Page 52 of A Scandal in Homeroom
“I’m after information on the person behind the List. As long as your business doesn’t intersect with that, I imagine we’ll be fine.”
“I’ve got to go,” she announced.
“Have dinner with me,” I blurted out.
Her brow furrowed. “What?”
“Have dinner with me. Just dinner. No pressure. We can split the check if you want.”
“We don’t even know if we like each other,” she said, looking down at her sneakers that looked a little worse for wear. Sometimes it was easy to forget Irene was a Have-not. She could walk around in her cheerleading uniform and all anyone would see was a girl supporting her school’s team. As opposed to a girl who couldn’t afford many other clothes.
I moved into her space. “Correct. But I think we can both admit that we don’tnotlike each other.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.
“We do. Make sense,” I said, reaching for the back of her neck and pulling her close so I could kiss her.
There it was again. That heady rush of feeling as our lips touched. Wet and slick. Hot and drugging. My stomach dropped between my legs and my dick got hard with an ache that said…Her. I want her.
Except I knew with Irene I couldn’t push. She had to come to me. Releasing her, I took a step back.
I didn’t apologize for my actions, and she didn’t ask for one. She knew she’d kissed me back.
“Have dinner with me. This Friday. After the game, of course.”
For a second, I thought she was going to nod her head in agreement, but then her face fell.
“I can’t. Not this Friday. I’ve got to go…I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
I didn’t stop her as she jogged out of the classroom and into the traffic jam of students trying to get to class. It wasn’t like I was disappointed by her rejection. She wanted to go out with me. I’d seen her first reaction. Then her disappointment.
Which meant whatever she was doing Friday night wasn’t something she wanted to do.
That answered the dangerous question.
* * *
Reen
“Hey, you okay?”Janie asked me, as she sat in the desk next to me. Since I’d practically sprinted out of the art room, I was a minute early to my next class. Other students were still pouring inside.
“I’m fine.”
“You look flushed.”
I gave her a look suggesting I didn’t want to talk about it. Then I touched my cheeks. I could feel the heat coming off them. Great.
“Fine,” she said, interpreting my expression correctly. “If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on between you and Locke, I won’t ask.”
I let out a slow breath. Of course she knew. Janie always seemed to know everything about me, sometimes even before I did. The only thing I’d ever been able to hide from her was my criminal activity.
Because I worked really hard at not disappointing her.
“I will say, for the record, I’ve never seen you this rattled. You play with a lot of guys in this school. You never get flushed from it.”
Because that’s all it had been. Playing.
It didn’t feel that way with Locke. It felt real. Which is what scared the crap out of me.
