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His fingers shift in mine, tickling my palm, and heat shoots up my arm. We reach the building’s front corridor, where a stairwell leads up to two more levels of classrooms and a row of glass doors leads outside. His thumb strokes the back of my hand.
“What sort of business?” He leans forward to push one of the doors open with his free hand. He flattens his broad back against it, and I squeeze through beside him while my pulse pounds in my head.
Outside, sunlight is streaming through the clouds: a soft, cool, filmy light that seems to set the scene for something serious. The pearly glow flickers through the trees, making a shadowy kaleidoscope of leaf-shapes that flickers across Kellan’s face and shoulders.
“Psychology,” I fudge. I don’t want to get into my real ambitions with him. I have a feeling he wouldn’t get it.
I look around at the wide, brick concourse out ahead, empty because everyone is in class; at the impeccably manicured lawns that spread out underneath giant, mossy oaks. The lawns and flower beds are striped by pebble walking paths.
He leads me toward the nearest trail, curling between rows of massive azalea bushes. Despite all my reservations, I follow.
My forearm brushes his, and suddenly I just can’t keep touching him. Not without bursting into flames. I wriggle my fingers impatiently, and his hand relaxes to free mine. He stops moving, and we stand there on the shaded trail, watching each other. He looks like a real prince in his vest-suit thing.
I feel like a pumpkin.
He trails a finger lightly down my forearm. “Relax, Cleo.” His voice is stern and soft. “I won’t bite—this time.” He winks, and I roll my eyes, despite the increase in my heart rate.
He walks, and my traitorous feet follow.
“You’re a senior?” he asks, glancing back at me.
My stomach writhes under his blue gaze. “Yeah.”
“So, grad school after this?”
The azaleas on each side of the path rise up around us, fluffy green bushes taller even than Kellan. The feeling of privacy makes my head buzz. Makes me sound breathless when I say, “It’s one of the reasons I need money.”
I search his face for hidden motives, but he’s looking at me the same way he was before: with sincere interest, as if he’s interviewing me for an important job. “What will you do with your degree?” he asks, in his resonant voice.
“Help kids.” Kids like my sister and me. After our youngest sister, Olive, died, Mary Claire and I both struggled. We had a hard time in school, and an even harder time at home. Our house was so gloomy. Both my grandmother and my mom cried all the time. My mom closed her sewing shop and took a factory job. Grans started cleaning houses when she could. Mary Claire and I were on our own. To understand why Olive was taken and we weren’t. To make sense of the knowledge that we’d never, ever see her freckled face again. For years, I would go to the cemetery on the fourteenth of every month, because she died on the fourteenth. Mary Claire has never been. She just can’t go.
Neither of us ever got “therapy,” because we couldn’t afford it. At our elementary school, there was one counselor, and she was busy helping with the kids who acted out.
My business will target kids like us. I’ll do private art classes, and I’ll charge my patrons... aggressively. I’ll make the classes really fun. I’ll make my clients feel like artists, and ensure they’re able to take home a nice canvas. Then I’ll use some of the money to offer free art classes to kids who’ve experienced tragedy. I talked to the local school superintendent here in Chattahoochee, and she said a plan like mine would definitely work in most school districts.
I look up at perfect Kellan, and I know
I can’t tell him all that. He’d never understand.
I give him an easy little shrug. “Kids with troubles,” I say. “I’m going to help them.”
“That’s a noble calling.”
“I should warn you, I have a sensitive bullshit-o-meter.” I lift my eyes from the ground and find him staring at me earnestly. He’s all blue eyes, cheekbones, and lips. Anger wars with desire inside me, tightening my chest. “It’s got to be better than your criminal plans.”
He slants his gaze down at me. “You’re probably right.”
Curiosity seeps through me. I only fight it for a minute before loosening my tight shoulders and asking, “What are your plans seriously? More of what you do right now? And you really do... what you said yesterday?”
He places a finger over my lips and looks into my eyes. His are so... intense. Almost hungry. I do this weird, mini-shiver thing, but he doesn’t seem to notice as he draws his hand away from my mouth and turns back to the path ahead. “Yes, Cleo. I really do. And... I don’t have plans,” he says, walking. His eyes are on the pebbles. His hands have disappeared into his pockets.
“Nothing?”
“Just keep thumbing through my wads,” he says. One corner of his mouth lifts, but it’s not a smile.
“Investing,” he adds, like it’s an afterthought. Our little path turns east, toward Taylor Hall, the tall, brick pre-Civil War administrative building.
I’m aware of his body, just a foot or so from mine. How quiet he suddenly is. How big—and also graceful. Like an athlete. Which makes sense, because he is. I keep forgetting Mr. Perfect plays soccer. I glance at his legs. I can see thick muscle through his slacks.
