Hate So Good: A High School Bully Romance (The Hate Series Book 2) by Nina Lincoln (first color ebook reader .txt) 📗

Clutching the picture of Colt and me from prom, I stare at our faces, my heart clenching. Is he still fucking with me?

How stupid am I? I looked into his lying fucking eyes and believed him, after everything he’s done.

Movement catches my eye, and grimly I glance up to find Colt standing at my door. Since Maggie barred him from the hospital, he knows something is up, so he stops at the threshold and looks around the room grimly.

“Finn?” he asks, bringing his gaze to mine.

“Is it true?” I ask harshly.

Flinching at my tone, he asks carefully, “Is what true?”

Bitterly I laugh, dropping the picture of us to the floor and stepping on it as I approach him. “Portia. Sarah. Me. Were we all just a game?”

His face falls, and an icy cold feeling envelops my chest. This is the confirmation I deserve but never wanted to hear.

“Why?” I ask softly.

“We were young and stupid. Boys.”

Snorting, I reach out a shaking hand and say, “Maybe with Portia, but Sarah?”

His face hardens, “She was a fucking bitch. She tried to waltz in and ruin us!”

“Did you know about your dad before she told you?”

Glancing away with a pained expression, he says, “No.”

“Did you do this to her before or after you knew?” I demand.

“Before.”

Turning away, I walk to the window, the same fucking window through which my fan has watched me undress and taken pictures of me. Nothing feels safe, not my room, not this house. Not even the fucking boy I carelessly gave my heart to...again.

“Finn,” he says painfully behind me.

Ignoring his distress, since he clearly never cared about mine, I turn back to him and say, “And me?”

“Finn, I-“

“Just answer the fucking question!”

“We planned it before you ever came,” he says quietly. “But Finn, I was wrong. And I’m so fucking sorry! You are my li-“

“Don’t fucking say it!” I cry, picking up a shoe from the floor and lobbing it at his chest.

He does nothing to stop it, not even a flinch when it glances off him and bounces to the floor.

His pale eyes gleam with pain, but I ignore his inner turmoil.

Fuck him. Fuck all of this.

“Why? Why?” I sob.

Hesitantly he steps forward again, his trembling hand outstretched toward me, but Maggie speaks behind us, and he slumps, dropping his shoulders in defeat.

“You need to go, Colt.”

Turning away, he walks to the door and stops beside Maggie. “What I did was fucking reprehensible, but I didn’t lie, Finn. You are my light, and I love you.”

I choke on a bitter laugh as he walks away with his head cast down, and as soon as he disappears, I crumple.

*****

We’re no closer to a solution about my safety, but I manage to convince Maggie to let me go to school. She’s less than thrilled, but I’ll go insane if I sit here alone. Do I want to face all the dicks? No. But if I’m going to move on, what choice do I have? I need to be normal.

I pull into the lot early, sweaty with fear but grimly determined. I can hardly ask Hayden for a ride, nor fucking Nate and Melissa would be backtracking to bring me here and head to North.

Since I have no desire to speak to a single one of the assholes who targeted me from the start, I hightail it to class and sit at my desk with a sigh.

Pulling out my notes, I prepare for Colt because he’s nothing if not persistent, but when he enters as the bell rings, he doesn’t look my way, not so much as a twitch.

I should be relieved, but I’m fucking devastated as my heart clenches painfully.

The gig is up, and now he doesn’t care anymore. Breathing through the pain, I try to get air in my lungs, but it’s all I can do to take short breaths.

Ignoring the students around me who turn and stare, I bury my face in my hands until the attack eventually subsides.

I hear nothing of the lesson and grimly wonder why I bother coming to school at all. In the past six or so months, I think I’ve learned nothing but how to survive in this brutal environment.

By lunch, I’m numb. I can’t leave the school, it’s what I agreed to with Maggie to come at all, so I hide out in the library and stare into nothing.

After the final class of the day and enduring hours of Colt’s complete ignoring of me, I shuffle to the car grimly.

I don’t see Hayden, which is good, but Nate steps into my path, and my stomach drops.

Of them all, Nate was the last I would have assumed played the game, and it just goes to show how well I know people, which is not at all.

“Hey Finn,” he says with a wide smile.

Apparently, word hasn’t spread to him because he’s still pretending. Clenching my hand into a fist, I eye him grimly, my mouth a flat line, and his brows ride over his head as he looks me over, concerned.

“The game’s over. You lost,” I sneer, stepping around Nate.

“Wait! What are you talking about?”

Spinning to him with cold eyes, I say, “You and your friends are truly evil, you know that?”

His face falls, his eyes turning down with sadness. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh? Then how is it? Do tell.”

“Yes, we fucked up, but Finn, I really like you,” he insists.

“Where have I heard that before?” I ask, rolling my eyes to the sky.

“Yeah, well, Colt’s a dick. It was his idea, you know. Just like old times,” he jeers.

Ignoring the pulse of pain in my chest, I say, “And you went along with it?”

Casting his eyes to the ground, he says, shamefaced, “Yes.”

“Then you’re no better than he is,” I hiss.

“Finn, wait,” he says desperately, grabbing my arm.

“Get your hands off me!”

“Let her go,” Colt says icily behind Nate.

Nate drops my arm and turns to Colt with a sneer, “Ah, here you are. What do you want, dick? Haven’t you done enough?”

Colt’s