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I checked behind me to make sure our exam supervisors weren’t in supervisor mode yet. “What’s your objective here?”
I’d made the mistake of leaning over too far, and Axel was very ready to take advantage of it, meeting me a little more than halfway so I could smell his breath as well as his fragrance. A slip, and his mouth would be on mine. “I’m going to charm you into letting me take you to the formal,” he murmured, the words falling warm on my lips the same way his kiss had, the one time I’d allowed it.
Taking me to the formal? I’d concluded when he asked me about that it was just something he threw out there to discomfit me.
“You don’t need to worry about the formal,” I told him. “I’ve already decided I’m going, just not with you.”
“It’s going to be uncomfortable for you if you’re not going with me. You know most people will go on believing those slutty photos were real, that you sent them to me to attract me and it didn’t go so well for you.”
I shrugged. Anyone who felt lik
e making me uncomfortable there was going to get what they gave, with interest.
“And speaking of clothes, what are you going to wear anyway? I know for a fact that you haven’t gotten yourself a new dress yet.” The question was, had he scored that gossip from Dad or Lucas via Callie? “It’s going to be hard to get something that fits well and suits your personal style in this time frame. I’m not an expert, I just know the stores are always completely stripped by this point.”
“I’m going to wear something nice I already have on hand.” A little number I’d worn out to a restaurant with Dad and Marcia during the uncomfortable process of disentangling our lives.
“Is it going to be as nice as the one you wore to my house that day you were a very bad girl?”
I failed at not shivering in response to that public reminder of how good he’d managed to make me feel, before he ruined it all. “Nicer. But you should know I intend to dance with Matt and his friends the whole night, not that I need to make my intentions known before the event or that anyone properly dances these days anyway.”
“I’m Matt’s friend,” Axel pointed out.
“You’re a terrible friend. Give it a rest, you know damn well you won’t be getting your hands on me any time soon.”
“Oh, do I—”
“Anderson, Bennett,” snapped out Mr. Phillips, “we will be starting very soon.”
I knew my name hadn’t come first just because it was alphabetical. Girls were always blamed when guys were so hot for them they couldn’t behave straight… they were always blamed doubly when they tried to fight back. Was it any wonder we said ‘fuck it’ sometimes and put on dresses that showed too much flesh, that we sometimes peeled the covers back on ourselves entirely for pictures and then sent those pictures to guys we thought might be interested, whether or not they stood a chance of betraying us? Was it right to look down on us for deciding to find something to like about bad boys, even if we’d always been good girls?
I was coming to terms—at the worst possible moment—with the fact that whatever it had started as, what was going on between Axel and myself now had a physical component to it beyond base punishment. He’d already gotten everything he originally wanted from me, and we had started a new game. The formal invitation was not a part of the game, it was the object, and he’d done it because he wanted me.
And maybe this was the closest I was ever going to get to a passionate appeal for my heart, the kind I’d dreamed about even though I was supposed to be the type of girl who was smarter than that. Even a few months ago, back when Callie and Tamara’s biggest problems had been each other, I’d still held that picture in my head of how the guy who was going to take me to the big social event that closed out my childhood would step from the crowds at the right moment and sweep me onward to the ball. It didn’t matter that no man who had ever stumbled by my life had come even close to fitting the bill. I’d just believed, helplessly.
I started and glared when Axel touched my shoulder. I thought he’d apologised to Mr. Phillips on our behalf; I certainly wasn’t going to. “Is everything all right?”
Is everything all right? He dismantled my dreams without even thinking about it and then I was expected to account for the fallout.
“Oh, fine. I guess real princesses are in short supply these days, that’s all.”
He made a hm noise back at me, and turned his attention forward as Mr. Phillips took a craft knife to the packaged box of official exam papers. I’d stopped feeling tense about those, at least. Every single time so far, a paper with my number on it had emerged from the box. There didn’t seem to be any reason to expect that to change now.
Axel muttered a thank you as he received his, and Mr. Phillips moved around the room matching temporary labels to students. When he’d returned to the front of the room, I was still sitting there without a paper.
I glanced over at Axel, but he was studying the unvarying instructions on his exam paper. If he’d been expecting something to happen he was playing it pretty cool after that swaggering entrance. Unless the entrance was the distraction to make me think…
“Axel!” I whispered. “What the hell have you done this time?”
He turned to me with surprise that, unfortunately, seemed pretty genuine to me. “Aileen,” Mr. Phillips called from the back of the room, “you need to be under exam conditions now.”
“That might be a lot easier if I had an exam paper, Mr. Phillips.” I tapped my desk, bearing enough stationery to get me through half a dozen exams and a notable excess of space otherwise.
Mr. Phillips whirled on me and gave me that glare you got from someone who was responsible for fixing your problem but wanted to blame you for it in exchange. “Aileen…”
Someone else in the room spoke up: my paper had gotten stuck under theirs.
“You really need to be more careful with these things, Mr. Phillips,” Axel spoke up. “You don’t want to get a reputation for messing up.”
