“Why do you have to be so difficult all the time?” he groans before reaching for the lock and putting the combination straight in. He opens it as I gawk at him and takes my bag straight out. “Come on,” he says before stalking off.
“Hey,” I call after him before I realize he would more than happily take off with my things. I hurry to catch up with him and yank my bag out of his hands. “What do you think you’re doing? And how do you know the combination for my locker?”
“First up, I’m trying to get you to hurry up. I thought that much was clear, and the combination is the same as your gate at home. 1005. You really need to find something a little more original.”
I narrow my eyes on him and give in. “Where are we going?” I ask as he pushes out the front doors of the school and walks down towards the parking lot.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells me. “You are.”
“Huh?” I grunt just as Nate’s Camaro pulls into the lot. He drives around and a moment later he comes to a stop right before us.
Jesse reaches for the door handle and pulls it open. “Get in,” he tells me. I clench my jaw and look over my shoulder. I wonder how far I’ll make it before they’ll catch me? “Don’t even think about it,” Jesse says. “I’ll catch you in no time, and trust me, I’ll enjoy throwing you over my shoulder.”
I groan and narrow my eyes on Jesse. “You’re an ass.”
“And you’re a princess,” he tells me. “Now, get in.”
With a huff, I do as I’m told and slide into the passenger’s seat of Nate’s car. Jesse shuts the door a second later and before I know it, Nate is peeling out of the school parking lot. “Will you at least tell me where we’re going?”
Naturally, he doesn’t respond, though I’m not surprised. He reaches into the back of his car and a second later, he tosses something onto my lap before focusing back on the road. “Eat,” he says.
I look down into my lap to find a sandwich looking back up at me. With a groan, I start nibbling.
Nate looks across to make sure I’m eating and seems to relax a bit when he watches me pull off a piece of bread and pop it into my mouth. “You’ve got to tell Jesse to back off,” I tell him.
His eyebrows pull down before he turns back to me. “Why?” he grunts.
“He tried to swoop in and save me from Elle and Josh when I had it handled. You know, despite what you and Jesse think, I can take care of myself.”
Nate shakes his head and pushes his car a little faster. “Do you have any idea what they were planning on doing to you?”
“No,” I say. “But it wasn’t going to happen anyway. I wasn’t going with them.”
“Whether or not you went with them is beside the point. They would have gone through with their plan anyway. They would have just waited you out. Done it at a party or tried to corner you at home. Trust me, you don’t know how these people work.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I question. “What was their plan?”
He lets out a sigh as his hand tightens on the steering wheel, turning his knuckles white. “They were going to strip you down and have Josh all over you. Elle was going to record the whole thing and post it all over the internet, calling you a whore. I overheard them discussing it this morning.”
My eyes widen as my jaw drops. “What kind of sick people do shit like that?” I question as my heart begins racing.
“Quarterbacks and cheerleaders,” he grunts.
I sit back in the chair and look out the window feeling sick. I mean, was that seriously their plan? To get me naked and humiliate me in front of the whole school, branding me a slut? “I don’t get it,” I say. “All of this just because I didn’t want to screw him? And I mean, Elle was the one who threw her drink all over me in the first place.”
“I know,” he says. “But you challenged her. You went against her when she’s trying to assert her dominance as cheer captain. Josh probably would have left you alone. He doesn’t have the brains to come up with it, but now the idea is in his head and he wants it. This screams Elle. She would have put Josh up to it.”
I silently nod my head, wondering how the hell I’m supposed to deal with this.
Nate pulls into an old abandoned parking lot and I turn towards him. “What are we doing here?” I question. This lot belonged to an old mall that was closed down a few months ago and is due to be demolished and rebuilt into a high-rise apartment building. There’s literally no reason that could bring us here.