"What's this word again?" I asked and pointed at a word on the page. 

"Hot," Che said and smirked. 

"That's not true," I muttered. "Focus for a bit, yeah?"

Che groaned loudly and looked down in the book. "It says 'teacher'." 

I muttered the letters and tried to remember it. "'CH' makes a 'TJ' sound..." I said to myself, wrote it down on a piece of paper next to me and kept going. "How about this one?"

Che leaned in and kissed my jaw, under my ear. "Beautiful," he murmured and ran his hand over my stomach. 

"Che," I said coolly.

"Nathan," Che almost purred back and cupped my cheek with his hand. 

"I really want to learn."

He turned my head and kissed me.

"I'll teach you something," he said gruffly and pried the book out of my hand. I sighed loudly and didn't kiss him back. He pulled back a bit and looked at me.

"Come on, I was just joking. The word was 'apple', okay? Now you've finished the page." He pushed the book farther away, out of my reach.

I sighed and realised I wasn't getting out of this. I slid my hands up his chest and pushed him down on his back in the couch-bed. It was late evening and since none of us could sleep, I thought reading was a good idea. Che didn't agree.

I slipped down between his legs and pressed my hips to his. 

"Uh, Nathan..." Che said and tried to sit up. I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him down. I rocked my hips again and opened the button on his trousers.

"I don't want this..." he said and looked seriously up at me. I tipped my head to the side before I dipped down and kissed him. 

"Relax," I murmured and ran my hand over his stomach. "I won't do anything you don't want me to do."

"Sorry, I'm just... Not into that," he said and actually looked vulnerable.

"It's okay," I murmured softly.

I slowly stroked my fingers over his skin on his ribs and stomach, before going down. He groaned when my hand hit jackpot. I lived for making him groan at this point. I loved listening to him.

I ran my tongue over the skin on his neck and moved down to the curve of his shoulder. I put my other hand next to his hip, my wrist pressing on his skin. He lifted his hips and pulled his trousers completely off. He sat up, forcing me back on my knees and pulled me closer.

"I love you," he murmured and kissed me, as he pulled on my sweats.

I froze again. I wanted to say it back, and it was hanging in the air taunting me once again. It was becoming more and more obvious I didn't say it back, for every time he said it. Instead, I repositioned myself and took away his attention from the thing I should have said. Would like to say.

Why are words so fucking hard...

I looked down at the gun and tipped my head to the side. 

"One would think, giving a loaded gun to a registered feral would be a poor choice," Carlos said thoughtfully and weighed his own gun in his hand. 

"Then don't shoot us and make them rethink this class," Rasmus said in his flat Danish accent.

Carlos carefully took out the magazine and checked the bullets. He pushed it back in and loaded the first bullet into the chamber. 

"Don't worry, Viking, I am not shooting anyone." He put the gun down on the table. "What do you think, Nathan?" He liked to get my opinion on stuff because we usually saw quite differently on a large number of subjects, broadening each other's perspectives. 

"I don't need a gun," I said. "They're loud. Knives are better. Cleaner, and it's easy to go for a quick kill."

I looked stone-cold at Rasmus, Carlos trying hard not to burst out laughing. Rasmus paled and went back to his own station. 

"You guys are awful," Nat snickered, the gun in her hands. She pointed it at the target and pulled the trigger. She was a natural. The instructor had said so herself. 

"Mr García, Mr Creed, is something wrong with your Glocks?" the instructor asked.

She was a chirpy bird with long red hair always tied up in a braid. Her fair skin was covered in freckles, and she seemed way too bubbly to be this interested in guns. But she was the best, according to Birdie. 

"Not at all, Instructor," Carlos said and smiled his most sly smile. "We were just discussing whether guns or knives were the best weapons." 

"Well, a good knife is always good. But it needs to be balanced properly; otherwise, you can't do much with it." She pulled out a really big knife from out of nowhere and showed it to us. "This one has a perfect balance. Here." She handed it to me. She was right. The balance was good. I handed it back to her, and she smiled. "Good right?"

"A lot better than a prison shank," I replied. She snorted and nodded towards the gun. 

"Now, try out the Glock. It has a good balance too if you hold it the right way." She picked up the Glock and showed me how to hold it, and how to stand to get the least amount of recoil. My aim was way off. I was a horrible shot. 

"That's all right, Mr Creed. You'll get the hang of it eventually." She walked over to Nat and spoke to her, leaving me and Carlos to it. 

"I'd like to get a hang of her if you know what I mean," Bruce, the Englishman, said and smirked.  

"Literally everybody knows what you mean," I muttered and fired my gun again, missing the target with at least a few feet. 

"You're no fun, Creed."

The instructor left us to it and went over to Ryan and Carlos' supervisor and started talking to them.

"Neither are you, but you don't see us complaining," Nat said and smirked at him. Another one she didn't like.

"Come on, the Instructor is hot, you gotta give me that at least, Creed." Bruce pulled the trigger and hit the target right in the heart. He put the gun down and folded his arms over his chest.

Awkward.

I decided to just pull the trigger again and avoid this conversation entirely.

"Unless you're gay or something."

And there it was. I had three choices. I could keep ignoring him, which would lead to more questions. Or I could act all pissed off, which would make him even more sure. Or I could just own up to it in front of everybody. Third choice.

Was that even an option?

I knew everything I told anyone here, with the exception of the Levy's and my sister would make it out somehow. And if it could make it out to the rest of the campus, it could hit the media as well. I was still a hot subject, people trying to dig up information about Nat and Cal, even my parents. Everything about me was worth a lot of money, and people were selling out.

The clerk in the first gas station we stopped at, after I got out of prison, told them all about me asking Che what the different stuff was, so obviously I had to be mentally challenged or downright stupid. Nobody thought about me not being able to read had a role to play in that occurrence. No. I had to be stupid because I was feral. 

I bet the media would go crazy over me being gay too. Ugh.

"And so what if he is?" Cassie asked from the other side of his station. "What gives you the right to ask something like that? Seriously, that ain't any of your business." She was officially on my like-list.

Bruce just raised his hands in the air in surrender.

"Nobody here can take a joke," he said, sounding very offended. 

"Everybody here can take a joke. We haven't strangled you yet, have we?" Nat said and fired another round. 

"I know you love me, less scary Creed." Bruce shot her a sweet smile.

She gripped around the handle of the gun and turned towards him. "The fuck you mean with less scary?" she growled angrily. I stepped in between them, still turned towards Bruce. 

"Time to stop fucking around," I said coolly and nodded towards his gun. "Go back to training." 

Bruce snorted and went back to shooting at his target. I looked over at Nat. We were definitely feeding off each other's energy right now, and it did nothing good for any of us. I took a deep breath, and she did the same.

Ryan rose to his feet and walked over to Nat. She was clearly still tense, where I was better at calming down after just mouthing off. If there had been any actual threat, he would have come to me instead of her.

"Hey Nathan, have you heard of the other students?" Charles asked and fired a round, not even remotely close to hitting the target.

"No, what's up?" I asked and loaded another bullet into the chamber.

"They're talking about doing something to us. To the 'ferals.' I overheard someone talking in the dorm a week ago." He fired another shot and turned towards me. "I figured since you live with active agents, maybe they had told you?"

"No, I've not heard anything of this," I said and shrugged. This was complete news to me but also not really that surprising. People looked weird at us when we moved around on the campus. I reckoned it was inevitable something would happen.

Charles was about to say something else, but he got interrupted by my sister.

"Fuck! This!" she screamed after a very brief conversation with Ryan. I put the gun down and followed her out of the building, shaking my head at Ryan. I would take care of this.

She was pacing outside looking like she was ready to kill somebody. 

"Nat," I said, and she whirled around and looked at me. 

"Fucking assholes!" she growled. 

"Who? Bruce? Fuck him."

"No! Fucking Ryan! He's trying to get in my head, and I want to fucking murder him in his fucking sleep!" I held my hand out to her, and she briefly looked down at it. "It's bullshit, Nathan." 

"I know." 

"No, you don't know! You don't remember shit! I do! I remember them taking me away from my family. I remember them taking you away. And now I have to go through this shit? I can't even get angry without them thinking I am having a fit and need to drugged!"

"That's because of me..." My hand dropped down to my side. 

"Not everything is about you!" She stepped towards me and went all up in my face. "Not every single thing in this fucking world is about you! I am not you!" 

"I never said you were." 

"Then tell that to Ryan, because he has a hard fucking time seeing the difference! I don't have a fucking disorder like you. I don't need to be drugged to be inside after fucking 10 pm. I'm not sick like you!"

"No, you are not," I said quietly. I turned around and walked back towards the shooting range. 

"Nathan, stop. Wait, I didn't mean it like that." She curled her fingers around my wrist and made me stop. But I knew she did. And she was right. I was sick. My newest diagnosis from Sarah the therapist was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. So now I had shifting disorder, anxiety disorder, insomnia and finally PTSD. And Nat knew it.

"I'm sorry, that was unfair. I know you've been through..."

"Shit," I said, finishing her sentence. She nodde, and I did too. "You don't have to apologise, Nat. This is shit. And a lot of the shit you're getting is because of me, so... Don't apologise to me... Please." 

"It's not because of you. It's because of them." Her voice turned dark, like it always would when she was in this mood. She hated everybody who wasn't us. Some people she just hated less. Like Che and Carlos for some reason.

I was close to telling her, these people had nothing to do with our situation, but I bit my tongue. There was no reasoning with her at this point. 

"We can't turn on each other." Her voice had turned softer, and she looked up at me with a fierce look in her eyes. "In the end, it's us against them. Right?" 

You are on my team, right?

I just muttered 'right' and started back to the shooting range.