Page 119 of Cruel Elite (Princes of Ravenlake Academy 3)

To know how he feels.

To tell him how I feel.

Now, I don’t ever want to see him again. I can’t.

How could he?

How the fuck could he?

I knew it was coming—the moment when he would make me regret everything.

I just didn’t realize it would be so public. So degrading.

I didn’t realize he was planning to pass me around to every guy in our grade.

Just the thought of what those drunken horny idiots wanted to do to me makes my stomach turn.

Actually, I feel like I might be sick.

I stop running and grab a tree for balance, bending over. My breath is coming too quickly. I can’t seem to get enough air into my lungs.

The harder I try, the worse it gets.

My pained wheezes are so loud, I don’t hear Noah coming up behind me until his hand lands on my back.

“Penny.”

I spin away from him, tripping over a tree root and catching myself hard on the trunk of another tree.

It knocks the wind from me, but that actually seems to help.

I gasp, filling my lungs with air, and then make the conscience decision to exhale and inhale slowly, calming my body down even while my mind races on.

“Penny, I didn’t—”

“You sure made great use of that picture,” I say, cutting him off. I don’t have the energy to hear whatever bullshit excuse he’s going to make.

I’m not even sure why he’s still trying to make excuses. Wasn’t this his grand finale? I hope so. If it wasn’t, I can’t imagine what else he could have planned.

“Very creative.”

“That wasn’t me!”

“Enough, Noah, okay? You’ve made no secret that you planned to ruin my life. I’m not an idiot. I sent that picture toyou. How would anyone else have gotten it?”

“I don’t know.” He runs both his hands through his hair, tugging on it. “J.C. must have taken it off my phone and—”

“If J.C. did that, it would have been because you told him it was okay! I know how things work in your group. He wouldn’t have done anything to me unless you told him he could.”

“I didn’t mean to!” Noah moves towards me, his steps clumsy because of the uneven ground and how much he’s had to drink. “J.C. has been pestering me for weeks about Spring Fling, and I’ve been ignoring him, telling him to take care of everything. He probably brought it up, but I was too distracted to pay any attention. I know this looks bad, but I didn’t mean for it to happen, and J.C. didn’t know. I’m still going to kill him for it. But he didn’t know.”

I don’t want to trust him. I’ve been burned too many times before, and I don’t want to be caught off guard again.

But Noah seems sincere.

I can’t understand why he would be going to such great lengths to explain away this prank unless… it wasn’t a prank.

Maybe it was a misunderstanding.

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