He pushes his chair back and stands, leaning forward before laughing in my face. Rage boils in the pit of my stomach, to an almost unreasonable level.
“Feel free to attempt it, Miss Moore, but you’ll get no handouts from me and zero extra credit. I still don’t believe you deserve to be in my class, but please, attempt to prove me wrong. Breaking you might be my new favorite sport.”
I see red, but somehow manage to keep my mouth shut and storm from the room, sweeping past Sawyer as I leave the building while I try to temper the rage inside of me.
Oh yeah, that ass really knows how to push my buttons.
“Hey. Briar! Wait up! What happened?” Sawyer calls out from behind me, but I can’t stop, because if I stop, the rage is going to boil over and I’m going to scream very loudly in front of a ton of people.
I really don’t want to be branded the freshman weirdo, so I keep my legs moving and my lips clamped together to keep it all inside. It doesn’t take long for Sawyer to catch up, and I let him steer me away from the people to the parking lot and into his car. Once the doors are shut, I let out a frustrated roar and hit the dash a few times.
I don’t feel entirely better, but at least the edge is gone.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he asks, watching me warily.
“Areyougoing to tell me why you’re in my class and didn’t want to leave me alone with him?” I counter, and he remains quiet. “That's what I thought. I’ve got to go and start on this new paper because I can’t afford to fail this class.”
“You still coming by the house later?” he asks with a sad smile on his face as I reach for the door handle.
“I don’t know, Sawyer. I’ll text you. Sorry,” I say, deflated, knowing he doesn’t deserve my bitchiness. I lean over and kiss his cheek before climbing from the car.
Determined, I make my way to the library. I am going to nail this freaking paper if it kills me, and if I get a chance to try and work out why Professor Crawford hates me so much, then that would be awesome.
Until then, I’m going to look into whether the whole head of department thing is something I pulled out of my ass, or if it’s something I’ve read somewhere. Because I want out of his class.
Turns out the life of the privileged really isn’t one I’m suited to.
* * *
“Maybe he’s just into you and is playing the ‘treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen’ card?” Charli says while dipping her fries into her shake. “Boys have being doing stupid things for all of existence.”
“Oh yeah, Professor Crawford is totally into me,” I deadpan. “That's why he’s an ass.”
Serena and Penn laugh at me while Charli just shrugs. “It’s a possibility. Especially since there’s no other reasonable answer that you know of.”
“She’s not wrong,” Serena adds, and I groan, dropping my head into my hands.
“Whatever his reasoning, it's asinine.”
“Ooooo, big words!” Penn teases before taking a bite of her gigantic burger. “Maybe drop some of those on him and just bewilder him into being nice to you.”
“Or you could just show him your tits. You’ve got real good tits,” Serena tags on, and I can’t help but laugh.
“I do have good tits, but I’m pretty sure flashing them isn’t going to help me.”
“Who are we flashing? Please say it's me.” Sawyer grins as he slides into the seat beside me, and I swear Charli and Serena just go slack-jawed staring at him.
I knock into him with my shoulder, and he drags me onto his lap. I let out a squeak as he manhandles me, and Penn just laughs at us while Serena and Charli continue to stare. Which gets worse when Asher takes a seat in the chair I just vacated. “Will you please tell your brother that he doesn’t need to be my seat?”
Asher grins at me wide, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “I dunno, I think he looks pretty good as your seat. I mean, I’d look better, but second place never hurt anyone.”
Sawyer laughs and I drop my chin to my chest, realizing just how alike these two can be sometimes. “I didn’t hear her calling me second place over the weekend.”
“Sawyer! I swear to God!” I screech while the twins just laugh. I look to the girls for help, and while Penn looks like she’s having way too much fun to intervene, it occurs to me that Serena and Charli maybe didn’t realize that I’d smoothed things over with the twins.
“Serena, you’ve got some…” Penn says, pointing to the corner of her mouth, and Serena turns red as a beet while Charli giggles at her.
“You guys know the twins, right?” I say casually. “Guys, this is Serena and Charli. You already know Penn.”