Page 23 of Raise Hell

Five

Olivia has a beautiful neck,long and graceful with fine hairs at her nape that are so light blonde they’re practically transparent.

I spent the first five minutes of class wondering what it might be like to wrap my hands around that neck and squeeze until I hear something break.

At least, I did until I got her kicked out.

It’s too bad she’ll only be gone for a day. Next time, I’ll get her forcibly removed from school completely. Or whatever else it takes to force her to leave and not come back.

Olivia Pratt is a royal pain in my ass.

She is also the sexiest girl I’ve ever seen.

My reaction to her still entirely baffles me. I can’t remember having a single encounter with her before that night, but I must have seen her in the halls or at lunch. I would remember if seeing her had been the punch to my gut it is now.

Something is very wrong here.

Seeing Olivia saunter around campus like the Queen of Sheba doesn’t match up with the broken girl I stumbled on in the woods. It makes me wonder if I even saw what I thought I did.

“Christ. Heads up, man.”

A rugby ball comes flying toward my face. I barely have time to raise my hands before it knocks my teeth out. Nolan’s scrimmage jersey is an orange blur as he barrels toward me, checking me hard enough in the gut with his shoulder that I go flying. He catches the ball on a bounce off the grass and runs it in for a goal.

Vaughn jogs up with an annoyed look on his face. This is our last practice before the game on Saturday, and my head is definitely not in the place it needs to be.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” he demands. “That’s the fifth pass you’ve missed today.”

I take his hand and let him pull me off the ground. “Sorry, man.”

“If you play like this in the tournament, then we’re going to get slaughtered,” Vaughn grouses. He glares at the goal line where Nolan is still doing a victory dance. “Whatever’s up with you better be fixed by then.”

Vaughn takes the rugby team way more seriously than I do. Really, he takes almost everything more seriously than I do. If he’s not on my ass about something, it’s because I’m literally in the middle of doing whatever he just finished nagging me about. Vaughn is the only one person at St. Bart’s that I let get away with that kind of shit.

For some reason, I find it more annoying than usual.

“You captain, now?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

He backpedals immediately. “That’s not what I meant. Fuck. We just can’t lose against Central State, man. St. Bart’s would never live it down.”

Central State is the only opponent in our division that has a chance of beating us. They are the only thing standing in between St. Bart’s and the regional championship.

That doesn’t make it okay for him to tell me what I need to be doing.

“It’ll be fine. Let’s get set up again.”

Vaughn backs off while we’re on the field surrounded by the rest of the team. It would undermine both my position as president and his as vice-president if we got into a fight in the middle of the rugby field.

He finally lets me have it after practice when we’re in the locker room.

“What’s got you so twisted up?” he asks, snapping a towel at a passing freshman then grinning when the kid yelps. “You need to get laid?”

“Always.” I pitch my voice lower, even though the locker room is loud enough with male conversation that no one is going to hear us. “But I think you know that’s the least of my problems.”

“I assume you’re talking about Olivia Pratt.”

“Are there more crazy bitches that I need to be worried about?”

His smile is a bit evil as he slams the locker door shut. “I heard you got her kicked out of Hewey’s class. Nice job, man.”

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