“What are you doing here?” I hiss at him. I try to be as bitchy as possible so he’ll just leave me alone. Somehow, I get the feeling I’m about as effective as an angry kitten.
“I could ask you the same question,” he says carefully. He looks at the door to study hall and then back to me. “Was somebody a bad girl?”
The way he says bad girl does bad, terrible, naughty things to my insides. His words make my stomach twist and turn, and they make my panties wet because when he speaks to me like this, all I can think about is writhing beneath him covered in sweat.
Fuck.
I’m in so much damn trouble.
Instead of taking the bait and protesting that I’m innocent, I simply shrug.
“So what if I am?” I say.
“You don’t seem like the bad girl type,” Harrison looks slightly confused, as though he’s trying to figure out whether I have a legitimate reason to be waiting outside of study hall.
I don’t.
I don’t have a good reason at all. Soon he’s going to realize that, especially if he, too, has detention today.
Suddenly, the door opens and all of the students who were in study hall stream out quickly. They’re all busy talking and laughing, and nobody so much as notices Harrison and me.
He looks at me and then to the open door.
“Shall we?” He gestures to it.
“Um, yeah,” I whisper, gulping.
Here goes nothing. I push myself off of the wall and enter the room. I go to the teacher at the front of the room. She takes down my name, and then she gestures to the desks.
“Sit anywhere,” she says. “Hello, Harrison.”
“Hello, Miss Amber.” Harrison sounds wildly confident and comfortable with the teacher. She’s a new instructor, or maybe a substitute. I’ve never seen her before. She’s tall and beautiful and she seems fierce and determined. She’s not at all like Mrs. Miller: the teacher who usually runs study hall and detention.
“Have a seat, Harrison.”
“Of course, Miss Amber.”
To my dismay, and to my surprise, and to my total horror, Harrison carefully considers every desk in the room before choosing the one directly next to me. If Miss Amber thinks it’s weird, she says nothing. She picks up her phone and does something on it – maybe sends a text, I’m not sure. Then she pulls out a stack of papers and starts grading them.
So this is it, then.
I just sit here silently.
Maybe I should do homework or pretend to read a book. I can feel Harrison staring at me, and I don’t know why. We all know that he’s not interested in me. Right? There’s literally no way that a guy like him would like me at all.
Not that I want him to.
It would probably be best for me, and for everyone, if Harrison O’Conner simply forgot I existed.
It would make things so much easier when I escaped.
That’s what I’ll think about while I’m here: getting away. Although, as graduation grows nearer, I’m not so ignorant that I don’t think Frank has a contingency plan in place. He has to know that I’ll try to run. He’s going to do something to keep me where I am, and I don’t know what.
Nothing is going to ruin this guy’s life plan for his son. I mean, he basically brought a child bride and raised it to be Harrison’s picture-perfect wife.
What would Harrison think if he knew?
Is his father ever going to tell him?