Page 72 of Broken by my Bully

“Ugh, this is going to take long.” She shakes out the folded paper. “Cruel Consequences.” Rolls her eyes. “He’s so melodramatic. If he wasn’t so hot, I’d be annoyed.”

She sounds annoyed to me, but maybe she’s just peeved.

She scans the page, grabbing a pretzel to nibble on while I try not to die of curiosity. Thankfully, she’s a fast reader.

“Oh, okay. So it’s like a twist on Truth or Dare. We can knock this out in an hour.” She hands me the paper and then upends the envelope on her palm. A set of laminated cards fall out, bound with a red elastic band, slips of paper, and a red sticker.

I skim the instructions.

We roll a die—not included, thanks Professor—to see who starts. Then we draw a card and have to decide to enact a Cruelty on our partner, or suffer the Consequence. Then we move to the next card and repeat the process.

If either of us refuses to complete a card, we both fail.

If we don’t turn in a video of us completing the cards, we both fail.

And finally, if we don’thave fun with it, we both fail.

“We have to record this?”

“It’s that or doing it in front of the class,” Melissa says, already glancing around for a place to set up her phone.

I don’t know whatthisis, but she’s right. We’re not exactly BFFs or anything, but at least we’ve said a few words to each other. Standing up in front of a class full of strangers would have been terrifying.

And then there’s Kai, of course…

And Professor Rooke.

“Yeah, this is much better.”

Melissa sets up her phone on the dresser, aiming it toward the floor where we’re sitting before taking a seat opposite me again.

“Okay, let’s start. We’ll do rock, paper, scissors to see who starts.”

She wins and wriggles her shoulders victoriously as she pulls the elastic off the stack of laminated cards. There’s a big ONE on the first card, and she turns it over to read what’s on the other side.

She shakes her head as she hands over the card. “Ugh, salmonella? No thanks.”

I frown at her. Look at the card. My eyebrows shoot up.

Cruelty

Read your partner’s last five text messages out loud.

Consequence

Eat a raw egg, shell and all.

“Seriously?” I groan.

Melissa shrugs again and holds out her hand.

“This is an invasion of privacy.” I cringe, but hand over my phone, doing my level best not to look toward the dresser as I casually take a sip of soda.

Melissa glances up at me after a few seconds. “There’s nothing on here.”

I shrug at her. “You’ve made your choice.”

She smiles at that, and, surprisingly, it lasts longer than a millisecond this time. Then her smile fades, and she gives me a hard stare.