I looked at him with a wide smile. He looked back, entirely unapologetic, like he'd said something completely normal.
Thanks,I said.I think.
It's definitely a compliment.He considered it.Your elbows are a close second. But the collarbone is the winner.
I laughed out loud before I could even think about containing it, and it was the first mistake because Colt's eyes found us from three rows over like a heat-seeking system, and I watched his jaw set from across the auditorium.
Michael had no idea. He looked pleased with himself.
I tried to warn him off, told him I'd catch him later, but Colt was already moving — up the stairs, through the kids sitting between us, zeroing in.
What the fuck are you talking to my girl about?
Michael didn't miss a beat.Skeletal systems. Mostly collarbones and elbows. For anatomy class.
I pressed my lips together so hard it hurt. Colt stared at him for a long moment and then moved on, apparently satisfied, and Michael turned back to the front like nothing had happened. I spent the rest of the assembly looking straight ahead.
Again, that was the first mistake.
The second was AP Chemistry.
I asked Colt's permission first — I didn't have a choice; that's just how things worked, that's how they'd worked for four years, and I'd stopped examining it because examining it was its own kind of cost.
My family couldn't afford a tutor. I needed the grade. Michael Bennett ran the curve without seeming to try, and asking him to help me study was purely practical.
At least, that's what I told myself.
Except the more time I spent with him in that library — his handwriting in the margins of my notes, the way he explainedthings three different ways until one of them clicked — the more my original draw to him grew into something I couldn't keep calling practical.
I wrote about him in my diary almost every day of high school. What he wore, what he ate for lunch, if he looked my way. I checked his social media more than I'd ever admit. Got quietly irritated watching Jessica Fullerton hover at his locker every day. None of it made sense given everything else in my life, and all of it made complete sense in the way that feelings tend to ignore your circumstances entirely.
He wasn't the most popular. That hadn't mattered to me since the assembly.
The problem was everything else.
My social status, my cheer captaincy, my whole life at Lee High existed inside my relationship with Colt Monroe, and it didn't take much for Colt to remind me of that. One wrong move and all of it collapsed. I'd watched him dismantle other girls for less. I knew exactly what the architecture of my high school life was built on, and I wasn't naïve enough to pretend otherwise.
So I kept Michael at a careful distance and wrote about him at night and showed up to study sessions pretending it was just chemistry.
It was never just chemistry.
"What is this?"
I looked up from my notes, and my heart left my chest and hit the floor.
Colt was standing at my desk. Holding my open diary.
I was across the room before I'd decided to move. "That's personal, Colt—" I reached for it and he held it above my head, turning away, still reading, like I wasn't there.
There was no personal when it came to Colt's claim on me. I'd known that for years. I just kept forgetting to stop hoping otherwise.
Michael looked so handsome today. He has a five o’clock shadow that makes his jawline so fucking sexy. I want to feel it rub between my thighs. We watched Spaceballs last night, and I woke up asleep on his chest. I love the way he smells. I pretended to stay asleep, so I didn’t have to move away from his arms.
I sat horrified as he read one of the entries. I was vibrating with fear. “It’s just a story, Colt. I promise.” My voice was pleading as my heart pounded in my ears.
"The debate geek?" He asked it slowly, through his teeth, turning to look at me with the expression I'd learned to dread. "You have a stupid fucking crush on the debate geek who's been tutoring you."
My eyes started burning. "No. It's not a crush; I don't like him like that. I was just writing stuff, it doesn't mean anything—"
