Bar Red's Redemption (Edited)

1: First Lie - Freshmen Year

Why couldn't he stop himself from feeling those things for her; things she wouldn't ever feel for him? Why did he have to be so fucked up, liking the girl he hurt?

Who the hell does that?

Bar fucking Red, apparently.

"Come on, guys." A couple feet away, an asshole named Wilson Creed that Bar absolutely despised laughed this out to his friends. "I bet you she'll cry."

"No way," Reid, the asshole's friend, snickered. "She's gonna snitch on you."

The reply was confident. "She'll be too hurt for that."

"Don't get caught!" He whisper-yelled, eyes nervously glancing over to where the Coach was standing across the yard, scolding a different group of boys for God knows what. "Just push her as hard as you can and come back here. Thirty seconds max or you don't get the cash."

"Shit dude," Creed laughed out. "I can do it in twenty. Ivory's weak as hell."

They were going to try and hurt his girl?

Who the fuck do they think they are, and why the fuck do they think they can get away with that?

Bar, without giving it much thought, strode directly up to Ivory, getting between her and them. "Ivy, stop playing that damn game and come here."

Ivy. That's what he called her.

It's because you're like poison ivy, he had told her one day, annoying and always where you shouldn't be.

It was a shit nickname and Bar knew she hated it, but if he called her anything else, things that he'd much rather keep a secret would come out. Things he wasn't ready to say. Ones that he was sure would just make her think he was crazy.

Ivory paused what she was doing, looking at Eli—who was glaring at Bar, shocker—with wide eyes before turning to the bully herself, short body looking delicate in her shorts and long sleeve shirt.

Delicate but fully willing to beat his ass if prompted, he knew.

Ivory dished it out as much as he threw it in, she could hold her own; verbally anyways, physically was another thing. The girl was a damn pipsqueak, which is a thing Bar would never dare take advantage of.

That's crossing all kinds of fucked up lines even he wouldn't step a foot over.

If there's one thing in life he refuses to be, it's his father.

"What do you want, Oly?" Her expression was sour and so was her tone, but her eyes lit up as she called him that.

It was her form of revenge, since she was one of the only people that knew his full name and gave him a nickname of her own. She remembered it from Kindergarten, back when he was called Bartholomew and wasn't so picky about who he let receive his affection or give him some themselves.

He was called Bartholomew until he hit second grade and his classmates would snicker out the name, calling him a monster because of his never-brushed hair and too big clothes.

He was then called Tholly until fifth grade and stopped when teachers would sneer it out from the front of the class with a Why don't you just do your work? They didn't know he was too tired to focus in class and refused to ask his father for help on the homework.

Then in sixth, he was called Bar and it stuck. A fitting name for a monster, they all said. Fitting name for the boy who always shows up to class with bruised cheekbones, busted lips, and broken knuckles. Fitting for the boy who fights.

High school hit and then the name Bar started to make people think he was a drunk and he'd get flashes of his father's hand curled around beer bottles every time he heard it.