Burned: A High School Bully Romance (Del Sol High Book 2)

by McKayla Box

  “And, no, I don't need to see your dick,” I say coolly. “I didn't bring my magnifying glass.”

  A ripple of laughter runs through the crowd and his grin flickers.

  He takes a step closer. “Wow. Smart mouth on this one, Arch. You should teach her how to keep it shut.” He looks at me. “Or maybe I could put something in it to keep her from talking.”

  I feel Archer shift behind me and I step back into him.

  “I don't think that would do much,” I say. “But I have used a toothpick before, so maybe it'd be like that.”

  More laughter from the crowd drifts toward us.

  Eric's grin is gone now. “Man, what a bitch you are.” He looks over me at Archer. “I think I win. Taking Reese over this one is easy.” He laughs. “You fucked up ditching Reese for this chick. But don't worry, buddy. I'll make it up to Reese tonight. While you do whatever it is you're doing with this bag of trash.”

  I feel Archer move again and this time I can't get my hands on him as he's around me in a flash. He levels Eric, putting his shoulder into the guy’s chest and taking him down to the sand. Aiden and Nick both fly by me and crash into Eric's two friends as they rush toward Eric and Archer.

  I step out of the way and watch as the six of them flail and swing and wrestle in the sand while the crowd cheers them all on. After what feels like forever, several other boys make their way to the brawl and pull them all apart. Archer is on his feet, his shirt torn, breathing heavily. Eric is sitting on the sand, his eyes glazed, blood smearing his mouth. Aiden and Nick stumble to their feet, huffing and puffing. Eric's two friends help him to his feet. His eyes are still glazed over and he looks dazed.

  “Get him the fuck out of here,” Archer growls. “If he comes back, you'll have to carry him away in pieces.”

  I notice that Reese is going nowhere near Eric as his buddies keep him upright and turn him around. They struggle to walk him up the sand toward the lot. Finally, Reese and her little magpies follow them.

  Archer takes a deep breath and looks at me. There's some swelling next to his left eye and the knuckles on his right hand are bleeding.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why did you do that?” I ask. “It's exactly what he wanted. He's an idiot. What if you really hurt him?”

  “I hope I did,” he says, glancing toward the parking lot. “I tried to.”

  I shake my head. “That's dumb, Archer. You're too smart for that. He was trying to piss you off. Reese was trying to piss you off. And it worked.”

  He touches the swollen skin around his eye and winces. “You don't know the whole story.”

  “I don't need to,” I tell him. “I don't care. But why would you let something she does get under your skin? That's all this was. She brought him here to piss you off. And guess what? It worked.”

  He doesn't say anything, and my temper flares a little.

  “I mean, do you still like her?” I ask. “Did it bother you that she brought him here?”

  “Oh, come on, Nola,” he says. “Come on. You know better.”

  “Do I? I just watched you get in a fight and hurt some kid because he had a big mouth when you could've just walked away. Why didn't you?”

  “This isn't about Reese,” he says, visibly annoyed now. “It's never been about Reese. Eric and I have been going at it since we were kids. And, yeah, he gets to me. So fucking what?” He looks down at me. “I didn't decide to kick his ass until he started talking shit about you. You realize that, right?” He shakes his head. “No fucking way I'm listening to that shit. From anyone. Ever.”

  I take his hand. The cuts on his knuckles are jagged and red.

  Because of me.

  Because he was reacting to what Eric said about me.

  I look up at him. “You don't have to defend me,” I say softly.

  “Yeah, I do,” he says. There is a determination in his voice that I haven’t heard before. “I'm not going to let anyone talk about you like that. Ever.”

  The sentiment is sweet, and it sets off the butterflies in my stomach. But I don't need him brawling and beating the shit out of anyone who looks at me the wrong way.

  “I don't need you getting in trouble or going to jail because some asshole decides I'm an easy target,” I say. “Or because Reese put him up to it. It's easy to walk away.” I tap his chest. “Remember that.”

  He leans down and kisses me softly. I don’t know if it’s because his lips hurt or because he’s purposefully trying to be gentle with me.

  “I'll try,” he whispers. “But no promises.”

  Chapter 24

  “What exactly are we doing?” I ask.

  It's the next day after school and we are in Brooke's car, driving to the beach.

  “It's the annual sandman making contest,” Mercy says. “Happens every year during Winter Ball week.”

  “Sandman?” I repeat. “What the hell is a sandman?”

  “You know how those goofs were trying to build snowmen with beach balls at lunch the other day?” Dylan says, turning around from the front seat. “We have to do the same thing they were trying to do, but with sand. Get it? Sandman rather than snowman? It's just an excuse for everyone to fuck around. Like usual.”

  I laugh. “Okay, got it.”

  “It's fun,” Mercy says. “It's silly, but it's fun.”

  Most everything related to the school spirit weeks seems silly, but fun. My high school in Florida had nothing like these traditions, so I probably find them more fun than everyone else who takes them for granted.

  We pull up to a section of beach near the pier, a long stretch of wide, flat sand. There are banners and flags set up and people are already milling on the beach.

  “It's seniors only,” Brooke says, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Teams of two. Usually, you build with your date, but you can build with anyone. It doesn't really matter.”

  We get out of the car and I immediately see Archer standing in the sand with Nick and Aiden. He sees us and waves.

  “Damn, that boy has it bad for you,” Dylan says. “First he asks you to the dance, now he shows up for this. This is decidedly very un-Archer.” She grabs my hands. “I must know your secrets!”

  I laugh and shake my head. “Stop. There are no secrets.”

  She studies. “Hmm. Not sure I believe you.”

  “It's the truth,” I tell her, ignoring the guilt I feel over saying those very untruthful words. There might not be any secrets about me and Archer, but I’m definitely harboring some of my own.

  Secretly, though, I'm pleased that he's there and that he's being un-Archer like.

  We cross the lot and walk onto the sand. The sun is shining and the breeze feels both warm and cool.

  “What's up, partner?” Archer asks, smiling. The wind tosses his sun-streaked brown hair and he brushes his hand over it, a move that is probably far less sexy than I think it is.

  “We're partners?” I ask. “Just like that?”

  “Yeah, it's the law,” he says, winking at me.

  I roll my eyes and he responds by grabbing me around the waist and pulling me toward him for a quick kiss.

  “Brooke, you with me?” Nick asks.

  Brooke shrugs, then nods. “Sure.”

  “Hey, Dylan!” Aiden yells. “Come on. Me and you!”

  Dylan makes a face and looks at Mercy. “Are you going with Jake?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Sorry. He asked me earlier.”

  “Ugh,” Dylan says, then looks back at Aiden. “Fine. But keep your hands to yourself, perv.”

  Aiden makes a show of holding his hands up in the air.

  I look at Archer. “So what do we do?”

  “We have to make a snowman,” he says. “Out of sand.” He pulls his shirt off and tosses it on the sand, and I try not to stare at his perfectly sculpted chest and abs. “And the sand is wet so that it'll stick together. Pretty messy.”

  I look down an
d realize that the sand is wet, like there's been some light rain.

  “Is it a race?” I ask.

  “Sort of,” he says. “And then there's judging.” He looks at me. “Any chance you know how to make a snowman?”

  “I'm from Florida,” I remind him.

  He laughs. “Right. Okay, so we're probably gonna lose then.”

  A whistle blows in the distance and all of a sudden, there's a flurry of movement, as people begin digging in and moving sand. Archer immediately drops to his knees and starts pushing the sand into a small mountain. I drop down and start doing the same from the other side, trying to make the small mountain bigger. The sand is heavy and within about two minutes, my arms are sore and I'm breathing like I just ran a race.

  “This is hard,” I say, still pushing sand toward our little mountain.

  “Uh huh.” Sweat drips down Archer’s face and chest. “We need to try and make this round now.”

  We do our best trying to shape the base, but it's lopsided and misshapen. I look around and nearly everyone's looks similar to ours. But people are laughing and yelling and having a good time.

  “Okay, now we need to do the middle of his body,” Archer says. “Just pick up sand and put it on top of the one we just did.”

  It's easier said than done, as the sand falls through my hands and it takes forever to get a decent amount of sand on top. Archer keeps working, just lifting handfuls and packing it down. I feel like I'm doing nothing, but I keep trying.

  “Ten minutes!” someone yells out.

  There's another burst of activity as people rush to try and finish. Archer tries to shape the middle but it looks like all we've done is add more sand to the first part.

  “We gotta do the head,” he says. “Hurry!”

  I just start laughing. “A head? We don't even have a body!”

  “Shut up!” he says, but then starts laughing. “Help me with the head!”

  We pile more sand on top and he's frantically trying to create something that looks like a ball. He finally manages to form something that looks like a small basketball. He takes his finger and pokes two holes in it that are supposed to be eyes, then traces a crescent shaped smile below the holes for a mouth.

  “We need a hat or something,” he says, looking at.

  “A hat?” I say, laughing. “Are you kidding me?”

  He looks around, then sprints up the sand about fifteen yards, picks something up, and races back. He sets an empty plastic water bottle on its head. “There.”

  The whistle blows. “Time! Everyone stop!”

  I survey what we've created. It most definitely doesn't resemble a snowman in anyway. It looks more like a lopsided pile of sand with a water bottle on top of it.

  “Pretty good, right?” Archer says.

  I start laughing and sit down in the sand. My arms and legs ache, I'm covered in sweat and sand, and I have no idea what we've just made, but it is absolutely not a snow or sandman. It's a sand blob.

  “It's pretty bad,” I manage to say in between gasps of laughter.

  He looks at it. “Come on. It's not that bad.”

  That just makes me laugh harder and I roll onto my side.

  He starts laughing and drops down to the sand next to me. “It's not that bad.”

  His insistence that it's not just makes me laugh harder. “You used a water bottle for a hat!”

  “It's, like, a top hat.”

  I'm laughing so hard I can't catch my breath. He pulls me toward him and I laugh harder, curling up into the fetal position, afraid he's going to tickle me. But he's laughing, too, as he looks down at me.

  “I blame you,” he says. “You didn't take this seriously enough.”

  “Me?” I say. “You were in charge. I was just the assistant.”

  He leans down at kisses me. We both have wet sand on our lips now, but I don't even care. I would stay there in the sand with him forever.

  I glance to the side and see a couple of kids coming with clipboards. “Are those the judges?”

  He kisses my neck. “Fuck if I know.”

  They stop near our sand blob and stare at it, perplexed.

  Archer rolls off of me and looks at them. “It's a hat. The water bottle is a hat.”

  They look at our blob, their brows furrowed, then make a few notes on their clipboards.

  “It's a hat, dammit!” Archer says, laughing.

  The judges move on.

  “I don't think we're gonna win,” I tell him.

  He laughs and turns back to me. “Can't believe you don't have faith in us.”

  I pull him down on top of me. I know that there are people around and that we're covered in wet sand, but I don't care.

  I kiss him. “I have faith in us. Just not as sand sculptors.”

  He laughs and we lay there in the sand for a while, kissing, oblivious to everything else around us.

  Chapter 25

  “Well, that was absolutely terrible,” Mercy says.

  We're standing at the showers near the restrooms, trying to wash the sand off of our legs, arms, and faces. She, Brooke, and Dylan are just as covered in sand as I am. The boys have headed toward the ocean to rinse themselves off.

  “Why?” Brooke asks.

  “Because we couldn't build anything,” Mercy says, making a face. “All we made was mush.”

  “Same,” I say, sticking my arms under the shower. The water isn’t warm but at least it’s getting me clean.

  “Same,” Dylan says. “Ours looked like a murdered sand creature.”

  “Ours wasn't terrible,” Brooke says. “Nick sort of knew what he was doing.”

  “I think I've heard you say that before,” Dylan says.

  “Ha,” Brooke says. “I probably have. But we got third place.”

  “We got zero place,” Mercy says. “Probably last place.”

  “No way,” I say. “Ours was absolutely a disaster.”

  “Again, ours looked like someone murdered some sand,” Dylan says.

  We all laugh as we try to get as much sand off of our bodies as possible. I'm trying to get my ankles clean when I see Ricky walking toward us. He holds up a hand and hesitates for a moment, then keeps walking.

  “I thought you'd be down here,” he says when he reaches us. “How'd you do?”

  “Not good,” I tell him. “Not good at all.”

  He laughs. “Yeah, this is totally not for me. I make a fool out of myself enough other times.” He adjusts his cap. “Hey, do you have a minute? I had a couple of follow-up questions for you. It'll only take a minute or two.”

  I look at the girls.

  “Go on,” Mercy says. “It's gonna take forever for us to get this off of us anyway.”

  I step away from the showers and Ricky and I walk over to a dry spot on the boardwalk.

  “I didn't want to just email you because I wasn't sure how often you check that,” he explains. “I need to get the draft in tonight, so I thought it would be best if I could just find you and do the follow up.” He holds up his phone. “Cool again if I record?”

  I'm immediately on guard and wary. I'm not sure why. Our first sit down was harmless enough and everything ended up being fine. But having him find me on the beach and want to ask more questions has me on edge.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It's cool.”

  “Awesome,” he says. “So, Florida. I didn't ask. Did you live there your whole life before you moved here?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Same place?”

  “We moved around a little, but basically the same place,” I tell him. “Was still central Florida.”

  “Okay,” he says. “The surfing thing. You told me you were learning to surf. Did you ever try to learn in Florida?”

  “Well, we weren't really near the coast, so no.”

  “No vacations or anything like that?”

  I shake my head. “No. I don't think I ever got to see the beach in Florida.”

  He tilts his head. “Really? N
ot at all?”

  I shake my head again. “No, I don't think so, unless it was when I was little and I don't remember.”

  “Is the beach far from where you lived? When I think of Florida, I automatically think of beaches. Well, and Disney World.”

  “It's a couple of hours in either direction,” I say.

  “Oh, okay,” he says, nodding. “I guess that makes sense. Okay, just a couple other things. Sort of school related. Was there a teacher you were hoping to have your senior year that you missed out on?”

  I think it's sort of a weird question and it must show on my face.

  “I'm just trying to sort of create the narrative of you moving here and what you might've missed your senior year there,” he explains. “Like, if I had to move this year, I would've totally missed Ms. Radford. She's the journalism advisor and she's been super cool to me. I don't know that I would've found another teacher that I connected with like that at a new school.”

  I nod. “Gotcha. Um, I don't know. We had this one teacher, Mr. Winfield. He teaches senior English. I didn't know him because I'd never had him before, but it was kind of a thing that you took him senior year. He was supposed to be kind of crazy and fun, and I knew kids liked his class.”

  “Sort of a rite of passage,” Ricky says.

  “Yeah, like that,” I tell him. “So I guess I did think about that. That I wouldn't get to be in his class.”

  “Okay, cool,” he says. “Last thing. Any friends you left behind?”

  A tiny knot forms in my stomach. “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean, duh. Obviously you left friends behind,” he explains. “But anyone in particular that was hard to leave? A best friend? A boyfriend? Anyone like that?”

  I think for a moment, remembering how everyone cut me out of their lives after what my mom did. When I left Florida, I didn't say goodbye to a single person because they'd all already said goodbye to me.

  “Not really,” I finally say. “Definitely no boyfriend. And I guess I was kind of...a loner. So no best friends or anything like that.”

  He nods. “Okay. Just realized I hadn't asked before. I know for some kids, it would be hard to move right before senior year because of all that stuff.”