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“Principal Emery is the woman in the confession,” another chimes a hair too loud in her husband’s ear.
“She slept with a minor?”his husband questions in horror.
So much for the confessions being a high school thing, huh?
Zac and Love didn’t only take Easton High by storm.
They took over all of Silver Springs.
It all started with an anonymous letter…
And two small-town kids with secrets the size of a city.
Xavier’s mom delivers the performance of a lifetime, a purposefully loud sob shooting from her throat as she makes a run for it, crocodile tears coursing down her face. Xav follows her lead, rushing off the stage without further explanation.
Everybody watches as Xavier shoulders his way toward the house. The mansion swallows him whole in an instant. No one chases after him, too shaken up to muster a reaction.
No one but me.
I’ve barely taken a step before I’m kicking my heels off, my toes smoothing over the grass as I run after the boy who set his own life on fire to extinguish the blaze ravaging mine.
The glass doors of Finn’s square-shaped house close behind me the next second, my heart pulsing in my head to the point of giving me a migraine. Worried sick, I wander into the living room and call his name.
Once.
Twice.
Nothing.
Then I hear a car engine roar outside.
And panic tightens its hold on me.
Shit, did he leave?
He can’t run.
He can’t—
“What happened to your shoes?”
Every bone in my body unwinds at once. I spin on my axis, my chest heaving with my lack of cardio, and tears of relief hail down my face.
He’s here.
He ditched his suit’s black jacket, wearing nothing but the button-up shirt he had on underneath with the sleeves rolled up. I don’t bother elucidating my shoe situation, struck by this intense need to kiss him.
So, I do.
I charge toward him, hurl my arms around his neck, and mesh our lips together before he can get a word in. Xavier immediately angles my chin for more, his large hand sneaking into my hair as he kisses the fear and adrenaline still pumping in my stomach goodbye. His mouth acts like a tranquilizer, his tongue tangling with mine soothing my worries. I’m still crying, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m happy, sad, terrified…
Or all of the above.
“What were you thinking?” I choke against his lips, my voice a quivering mess. “Your scholarship, your future. God, what if Duke finds out? Xavier, what did you do?”
Xavier grabs my face with one hand and squeezes my cheeks, staring into my eyes as if to engrave the words into my brain as he whispers, “I protected my family.”
My crying picks up again, twice as hard this time, and Xavier’s lips enclose mine, his thumbs swabbing my tear-soaked cheeks dry. He kisses me so hard I wonder how I could, for even a split second, consider moving 2,216miles away from him.
