graced me with a counterargument; I was just ignored like an annoyance.
Needless to say, when the horn blasted to signal the end of our time, we had not finished. Matthew gave us all a lecture about failing the course, then ordered us to run the track through the woods behind him. Everyone groaned, but no one argued to his face. As I passed the marker sign, I gulped. Ten miles? I was nowhere near fit enough for that, not at the pace the guys were setting and with my current injuries.
With a small sigh, I set myself an easy pace that I could—maybe—maintain for the whole run. I didn't need to stay with the other campers; I just needed to keep my head down and survive.
Footsteps sounded on the trail behind me, then twigs crunched as Ben fell into step beside me.
I gave him a curious glance. "Why are you doing this?" I asked. "Aren't you a guide?"
He flashed that winning smile that was slowly growing on me. "Yup. Someone needs to keep an eye on you fuckers, though, make sure no one falls and sprains their ankle... that kind of thing."
I couldn't fight my own grin when he winked at me, but the fuzzy moment of flirtation quickly soured when I remembered Dylan was in charge of this whole camp. And that I still hadn't gotten over my infatuation with his cranky ass.
He’d never been like that when we were together. I knew it was part of his personality; the media loved to talk about how bad-tempered he was. But he'd never shown me that side before. Our nights together had been driven by one thing and one thing only: sex. It was my own damn fault for catching feelings along the way.
"You okay, Florence?" Ben teased, elbowing me teasingly. "You look like you've got some heavy-ass thoughts going on in there."
I bit my lip. There was no way in hell I could tell him about Dylan and me. God, I could only imagine the drama if that came out in the tabloids. One of the country's richest, most eligible bachelors fucking a seventeen-year-old? They'd have a field day. No one would care that I'd lied or that he'd never known.
"What's your deal, Ben?" I replied instead. "I thought this whole camp was supposed to be total torture—disciplinary training or some shit. But you've been, dare I say, nice?"
"Is that what you were sent here for, then? Discipline?" He gave me a wry look, like that was a joke.
Bitterness washed through me like acid. "My brother finds me too willful. He had to leave the country for a month or so on business and didn't trust me to be home without him." Even to my own ears, that sounded pathetic. I was eighteen now, and at some point I had to stop letting Blake push me around.
But I was just so weak. No matter how badly I wanted to be a strong, independent woman, I was nothing more than a broken doll, a shell of a girl, waiting for the next punch to land.
"Stupidest shit I've ever heard," Ben muttered, like I wasn't supposed to actually hear him say that. "Well, don't stress it. This camp is not what it used to be. Ever since the Delta Five took over and Riley merged Delta to Huntley, things have been different. The objective here is still to train rich, entitled brats. But instead of turning them into white-collar mercenaries to do their family’s dirty work, we're teaching them to be better people. Yeah, it's still gonna require some hard knocks, but the motives are a whole lot nobler than when Dylan and the other Delta guys attended here, that's for damn sure."
I was stunned into silence for a few moments. That... wasn't what I'd expected. Surely, no one else knew this, though. Blake sure as fuck didn't, or he never would have sent me here. He genuinely thought I would be put through some kind of submissive hell for weeks while he was gone. He planned on coming back to find me totally broken of all my remaining will to survive.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked in a small voice as we continued to jog through the woods, side by side.
Ben gave another winning grin. Damn. He really was a good-looking guy... He just wasn't the one who haunted my dreams. "Because you don't need this training, Florence. You're already a good person... but maybe this camp can