Warren grinned. “Cocky bastard, though. You’ve got a type.”
Jude arched an eyebrow. “A type?”
Warren gestured around the classroom. “All these quotes. Makes me wonder if you go for men who like to rewrite the ending.”
There it was again. That pull. Subtle. Certain.Dangerous.
Jude looked away. Back to the screen. Pretended he was still typing.
He wasn’t.
His fingers had stilled, but his chest hadn’t. It was too tight, rising and falling too fast since Warren had walked in. Jude couldn’t deny his attraction. It had been there from the start. Probably the moment he first laid eyes on him across the school hall. Then again during that bit of banter at the back of staff training. And every moment since, it had grown. Quietly. Steadily. The pub quiz had cemented it. He’d even berated himself for not accepting that lift home. But caution had always been his shield. His safety net. It had kept him upright. Kept himsafe. But he’d never been safe at all.
And this pull he felt towards Warren?
It wasn’t romantic.
It was reckless.
“You took History, then?” he asked, aiming for neutral.
Warren stepped closer. “Er, nah. Geography.”
Jude glanced up. And there he was.Right there. Close enough for Jude to catch the faint scent of him. Clean sweat, something citrus, maybe soap or shampoo. It slid into his senses like a memory he didn’t want to have.
“The geography field trip was to Durdle Door in Dorset.” Warren lifted one leg to casually perch on the edge of Jude’s desk. Half-seated, fully confident. “First time I saw the sea. Grew up in South London. Closest I’d come before that was theEastEnderstheme tune.”
Jude let out a quiet breath of amusement.
“And the History lot got stuck with some boring old castle.”
Jude arched an eyebrow.
Warren chuckled. “Which I now fully support, obviously. Love a good drawbridge. Big fan of moat-based learning.”
Jude shook his head, laughter low and unexpected in his throat.
The silence following wasn’t uncomfortable. But it was… charged. Jude kept typing, letting the screen shield him, feeling Warren’s presence wrapping around him like a weighted blanket. Warm. Solid. Unapologeticallythere.
It was oddly comforting.
On another day, in another life, Jude might have leaned into that. Might’ve tested the air between them. Maybe even found a way to ask, casually, if Warren was sitting there because hewantedto be… or playing polite. If the offer of the lift home on Friday had been because he, too, felt something brewing between them bigger than the classroom walls or if he was simply a decent human being, them having been in short supply of late.
But now Callum was back, and those feelers had to remain firmly retracted.
Warren hooked a thumb over his shoulder, back towards the corridor. “That was Alfie Carter earlier, right?”
Jude paused mid-keystroke. He rolled his neck, cracking out the tension. “Yeah.”
Warren tapped his knees. “Good footballer. Quiet, though.”
“He’s been through a lot.”
Warren titled his neck. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Jude left that there. It wasn’t his story to tell.
Warren rubbed his hands together and gave a grin pulling them back to lighter ground. “Alright then. Where we going? And, more importantly, do I get to fire a cannon?”
