“Fine,” I say finally.“We’ll work on it.”
The relief flashes across her face before she can stop it.
“When?”she asks.
I shrug again.“I don’t know.”
“Oh my god, you are so frustrating.”
I smirk.“Tomorrow afternoon.But you’ll need to come to my house.”
The words barely leave my mouth before she stiffens.
“I am not going to your house.”
I smirk, knowing this is the moment it clicks for her that I’m not giving an inch.“Then I guess we fail.”
Her glare could cut glass.She hates that I’ve cornered her with the one thing she can’t walk away from.
And that only makes it sweeter.
She lingers there for a moment longer, jaw clenched, eyes burning into my face before spinning on her heel and storming down the hall.Red hair swinging as she leaves.
A gentle sense of satisfaction settles in my chest as her boots echo down the hallway.
“Did she say yes?”Jace asks, slamming his locker shut as if he actually pulled something useful out of it.Which he didn’t.He never does.
I push off the locker and roll my shoulders.“She didn’t say no.”
Jace snorts.“That’s not the win you think it is.”
My eyes remain fixed on the end of the hall where she vanished.
“She’ll come,” I say finally.“She wants that grade more than she wants to hate me.”
Chapter 5
Sam
IfuckinghatethatIhave to go to his house.
The sun hangs low, burning gold against the rooftops as I walk the cracked pavement, my backpack digging into one shoulder.Every house I pass looks the same kind of perfect.Trim lawns.White fences.Garden gnomes smile as if they know nothing bad ever happens here.Wind chimes softly tinkle, the kind that sound as if fairies really live behind those front doors.
Reece lives at the end of the cul-de-sac, where the road curves and rules no longer seem to matter.His house feels isolated from the rest of the neighborhood, as if it never truly belonged here.
The front yard is cluttered.Overgrown grass blocks the path to the door, weeds scraping at my ankles as I walk closer.An old couch sits half-buried in the dirt next to a torn-apart engine block that looks abandoned.Rusted tools are scattered in a milk crate on the steps.I wonder if he’s the one who works on it.If those hands that scribble dirty notes know how to fix things or if they only know how to take them apart piece by piece.
That makes sense.
It has a poetic quality, in a way.
Reece is good at breaking shit.The rules, people, anything that gets too close.
And me most of all.
I stop at the bottom of the steps, irritation creeping under my skin because I hate how he dragged me here.I hate how my grades matter more than my pride.
I stare at the door a moment longer than I should, my heart pounding in my chest.I take a deep breath and knock before I can chicken out.
