Page 29 of Midnight Curfew

“I could introduce you to him,” Jerome says.

I swallow, hating this conversation. But I can’t tell a man I need to shut his fucking mouth. I don’t want anyone. I haven’t wanted anyone for a long time.

But I need it. Badly.

And maybe it’ll feel good to flaunt my charmed life in front of Dallas.

“Well,” I sigh. “I guess I can’t stop you from bringing him by the Wolfe Room whenever you want.”

He smiles, and I won’t admit that I kind of appreciate having one person to talk to about this.

“Just not tonight,” I throw out.

I’ve got plans.

—

Summer classes at Marymount start tomorrow, and there’s anticipation in the air as I charge through the empty hallways. Lightning flashes over the courtyard as rain pours down, the distant thunder rolling. I pass brightly lit rooms and teachers getting ready, as well as janitors lining trash cans with fresh bags.

I never spent more time here than I had to as a student, but I know the school isn’t completely empty all summer. Not only do teachers who aren’t teaching take the quiet opportunity to prepare in their classrooms before the fall, but the football team will be starting practice soon. The boys who aren’t traveling will already be in the weight room, bulking up before everyone returns in about a month. I didn’t much care for sweating my ass off in a hundred percent humidity out on the football field, and when I quit the team mid-season junior year, it was the first of many times I realized I took after my mother more than I did my father. She didn’t want to suffer to please him, either.

There are far better men to do that for.

Climbing the stairs and approaching room 244, I slow, watching the classroom come into view.

At the doorway of Dallas’s classroom, where the lights are off and candles are lit, I stop and take in the scene of Dallas Jaeger and my stepsister, feeling like I’ve interrupted something.

Sophia kneels on the foot-wide windowsill of polished redwood, the bottom of her black knickerbocker pants buttoned just below the knee, a matching ribbon tied into a bow at the back of her head.

Her long brown hair is in tangles down her back, as if she was outside playing a short time ago. Dallas drifts slowly around the room, silently picking up desks and gently placing them into new arrangements without any sound as he watches her paint.

Candlelight flickers across the walls, the clouds letting in only minimal light as my sister colors in a massive scribble art piece on the windows. I’ve seen her do these before. One black line drawn in curves and loops, hills and dips, making overlapping shapes, and then she fills in each section with a different color. The piece covers one whole seven-foot-tall window, half-finished, as the reds, purples, and oranges come alive with the firelight and the streaks of rain cascading down the other side of the watercolors.

Sophia sits back on the heels of her sneakers, and I see that she’s wearing suspenders over her short-sleeve white T-shirt. From here, she looks eleven again. Which is how she wants to be seen.

I shift my gaze to Dallas, watching him move around the room, careful not to disturb her as she fills in each shape with paint. He’s still a couple of inches taller than me, and he still hasn’t noticed I’m here. Or maybe he has, and he’s letting me look. He’s fucking arrogant like that.

Trailing my eyes up the side of his neck, I linger where his soot-black hair touches the nape, and he still looks like he’s perpetually a month overdue for a haircut. It hangs over his forehead, too, a little wild but not unkempt, and his black tie hangs loose around his white collar.

That Jaeger bracelet—three thin brown leather straps securing an emblem of a snake wrapped around an hourglass, matching the tattoo on the front of his shoulder—is tied around his wrist, drawing attention to his forearms and beautiful fingers.

His chest is broader, his stomach just as tight, and he looks better not dressed in jeans. I like this view.

I’m sure he likes the teenage girls here and their crushes, too.

Leaning against the doorframe, I slide my hands into my pockets. “How old are your students this year?” I ask.

He twists his head to me, and I feel my stomach drop a little just like it did when I was seventeen.

Sophia keeps working, unfazed.

Dallas places another desk in a group. “Rising seniors.”

I almost smile. How poetic.

“I remember my summer at that age.” I look toward him with a hooded gaze. “Do you?”

He glances at me as he works, amusement playing on his face. “Yeah.”