AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What?” Lane says. “Why not?”
The answer tothatquestion feels so painfully obvious that I bark out a laugh. I wave a hand between us, though of course that’s no answer at all.
Lane wilts in her seat. Chewing on her bottom lip, she stares at her notepad, scrawled with notes from a different class.
“You don’t have to keep seeing me, you know. As my tutor or… anything more. No one’s making you, Ambrose.”
No, no one’smademe do any of this: tutor a student who doesn’t need help; break my own code to kiss her; fall in love against all my survival instincts. Turn up late today and make everything worse.
This is all me.
And I know it makes me the biggest ass in the universe, but a small, bruised part of me rankles when Lane seems so calm about it all. Would it really be so easy for her to end our arrangement?
Would Lane find someone else for herkissing lessons? Does she already have someone in mind?
I squeeze the edge of the table until my knuckles ache.
“Just tell my parents you’re no longer available,” Lane says dully, still staring at her notepad. She’s doodling a flower. “They’ll insist on finding someone else to tutor me, obviously, but you’ll be off the hook. Problem solved.”
My chest burns.
Problem solved? Problemsolved?
“Fine,” I grate out. “Good idea. It’s probably for the best, anyway. This was becoming a distraction.”
And then, only then, does Lane finally glance up—and hit me with the hurt swimming in her big, blue eyes. Tears brim, and her lower lip wobbles.
Fucking hell.
It’s a punch to the chest. My thoughts scatter, my lungs freeze, and only my grip on the table keeps me anchored in place, because Lane looksagonized.Like this hurts her every bit as much as it hurts me, and how did I not see that before? Why did I assume I’m some lone ranger, completely alone in these feelings? Didn’t I feel the hungry way she kissed me? Didn’t I feel her shy trust when she lay back for me on Sunday night?
I’m such an ass.
“A distraction,” Lane chokes out. “Yes. Okay.”
“No, wait—”
She stands up on wobbly legs, grabs her notepad and pen and stuffs them blindly into her backpack. Lane reaches for the mug too, then catches herself before pouring a whole frothy coffee in her bag. Blue eyes blink at me in a daze.
“Um. See you around, Ambrose.”
“Lane, hang on a second. Please, just wait—”
She stumbles away from our table to the nearest door, bouncing one shoulder off the wall. Like I’ve injured her physically as well as dealt an emotional blow.
My own chair screeches over the floor, and I stagger after her, but chairs push back and slow me down.
When I spill through the door onto campus, every hacky-sack player in a ten mile radius rushes to get in my way.
“Lane!”
I’m crowded, jostled, surrounded by stoners and skateboarders and someone pushing a flier into my chest, telling me to come to the drama school’s production of Romeo and Juliet. I bat them away, desperately scanning for a head of blonde curls.
“Lane!”
In the distance, she hurries away, dress swishing around her thighs. She disappears around the side of the building—and when I finally break free of this mob and run after her, I round the building to find… no sign.
Breathing hard, I press my knuckles into my chest, then march forward, scanning the different paths Lane could have taken. Nothing.
