He taps his fingers on the desk with a slow rhythm.Each tap challenges me to respond.
“Fine, Red,” he says.“You want me to play nice, I’ll play nice.”
It’s a lie.Every word he says is just a game.Every look is another move on a board only he seems to understand.
Before I can respond, the bell rings loudly through the room.
I shove my belongings into my bag so quickly that my notebook nearly rips in half.Pens clatter to the floor.I leave them.I can’t stay here even for a second longer.Not with him still watching me.Not with my pulse pounding like I just lost a fight I didn’t agree to take part in.
I bolt.
Down the aisle, out the door, through the hallway.
I don’t slow down until the sunlight hits my face outside.I grip the strap of my bag.My heart’s still pounding in my chest, all scrambled and loud, as if it hasn’t realized that I’m free.
This year was supposed to be the best I could get.
Not perfect or like a fairytale.Just something that finally worked in my favor for once.One chance to get straight grades, walk across that stage, and move on to something better than this town has for me.I want more out of life.
This assessment counts for forty percent of our final grade.Nearly half my grade depends on one sheet of paper and a few weeks of partner work I never asked for.I need every single point I can get if I want to pass.
So no, I’m not letting Reece Wilson—human distraction, chaos in sneakers, walking red flag with a six-pack—screw that up for me.He can keep his grin, that flirty voice, the lazy charm that makes half the school fall over themselves just to be the next name he forgets.
He’s not ruining this for me.
Chapter 2
Reece
It’sherfuckinghair.
That’s where it starts.Always.That red, too bold to ignore, too dangerous to touch without getting burned.It glows in the sun, turns molten under the fluorescents, and makes my brain short-circuit every time it brushes her shoulder.
Sam Carter doesn’t own the hallway.She doesn’t strut.She doesn’t perform.Most people don’t really see her, not the way they should.She keeps her head down, shoulders squared, moving through the noise instead of feeding it.
But I see her, and that’s the fucking problem.
Sam Carter is the kind of girl who makes tight jeans, and low cuts seem desperate.She doesn’t cake herself in makeup or pout in bathroom selfies.She exists and nothing more.Effortlessly.Beautiful in a way that’s real.Natural.
Some days she shows up in a hoodie and jeans and still manages to make every fake bitch in this school look like they’re trying too hard.Because they are.Tia with her stripper lashes.Nicole and her please-look-at-my-tits top.
Sam… She doesn’t try.Doesn’t lick a straw like it’s a skill.She’s everything.Messy hair, sleeves too long, lips soft and unbothered, and somehow I’m standing here wondering how they’d feel wrapped around my…
Focus.
I mean, sure, I’ve imagined it.Once.Maybe twice.Fine.Every damn time she opens her mouth and tells me to fuck off.Those lips are pure fucking trouble—smart enough to ruin me, soft enough to make me want it.The kind of lips that stay in your dreams for a moment, enough to wake you up hard, irritated, and one bad choice away from a hand job you’re not even proud of.
It’s humiliating, honestly.
She rolls her eyes, mutters something and suddenly I’m spiralling, wondering what those same lips would do if she wasn’t using them to verbally dismantle me.If she wants me the way my body wants her.
Which is aggressive, always at the worst possible time.
I’ve heard Jace talk about her.It’s crude shit.Locker-room garbage.Running his mouth about her ass, her body, what he’d do if she ever let him.I laughed it off in the moment because that’s what I do.But my jaw was locked so hard I thought I might crack a tooth.
I almost punched him.
Not because he was wrong, she is hot as fuck.But because she wasn’t his to talk about.
