberty finds me out by the light blue and white, 2013, last edition Volkswagen Bus that Mom bought instead of rings for their commitment ceremony months ago, years after they became a couple.

  It seems like another lifetime passing … again.

  Seashore Academy

  Junior Year

  Chapter 1

  “Nothing in life is to be feared,

  it is only to be understood.

  Now is the time to understand more,

  so that we may fear less.”

  ~ Marie Curie

  Savvy

  Staying on campus alone, in my Seashore Academy dorm over Thanksgiving break, is yet another one of my new realities, which I have made a conscious decision to call a “tradition.” A tradition that has been metaphorically pissed on by my roommate’s, Chloe, choice to stay here for break instead of going home like she has in the past.

  I get it. It’s her reality, as her situation has changed. Her mother is now working a second job, so she would only see her for a couple of hours after her five-hour drive. That seems like the opportunity of a lifetime to me, but still, I get it. I understand that, if she went to see her mom, she would be expected to see her dad, too, and the idea of hanging out with him, his new girlfriend, and her kids at their new “love nest,” as Chloe calls it, is “not happening.”

  I totally get that she’s pissed. He leaves her
mom with all the bills, including the house and a mortgage once paid for with two incomes. He’s now living his best life, without responsibilities, while she’s working two jobs to keep the house that Chloe and she are so attached to. I get it. It’s not unusual. In fact, it seems like yet another confirmation that my mom was right; that societal norms are way out of whack. We are all basically bitches to “the man.”

  I get it fucking all, but I don’t like it.

  Reality? The house that they feel anchors them is more like a shackle attached to the ball and chain, keeping them in a place where neither of them truly have time to enjoy. Hell, they can’t even see that it’s taken away their chance to begin again and is slowly killing their spirits.

  Case in point: Chloe has been in her bed since school let out yesterday, and what has she been doing? She’s been glued to TikTok, Snapchat, IG, and YouTube. She’s not alone. She and most of my peers get sucked into that hole and come out of a Sway House, or Hype House, with dilated pupils and a lady boner, believing that someday one of those guys will fall in insta-love with one of them, and they will be “internet famous” and live a “carefree life,” on screens across the world.

  I mean, good on you if that’s what you want, but is it? Is it really?

  Because ten minutes later, you’re on IG, hearting all the women empowerment posts about misogynistic men, then an ad pops up to help support a project to save the turtles, by buying a reusable straw, and you’re now off to show your support by buying a twenty dollar straw to use in your thirty dollar travel mug when you drink your ten dollar coffee.

  Fuck. That.

  I don’t want to be that girl. I fight it every chance I get. I’m sure someday they’ll realize they don’t either, but fuck if they don’t believe it now. And then … squirrel! Some other notification pops up and grabs their attention.

  Hands down, the worst app here, The Seashore Sound. It’s run by the elite to throw their privilege in the faces of the lesser privileged, to talk about some party they’re missing, and then the “why, oh why, don’t they invite me?” moans echo through the halls, where many of its residents are here on scholarship.

  I’ve sworn off The Sound app. I just can’t stomach knowing this is where I was dumped by people who wanted me to “live free.” But I’ve found peace with that by way of freeing yoga, freeing meditation, or heading across the quad to find my non-pharmaceutical anxiety med, rolled in a fifty cent Zig Zag or smoked out of a reusable pipe.

  With my “pharmacist” having gone home for Thanksgiving, and my roommate complaining nonstop, my Zen might as well be on the moon. And if that isn’t bad enough, I’m now stuck with all the girls who stayed back because what is basically a real-life reality show to them has moved to town …

  The Steel families—yes, plural—seem to be the talk of the school, so to speak. Apparently, they are not only extremely wealthy, and evidently hot “AF,” but they are “connected” socially.

  Yes, I have eyes—they are appealing—but I also have the depth ingrained in me from my last lifetime where I spent countless hours digging in the dirt, and to me, that is true beauty, not six-foot-plus of male testosterone. These fools have obviously been fed their steroids via silver spoons and probably never known struggle. They’ll fit in a lot better than I did when I first came here. So, yes, all eyes are glued to where hashtag Steel Crew will be next.

  Apparently, there are a few girls in the family, too, but it’s the guys whose names fill the female dorms. And, seriously, let’s be honest; it’s Patrick Steel, or “Tricks,” who leads the charge on the social media posts that have put all the girls around here in heat.

  I can’t even count the times the squeals of nearly adult women sound off like a sinful choir when “Tricks” does a duet—whatever the hell that is.

  I thought I was gaining headway with some of the more “woke” here, but why try to educate them on “the man” when they all would rather be on the man. They’ll see when they’re ready, I remind myself as I grab my work tee and pull it over my head. If I don’t continually remind myself, I’ll forget that these women are still growing and becoming. They are our future, and all our futures depend on them.

  When another screech nearly gives me a heart attack, it pisses me off that, a week ago, I had twenty girls in the common area, listening to me and agreeing with what we females needed to do to become stronger so that, together, we can ensure in years to come that we still have the ability to make choices for ourselves. Whether we came from money or are here at the Ivy League of high schools, the ultimate privilege, or on scholarship, we seriously need to think more for ourselves than future baby factories or repositories for seminal fluids. We need to use this privilege for the betterment of sisterhood.

  I thought I had made headway … until the Steels moved to Mantoloking.

  What can my voice do against them? How can I still be heard against the coveted frat boy lifestyles that my peers all seem ravenous about? They are straight-up in competition with each other for who gets them in bed first. A ten-dollar pool, for fuck’s sake! I wonder if they know how many reusable straws that pot of cash could buy … fucking feminists, my ass.

  Grabbing my bag, my phone that I only use for emergencies, and my keys, I walk to the door to head to work.

  Chloe holds out her phone. “Come on, Savvy; it’s Tricks and his hot daddy. You have to see them do Renegade.”

  “Hard pass on that. You enjoy,” I tell her as I open the door.

  “Bring me back a burrito?”

  I force a smile. “Of course.”

  * * *

  My plan for break was to work my shift tonight, bring back an entire bag of our infamous “garbage burritos” and a few of my own design—tortilla chips and guacamole—eat the shit out of them while binge-reading all the books Liberty left in the VW when she ditched me while I was taking those stupid fucking tests, and fall asleep to some Joplin.

  Thanksgiving was supposed to be spent working my morning shift, consuming copious amounts of caffeine, and hiking all day to clear my mind. Then come back, shower, down a gallon of water, throw on the most comfortable old man flannel pjs and fuzzy socks that I could find, and fall asleep with my face in whatever book I had fallen asleep to, only to be woken up by a full bladder at least two times, then fall back to sleep, ignoring the fact that my stomach is screaming at me to put something in it. Thanksgiving was the first holiday I spent basically orphaned, and fasting is also part of my tradition/reality.

  Friday morning, I would go to work, eat a big breakfast at said work, then hit the thrift stores Black Friday deals to update my wardrobe. Then I’d spend the rest of the daylight hours at the lake, a-fucking-lone.

  The boys, dealers, friends would be back by Saturday night, and I would definitely be partaking in some herbal and holistic antianxiety therapy.

  Bottom line, this time of year, I need a break from the reality cast upon me a few years ago. And by cast upon me, I actually mean I was tossed from the literal road of freedom into one of the most toxic poisons of a patriarchal society—institutionalized learning and dorm life, which, one alone would cause high amounts of stress, but mixed together, they create the perfect recipe for disaster. I’ve witnessed three years of it. Some lose their damn minds and get tossed on meds, labeled, but more often, they’re are bullied to become the smorgasbord of societal norms, becoming its constant connoisseur and submitting to its unrelenting appeal. But for a girl like me, so grounded and knowledgeable about one’s self—insert eye roll—it’s just a little bit overstimulating, thus the need for some alone time.

  I’m handling it, while still attempting to keep a very important piece of who I am burning inside of me as I continue to try to figure out how to forge and maintain real friendships in a place where most of the people actually think their way of living is civilized and those outside the walls of their ivory towers are animalistic. I know many don’t get it—they’ve never lived it—but their reality is no more realistic than the sh
it we’re inundated with on television and social media to sway the masses. Yet, without a break, it’s overwhelming and still could easily spark anxiety inside of me, threatening to burn everything I’ve had to work for to ashes like a forest fire. So, self-maintenance and balance is a must.

  Unlike the whispered names they used to call me behind my back, I have adjusted. Yet, I still need to find my center again on occasion, and there was no way in hell to do that amongst teenagers full of their angst and raging hormones with not a care in the world behind the screen and what they see, and hiding with the flipped screen of the selfies they shamelessly filter and share, further feeding into the skewed sense that the real world is just like those stupid reality shows that so many manage their lives around, believing that’s how life should look.

  I’m not a hundred percent sure if I connect more with earlier women’s rights activists, my heroes, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Ida B. Wells, Frances E.W. Harper, and Mary Church Terrell, who paved the way for women in the feminist movement in the 70s, or women who started the feminist movement and continue to strengthen it. Regardless, by the time I walk out these doors, I’m sure I’ll know. Why else would they leave me here?

  * * *