Pirate girls hellbent bo.., p.1
Pirate Girls (Hellbent Book 2), page 1
Copyright © 2024 Penelope Douglas
Cover Design © 2024 Hang Le
Formatting & Proofreading by Allusion Publishing
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Also by Penelope Douglas
Playlist
Author's Note
Map of Shelburne Falls
Family Tree
Epigraph
Dedication
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
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Sneak Peek
Quiet Ones
Main Cast of Characters
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Stand-Alones
Misconduct
Punk 57
Birthday Girl
Credence
Tryst Six Venom
The Devil’s Night Series
Corrupt
Hideaway
Kill Switch
Conclave
Nightfall
Fire Night
The Fall Away Series
Bully
Until You
Rival
Falling Away
Aflame
Adrenaline
Next to Never
The Hellbent Series
(Fall Away Spin-Off/in progress)
Falls Boys
Pirate Girls
Quiet Ones
Night Thieves
Parade Alley
Fire Falls
On Spotify
“Beneath the Serene” by Mercury’s Antennae
“BORN DARK” by Holy Wars
“Caterwaul” by …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
“Deadly Valentine” by Charlotte Gainsbourg
“debbie downer” by LØLØ, Maggie Lindemann
“(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Pierce The Veil
“driver’s license” by Olivia Rodrigo
“Gravedigger” by MXMS
“HONEY” by LUNA AURA
“Jealous Sea” by MEG MYERS
“Keep the Streets Empty for Me” by Fever Ray
“Luci” by ZAND
“Magic” by Olivia Newton-John
“Movies” by Weyes Blood
“Seize the Power” by YONAKA
“Slip To The Void” by Alter Bridge
“The Collapse” by Adelita’s Way
“Victim” by Halflives
“you broke me first” by Tate McRae
In addition to playlists, all of my stories come with Pinterest mood boards.
Please enjoy PIRATE GIRLS’s board as you read!
The Hellbent Series is a spin-off of the Fall Away Series. These are the kids’ stories.
Reading Fall Away is helpful but not necessary. The parents do appear a lot, as well as references to their past storylines, so if you wish to read those first, the order is BULLY, UNTIL YOU, RIVAL, FALLING AWAY, AFLAME, and NEXT TO NEVER.
FALLS BOYS (Hellbent #1) is strongly encouraged before you read PIRATE GIRLS. There is an ongoing mystery playing out in the background. I do try to bring you up to speed in this story, but you’ll have the best experience reading FALLS BOYS first. Just a warning.
And if you’d love to read all the times the characters in this series appeared before this series started, go here-> https://pendouglas.com/2022/02/28/get-ready-for-hellbent/
Again, none of this is necessary, but if you’d like to experience the whole world, BULLY is where you can start. Enjoy!
Please click the link for a map of Shelburne Falls.
Please click the link for a family tree.
“You have to fight twice—once against your fear and once against your enemy.”
― Carolyn Keene,
Captive Witness (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #64)
To Aunt Carol, who read Bully
and asked, “Where the hell are their parents?”
They’re now the parents!
Dylan
I lock eyes on Aro, willing her not to say it.
“You’re half an hour late,” she tells me.
Yeah, duh.
I cross the parking lot, speed-walking up to her as she waits near one of our school’s rear entrances. The lights from the football stadium brighten the night sky off to my right, and an announcer’s voice booms so loudly I can’t make out what he’s saying. But the crowd cheers anyway. I swipe my hand under my chin, wiping off the mud, and tuck my keys in the pocket of my filthy motorcycle jacket.
My cousin’s girlfriend lowers her voice as I approach the door. “Your dad thinks I went to get you,” she says.
I pull out a metal nail file, Aro moving to the side as I grab the door handle and start working the lock. I need to clean up before my parents come out of the stadium. I have a change of clothes in my gym locker. If my dad sees the dirt all over me…
I glance at her. “You didn’t tell him where I was, did you?”
She hoods her brown eyes and locks her jaw, and I realize I’ve insulted her. She wouldn’t rat me out. It’s code.
“Good.” I nod and continue working. “Just don’t say anything if he asks.”
“He’s going to know,” she fires back. “If I don’t respond, it’s because I don’t want to lie, and he knows that.”
I jiggle the nail file and then twist. “Well, you can lie...”
It’s always an option, of course. He can’t ground her.
I guess he can try to force my uncle Jax—his brother—to ground her, since she and her two siblings live with him and his wife next door to us. But Jax won’t do that. Aro stopped being a child long before she should have, and Jax understands that better than most.
I grip the tool, twisting and jiggling some more, but then I feel the heat of her stare.
I look over, meeting very different eyes this time. Darker.
I shake my head, completely fed up with myself. She loves her life here. My dad is her boss. She lives in his brother’s house. She dates my cousin, Hawke. She goes to school with me. Her brother and sister are thriving in our community...
I’m asking her to disrespect all of that.
“That wasn’t okay.” I pause. “I’m sorry.”
Her left eyebrow arches, and she holds out for a moment more before finally giving in. “It’s fine.” She sighs. “Last year I was kicking your ass. This year, I’m the only one you tell all of your secrets.”
Kicking my ass…what?
She smiles smugly. “You’re so lucky to have me, aren’t you?”
I am. I adore her.
But she did not kick my ass…
I jam and jiggle the tool in my hand, trying to muscle it.
If we hadn’t been pulled off each other during that fight…
The thin edge of the nail file cuts into my hand as I try to pry the lock.
Nearly all of my cousins are guys. I know how to wrestle, thank you.
But then…the file snaps in two, half of it still lodged in the lock.
I dart my eyes over to Aro, a groan expelling from my lungs as my shoulders slump.
She rolls her eyes and moves in. “Seriously, get out of the way.”
I step off to the side and watch her pull out her key ring full of carefully hidden little tools from her misspent youth. Digging my broken nail file out of the lock, she inserts a small tension wrench. Holding it with one hand, she finds another little thingy and slides that into the doorknob.
I’m glad I asked her to meet me here. She’s taught me how to do this three times, but I still struggle. I should’ve just gone home to clean up, but Rivalry Week starts tonight. I need to be here.
Her eyes flash to my hand. “You’re bleeding.”
I look down, seeing blood spread over the long bone of my index finger.
I graze my chin again and hold my hand up, seeing a few thin crimson lines. Yeah, that wasn’t mud I felt before. It’s going to be hard to hide that.
She works the lock, and I can tell she’s biting her tongue. She knows I fell off my bike, while I was training illegally and without permission tonight, and that my face is bleeding, because I took off my helmet while I was racing.
“What happens if you get injured and you’re all alone out there?” she asks.
I check my phone, seeing two missed calls from my dad. I tuck it back into my po
“And what happened with the first person to make me feel like I was never going to be alone again?” she asks, meaning my cousin, Hawke. “I straddled him.”
I pinch my eyebrows together. “Ugh.”
“In your old car…” she taunts, and I hear a click.
“Christ.” I growl under my breath. “Move.”
I shove her out of the way and pull out her key chain, tossing it back at her and opening the door.
Hawke is a year older than me, so he’s been alive every single moment of my life. I knew him before he noticed girls at all. Before he had muscles.
I don’t care to hear about him doing things that will give me unwelcome mental images. But as my friend, she wants to talk to me about her boyfriend sometimes, and it’s ew-y.
I enter the empty school, the hallway dark and quiet, and she follows me in, slamming the door. The music and cheers pounding from the stadium seep in, but only as a distant thrum as light from the moon and the football field spill through the overhead windows.
I start walking, Aro’s unusually calm voice falling in behind me. “And I don’t look at facing people with guns as something that was smart,” she reminds me. “I did what I had to do, you know?”
I throw her a soft smile. I know.
She came from Weston, the dark and dilapidated mill town across the river where all the area’s young criminals live, because police don’t go there. It sits less than ten miles away, but it’s another world from Shelburne Falls. Their newest building is from the turn of the century—the one before last, I mean—and you’d be lucky to find two working street lamps in a row.
But even if she grew up with the advantages I’ve had, she still wouldn’t appreciate people telling her she can’t have what she wants.
“And I have to do this,” I explain.
I have to train, even if it’s on my own. This town thinks they know who I am, because they know who my parents are, but no one really wants me to be me. They don’t see me. They see a Trent.
We walk, and I pull off my jacket and boots, leaving a mud trail down the hallway.
I gesture to room fifty-eight as we pass. “That’s the room where my mom cried and told my dad in front of the whole class how much she missed him…”
Aro’s heard all the stories from when me and my cousins’ parents went to school here.
We keep going. “And that’s the lunchroom where Uncle Madoc asked her to prom,” I chirp, walking by the windows of the newly renovated cafeteria.
We arrive at the gym, and I wave my hand to the door on the right. “And that’s the locker room where my dad punched him afterward.”
And then I stop, turning and jerking my chin at the locker with the number 1622 on it, sitting in full view of everyone who passes by. “And that’s the locker where the cell phone was found.”
It sits, along with two others, in a display case with trophies, championship banners, old photos, swim ribbons, newspaper clippings of successful alumni (including, not only my parents, but Madoc, the Mayor, and Aunt Juliet, the novelist), and some vintage clothing items. The exhibit spans nearly twelve feet down the long wall.
I stare at the chipped yellow lockers, number one-six-two-two on the left.
“How do you know that’s the one?” she asks.
I don’t blink, and I don’t look at her. “Hawke hacked some old school records when I asked.”
The metal corners are rusted where the paint has worn away, and dents and scratches are scattered across every square inch from the vents to below the handle.
More than twenty years ago, my parents lifted that handle to discover my dad’s stolen cell phone that Nate Dietrich used to make my mother believe my dad had posted a video of them having sex.
That was the locker of his partner in crime, Piper Burke, and it didn’t register with the administration when they decided to install new ones last year and save a few of the old for a nostalgic showcasing of the school’s history, but it did with my step-cousin, Kade. He didn’t want this locker trashed, so he made sure it was one of the artifacts preserved in this long glass case I have to walk past several times every day.
A lot of people saw that video all those years ago, and they had kids who are here now. It hasn’t been forgotten, and while no one would dare say a word to my parents, the secret that’s not really a secret still slowly fills any space I walk into like a ship filling with water.
I doubt Kade thought of that, though. All he cares about is that Nate and Piper had a kid, and that kid just started high school here this year. The sins of the father and all that…
And I know the video wasn’t my parents’ fault, but their shadow falls everywhere.
I glance at Aro and then walk over, pushing open the women’s locker room door. “This entire town revolves around my family, this school orbiting them the most.” I drop my jacket on a bench and kick off my boots. “My father thinks I’ll be a target as a motorbike racer. Not just because I’m a girl, but also because I’m his daughter. He doesn’t want me to be taunted like I still am at this school from time to time over my parents’ bullshit back in the day.”
Make no mistake. My dad knows and regrets the reputation he made for himself when he was my age.
But his mistake is thinking it’s my burden to bear.
I turn to her, whipping off my shirt and opening my jeans. “You know why my dad thinks it’s my responsibility to lay low and not invite scrutiny because I already get so much for his life?” I ask her. “Because I’m a girl.” I turn away and head for the showers in my bra and underwear, grabbing a towel off the rack. “When the time comes, he won’t tell my brother he can’t race motorcycles if he wants to.”
He’d love for James to share his interests, but I’m the one who needs to be shielded.
Whipping open the shower curtain, I step inside and start the water. I hold my hand under, checking the temperature as I hang my towel on a hook.
Aro leans in, pressing both hands on each side of the stall. “I’m going to tell you a secret.”
I cast my eyes up to her.
“Parents have far less control than you think they do, Dylan.” She smiles a little. “There’s a limit to how much and how hard they’ll fight you before they just give up. If that’s what you want.”
No. I don’t want them to give up. That’s not…
But she pulls the curtain closed and leaves me to clean up.
I tear off the rest of my clothes, hearing the locker room door echo shut as she leaves. I pull my hair out of my ponytail, wetting it under the spray.
She’s right. I know she is. I learned a long time ago that my parents would fold pretty easily on a lot of things with just a little resistance from me.
My father does not want me racing motorcycles, though. It’s the one hill he won’t descend.
I smooth my hand over the top of my head, seeing mud drip off my body, down to a pool around my feet as I quickly wash and shampoo.
However, I don’t want to go as far as Aro’s telling me I can.
Yeah, I can race, and he’ll scream or try to put me behind lock and key, but eventually I’ll find a way around him until he just gives up, both of us destroying our relationship—the respect and the trust—in all of the turmoil. I’ll tear my house apart, distress my mom and my brother… I don’t want my dad to just give in.
I want him to train me.
My head pounds, and I growl under my breath, shaking off all the noise in my brain.
I slam down the lever, shutting off the water, and grab my towel. I wrap it around me and exit the stall, finding clean clothes from the gym locker that I share with Aro.
The dull vibration of the music outside stops, but the walls are too thick to hear if an announcer is speaking or if the crowd is cheering.
I glance at the clock high to my left. Eight-nineteen.
We have to be there by nine.
I pull on the change of clothes, some clean sneakers, and my black varsity jacket that I love, because it has orange and black stripes around the cuffs and around the trim at the waist and collar. They’re our school colors and no one else has this jacket. I scored it at a thrift shop when I was ten, and I’ve saved it all this time, waiting to fit into it.
Sticking my keys in my pocket and my phone in the back of my jeans, I brush out my hair and swipe it up into a ponytail. Wrapping my muddy gear in a towel, I stuff the bundle in my locker—which Aro won’t appreciate when she opens it for gym class in the morning, but I can’t risk my dad seeing it.
