Page 139 of Beyond the Temptation: Vol 2

“Yeah, I realize that, but it was at my expense.” Pulling out my schedule, I looked at the room number I needed and then at the room numbers around us and saw I was nowhere near where I needed to be. “If you want to be helpful, show me where I need to be.” I swear they needed ten minutes between each class just to allow students to get where they needed to be.

“Sure.” He nodded in my periphery.

We didn’t speak for the next couple of minutes as everyone gawked and greeted him. I kept a blank expression on my face, not letting on how much I hated the attention. The girls already hated me for the simple fact that I had Slade by my side, and the guys leered at me like I was the next image in their spank bank. As long as they didn’t tell me about it, I didn’t give a shit.

“Are you like the captain of the football team or something?” I asked when he stopped outside a door that read 425.

His dirty yet captivating eyes darkened as he looked down at me. His entire body went stiff before he relaxed against the wall, but he wasn’t fooling me. Something had happened there. “I was. The season’s over.”

“That explains a lot.” I patted him on the arm. “Well, thanks for walking me to class. This place is like a damn maze. The room numbers are all over the place.” There was no rhyme or reason to the way the rooms were numbered, at least that I could see.

I stepped inside the classroom, and all eyes were on me. This was what I hated. I was the freak who appeared five months into the school year while everyone already had established relationships.

An older man with very little gray hair on his head but plenty coming out of his nose and ears smiled at me as he looked at me over the rim of his glasses. I handed over my schedule and let him look it over.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Blake. Please take a seat at any of the free desks.”

I took back my schedule that he’d marked on and turned to find a seat, only to find the single vacant one was directly in front of Slade. What were the odds?

Why did we have to have this class together? I already wasn’t excited about it, and now with him here, I’d be dreading it. Science classes were so not my thing. Dissecting a once-living thing was not in my wheelhouse. At least the teacher seemed nice.

Mr. Brown stood up in front of the class and started writing on the board. I pulled out a notebook, prepared to write notes, and hoped the class went by without event.

“As you can all see, we have a new student with us today. I’m not going to embarrass Ms. Blake by making her come up here in front of you all. Instead, we’re going to change up our lab partners for the rest of the year, and no, you won’t be picking.”

At least if we weren’t picking, Slade couldn’t choose me. Thank god for small miracles. My thoughts drifted to when I asked my mom for money for lunch this morning and the way she sneered at me as if I asked her to give me a pint of her blood.

“I hope you’re not squeamish,” Slade chuckled from behind me, breaking me out of my thoughts about how I was going to get money to eat lunch. I was already hungry since I didn’t eat breakfast after my mom pissed me off.

Looking over my shoulder, I hissed back. “What are you talking about?”

His unique eyes scanned my face for a moment and then brightened with excitement. “About the fact that tomorrow we’ll be cutting into a baby pig.”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere near anything that once had a heartbeat.” I realized then that I’d missed who my partner was. “Can you point out who I was assigned to?”

He tilted his head to the side and stared at me for a moment before lifting a finger and pointing at his chest.

“No.” I nearly stood up from my desk and backed away. There was no way fate could be this cruel.

Pressing his hand to his chest, Slade chuckled. “You wound me. How can you say you don’t want me to be your partner when I’m the only person you know here?”

“Who says I don’t know anyone else?”

He gave me a dry look that said I was stupid for the words that just came out of my mouth.

“Fine,” I huffed. “I don’t know anyone. Including you.” I looked back to the front of the classroom and saw everyone was moving to the lab portion of the room. “Please tell me we’re not doing this today.”

“Not today. We’re just getting prepared for tomorrow. Don’t worry. If it makes you feel better, I’ll do all the work.”

My head frantically shook as I stood up and followed him to a table in the back. “Not really,” I said as I stared down at a diagram of a pig. “I can’t sit here and watch you cut into some poor piglet.”

His nose wrinkled up in disgust. “Are you a vegan?”

“Not a vegan, but a vegetarian.”

“Almost as bad. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Well, it’s pretty easy since I don’t like to think about eating the faces of animals that I like.”

---