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“I don’t need glasses.” Then, “I’m glaring, not squinting.”
“Glaring?” I frown, another step toward him. “Why?”
There are only a handful of steps between us now and he snaps his eyes down to look at the distance between us. “What the fuck are you doing?” Looking up, he commands, “I told you. Get away from me.”
“No,” I say as I keep closing the distance between us. “But you can.”
“What?”
I jerk my chin. “There’s a door behind you. It’s open. You can leave if you want. But I’m not stopping or going away. In fact, I’m going to attack you in exactly…” Two more steps closer until I reach him and crane up my neck. “Two point five seconds.”
His frown is thick and dark. “This is unprofessional.”
I smile. “I know. And I’m going to admit it’s fun.” Then, “Now I realize what my friends have been talking about all this time.”
“What friends?”
For a second, I think I shouldn’t tell him about Heartstone, my friends. But then I realize it’s him. It’s Atlas.
I can tell him.
He’s not going to react badly. He already proved that last night.
“My friends from Heartstone,” I reply, and a look of concern passes through his features. “I never thought I’d make friends there but I did. And they’re awesome and they’ve been telling me how fun it is to break the rules and to let loose. But I haven’t been listening. Not until last night.”
He’s watching me so intensely, so carefully. Like he doesn’t want to miss anything that comes out of my mouth. Then, as if to himself, he murmurs, “Is that why you were laughing like that?”
“Laughing?”
He shakes his head slightly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh like that. Not before last night. It was…” He shakes his head again and his eyes shine like jewels. “It was beautiful.”
My heart skips a beat.
Beautiful.
I don’t consider myself that. My mousy brown hair, my unimaginative brown eyes, my slender body with meager curves. Nothing about me is remarkable and I’ve been okay with that. Because there are other things to focus on, my grades, my career.
And they’re still there and I still don’t think I care about how people see me.
But this is good.
The fact that he thinks that. That to him, I’m beautiful.
“When was I laughing?” I ask, needing to know.
For a second it looks like he won’t say, but he does. “Last night. When you were home. I saw you laughing through the window. Your hair was” — he glances at my loose hair — “up and you had on peach-colored pajamas.”
“You saw me through the window?”
It must have been when Renn was trying to lighten up the situation. I ended up telling her everything, even about that day last year, and of course, I was upset. I told her that all of this was doomed because I couldn’t even tell if a date was a date or not. So she went online, searched for funny dating stories, and we ended up browsing through blogs for more than an hour.
I mean, people have really weird dating problems.
In comparison, this is nothing.
My heart, my breaths, all too fast, are nothing.
Or maybe it’s everything.
Every fucking thing.
“I came back,” he says, staring into my eyes. “I wanted to make sure that you were okay. After” — a jaw clench — “what I did. And I saw that you were happy and laughing so I… I went away.”
“You shouldn’t have,” I whisper, taking yet another step closer to him.
Which brings me to his chest, my breasts brushing against it.
He inhales deeply, flicking his gaze to my chest. “You should step back. This is inappropriate. I’m your tutor.”
“I can get another tutor.”
His frown is back. “You’re not getting another tutor.”
I frown too. “Why not? Up until two days ago, you wanted me to.”
“I’ve reconsidered.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I’m the best,” he tells me, almost glaring at me. “And because if anyone’s going to teach you fucking biochemistry and wipe off that anxious look that appears on your face as soon as you step into class, it’s going to be me.”
I let myself breathe for a second. Just absorb his words into my brain. My skin.
Because I think… I think I have my answer.
Because I think I’m going to say it.
“You care about me,” I tell him as if he doesn’t know.
And he says, lying again as if I’m going to believe him this time, “I care about you as much as I care about the next person.”
I put my hands on his chest, a daring move but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels right, especially when his chest flexes and I feel his heartbeats under my palm. “You like me.”
“I don’t.”
“You have an elevated heart rate.”
“That’s because I’m taking offence,” he murmurs. “To the way you’re touching me. Inappropriately.”
“This could all become completely appropriate. But you’re the one who wants to be my tutor,” I tell him.
