The phone buzzed again, muffled by denim. Karter flinched. His hand twitched toward his pocket before he caught himself. The color climbing his throat gave him away.
“Hand it over.”
“What?”
“The phone.” I held out my palm, waiting. “Put it face down on the table.”
“No.”
“Karter.”
“Still no.”
I leaned forward, my body casting a shadow over his side of the table. “You think my future is a joke?”
“It’s just a text,Aleks,” he said, his voice sneering on the nickname he’d given me. “Drop it.”
“Phone. Now.”
Karter’s chest rose and fell fast. Instead of shrinking back from my size, he shifted his weight forward, lifting his chin.
“Make me,” he said.
Something ugly and reckless snapped awake inside me. My bone-deep fatigue vanished, replaced by the cold, sharp instinct of realizing a fight had just been picked.
I pressed my palms flat against the tabletop, my breathing going still.
Letting some rich kid mock me wasn’t an option when I had nothing left to lose.
I shoved the chair out of my way and stepped into his space. I didn’t give him a second to react, throwing my weight forward to pin him between me and the table. I wasn’t trying to intimidate him anymore—I was going to rip the phone right out of his pocket.
“You think I won’t?” I warned.
I grabbed the thick fabric of his hoodie and hauled him out of the chair. Karter scrambled backward, his hip knocking hard against the edge of the table. He ripped the phone from his pocket and wrenched his body sideways, turning his back to me. By the time I lunged around him, he’d already shoved it somewhere I couldn’t see; whether in a different pocket or the waistband of his jeans, it was gone.
He then spun back around and retreated into the narrow aisle between two towering bookshelves. I followed, using my broad frame to block his only way out.
“Back off,” Karter said, his breathing shallow. He planted both hands flat against my chest as I neared. His fingers felt cold through my shirt. But for all his defiant talk, he pushed against my chest with zero actual force.
“What’s on the phone?” My hands slid down his sides. The rough cotton of his hoodie scraped my palms.
“I told you, back off.”
“I’m done asking,” I muttered.
Moving lower, my hands patted down his hips to find where he’d stashed it. Karter shifted again to block me, and his hoodie rode up. My fingers slipped past the fabric.
And then my skin brushed the bare stomach right above his waistband.
The sudden feel of his bare skin short-circuited my brain. We both froze. My shoulders tightened, bracing for the inevitable hit—because guys like me didn’t corner people without catching a fist in return.
However, instead of fighting, Karter exhaled a ragged breath. He just gave up, letting his body sag forward into my grip.
My hands went totally still against his stomach. The phone didn’t matter, and I wasn’t just pushing him around to prove a point anymore. Twenty-one hours without sleep had stripped away my usual instincts. I was too tired to back off, and too curious to see what he would do if I didn’t.
“You’re not fighting me,” I whispered.
“You’re not searching my pockets,” he answered.
