Page 82 of Sweet Temptation

Noah huffed in response. “Like I said, my visit had nothing to do with him, so he won’t be able to tell you. If you must know, I was there to see my lawyer. He has the great misfortune of sharing an office building with The LaFleur Corporation.”

“Oh,” I murmured. Wes had mentioned there were other offices in the building. Maybe it was a simple coincidence. I couldn’t imagine why a seventeen-year-old needed to see a lawyer, but Noah wasn’t your average teen.

“So, is being nosy something we do now?” Noah asked. “Because you looked awfully close with Wes outside the gym just before...”

I shot him a scowl. I didn’t need to explain myself to him. Still, I found myself taking the bait. “Wes and I are friends; of course, we’re close.”

“It looked more than friendly to me.”

“Well, you must be seeing things. Maybe you should get your eyes checked out?”

Thankfully the first beep of the test finally sounded, and I started to jog, eager to get away from Noah. He fell in right beside me, his feet slapping against the ground in perfect unison with my own.

“I’ve heard things too,” he said after we’d done several laps between the two cones. Apparently, he wasn’t done with our discussion. I definitely was, and I chose to ignore his comment. “Sawyer likes to talk a lot at soccer training.”

“He likes to talk a lot period,” I muttered. “But I prefer not to talk when I’m running.”

I wondered if Noah was trying to hint that he knew Wes and I had kissed. I had a bad feeling that was exactly what he was getting at, and I really didn’t want to talk about it with him.

Noah remained silent for several more laps. We were already jogging quite quickly, and my breaths were beginning to come in faster. He barely sounded puffed in comparison, but that was hardly a surprise given how fit he was.

“Are the two of you together?” His voice hitched slightly as he spoke.

I stopped in the middle of the court and turned to him. “Why are you asking me this?” I said between exhausted breaths. “Why do you care?”

He’d stopped barely a foot away from me, his green eyes stormy and filled with pain. “You know I still care. It’s just… I didn’t think you’d move on from us so fast.”

“I can move on however fast I want,” I replied. “You broke up with me. You don’t get to dictate how I move on.”

“You are with him then?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not. We’re friends, just like I told you.”

“So, you’re kissing your friends now?”

“I’m kissing whoever can make me forget about you for just one moment. You think I’m moving on too fast, but that’s just the problem. I can’t seem to move on from you at all. You didn’t just break my heart when we broke up, you decimated it, and no matter what I do, I can’t fit the pieces back together again. So, yeah, I kissed Wes, and maybe I’ll do it again. We can’t be together, and I’m trying to accept that. Maybe you need to accept that too.”

I turned to walk away, but Noah called after me. “You think it’s easy for me to accept losing the best thing that’s ever happened to me?”

His words were a dagger straight to my heart, and I glanced over my shoulder at him. “If you really felt that way, we never would have broken up.”

He opened his mouth and went to say something but quickly closed it again. He looked lost for words, and I shook my head. He was never going to fight for us, and we both knew it.

I spun round and stormed away from him before he could torment me any further.

* * *

Noah’s wordshaunted me the rest of the day, so I was glad when Wes suggested we study together in the library after dinner. I hated that Noah had gotten in my head, and I jumped at the chance to fill my thoughts with economics homework instead.

Unfortunately, my economics homework didn’t want to be in my thoughts. I must have been a terrible study partner. Wes was having to ask me something several times before I registered the question, and even when I heard him, I had no clue what the answer was. My mind was somewhere else entirely, and most of my homework lay unfinished on the desk.

“You seem distracted,” Wes said after I’d misheard one of his questions yet again.

“I know. I’m sorry. I...” My voice trailed off as I looked at him. “Wait, you wear glasses?”

I was surprised I hadn’t noticed him put them on, especially since they made him look like some kind of hot librarian. They gave off all these sexy nerd vibes, and now that I’d seen them, they were impossible to ignore.

I didn’t know he needed glasses. I’d never seen him wearing them before. Maybe he realized he couldn’t use them too often because they gave him too much power. He knew he would constantly captivate all the girls at school if he wore them every day.

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