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“Up until recently, I knew there wasn’t going to be anything left for me here. Between you going to Penn State and my parents spending the past couple of years reminding me that I’m not good enough, I honestly thought I’d be out of here the moment I graduated.”
“But then you fell in love,” Tate teased, dumping her books on the first table while I moved to the second.
“Technically, Jaxon and I haven’t used the ‘L’ word yet,” I corrected, though I couldn’t do it without this dopey grin on my face. Jaxon was a little older than me, and while Tate adored him, my parents had tried to keep us apart on numerous occasions.
Partly because he didn’t come from a wealthy, upper-class family.
But mostly because he was a part of the Brothers by Blood Motorcycle Club—the president’s son, to be exact. He rode a motorcycle and wore what they would call gang patches.
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.
