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“It’s fine, Lucas, take a seat. Clementine, please continue.”
I chuckled. I once promised I would never call her by her full name. Today I would do it over and over again. I would scream it from a roof, on the field, from my fucking bedroom window, just to cause her pain.
If I talked to her that is, which I didn’t plan on doing. If her presence could do all this shit to me, I didn’t want to find out what a fucking conversation would.
“Thank you, Miss Brown,” I smiled and took a seat in the back of the classroom. I looked at Clementine’s face again. She was irritated, uneased. She was looking around, probably trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening.
“Clementine, go on,” Miss Brown pushed her with frustration.
I grinned. In that exact moment Clementine’s gaze searched for mine. A single second felt like eternity. We hadn’t looked at each other so openly in ages. Her eyes narrowed when her doubts were confirmed. I was taking pleasure in this.
She returned to whatever the hell she was reading and I didn’t hear a fucking word. All I did was stare at her. She, however, didn’t look at me again for the rest of the class.
For the rest of the week to be exact. I tried to do the same.
On Friday I watched them warm up for their track workout during my practice. They were laughing. A sixteen-year-old knocked me down and pushed the air out of my lungs like I was a ragdoll. Chase just shook his head not saying a word.
I spent that same evening on his couch. Amy was there too. She tried to glue her thigh to mine. Chase noticed she was too close, but he just rolled his eyes. I knew his official position was he didn’t care what was happening between us.
“My sister is a big girl. If she wants you to break her heart, that’s her choice,” he told me once.
We watched some stupid horror flick but even that amount of screams, blood, and gore didn’t distract my mind enough for it to stop showing me images of Clementine’s face smiling at Dylan.
It was 1 a.m. when I finally left. I was almost at home when something caught my attention in Clementine’s house. A weird light inside their living room. I stopped on the sidewalk, giving a few seconds to my preoccupied brain to understand what was happening.
A fire.
My heart dropped. I ran to the front door and started ringing the doorbell so I could wake them up. Then I broke the nearest window and got inside. And I froze by the staircase, looking at their living room.
It was covered in candles. All of them lit. It looked insane. The window curtains were burning, and the fire was spreading fast. There was a lot of smoke already.
Footsteps thundered from the second floor down the stairs. I saw the shock on Clementine’s face when she saw me. I also saw the fear written all over it. Then she passed right beside me and sprinted into the living room. I grabbed her by the elbow and jerked her back.
I was about to scream at her crazy ass when she pulled her hand away from mine.
“My mother!” she screamed in my face.
I hadn’t noticed Sylvia was there. Clementine ran to their sofa and started shaking her mother pretty hard. She looked as if she had passed out.
“Move,” I barked and Clementine stopped her hand midair just before she bitch-slapped Sylvia. I kneeled next to the unconscious woman and took her in my arms, honeymoon style.
“Is there anyone else in the house?” I asked between coughs as we got out on their front lawn.
“No,” she said, her voice all husky from the smoke.
We crossed the street, and I put her mother down on the ground and tried to find her pulse. I really thought she was dead, but she wasn’t. And yet the way Clementine shook her would have woken up a person who was alive.
Maybe she’s taking sleeping pills. Isn’t that a thing with old people?
“Call 911,” I said, tossing my phone behind my back, still focused on Sylvia.
Silence. I looked behind my shoulder. Clementine just sat there on the grass, half naked and barefoot, looking at her home. I could already hear the fire cracking behind me. All of a sudden, she jumped on her feet and ran Usain Bolt style back to her house.
I left Sylvia without even thinking and went after Clementine. I grabbed her by the waist and pinned her to my chest. I pressed her back to me as hard as I could without hurting her. She was fighting me. She wanted to get back inside.
“Are you fucking crazy?” I yelled, as I stumbled back with her body still pressed against mine. She produced something resembling a roar as she tried to escape me. I felt amused which was really sick I had to admit. Who took pleasure in anything at a moment like that?
Me. I did. The guy who felt like his entire body exploded the minute her back hit my chest.
