There was a shifting sensation near my heart; a strange pang that made my chest tighten.
Laney stepped right up to me, lips slightly parted. “Hey, Hunter. Can we talk?”
“Get lost, Virgin,” a little blonde sophomore said with a sneer. Her friends cackled alongside her.
Laney ignored them, keeping her gaze level on my face. “Well?”
The other Princes stepped forward, but I held up a palm and stopped them from going any farther. “It’s fine. She can stay,” I said.
Laney’s cheeks turned slightly pink. “I was hoping we could talk in private,” she murmured.
I turned and snapped a finger at the girls flocking around me. “Leave.”
They scurried away, and my friends followed them. I turned back to Laney, jaw clenched. “What do you want?” I asked.
She shifted her weight, biting at her bottom lip. “Well, first off… I wanted to apologize for the other day,” she said. “I shouldn’t have blamed you for the boat thing. It turned out to be an accident.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. There was a log sticking up in the lake. It pierced my scull when I went over it.”
My brows pulled together in a small frown. I knew for a fact that a junior girl from the rowing club had gouged the hole in Laney’s boat after the coaches were done checking them over, because she texted me proof afterwards—a photo of herself doing it, along with another one of her tits.
Curious as to why Laney was suddenly trying to get on my good side with this faux apology, I tilted my head to the side. “What’s the second thing?” I asked. “Got something you want to admit to me, maybe?”
“What?”
“You said ‘first off’ earlier. Meaning there’s more. So what is it?”
“Oh. Right.” She took a little step forward, and the subtle vanilla scent of her perfume wafted over to me, instantly driving me wild. I wanted to tear her clothes off, fill my head with the sweet smell of her, press my lips over every inch of her soft skin.
Get a fucking grip,I commanded myself, gritting my teeth. “Spit it out, Laney,” I said, needing her to hurry up so I could finally get the hell away from her.
Her eyes widened, and I realized I’d just made a mistake. I never called her by her real name. Only some variant of the awful nicknames the other students made up for her after I stuck her on the blacklist. Virgin. Trash. Walmart.
Now she might think I was softening on her. Shit.
“I don’t have all fucking day,” I added with a sneer, hoping that would make it obvious that my feelings toward her hadn’t changed one bit.
She let out a short sigh. “Look… I think it’s become pretty clear that we don’t like each other.”
“No shit,” I said with a derisive snort. “Is that really what you came all the way over here to say?”
“No. The thing is, even though we don’t like each other, I’ve been thinking about that night at the party, and I can’t get it out of my head,” she said softly, lowering her gaze. “I know I’m probably off-base, but when we were in that clearing, and you made Chris leave, I thought—”
I closed the distance between us, towering over her with narrowed eyes. “You thought what?”
She gulped audibly. “It felt like there was something between us. Some sort of… tension.”
I opened my mouth to tell her it was pretty normal for two people who fucking hated each other to feel tension between them, but she lifted a palm, clearly anticipating that I’d say exactly that.
“I don’t mean an angry kind of tension,” she said. “I mean… as much as we can’t stand each other, it feels like there’s something else between us. I’ve felt it since we first met, and when we were together in the clearing that night, I felt it more than ever. Maybe I’m just being stupid and totally embarrassing myself right now, but…” She lowered her voice. “I thought you might feel it too.”
I smirked. “Oh, really?”
“Yes,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. Her breaths were coming quicker now, and she looked like she wanted to melt right into the ground from embarrassment.
“Why would you think that?”