“Right, come on then, honey, let’s get you to the airport,” Dad says, coughing to disguise the emotion that’s filling his eyes with tears and reluctantly releasing me to grab my case.

A shudder of fear rolls through me the moment I step off the plane and into the Florida sunshine. Coming back here was awful last time, but at least then I knew it was only for a couple of hours. Now, I’m here to stay and it’s unlikely I’ll get a chance to go home until Thanksgiving.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I inhale a deep, affirming breath, then roll back my shoulders, pick up my case and move to the line of people all waiting for cabs. Mom wanted to pick me up, she kept saying that she deserved to be able to take her only child to college. I almost agreed, until she told me that Harry and Evan were looking forward to helping me get settled. Hell no, I’d rather Evan have no idea where my dorm room is. Not that I think my stepbrother will want to have anything to do with me.

Evan, Clay and Hunter were all nice enough to me, but they’re his, and I don’t want to be a part of anything that will bring him back into my world. The cab drops me at the bus station and I thank the driver and grab my case from the trunk. It takes an hour to get to the closest bus stop to Kingsacre, and then it’ll be about a ten-minute walk dragging my case to the college campus.

Being a private college, I can pretty much guarantee I’m the only freshman who’ll be arriving by bus and the closer I get to the place, the more worried I feel. I hate this world. I hate the rich and elitist, and here I am again, putting myself into a position where I’m going to be forced to interact with them and live with them for the next four years.

Of course, in a place like Kingsacre, there’s no way any of the rich kids that attend could imagine sharing a bathroom with thirty others, so instead of shared dorms, the kids live in houses on campus, where each room has its own bathroom. It’s pretentious as hell, but I wasn’t exactly going to say no to a private living space rather than having to share air with a stranger. My dad offered to pay for an off-campus apartment, but with no car and the campus being twenty minutes away from the closest apartment up for rent, it didn’t make sense for me not to take advantage of the free room and meal plan that was part of my scholarship.

My cheeks are red and there’s a fine layer of sweat coating my skin when I finally arrive at the huge arched gates that signal the entrance. Like I expected, there’s not another person on foot in sight apart from the ones climbing out of Ferrari’s, Porsche’s, and I think that might be a Bugatti. I’m stepping back into rich-kid hell and for the hundredth time since I got off the plane, I consider using my return ticket and just going back home. There’s nothing wrong with community college… right?