All Chapters of Beauty and the Bastard : Chapter 11 - Chapter 18

The nerve of that asshole, I swear to fucking God. Jacob mother-fucking Broder needed to mind his own fucking business and shove his nose back in his ass before I did it for him. Prince Charming, knight in shining armor, and bodyguard. Those seemed to be his only roles in his relationship with Leia. He was always treating her like she was some delicate, fragile, breakable artifact or something when she was anything but that. Leia was a strong-minded, independent, and intelligent woman. She never failed to speak her mind or confront others when they were treating others like shit. Unless it was me, of course. That was when she avoided my presence as much as she possibly could. And as annoying as it was, she was also incredibly passionate about what she loved and cherished the most, always excited to share whatever brought her joy. Let it be her ridiculous obsession with books, her love for history, or her dreams to be a photographer that she'd had ever since she was a little girl..

I could barely contain my laughter as I walked away from Leia and Haylie. Their faces had just been too comical. If I was going to be completely honest, I wish I had played the nice character a little bit earlier. Of course, Leia was too smart to believe that I had been sincere about it. But then again, I hadn't even tried to make her think that I had been. I walked over to Marcus, and the tension rose, thickening to a point where it was nearly unbearable and completely impossible for either of us to ignore. "Hey." He looked over at me and gave me a tight, closed-mouthed smile. "Hey." The awkward silence that followed the small word exchange was so palpable that I felt like it could've choked the life out of the both of us. And there was really only one way to ease the tension. "Look, man, I'm sorry," I said, turning to look at Marcus. "I shouldn't have blown up like that." He looked at me and gave me one of those awkward half-smiles. "No, it's alright." He looked back

This drive was supposed to take over 24 hours. So obviously, we had to stay the night somewhere. Haylie had told me that we were supposed to stop at the Hilton Inn for the night, and then we would drive the last ten hours to the hotel where we were going to stay for the rest of the trip. But we had made up enough time to the point where we could just drive the whole way to the D.C hotel. The TSO had booked one hotel room for every two students. I really hoped I would be roomed with Haylie or Jake. If I was not, I was going to be throwing hands with someone. We still had around thirty minutes left until we got to the hotel, and it couldn't have been any longer. I needed to get off of the bus and as far away from Zach as possible, or else I was literally going to fucking strangle him. He had spent at least fifteen minutes whistling a random tune that he had made up, making the pitches alternate between long and slow and short and fast. It had annoyed the fucking shit out of me. And

I shouldn't have snapped like that. It's not Leia's fault, and she didn't know anything. She didn't know my history with that scene in that fucking drawing. I sighed and rubbed my face as I walked down the hall, away from the door that I had walked out of after yelling at Leia. The sound of the slamming impact of the door echoed throughout my head as I made my way to the elevator, replaying not only the sound but the events that had happened before. The guilt made me feel like three tons of lead were sitting in my stomach, and it stuck with me as I pressed the button to send the elevator to the first floor and stepped out into the main lobby. I felt a buzz in my pocket and pulled my phone out to see the notification.Marcus: Yo, there's a party in the pool house rn. Get your ass over here. I heavily sighed as I read the text. I really didn't feel like going out. Especially not after what had just happened with Leia. But maybe I needed a distraction, some action, fun. And Marcus