Page 86 of Teaching the Teacher's Pet

I gaped at how casually he leaned against the car while I was fully absorbed in disbelief. This entire time, he and Jade had been…what? Letting people think they were together? Lettingmethink they were together? The past twenty-four hours of me struggling with my thoughts, my feelings, and they weren’t together? “Why?”

“Homecoming king and queen relies on us being together. It’s important to her.” His voice softened, eyes getting a faraway look. “And it was important to me, too. My dad was the quarterback, did I ever tell you that? Homecoming king, too. When Coach picked Landon for quarterback over the summer, my parents were so disappointed. That’d been Dad’s dream for me, to follow in his footsteps. And I couldn’t change that, but as long as I was with Jade, there was still a chance to be homecoming king. Just like he was.”

I let out a breath. His words made sense, but…not. He’d been so conditioned to live in the world of social hierarchy, to focus on what people thought of him—toobsessover it. That was why he kept tutoring a secret, hid the fact that he had to move in with his grandmother, dated Jade even though they’d lost their spark. A lifetime of being put on a pedestal had made him terrified to fall off.

But then again— “Wait a second, let me get this straight.” I held up a hand between us. “Your whole relationship was a hoax, and yet you offered to give melove advice?”

Connor pressed his fingers to his bottom lip, but it did nothing to hide the boyish smile. “I guess I thought I could fake it til I made it.”

“Except it totally backfired in nearly every way.”

“I should’ve made you sign a waiver.”

I scoffed out a laugh, leaning against the car beside him. Our shoulders brushed, but he didn’t lean away from the contact. Neither did I.

It was suddenly too hard to swallow, too hard to breathe, too hard to do anything but look at him. The weight of his confession and the fact that he shared it withmehad me drawing courage of my own. “Alex and I broke up.”

Connor’s eyebrows went up in a flash, the surprise on his face no doubt mirroring mine a second ago. “What? When?”

“Last night.” I flatted my fingertips across my skirt, tracing the floral pattern. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”

His shoulder pressed into mine more firmly, sending sparks along my side.

“I didn’t realize how suffocated I felt until after. Trying to stuff myself into a mold to fit what he wanted me to be.” And who was that person for Alex? Someone who was more outgoing, had more normal hobbies. Who I was now hadn’t been it for him. “He always looked down on me, and I knew it. Not on purpose, I don’t think—Alex isn’t cruel.”

“You give him a lot of credit,” Connor muttered. “I’m not that generous.”

But he didn’t know Alex like I did. “He wants to be like you, the cool guy everyone looks up to.”

“It’s overrated,” he said, and my mind flashed back to the night that Connor had driven me home from the diner, to our conversation then. Even back then, I’d been giving Alex an excuse.He just wants to be in the in-crowd.

And Connor’s monotone reply.It’s overrated.

“If I could trade places with Alex, I would,” Connor went on, shaking his head. A few cars passed by us with a soft zoom, but it didn’t burst us from our quiet bubble. “He can be the guy everyone scrutinizes. Because I know what it feels like to be suffocated, too.”

Of course he did, and my heart squeezed with sympathy. All of his secrets, all of his lies, all to keep up the image everyone expected from him. Mr. All-Star Player, who had everything he wanted. No one wanted to look underneath the mask; no one wanted to risk finding out that the guy they worshipped was as flawed as they were.

“I wish I figured it out sooner. That we wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t have had to worry about keeping all this from him.” I tried to think back to pinpoint an exact moment when things had begun falling apart. But when had it happened? It’d been a gradual build, beginning two weeks ago with the resurfacing of the Most Likely Tos. Two weeks ago, when I’d begun tutoring Connor. “Figured out that I…wanted more.”

Like someone who would make my heart tumble over itself.

I blinked a few times, the dawning understanding enough to render me speechless.

“You deserve more,” he murmured, and before I knew what was happening, Connor picked up my hand from where it was still tracing my skirt. He wrapped his fingers around my palm, the warmth of his skin spreading like wildfire through me. “You deserve the world, Maisie Matthews.”

All of Connor’s love advice came flooding back in a rush, consuming all rational thought.

For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to be bold. To channel the energy every jock seemed to possess, to be as confident as Connor and Madison were. I twisted my hand so that my fingers could thread through Connor’s, watching as they fit so perfectly into the spaces his created.

And without hesitation, Connor’s fingers curled around mine. The wildfire was nearly everywhere now. I was a field of paper roses, swallowed by flames.

When our gazes locked, the heat inside me seemed trapped in his eyes, an emotion seeming to melt the brown tones in his eyes while brightening the greens. Something low in my stomach shifted.

It’d been the reaction stirring inside me for days now, the gnawing sort of longing that I couldn’t place. Until now. Until I looked him in the eyes and the places my thoughts went were no longerwrong, despicable, awful. Looking at him was allowed now, but I still felt the strongest urge to pretend I wasn’t feeling what I knew I was.

Instead, the desperate craving to throw the consequences to the wind swept over me, charging the air between us.Sometimes you need to just be brave.

And so, ignoring everything, throwing caution to the wind, I leaned forward and pressed my lips against Connor’s.

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