Cocky Bully: The Enemies to Lovers Romance Box Set Read online

  “One more thing before you leave,” he said as I tried to turn away.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  Trent’s eyes flicked down over my body, taking me in before he spoke. “A few of the gang want to see more of you.”

  “I’m not a whore,” I said, frowning at him and shaking my head dismissively.

  “For me, you probably would be, but that’s not the point I’m making. I mean, the guys want you to come with us to the lake tonight,” he said. “There’ll be other people there too. Women and stuff.”

  I was confused, but that seemed to happen often at Bayside Academy. I wasn’t savvy with the way these types of people were. Was ‘lake’ slang for something else?

  “I knew you’d be confused,” he said, cracking a smile. “Thanks to some sewage pipelines, there’s a way off the school campus. Not everyone knows about it, but I figured since you were tight with the Killers, maybe you’d want to join.”

  “I’m not tight with your silly gang,” I said, but I had to admit I was more than a little curious. Was it actually possible to leave Bayside whenever I wanted to?

  “So, I’ll tell them you pass on the offer,” Trent said, waving a dismissive hand.

  “Hey, I didn’t say that,” I blurted, unable to contain my excitement about the option of leaving the school.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said, leaning against his locker again. “We leave from one of the basement bathrooms. I have a key to get down there, but once you’re out, you’re not coming back in until tomorrow when school starts again.”

  “I have to sleep outside?” I asked, feeling a glimmer of doubt.

  “We sleep in an abandoned storage cabin out there. It’s not a big deal. All the supplies are there already, so you don’t really have to worry about anything,” he explained.

  “How do I know this isn’t a trick?” I asked, studying his face for the truth.

  He chuckled. “Why would I be tricking you?”

  “You did it in the graveyard before,” I reminded him.

  Trent shook his head, giving me a look as though I was stupid. “Come one, you know as well as I do that what I did was punishment for lying to me. Don’t lie, and there won’t be consequences. You got it?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sure,” I said, but I didn’t fully believe him. Despite all that, I still wanted to join him and the others by the lake tonight. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to escape the hellhole that was Bayside Academy for a little while. I needed to enjoy some freedom again.

  “Are you coming or not?” he asked, glancing at a plastic clock hung on the wall across from us.

  “Yeah, I’ll go,” I replied. “But don’t try anything funny.”

  “I would say the same for you, darling,” he said, winking at me.

  I shook my head at him, but I liked the attention. Maybe it was that I had been cooped up in this place for too long to remember what normal men were like, but the devilish charm of Trent was starting to grow on me. I planned on keeping a distance, but that was becoming increasingly difficult with him. He seemed to have a magnetic effect on me, and that was just the beginning.

  The lake could have been a ruse to get me alone with him and his gang again, but there was something in his tone that made me want to trust him. I shouldn’t have been giving him another chance, but I did anyway.

  “When and where do we meet?” I asked, spinning a lock of hair in my finger.

  “Meet me back here when the final bell rings. I’ll show you where to go from there,” he said, pushing himself off his locker in preparation to leave.

  “See you then,” I said.

  “See you.”

  I watched him walk away. His swagger was exaggerated as usual. I loved to hate him, but this time I let myself admire his figure as he disappeared into the throngs of students heading to their next class. Only when he was completely out of view did I leave his locker, heading for another dull lecture before the end of the day.

  Chapter 11

  I had worn a jacket today. It was drizzling outside again, the rain light enough to be ignored, but persistent enough to wear it cooled the air. The afternoon was going to be great, I thought to myself as I looked out the window during my final class of the day.

  The mood around the school was as gray as it was outside, but I wasn’t as depressed as everyone else. I felt excitement bubbling beneath my skin. And hope. I hadn’t felt hope in a long time, and yet it was there too, shyly presenting itself to me like the first rays of sun after a winter storm.

  I peered out the window again from my new favorite spot at the center of the classroom, admiring the beauty of the rain. I used to go out and dance in the rain with my mother. She really enjoyed that sort of thing before she had died.

  I clutched the gold heart pendant from my necklace in my hand as I watched the droplets of cold rain roll down the window. She would have loved this sort of weather. I wondered what she would think about me being at Bayside Academy, though. Would she be disappointed in my father and I for the road we had taken?

  I tried to put those thoughts behind me. They couldn’t rule my mind the way that I had let them rule me when I first got locked up. I had grown stronger since then. I wasn’t the fragile, rich girl who had once been scared to walk down the hallway with all the other students. I was broken now, but I was piecing myself back together with a stronger glue. This time, I prayed that it would hold.

  Another day, another boring lecture. I was beginning to understand why the teachers at this school looked so lifeless. The subject matter was as dull as it was useless, and I’m sure they had recited it hundreds of times already. This was useless compared to the education that I had received from my private school. I would kill to go back there.

  “And I want to see you all at the exam tomorrow. No excuses,” the teacher finished right before the bell rang.

  Exam? Shit, maybe going to the lake tonight wasn’t that good of an idea. I had no idea what was going to be on the lecture. Shouldn’t I study for something like this?

  As everyone jumped out of their seats, I lingered in mine for a moment, trying to think about the consequences of choosing the lake over studying for an exam. I doubted the material on the exam would be especially difficult, but I wanted to make sure that I didn’t fail it. That, along with nearly every wrong thing you could do, would result in detention. Repeated failures would have you flunked and tossed into jail.

  My foolish brain convinced me that I could study at the lake, or at least look over the material that we had covered in class. If Trent and all the other people going to the lake didn’t see the point in studying for the exam, then maybe it wasn’t that difficult.

  It didn’t take me long to dismiss the exam entirely. I was too excited to finally get out of the school campus and experience true freedom without the fear of constantly being monitored. I mean, fuck, I couldn’t even adjust my bra without it being caught on camera. It was frustrating.

  I got up from the warm metal seat that had tried it’s best to make my ass go numb and pulled my jacket over my arms. The leather felt good against my skin, giving a quiet creak as I moved. I always opted for leather over synthetic fabrics for jackets, but that was just the rich girl inside of me. I would always be one at heart, no matter how poor I was. Daddy didn’t raise a beggar.

  I took a sip from my plastic water bottle and made my way to Trent’s locker. He was leaning on it when I arrived, the usual smug look plastered on his aggressively handsome face. He had shaved again, displaying the details of his strong chin under the weak lights in the hallway.

  I slowed down as I approached him, wanting to admire his impressive stature for a moment longer before he noticed me. I couldn’t do this for very long. Trent’s sharp eye darted toward me once I was in his peripheral vision, and he stood straight to greet me.

  “Took you long enough,” he said as I walked up to him.

  “It’s been, like, thirty seconds since class ended, weirdo,” I re
plied.

  “That’s thirty seconds too long, princess. Let’s go,” he said, motioning with his head for me to follow him.

  I practically had to run to keep up with his long strides. He was so tall that his legs could move him twice as fast as mine could without as much effort as it took me. He stayed two steps ahead of me as he guided me toward the secret exit from the school.

  “Are you aware that we have an exam tomorrow?” I panted as we barreled down the hallway.

  “I don’t much care for tests,” Trent answered.

  “Are they easy or hard?”

  “Easy and pointless. Who cares if you know how long it took the train to move from A to B? That’s what we have google maps for,” he said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to fail,” I said.

  “You won’t. Only stupid people fail,” he said, swinging around a corner and continuing his aggressive pace toward the end of the hallway.

  My sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as I sharply corrected my direction. “So, you’re saying that I’m smart?” I asked with a smile.

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on. Give me this one, just once,” I pleaded.

  “No,” he answered again, coming to a sudden stop in front of a pale wooden door. He pulled an old silver key from the pocket of his torn jeans and held it up to the light for a moment before pushing it into the lock on the door. He wiggled it violently in the hole until there was a loud click, then he removed it.

  “Get in,” he commanded, opening the door.

  It was pitch black inside, the swell of darkness threatening to spill over into the lit hallway. I was afraid of it. What if this was a trap?

  “Get in,” he repeated, grabbing the sleeve of my leather jacket and throwing me inside as though I was nothing more than a plush doll.

  I stumbled into the darkness, feeling like I was drifting out into dead space. The air smelled like dust and mold, and the floor beneath my feet was rough and unfinished. I fell through the thick air but caught myself with a firm step on the floor. I turned to see Trent coming in after me. I suppose this wasn’t a trap, after all.

  Trent closed the door, rendering the room completely dark once again. “Don’t waste my time, Samantha,” he growled, grabbing my arm and practically dragging me down through the darkness.

  I didn’t know where we were going, but he seemed to. He had to know this area by memory because there was no way that he could see without any light. Even as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I couldn’t see much more than Trent’s white t-shirt as he pulled be along.

  “Watch the stairs,” he said, jerking me to a stop.

  I heard his hand hit a switch, and seconds later, a pale light blinked on overhead. We were at the top of a stairwell, long abandoned, with cobwebs along the railings.

  “Quickly,” Trent said, once again pulling me along with him as he flew down the stairs.

  I had to focus closely on not falling and breaking my neck as he yanked me down. He seemed not to be terribly concerned about me, as though I was more of a burden than anything. I wondered why he had even brought me if he was going to behave this way.

  “Why are we in such a hurry?” I asked.

  “Because,” he growled, “The sewage system gets flushed out once the bell rings. I was unfortunate to be there when it happened once. Never again.”

  I laughed, imagining him sopping wet in the sewer. He deserved it, so I didn’t feel guilty for laughing at his misery. He would have done the same for me.

  “Real funny,” he grumbled. “You’re lucky I don’t leave you there to drown in human waste.”

  “Have a sense of humor,” I suggested, still smiling at the mental image of him getting washed away in the sewer.

  “I do have one,” he said, sounding defensive.

  “Sure, you do,” I replied as we reached the bottom of the stairwell and turned into a bathroom.

  Trent turned off the light in the stairwell and turned on the one in the bathroom. Neither of them was automatic, a modern amenity that hadn’t made it to the forgotten depths of the school.

  “Over there,” Trent said, pointing to a stack of misplaced tiles beside a large hole in the floor. “I’ll climb down first, and then you can follow.”

  I approached the hole with him, peering down into the darkness. How had he managed to find a place like this? He must have spent a long time exploring the inner workings of the school. That, or someone else had done it for him.

  Trent winked at me as he positioned his large body over the hole and lowered himself down. I watched him disappear into the blackness, a thud sounding as he hit the bottom. It wasn’t a long way down, but I was shorter than he was. I would have to brace myself for the impact.

  I scrambled down immediately after him, not wanting to get caught in the sewer storm that was heading our way once the bell rang. I let faith do the worrying as I dropped through the opening and let my body fall. I was expecting a longer fall and was jarred by the sudden stop at the end.

  “Take my hand,” Trent said from somewhere I couldn’t see him.

  “Where are you?” I asked, looking around in the dark.

  “Here,” he said, stepping close enough to where his body was touching mine.

  I caught my breath and looked at him in awe. He looked wonderful in the dark, but also frightening. His eyes seemed to glow against the syrupy blackness that surrounded him. He could do anything to me down here, and nobody would be the wiser.

  Trent reached out his hand and clamped down on mine. I felt a jolt from his touch like he was hooked up to a power generator. I had never experienced a touch like his. I was shaken, but he didn’t let me dwell on it. Instead, he pulled me down into the depths, guiding me through the dark to reach our destination.

  “Keep your feet spread if you don’t want to get them wet,” Trent ordered as we moved toward the sound of running water.

  I did as he said and found that the floor inclined on either side. We were in a tunnel, and there would be water flowing down the middle. We slowed down as we both waddled over the running water. I could smell the steady growing stench of sewage as we approached a light.

  “Almost there,” Trent assured me as we made our way down the pipeline.

  “Good, because it stinks in here,” I replied, gripping his hand tighter. I felt small with him leading me this way but in a good way. Instead of feeling afraid of him, I felt like he was protecting me. It was a seductive feeling to have toward a man, and ultimately dangerous. Just because I felt that way, didn’t mean his intentions aligned with mine.

  “Up,” Trent said, pointing at a grate in the ceiling, just a foot from his head.

  We stopped, and with a firm push, he shoved the heavy rusted grate out of place, revealing our exit. I could feel a light drizzle of rain coming down as we stood under the hole. The tiny drops fell into my eyes, but I was just glad they weren’t sewer water.

  I felt the steady hold of Trent’s hand leave mine, and for a moment, I felt panicked. Then, as though I were being flown to the heavens, he lifted me up toward the exit.

  My head popped up above ground, revealing our new location. My hands found the grassy slope on either side of me as I took over my rise through the hole, pushing myself further outside. Trent’s hand pressed against my ass, almost between my legs as he gave me a final shove out.

  I toppled over into the grass and rolled over, laughing as felt the pure earth beneath me. It was glorious to be free again. Even being outside of campus for a few seconds made me not want to ever return. Would it be so bad to run away?

  I didn’t have long to think about it before Trent popped out of the ground after me. He came up with grace, his large muscular arms making easy work of the task. I looked up at him as he stood above me and moved the grate back into place with his foot.

  “This is it,” he said, placing his hands on his hips and looking around. He looked like an emperor surveying his land.

  He looked down at me as I gazed up at him
. “Are you going to stay down there?”

  I nodded. “You want to join me?”

  He chuckled, grabbing my arm and pulling me to my feet. His power was exciting, and his touch was like lightning. I doubted that he felt the same way, but I was having trouble keeping my composure around him. It was stupid that I was so smitten, but it was difficult when he was this commanding.

  “Where’s the lake?” I asked, looking around.

  “Behind you,” he replied.

  I turned around and gasped at the sight before my eyes.

  Chapter 12

  Bayside Academy was built like a castle, towering at least ten stories high even though most of the floors were unused. It looked beautiful from across the lake, even with the tall walls that separated it from the civilized world. The light of the setting sun reflected off the glass windows in a dazzling display of gold and orange, scattering rays across the land as far as my eyes could see.

  “It doesn’t look so bad from here,” Trent said from beside me, his voice deep and thoughtful.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, in awe at the building that had become my prison.

  “It’ll be even more beautiful when you leave,” he said, shaking his head. “I hate this fucking place.”

  I looked at him. The setting sun painted his face in a dramatic light, accenting his strong features. I smiled. “We’ll both be out soon.”

  “True,” he said. “But until then, it’s time to get fucked up,” he said with a mischievous grin. “Come on. Let’s go to the cabin. Everyone is already there.”

  I had the urge to hold his hand while we walked there, but I kept it to myself. There was no need for me to escalate the situation with Trent. He was a bad guy, and I had to keep my head straight. Maybe if I kept telling that to myself, then I would do it, but I was already drifting off the golden path into the woods. Things were getting risky.

  All I could do was trust Trent at this point, as I was unsure of what would be going on tonight by the lake. I hadn’t seen anyone yet, but he insisted that there would be many people there with us. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded getting more time alone with him.