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an us who I could only hope didn’t have any connections to my school. Callie had to step in and explain for me. I really shouldn’t have had sex with anyone if I wasn’t capable of handling the fallout.
We didn’t laugh getting our uniforms back on in the bathrooms, and Callie hurried back to class after our excursion was done without much to say to me. I went back to the library, looking behind me the whole way there. There was no reason Steven should be able to track me there. I didn’t think I’d so much as glanced at a book in his presence after all, and I couldn’t imagine someone who played sport as a hobby would even know that libraries could be used for other things.
I put my head down at a computer in the back and pretended to study until I could go meet Ryan to go home. I started every time someone walked behind me, but nobody bothered me, and after a while I was able to grow so relaxed I stopped watching the clock and didn’t notice I was free to go until it was nearly four. So when I ran out to find Ryan I had him grumpy with me anyway—well, on that day he could join the club with that attitude.
Chapter Sixteen: Steven
I could tell from the way Tamara moved around for the next few days that she was expecting me to do something else to her. Her head was constantly turning from side to side as she walked, and she flinched at every loud noise nearby.
I didn’t actually have anything planned. Honestly, I was fucking embarrassed I’d done that condom thing. I’d had to go to half a dozen different places, and I’d even scrounged some free ones from the local sexual health place. Now between that and her birth certificate payment I had no fucking money, and she had all the condoms. It didn’t exactly seem like the genius plan I would have liked to begin my career as an evil mastermind with.
Of course, the real genius of it was that I didn’t really need to do anything else. She was obviously coming up with far more interesting ideas than I ever would.
I should probably have been feeling bad about what I’d done, but at least I wasn’t the sort of shitty coward who did this stuff under cover. Everyone knew I was responsible for those fucking condoms. I made sure I told them if there seemed to be any chance they’d missed the memo. I thought bloody Callie was going to start some shit with me over it actually, but she just had this constipated look on her face whenever it came up, like she was trying really hard not to let anything slip.
Lucas, Mic, and Axel thought it was fucking hilarious. Of course, they also thought I was trying to let Tamara know I was keen to get a leg up on her again.
Maybe there was something in that too. I mean, I definitely wanted to fuck her again, you didn’t have to think a girl was decent to get into her, but I didn’t see it actually happening. She’d been so pissed off by how I’d reacted to the thing with Rowan.
Now I’d had time to think about it, I wished I’d just let her see me get mad about it. Honestly the nerve of the guy pissed me off. He was just trying to take advantage while he thought he could. An absolute creep. Yeah, there were lots of guys who would do that shit, but it didn’t make it something I was personally happy about.
I would have done something to him if I could… but there was the thing, I couldn’t. The day after the condom incident, Ms. Miller pulled me aside on the way to class, made me come into her office with her for a second. I stood there with my eyes on her desk as she lectured me, looking at some other poor bastard’s file left on her desk with one scribbled-over page sticking out. It didn’t take a genius to work out how Tamara had managed to get hold of information about me she should never have had. And now I couldn’t call this bitch on her carelessness without getting Tamara in trouble, which I really didn’t want to do even if she deserved it.
Honestly, people like Ms. Miller pissed me off. They managed to get just enough power over other people to really fuck up their lives, then they got to act like the ones who were righteous and knew how everyone else should behave.
Fortunately, Ms. Miller hadn’t actually heard the condom story. Just a lot of whispering and laughing that involved the two of us, and it wasn’t like she could do much because other people were putting our names together. But obviously she wasn’t dumb enough to think there was nothing behind it, so she was letting me know I was really on the edge now.
As if I didn’t fucking know. I’d been on the edge ever since Julia’s bullshit. Thanks to her, the only exciting thing I had to look forward to in my life was maybe self-destructing. I wasn’t going to be playing footy at a higher level than high school, that was for sure. In a rare heartwarming father-son moment, my dad had pulled me aside after the legal shit was done with and pointed this out to me. Like, hey, son, so you’re feeling really great right now that this fucking mess is going to calm down for a bit, but don’t ever forget that a man who abuses women isn’t welcome anywhere in society.
Not even if it was just once. Not even if he realised right in the middle of it he’d made the biggest fucking mistake, and apologised, and made sure he never let that shit happen again. Not that he had much of a chance, when the ‘he’ being talked about was me.
Yeah, Ms. Miller. I was more than fine without the lecture.
But I got the point. I couldn’t risk doing anything to Rowan, who didn’t have any reason to hold back if I pissed him off. I shouldn’t have even done anything to Tamara, but I needed to keep her in line. She needed to feel like fucking with me was a bad idea.
And, honestly, I was finding it pretty hard to stay away from her. I didn’t fully understand it myself. I’d had girls I wanted to fuck and not been able to make it work with before, that wasn’t the issue. There was just something about Tamara that provoked me, had ever since that first fight, and it made me react in this really stupid juvenile way where I wanted to pull her hair and trip her in the corridors and all this mental preteen stuff I’d never done with any girl, ever. Not even Julia, and to say she’d gotten my head screwed on upside down was understating it.
Maybe this was just how I was with any girl I stood a chance of getting into a real relationship with. Maybe all the fucking hell Julia had put me through was for the good of all womankind, after all.
But why the fuck would I be lumping Tamara in with Julia? We’d spent one night together, and most of it playing fucking Halo. That was the sign you’d found someone who would make a great girl bud, not a girlfriend.
My head made no fucking sense at the moment. I was sick. I was a total mess. I should be doing everything I could to stay away from her.
So of course I was slinking around after her and watching her even when there was a good chance she could see me doing it. I got to confirm she took care of that little issue she’d been weirdly weak on, and I saw lots of evidence she wasn’t back to normal.
And I felt really shit about it actually. Maybe there was actually no way to justify what I was doing to her. But I couldn’t work out how I was going to turn things around, either.
It just led to more of me watching her. That was the only thing I could think to do. And it didn’t lead me to any genius moments that would fix this whole thing. I didn’t see something that changed my entire perspective on the situation or provoke her enough that she came up and challenged me directly. And I kind of wanted her to challenge me directly, it seemed like it would be hot as.
By Friday, I was ready to do something else. Something that would get a really good reaction out of her. But the hours rolled by that day and I didn’t actually come up with something I could do that wouldn’t blow up in my face.
Then at lunch, I hurried to her locker, determined to catch her this time before she disappeared to wherever she went during lunches—I hadn’t spotted her once over the lunch break that week. She had to be doing it on purpose.
When I nearly collided with her headed away from her locker, I stopped still in the middle of the path at first, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Tamara hadn’t even seen me. She was wearing her school backpack, and wherever she was headed, I’d bet it had nothing to do with me or with her education.
And I was never going to just leave it at that. As soon as I was sure she had no idea I was even around her I was moving back the way I’d just come, trailing her through a side exit between two buildings that would have been a lot more popular as an escape route from the hell of Burgundy if anyone knew it existed. I knew it was there, and I wasn’t at all surprised Tamara did as well. That girl knew a lot about escaping notice.
