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

became such for the sole purpose of torturing the shit out of us. Not a bad plan if you’re them.

“Yesterday, you learned about survival. Today you get to test your mettle. We’re going to drop you in groups at different spots up the road with a bag of supplies. It’s up to you to find your way back.”

Bewildered, I glance around. I thought this was the last part of our trip? Why are we doing it now? Don’t we need like more instructions or something?

Before I can ask the question, we’re rounded up into our groups from yesterday, handed the bag of supplies, and ordered into the bus. Colt’s silent behind me as I drop into my seat heavily and stare out the window, ignoring everyone while I sulk.

When we’re all settled, the bus pulls away, and as we pass by the entrance, I spy a police car stopped behind the last bus, two teachers stepping forward to greet the trooper who emerges.

At the sight, icy dread slides down my spine, but I don’t mention what I saw because every single one of these jerks refuses to believe me, and I’m uninterested in another go-round of disbelief and skeptical stares.

Five miles up the road, the bus pulls into the first drop off and four groups of students are called forward, exiting into the lot with their allotted bag of supplies.

From my viewpoint by the window, I mutter sourly, “Is this even legal?”

Colt clasps my hand in his, and I turn, giving him a small smile, and when his eyes light up at my look, I ease a little in my anger.

Everything about this is too close to my experience with my dad. He never could handle disappointment well, and on the last camping trip we had together, he ruined it for me forever.

I’ll never forget walking through the forest, annoyed and hurt at first, crying like a baby when he got angry and left me. And after a couple of hours, I seethed, wandering in what felt like circles, but by the end, I was terrified, convinced he had brought me out there and left me to die.

When I finally found our camp, by luck, I swear, he sat by the fire, gazing into the flames casually. He wasn’t even out there looking! I sat beside him and refused to say a word, and we left the next morning. I’ve never been back.

Truthfully, it hurt me and opened a cavern of distrust and pain I still feel to this day, but I’d like to think he knew where I was the whole time. Maybe not, but I can feel the anxiety building in the tight feeling in my chest.

Nothing good can come from this. It feels perilous. We’re fucking high school students from the inner city, and they promised to show us more survival shit. Something isn’t adding up.

Or maybe, I’m just paranoid. Fuck.

The bus pulls up to another clearing, and we stand, noting we’re the last to be dropped off and the only group now. Ms. Klein of the snarky look the night before informs us we are to find our way back in the next three hours or so. Sure.

“Don’t worry,” a teacher with a smarmy smile and large gap between her teeth says, giving Colt a broad smile, “there’s a GPS in your compass.”

Fantastic. Sourly, I step off the bus and stare into the forest. This is so much shit I don’t know where to start. I should’ve claimed mono or some shit like Melissa. She’s probably sitting back and laughing at us all right now.

Grimly, I stand next to the others at the edge of the concrete as we watch the bus pull away. To my right is a low squat building where the restrooms reside, with a large map just past it, the blue and red lines marking the trails nothing more than tiny squiggles from here.

Dirk’s the first to speak into the silence as we all stand around glumly. “Maybe we should just follow the road.”

“It’s twice as long,” Hayden grunts, turning toward the trees. “C’mon, it can't be that bad. Let’s just follow the damn compass south. It should be a straight shot from here.”

The trees are so thick here that we’re forced to follow Dirk in a single line as he leads the way holding the compass aloft. We’re all so quiet - I can hear the guy’s as they breathe heavily, well that and the natural sounds of the native creatures around us.

Thoughts of which bring to mind the dying animal from the other night, and I’m annoyed once again. We’re not fucking survivalists, and I’m pretty sure even badass Hayden can’t take on a fucking bear if we happen upon one.

Colt steps up with the guys, and they murmur in low tones about sports or some shit while I glance around warily and grimly acknowledge I have terrible luck, so if anyone will run across a wild animal, it's gonna be me. With that in mind, I scurry closer to them and trudge along mulishly.

I can’t help but to psychoanalyze how this can go wrong as we do, which does nothing for my mood. Hell, I’m even annoyed that the guys are in good spirits while I brood behind them.

After about an hour of listening to them debate the merits of the greatest quarterback of all time, I intervene, annoyed, “Stop being a bunch of douchebags. We all know it's Joe Montana…”

Silence surrounds me as the guys look at each other wide-eyed, and then Colt looks at me out of the corner of his eye and adjusts his dick in his pants with a wink.

Rolling my eyes, I smile, heat surging through me despite his joke.

“Oh, Sweetie, if you ever choose to lose this dick…” Dirk jokes, to which Colt slaps him in the back of the head.

“Hey, dick,” Dirk exclaims before they break out in a playful scuffle.

The afternoon progresses along the same lines, and we make good time