Beside me on the course, the other guys were still shouting and fighting and choking on mud in the heavily watered-down sections. None of them even noticed me cruising right on past. And yeah, my face ended up covered in mud because it was the only way to stay low enough not to catch my head on the wire, but that was a small price to pay.
As I continued the monotonous movement—head down, elbow over elbow, wiggling forward—I let my mind go into the place that was my safe zone. It was here I escaped to when Blake beat me or when I lay awake at night in fear—a blank, white wall in my head, a barrier insulating me against whatever terrible shit was happening to me.
Before I knew it, I was at the end, and as I dragged my nauseous, aching body out, I felt a sense of accomplishment, even with my forearms and shoulders screaming at me, because, clearly, neither of them had ever done that shit before. I was pretty sure tomorrow I’d feel muscles I didn’t even know I had.
And the obstacle course wasn’t even close to being over yet.
After the mud section was a row of tires. They spanned the path before me in varying sizes, and it was clear we were supposed to run through them. After ditching my outer layer, thick and weighed down with mud, my second layer of a wool jacket and leggings was, thankfully, still warm enough. And now I could move a lot more freely.
Not bothering to look around, I took off, leaping from circle to circle. And while I was exhausted from the night's events, it was kind of thrilling to be out in the chilly morning air, stretching my body. Sure, my ribs ached, my shoulders hated me, and there was a big-ass graze on my face, but pain was fleeting and this obstacle course was actually fun.
At the end, three huge tires were lined up, blocking the path, the large center holes covered with a mesh. They wanted us to push the tires down the path to get through. Taking a deep breath, I stretched my limbs out before moving to the closest tire and giving it an almighty shove. It swayed but didn't move, and it was only as some of the guys ran up beside me that I figured out at least two people had to shove these to get them down.
It struck me that I had been the first one here, and that was so unexpected that I had to chuckle. Blake had always told me I was useless, clueless, and clumsy. Turned out I just needed to stretch my muscles a little more.
The front row of guys slammed into the three tires, knocking them down, but that wasn't the end of that trial. They had to lift them back up and flip them again, over and over, until the tires went into another mud pit, where we could use them to get across to the other side unscathed.
Of course, none of us made it that far because they all argued so much about the right way to move a tire. Each guy thought his ideas were the superior ones, when all they really needed to do was shut their mouths and use their muscles. No wonder the camp leaders had stressed the need to work together. Teamwork was a skill severely lacking in this group of campers... myself included.
I tried to speak up to organize the situation and encourage three or four of them to workwithme to pass this obstacle. None of them listened. None of them even 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 hadnotfinished. 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 nowherenearfit 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.Andthat 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 toowillful. 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 isnotwhat 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'tneedthis training, Florence. You're already a good person... but maybe this camp can teach you something different."
I stumbled over a tree root but caught myself before hitting the dirt.
"Like what?" I asked, hoping like hell he couldn't see my flaming blush from almost face-planting on the ground.
