around listening to a class on how to shoot a hunting rifle. Most of these rich fucks had grown up hunting and were probably bored shitless, but it was all gibberish to me. Blake would never have given me lessons in weaponry, afraid I’d try and take him out one day. Stupid asshole probably hadn’t read the fine print on this camp and didn’t know I’d have this sort of instruction.
"Huh? Deal?" I wasn't following the conversation, still trying my best to listen to the older guy giving our lecture in front of an outdoor target range.
The boy beside me snickered, and I gave him a confused frown.
"You know," his friend on my other side explained, "you and Grant. You're fucking, right?"
I blinked several times before realizing he meant Dylan. That was such a man thing, calling everyone by their last names.
"Uh, no." I turned my attention back to the instructor, but all I could hear was the rush of my own pounding pulse.
The first guy scoffed a laugh, nudging me again like I'd just cracked a funny joke. "Sure you're not. He must have carried your tight ass out of lunch the other day 'cause he wanted to play Scrabble with you, then."
"More like twister," the other guy cackled. "Naked twister."
The two of them guffawed and high-fived behind my back. Wow. Had they just walked straight off a teen movie set? Talk about cardboard characters.
"We're not fucking," I muttered, feeling my face flame. Not anymore, but they definitely didn't need to know that part.
More nasty snickers came from the two stooges who'd decided to pick on the token girl today.
"Yeah, I'd deny it, too, if I were you," one of them commented. "You must be a pretty crappy lay for him to treat you like he does during the day. Or maybe that's your kink, huh? Being humiliated and degraded?"
The other boy gave a small moan. "If so, I'll happily make you lick my boots, sugar. I'll humiliate you all night long." He was practically breathing down my neck, so I cringed away and took a step closer to the rest of the group. It was my own damn fault for lurking at the back, hoping to go unnoticed. All it'd done was make me an easy target.
"Something funny over here?" Matthew asked, coming over to glare at my two hecklers. "Feel like sharing with the class?"
I couldn't help turning to watch as the two idiots flushed and fumbled out a lame excuse. Matthew just rolled his eyes, then jerked his head to me. "Come stand up front with me, Lawson. You can't hear shit back here."
He gave me a small push to get me moving, but I still heard the boys muttering not so subtly about how I must be whoring around with all the guides too. Such a tired, overused insult, but it always hit its mark. My cheeks were flushed with anger as Matthew directed me closer to the instructor. Closer to Dylan.
"Everything okay?" my moody cabin-mate and former lover asked in a low tone. He wasn't asking me, though. God forbid he engage me in conversation around other humans. Nope, he was asking Matthew, who gave a short nod in response.
Dylan continued watching me from the corner of his eye, but when he said nothing, I huffed and folded my arms over my chest. I needed to concentrate if I was going to learn anything.
I learned nothing. How the fuck was I supposed to focus on the ins and outs of rifle mechanics when Dylan was all but breathing down my neck? Nope. All I got out of that lecture was that Dylan Grant might actually make me crazy.
At dinner I sat with the guides again, as was becoming my normal placement, and tried to convince myself that it was because I was the only girl. It wasn't so strange that I was getting extra attention when I was literally the only vagina at the camp, right? And not in a sexual way, just in a... Ah fuck, I didn't even know what I was trying to convince myself of these days.
More and more, it felt like Dylan was making a point—not that I was his, just that I was off-limits to everyone else. Especially Ben. Every time my new sort-of friend was caught chatting with me, Dylan showed up with some menial task that Ben desperately needed to be doing.
Alright, fine. Ben was flirting. But so what? Dylan and I were nothing more than