THE PRETENDER: Black Mountain Academy

by Brent, Cora

  THE PRETENDER

  Black Mountain Academy

  Cora Brent

  Contents

  Also By Cora Brent:

  Contact Me

  The Pretender

  1. Ben

  2. Camden

  3. Ben

  4. Camden

  5. Ben

  6. Camden

  7. Ben

  8. Camden

  9. Ben

  10. Camden

  11. Ben

  12. Camden

  13. Ben

  14. Ben

  15. Camden

  16. Camden

  17. Ben

  18. Camden

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader:

  Also By Cora Brent:

  Also By Cora Brent:

  GENTRY BOYS (Books 1-4)

  Gentry Boys Series

  DRAW (Saylor and Cord)

  RISK (Creed and Truly)

  GAME (Chase and Stephanie)

  FALL (Deck and Jenny)

  HOLD

  CROSS (A Novella)

  WALK (Stone and Evie)

  EDGE (Conway and Roslyn)

  SNOW (A Christmas Story)

  Gentry Generations

  (A Gentry family spinoff series)

  STRIKE (Cami and Dalton)

  TURN (Cassie and Curtis)

  KEEP (A Novella)

  TEST (Derek and Paige)

  CLASH (Kellan and Taylor)

  WRECK (Thomas and Gracie)

  The Ruins of Emblem

  TRISTAN (Cadence and Tristan)

  JEDSON (Ryan and Leah)

  LANDON (Coming Soon)

  Worked Up

  FIRED

  NAILED

  Stand Alones

  UNRULY

  IN THIS LIFE

  HICKEY

  SYLER MCKNIGHT

  LONG LOST

  Please respect the work of this author. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without permission. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any similarity to events or situations is also coincidental.

  The publisher and author acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks and locations mentioned in this book. Trademarks and locations are not sponsored or endorsed by trademark owners.

  © 2020 by Cora Brent

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover: Lori Jackson

  Photo: Shutterstock/ 227751703

  Created with Vellum

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  The Pretender

  BEN

  They all know me as Ben Beltran, a poor kid from a working class town who lucked into a baseball scholarship at elite Black Mountain Academy.

  That’s mostly a lie.

  There’s a lot at stake and I have no patience for some uptight snot who sticks her nose in where it doesn’t belong.

  Camden Galway is another scholarship case from my crappy neighborhood and she’s just begging to be taught a lesson.

  She’ll find out the hard way that she has no idea what she’s dealing with.

  CAMDEN

  I need to succeed for my family’s sake as much as my own.

  And I refuse to be interrupted by some brooding jock with a wicked reputation.

  Sure, Ben Beltran can turn heads by rocking that bad boy heartbreaker vibe.

  But some things about him don’t add up.

  He assumes the taste of his lips and the feel of his muscles can distract me from digging for the truth.

  I’m going to prove him wrong.

  No matter how much he hates me for it...

  This high school enemies romance is a stand alone and part of the Black Mountain Academy series.

  Ben

  The bus is late and this is bad news.

  Teachers at Black Mountain Academy are obsessed with punctuality. They don’t want to hear it if your dog died or your tooth broke or you had the shits. You can expect some grief if you don’t have your ass in a chair when the bell rings.

  Plus it’s cold as fuck out here. The temperature plummeted right after last week’s Thanksgiving holiday and all the local business have already begun sticking random Christmas crap all over the place.

  I’m standing at the very edge of the corner, partly so I can squint down the flat road in search of bus headlights and partly to stay far away from the only other person in sight. Usually Mrs. Copella is also here, complaining out loud to no one in particular about her arthritic knees. She works in the Black Mountain town library and this is the only bus that runs between there and Devil Valley. Mrs. Copella isn’t around today so that leaves just me and Camden Galway eyeing each other in tense silence.

  A flash of headlights in the distance fools me for a second but turns out to belong to a garbage truck. It makes a right on Cardinal Street and disappears.

  “Fucking hell,” I mutter.

  Puffs of frost fly out of my mouth and Camden shoots me a disturbed look from where she’s propped up against the lone bench. When Mrs. Copella is here, Camden always takes a seat beside the old lady and crosses her legs at the ankle but today she stands around awkwardly while scribbling something in a notebook with a fat black pen. Maybe she’s afraid that if she sits down I’ll decide to sit next to her. That’s funny because I would no sooner do that than I would break into spontaneous tap dancing.

  I leave Camden to her mysterious scribbling and stare down the road once more. I should feel lucky that the public bus route still exists. There has been all kinds of talk about county cutbacks and election bonds and other fascinating nonsense that would have added up to a problem in my world. There’s no way I’d be able to afford a car. I’m barely able to keep my mother’s old bucket of metal working so she can get back and forth to her job at the diner. Without a way to get to Black Mountain I’d be stuck returning to Devil Valley High, which isn’t the worst place on earth but it’s not great either. People are always brawling over garbage like who looked sideways at someone else’s girl or who got disrespected while walking down the hallway or who is owed drug cash. There are plenty of decent kids at DVH but they try to stay under the radar and make do with the weak academic offerings. Besides, the sports situation sucks. I didn’t like being the only player on the baseball team who was able to handle the ball. So when Black Mountain Academy called me up last year and offered me a scholarship I didn’t hesitate.

  My mother had been less excited. She’d twisted her nicotine stained fingers together and blinked sad eyes ringed with smeared mascara. “Ben, Black Mountain is a very elite school. You’ll be more visible. THEY might find you.”

  But I was tired of worrying about THEM. Because of THEM I’d lost my name and my home and my friends and the life I was supposed to have. And I also lost my father. No, I couldn’t forget about him. Besides, if THEY had been able to track us down then THEY probably would have found us years ago.

  “THEY aren’t even looking,” I assured her, though I had no clue if that was true.

  In the end she didn
’t try to stop me from going to Black Mountain.

  As far as anyone around here knows, I am Ben Beltran, a hard luck working class kid with a good throwing arm who has been living with his mom in a rented two bedroom eyesore ever since moving to Devil Valley nearly four years ago. I never had to invent much of a backstory because no one cared about where I came from. My mom told anyone who asked that we we’d moved from the Chicago area. She was born there and could sound like she knew what she was talking about.

  As for me, it’s not hard to avoid giving out details. Guys generally don’t give a flying fuck about my history while girls think it’s hot when I glare at people and don’t say much. Works out for everyone.

  Minutes tick past. I don’t know how many because I can’t check my phone. The cell phone service was shut off last week after two months of overdue bill warnings. My mother doesn’t have the cash to pay the outstanding balance. Sometimes her eyes well up with tears just from looking at me so I make an effort to act all cheerful about having no phone, owning three pairs of jeans and eating canned pasta for dinner most nights. Maybe she’s thinking about our old life in a seven thousand square foot estate within sight of the ocean and how there was a maid to clean up after us while half a dozen luxury vehicles languished in the cavernous garage. Or maybe she’s just thinking that the older I get the more I look like my father and the rest of the Drexler men. Either way, she never says what’s on her mind.

  To plug the financial holes I’ve been putting in extra shifts at the gas station and I get paid on Friday so I’ll have my phone back soon enough. In the meantime, I just lie and say I lost it because people think it’s inexcusable if you’re not glued to a tiny screen for most of your waking hours.

  The air smells of snow today and the cold drills right through my jacket. While growing up, the only time I ever saw snow was on a trip to Aspen. The peak of Black Mountain is already covered with the stuff and down here we’ll get our first seasonal dose any minute now.

  A rustling noise catches my attention but it’s just Camden turning the pages of her notebook. I make a bet with myself that she’s either writing awful poetry or making a To Do list. Something like:

  Assume I’m superior to the rest of humanity.

  Look down my nose at the Devil Valley commoners, especially Ben Beltran.

  Act as if I am doing something vitally important instead of doodling random bullshit in a spiral notebook.

  A fuzzy pink scarf hangs around her shoulders and it’s the same color as her fingerless gloves. Even with a scarf and gloves and a winter jacket worn over her academy blazer she’s got to be cold with the arctic wind whipping her skirt around her bare legs.

  Camden flings her long, honey-colored hair out of her eyes and notices that I’m staring. A peculiar look crosses her face. It’s triumph. She enjoys the idea that I’m looking at her legs and having thoughts.

  Then a shadow falls and she becomes annoyed.

  She remembers that she hates my guts.

  She probably also remembers that rumor about six different shades of lipstick showing up on my dick from all the mouths that supposedly sucked me off at the same party. I don’t know how stories like that start but I’m not going to deny them. What kind of guy would reject the reputation of having an irresistible dick? Sure, I’ve had hookups here and there but there’s never been a blow job orgy involved. I think I would have remembered that.

  But I’m fine with Camden believing the worst. If she decided that I was all right then she might think it’s a good idea to talk to me more often. A conversation between Camden and me always veers into a bad place. She’s sure that I’m a low life piece of gutter trash and I’m sure that she’s got her pretty, conceited head wedged up her tight little ass. Now and then I get to hear crap from my buddies about this girl thanks to the fact that we’re both from Devil Valley. They assume our infamous hostility towards each other has got to end in some wild hate sex.

  She’s not quick enough to battle a sudden harsh gust of wind and her little plaid skirt goes flying up. I get a flash of her underwear. It’s white, the hip hugger kind. It looks like something that gets handed out in Dress Like A Virgin class. Still, I wouldn’t complain about seeing it again.

  After she flattens her skirt against her thighs she turns her head away and shivers. I have the urge to shrug out of my jacket and hand it over to her even though she’s not my favorite person. I just don’t like to see a girl, any girl, uncomfortable.

  In the next second I decide that I don’t care if she’s shivering because I’m thinking about what happened the first time I showed up at the bus stop with the unsightly Black Mountain Academy blazer stuffed under my arm.

  She barreled right over like an unhappy, plaid-skirted bull. “Don’t tell me YOU are going to Black Mountain?” Her eyes were so wide I thought they’d fall out of her head. She’d said the word ‘YOU’ like ‘EWWW’.

  And I grinned at her. I knew that I was better looking than most guys and I wanted to fuck with her prissy attitude a little. “That’s right. Looks like we’ll be sharing a ride every day. So play nice and maybe I’ll let you sit on my lap, Cammy.”

  “No one calls me Cammy. And you can keep your lap, Ben. From what I hear it’s probably worn out.”

  She was trying to be all haughty and superior but her voice cracked and a blush colored her cheeks. I could have easily kept up my end of that exchange of offenses but I let her have the last word. I wasn’t being nice. I just didn’t care enough to bother at the time.

  That was last January and our interactions have not improved much since then. Our finest hour peaked this past fall at a BMA football home game. She’s in charge of the Black Mountain Academy Bulletin so she attended the game in order to get in everyone’s way, pestering them for quotable thoughts on ‘these waning days of our high school careers’. No kidding, those were her actual words. I was just there to watch some football and maybe get a handful of tit at one of the after parties so when Camden got to me I told her the honest truth. She got all fired up and called me a colossal prick. I acted like that was an invitation. I offered to drop my pants right there in the bleachers and give her a show. I wasn’t serious. But she yelped and scampered away as if the sight of a penis might blind her. Since then she pretends like she’s allergic to me.

  Camden is a Devil Valley lifer. She’s undeniably cute but I never see her mixing with the local crowd. This isn’t a huge town so everyone knows who she is and is aware that she gets ferried off to exclusive Black Mountain Academy every day. She acts like she thinks she’s pretty special, skipping out of here each morning in her plaid skirt to go mingle in more pretentious circles. She’s a star in her own head, climbing out of the Devil Valley slums to be the special snowflake at BMA. She doesn’t want to share that role with me or anyone else.

  Since Camden refuses to look in my direction again I’m free to keep staring at her legs while wishing for another breeze to lift her skirt. Camden’s got a great body. Unfortunately, it’s attached to her personality. She might be plenty of fun if she kept her mouth shut and took off her shirt. The stirring in my pants reminds me that I don’t have to like a girl to want to see her naked. The guys might be onto something with this hate sex idea. I probably wouldn’t turn that down.

  The low growl of an engine puts an end to my pornographic thoughts. The aging green bus coughs and moans its way to the corner and then with a squeal of the brakes the doors open.

  “IT’S A BEAUTIFUL MORNING!” The woman who sings out the greeting is somewhere around my mom’s age. She’s too irrationally happy about driving a decrepit municipal bus on a frigid morning.

  I hustle up the steps, flash my pass and drop my backpack into the last seat on the left. Only a handful of other riders are yawning in their own seats and every one of them is alone. I watch Camden climb on and smile at the driver before sitting up front. I stare at the back of her head. It’s a familiar sight. She’s in most of my classes and always sits in the front row, ba
ck straight in the chair, pen at the ready to copy down whatever priceless wisdom rains from the teacher’s mouth.

  The drive to Black Mountain takes twenty-four minutes. Sometimes I push my backpack against the window and use it as a pillow while the scenery flies past. But today I don’t feel like napping because I’m thinking of Camden’s skirt flying up. I don’t want to. I just can’t help it. If I thought I could get away with it I might spank one out real quick in my seat.

  My hand brushes the rigid bulge in my pants. My mind pictures blinding white panties and the tantalizing V at the center. A groaning hiss escapes me and the old lady sitting two rows up pauses her knitting needles to swivel around and deliver a suspicious glare.

  I glare right back. But I also take my hand off my dick and look out the window instead.

  The landscape gets prettier as we leave Devil Valley behind. Not everyone in the town of Black Mountain is wealthy or famous. There are plenty of regular folks mixed in. However, Devil Valley is considered a distant poor cousin and some people turn this into a rivalry. The sports teams don’t often play each other, which is a good thing because when they do, Black Mountain always wins. Then there’s a fight because some jackass will inevitably shoot off his mouth and Devil Valley kids don’t take kindly to being crapped on.