Romantic - Enemies to Lovers - Forbidden Love
•✦───✧✦✧───✦•
In the peacetime following World War II, Jean Ward loses everything and is sent to live with her best friend, Clyde Mayberry, and his brood of brothers on his family's cattle ranch.
For a...
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•✦─Autumn, 1952─✦• Jean, age 14
Jean's chest felt hollowed out when Jory left for college. She no longer looked forward to the long walks to school, and dinnertime wasn't as fun with him not there for her to sneak glimpses of, and she missed the way he made her feel when he would look her way or brush against her by accident.
His absence was just one more thing that had made her first year of high school miserable.
She didn't like high school. It was too big. She felt like a little fish in a big sea, a minnow at the bottom of the food chain. Surrounded by sharks.
The biggest shark of them all was a boy named Melvin Jenkins. He was an ugly boy with a big nose and ears that stuck out like an elephant's, but his parents were well off, so he always had a sizable group of friends who laughed at his jokes and played their roles of making him feel important quite well.
He was a year above Jean and liked to pick on her every chance he got. If he wasn't making fun of the bumps that had sprouted on her forehead over the summer, then jokes were said about her hair, freckles, or the flatness of her chest.
She mostly tried to ignore his insults, but sometimes they would get to her. She'd think about them late at night when she couldn't go to sleep, or when she heard a snicker that she thought was aimed at her or any time she passed by a mirror.
Melvin Jenkins, as ugly as he was, made her feel even uglier.
She never told anyone of his bullying, however. She'd found out as a young girl that she didn't like being pitied, after all.
But on days when his words hit her heart just right and send tears to her eyes, she would briefly think about telling Clyde.
Clyde had grown like a weed over the summer, all tall and muscled like his daddy and brothers. He'd grown handsome, too. Jean hadn't noticed until she heard a huddle of girls talking about him in gym class one day. When she saw him next, she realized that his dark hair and eyes and tanned skin were, in fact, quite handsome.
He was also well-known and revered in their grade, and had a last name that held weight. Everyone knew of Mayberry because of Jory Mayberry—the boy who had put Willis Young High on the map.
He'd been the best quarterback the school had ever seen and had won them nationals two years in a row, earning himself a full ride to any college of his choosing.
People often treated Clyde like royalty because of Jory, just because they shared a last name. Jean had hoped people would do the same to her because of her association, but they never did.
