Page 2 of Ride or Die (The Shores #1)

CHAPTER

TWO

THE GOOD GIRL

LAYLA

Accounting & Business Mathematics can suck it.

I hate math. I have no intention of doing math in my job.

I’ll hire an accountant to do this shit.

I shift on my uncomfortable wooden seat in the lecture hall and twirl my pen around my fingers in boredom.

I read ahead, so I am already familiar with the content the professor is teaching.

My name is Layla White and I’m known as one of the ‘good girls’ in The Shores. And somehow that reputation followed me to college.

Looking around, I don’t know a single thing about any of my peers, and they know nothing about me either, or how I got here.

In its heyday, The Shores was a suburb full of middle-income families. It was a beautiful waterfront community about an hour outside of the city. But that’s no longer the case.

When the car plant closed, the families that got jobs elsewhere vacated the area, leaving it virtually abandoned. Eventually, the homes were designated low-income housing and a more poverty-stricken community started to build.

The car assembly line turned into food and product factories that paid minimum wage. They hired people in temporary part-time positions to avoid paying for benefits or sick pay, limiting room for wage increases and beginning the cycle of crime for those in desperate positions.

Crimes like gangs, drugs, and petty theft, among other things.

Everyone here has fallen on hard times or was born into generational poverty. Doing anything we can to survive, to try to get out and make a better life for ourselves, at any expense.

We moved to The Shores when my parents were laid off from the auto industry in Detroit, and my dad’s friend got him a job at the local food plant.

We have now lived here for the past ten years, renting out a decrepit old house that almost feels colder inside than it does outside during the winter months.

As tough as living here has been, it gave me the drive to get out. Watching my parents struggle through poverty while they enslave themselves for someone else’s profit is a great motivator. That is not the life I will lead.

I worked my ass off in high school to get a full-blown scholarship and multiple grants for a university business program. Grants and scholarships that paid for my tuition and living expenses. I put them to good use and will likely graduate with a 4.0 GPA at the end of this year.

I always dreamed about starting my own business and going anywhere my heart desired, being my own boss. And that's exactly what I’m going to do.

So because I’m a dedicated student, because I work a normal job at a coffee shop, because I don’t party, because I want a future outside of this place and choose to do so legally, it makes me a bookworm, a nerd.

The good girl.

No one wants to associate with the good girl, so I spend my time studying or reading alone.

I kind of fade into the background. Not that I stand out with my simple chestnut brown hair and amber eyes. I’m small at five foot two, no big boobs. I am average at best. I’m not hard like the other people from The Shores, my sister Simone included.

Simone is the one who commands attention. She looks similar to me but puts it all out there with skimpy outfits and makeup. She gets all the guys and, sadly for her, a reputation. The things I’ve heard about her in passing are…gross.

She doesn’t try for anything except the bare minimum. I love her, but she blames all her problems on everyone but herself and frequently likes to tantrum when she doesn’t get her way.

She works at a local restaurant as a server and uses guys to pay for things. She expects to live the same life as my parents, though she will use her body to get her as far as she can before working an assembly line.

I fear that if she can’t find a man to take care of her, one day she will end up selling herself to make ends meet.

I don’t have a good relationship with my family. My mom tried for a while after we moved here, but that didn’t last once she was immersed in The Shores’ way of life, and I was old enough to take care of myself.

My parents are assholes that blame us for their shortcomings. They only speak to me to demand that I clean the house or give them money. It’s no wonder I have trouble making bonds and friendships.

When I graduate, I’m getting the fuck out of here, and because I know they will only try to use me, I’m even heartless enough to say I’m leaving them all behind.

Since I was eleven, everything I did was on my own.

I worked odd jobs cleaning houses or feeding the cats of the old lady up the street.

I’d even collect things like booze bottles from recycling bins to return to make cash.

I hustled to get where I am, and in eight months, my freedom is within my reach.

I’m startled from my thoughts when the door to the lecture hall slams shut. My head swings to the right, and my jaw drops when I see him. There stands the six-foot-something, sexy as fuck, dominating man, Colton Hawthorne. The ultimate bad boy.

I’ve had a crush on him since I moved here.

He is a street racer, a car thief, and a player. He is known for his uncanny ability to steal a car and ladies’ hearts.

Most guys from The Shores end up in drugs, gangs or things like street racing. I guess I consider this the lesser of the evils in our community, but that might be because I have a crush on Colton.

He has messy black hair, a strong jawline that leads to perfect plump lips, and eyes that shift from gray to blue depending on the light. They are utterly beautiful, and I’ve longed to gaze into them, but boys like Colton don’t go for girls like me.

Tattoos cover his muscular arms from his hands up his neck. He’s wearing his signature outfit, jeans and a t-shirt under a leather jacket and black boots, and his hair is just the right kind of unruly today.

He’s hot, and he knows it.

He grew up in the Shores, and we’ve gone to school together ever since I moved there. We are in the same business program too, and in our final year. He’s raced cars for as long as I’ve known him and eventually turned into the rumored car thief he is.

It’s how he made money and, I’m assuming, how he pays for tuition. Not many kids from the Shores make it to college, so the fact he made it here as well makes him all the more intriguing.

Colton shows up ten to twenty minutes late to every class.

Funny how I take transit and can be here on time, yet he drives and never is.

Instead, he comes in banging around, disrupting everyone every single day.

It’s like he wants the attention. Because everyone staring at him everywhere he goes isn’t enough.

He scans the lecture hall, looking for a place to sit, when his eyes land on me. I look away from his heated stare for a moment, and when I look back up, he's maneuvering to his seat.

I can’t help but watch him as he moves down the row from me. He slumps into his seat and his head turns to look at me again with that hard, intimidating glare that makes me both excited and terrified.

He lives a street over, and I’ll never forget the first day I saw him. He was at a friend’s house across the street from mine and watched us unload the moving truck the entire time. Sizing up the new family moving in.

He was as intimidating then as he is now.

Even though we went to school together, and now university, we didn’t speak much, mostly only sharing a look at each other in passing.

Maybe a grunt or sorry if we bumped into each other.

We did a group project together once in middle school, where he just sat there and let me do all the work.

But yep, that’s it.

Not all the kids in our class grew up in this shithole, we were bussed to their school.

Most lived in nice suburban neighborhoods and had no clue what we went through here.

There was something about Colton, though.

I always felt like there was something more there when our eyes would meet.

A secret understanding between us, of where we come from.

We never talked about it, it was just there.

He is totally out of my league, and way too menacing for me to even try to befriend him. I just put my head down, mind my own business, and try to get through the days.

I’m so close to freedom from this identity and community I can taste it, but I can’t give up yet. I only have this last year of working my ass off, then I’m taking my savings, getting out of here, and starting fresh, away from my good girl reputation.

Two hours later, the lecture finally finishes.

I gather my stuff, pack it into my bag, and head down the aisle to exit the lecture hall.

But there in my way is Colton, his long legs spread as he blocks the row.

I walk up to him and wait for him to move while he conveniently ignores me.

When I clear my throat, he finally looks up at me.

“Can I help you?” he asks with a scowl, his gorgeous eyes challenging me.

“Yes, move please,” I say bluntly, making a small smile creep up his face.

“Why?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Can you please just move? I have to catch the train to get home.” His smile gets bigger as he pulls his legs up, using his arm to gesture to the space in front of him.

I start to walk past when he speaks up again. “Your wish is my command, princess.” I ignore him because I know he is just trying to get a reaction out of me. I’m no stranger to bullying.

I can feel his eyes watching me as I exit the lecture hall, hurrying to the bus stop to wait patiently.

Across the way, I see Colton walking to his car with Serena Vanderhelt on his arm. Ultimate rich snobby bitch. They are a match made in heaven. She’s laughing and talking away as they reach his car, which of course is a sexy dark gray two-door Camaro with a V8 engine.

She giggles loudly as she hops in, but he stops at his door and stares over his car at me. A small smile tugs at his lips as he gives me a nod and a two-finger salute.

It's amazing how two people from the same place can be so different. While I can fantasize about being with a man like Colton, our lives are far too opposite. There’s not a chance in hell anything would ever happen between the ‘bad boy’ and the ‘good girl’.