Tough Shit (Rejects Paradise 1)

“Oh, so now I’m a kid? Fucking perfect. I wasn’t so much of a kid when you were wanting to fuck.”

“Don’t you bring that into this bullshit. You’re coming home. I won’t allow you to stay there.”

My eyes bug out of my head. “Allow me? You’re not my fucking father, Nic. You’re not even my boyfriend. I’m staying there and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Over my dead body,” he spits.

“Stop the fucking car, I’m getting out.” He rolls his eyes and the rage builds up within me. “You lost the right to tell me what to do. You need to back off, Nic. I love you but right now, you’re being an impossible jerk. I can’t handle your bullshit. I’m not going back to Breakers Flats. For now, Bellevue Springs is my home and I’ll deal with the bullshit that comes along with that on my own terms.”

“That’s fucking bullshit, Ocean.”

“I don’t care what you think it is, but I’m not throwing away my chance for a proper future just so you can feel better about yourself and play the part of a top-dog alpha. I won’t do it, and you shouldn’t even ask.”

His hand slams down on the steering wheel again. “You’re so fucking infuriating.”

“Try dealing with you on a daily basis.”

Nic rolls his eyes and starts muttering under his breath the same way his mom does when she’s pissed but nonetheless, he drives me back to Bellevue Springs. We sit in silence and it’s awful. I hate leaving things like this with Nic but by the time he pulls up in front of the massive mansion, there’s resentment bubbling within me.

The car comes to a stop and we sit there, neither of us wanting to leave it like that but both far too stubborn to be the first to make it better. “I know what happened at school on Monday,” he says. “And I know about Charlie.”

Fuck.

Nic scoffs seeing the look on my face. “You have five hundred horny teenagers at your school. Finding out what’s going on with you wasn’t that hard.”

I look out the window, refusing to meet his eyes. “It was handled.”

“Handled?” he spits. “By who? How?”

“I …” I cut myself off, thinking over the week and realizing that I don’t exactly know how it was handled. On Tuesday morning, Jude didn’t show up for school and then again on Wednesday. The same thing happened until the end of the week and I just assumed it was handled just as they promised. “The boys fixed it.”

“The boys?” he laughs. “The same guys who kept quiet about him raping that poor girl? The same boys who’ve allowed him to come at you time and time again? The same fucking boys who treat you like trash? Call you fucking trash?”

“I … I … I don’t know, okay. They said they were going to handle it and then he was gone. So yeah, they did handle it.”

“No, Ocean. I fucking handled it. Your fucking precious boys let him get away with it. They walked out of there and left that fucker breathing. I. Handled. It.”

My eyes bug out of my head as I suck in a sharp gasp. “You killed him?”

“No,” he snaps, “But I fucking should have. Unfortunately, the fucker is going to live.”

“Nic …”

“No,” he says, cutting me off. “Just go. Go be with your new crew in your big fucking house with your fancy fucking cars and expensive school.” He looks away as a tear rolls down my cheek. “You’ve changed, Ocean. I don’t even know who you are right now.”

Nic kicks over the engine cutting our conversation short, and with nothing else to say, I push open the car door and get out before watching as Nic disappears up the long driveway, leaving my heart an absolute mess.

Chapter 28

The weekend passes uneventfully and then Monday quickly turns into Thursday. I’ve never had such a bad week here. Nothing has even happened. Colton has left me alone, there’s still no sign of Jude, and Milo has kept me smiling, yet the heaviness in my heart from leaving things so shitty with Nic has killed me. Hell, I think I’d prefer having the whole school groping me than having to deal with this.

I make my way down to the parking lot after another painful day and lean against the passenger’s side door of Milo’s Aston Martin as I watch the students filtering out of school.

I hate it here but the fact that I’ve chosen to stay tells me that Nic was right. I have changed, or at least, maybe I’m changing. Right now, I can’t work out if that’s a bad thing or a good thing. All I know is that he shouldn’t be pissed at me for wanting more out of life.

I see Milo walking out of the front gates and a smile pulls at my lips until I really take him in. He’s walking out of the school like his ass is on fire and the look on his face is telling me that something is wrong, very wrong.