I start to walk off, but he catches my wrist with his massive hand.
I turn around to look at him, and try my hardest to ignore the tingle in my skin where he’s touching me.
When I focus on his face, I notice a shift in his expression. He’s still smiling, but it’s softer now. The cocky edge is gone, leaving behind something raw in his stare.
“Please, Poppy? I’ll get down on my knees and beg if I have to.”
Heat flashes across my skin at the low, rough sound of his voice. Just the sound of his voice, all soft and growly like this, and I’m transported back to high school, when I was a shy, nerdy girl crushing hard on my best friend’s twin brother, but he barely noticed me.
Except that one day, junior year of high school, when he asked me to prom in the crowded lunch room, in front of the whole school.
I thought he was serious. I thought he liked me.
But right after he asked me, he burst out laughing. And that’s when I knew it was all a joke. Of course it was. Because no wayon earth would a handsome and cocky jock like Nick want to take me, the biggest nerd on the planet, to prom.
That familiar embarrassed feeling surfaces once more.
My defenses sprout up, and I look him in the eye. “Find someone else.”
I walk out of the room without another glance at Nick St. George.
Chapter 3
Nick
“Dude, I told you to throw out that couch,” Blake says as he walks into the living room from the kitchen.
He tosses me an apple. I catch it and take a bite.
“I don’t need to throw it out. I cleaned it,” I say around a bite of apple.
He rolls his eyes and plops down on the armchair across from where I’m sitting on the couch.
“And how thoroughly did you actually clean it?” Blake asks.
“Very thoroughly.” I take another bite of apple and nod over to Travis, who’s stretching out his hamstrings on the floor in front of us. “Right, Travvie?”
“He did. I watched him clean it with an upholstery cleaner. He used the steam cleaning setting, too.”
I lean down and fist-bump Travis, then look at Blake. “Do you really think I’d be sitting on this couch if it was still dirty?” I say to Blake.
“Yeah. I do. You’re gross.”
I toss a pillow at him, but he ducks.
He runs his gaze over the couch, his lips curled in disgust, like he’s doubting the cleanliness of it despite Travis’s reassurance.
When Travis finishes stretching and sits on the other end of the couch, Blake’s frown eases. I shake my head and laugh.
“How did it go asking Poppy to be your tutor?” Travis asks me.
“She shot me down.”
I don’t know why I thought she’d agree. She’s never liked me.
That hasn’t stopped me from liking her, though.
When I think about the face she made when I asked her to tutor me, excitement flickers in my chest. The way she wrinkled her cute little nose. The way her lush, pouty mouth pursed. The way she rolled those big hazel eyes at me. The way she flipped her long, sandy blonde hair when she turned and marched away from me.
