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They were sure one day his outlaw-ness was going to rub off on me, and I was going to start cussing, drinking, and killing people.
I took a seat, slumping into my chair. “I know everyone says I’m young and don’t know what I want. I shouldn’t stop my life for a guy?—”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” Tate agreed under her breath.
“But I just know. I know there’s more to us.”
It was this feeling.
One that had sat in my stomach since the night Jaxon and I met.
Correction—since the night Jaxon saved me.
“Take your seats, please!” Mrs. Calder announced as she stood by the door. “Hurry, hurry!”
The classroom of seniors felt like the inside of a beehive as they finished conversations and moved to find their seats. At the start of the year, Mrs. Calder had paired the lab partners up boys with girls in an effort to have some kind of focus in the classroom, I assume. It was a technique that probably would have worked if we still believed in cooties and thought the opposite sex was yucky, but our senior class was full to the brim with raging teenage hormones, which meant everyone was pretty damn happy with the seating situation.
Everyone except me.
Mainly because I was paired with the most obnoxious, arrogant teenage boy I’d ever fucking met. “I’m just not sur?—”
“Go Titans!”
Speak of the devil.
Literally.
I looked up just in time to catch Liam Hennely—the school’s golden boy of football—strut through the doorway, drawing the entire room’s attention. Boys wanted to be him, and girls wanted to date him.
I was of a third opinion.
And I knew it was the unpopular one—probably because I’d already dated him and regretted every moment I’d had to spend with that misogynistic bastard.
“Mr. Hennely,” Mrs. Calder scowled, ushering the final students into the classroom. “Hurry up and take your seat, please. I won’t be a moment.”
“Of course, Miss!” He grinned, offering her a sarcastic salute and earning himself a narrowed glare as she ducked out, disappearing down the hall. His scruffy blond hair fell across his face, his look very much Cali surfer dude with his tanned skin and toned body, and the way he walked like he didn’t have a fucking care in the world.
Strike two.
Tate rolled her eyes with a smile as she turned and leaned against the table in front of me. “I think you should talk to Jaxon before you decide what you’re going to?—”
“Damn!” Liam crowed, pulling my attention from Tate just as a resounding slap filled the room. “How did I miss that perfect ass before?”
That was when I realized Liam Hennely had my best friend’s ass in his hand, squeezing it hard while his knucklehead buddies behind him chuckled.
I saw the moment she stopped breathing, and her eyes glazed over.
Tate was another negative in my parents’ eyes, though I’d never tell her that.
She wasn’t born into wealth but adopted into it a few years ago after a rough ride in the foster care system. While she hadn’t filled me in on all the details about what happened when she was younger—I think because she was determined not to relive that hell—I’d pieced a lot of it together by how she reacted in certain situations.
And she didn’t do well with people touching or grabbing her without warning.
Tate wasn’t a pushover. The girl was stronger than people gave her credit for, but right now, there were tears pooling in her eyes, and as the seconds ticked by, Captain Fuckhead was still touching her and grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Almost as if he was expecting her to turn around and swoon at him at any fucking moment.
My heart leaped up into my throat, and without a second thought, I leaped out of my seat and grabbed the nearest weapon—the acoustic guitar one of the boys had propped up against his table.
