Page 14 of Chaos at Westbrook High

It looks like he’s coming right for me, and I start to panic, unsure whether I should hide my face in my locker or just run away altogether. But he’s not paying attention, and I’m staring at him again, and it’s only when he walks right into me that I finally snap myself out of it.

Shit. I should’ve run.

With his feet just an inch from mine, he glares and lifts his head from his phone, looking like he’s about to bite mine right off. But when he looks at me, his eyes flash with something that looks an awful lot like shock, his lips parted. I expect him to do or say something, but he surprises me by doing the opposite. He does nothing. He just stares at the middle of my face. He stares for so long that I start to get really, really uncomfortable. I slowly look around, finding most of the students staring at me as well. It’s as if they’re waiting for something bad to happen.

What? Am I supposed to move for him?

Feeling a strange compulsion to obey, I side-step out of his way like everyone else did before, but in that same second, he turns his whole body and moves with me, crowding my space until my shoulders hit the open locker behind me.

Whatever you do, do not let them back you into a corner.

I try to move, but he moves with me again, preventing me from taking a single step.

“Kai,” I breathe out, immediately kicking myself for saying his name like that. I didn’t mean to. It just slipped off my tongue, and—Jesus, has he always been this tall? When he’s this close, I have to crane my neck to look at him, swallowing when I see the hunger in his light blue eyes. His mouth stretches into a grin, and he moves even closer, flattening his palms on the metal on either side of me, caging me in.

“You’re here.”

I don’t know what to say, so I keep my mouth shut, jumping when the shrill sound of the first bell hits my ears. He lowers his head, bringing his eyes down so he can meet mine beneath my ball cap.

“Baby, relax. You’re shaking.”

Again, I have no idea what to say.

“I thought you were in college,” he murmurs, moving one of his hands to play with a loose strand of my hair. “What are you doing here?”

I consider ignoring him like I always do, but I figure the best way to get him out of my face is to move this along quickly. “I’m a senior. In high school,” I clarify.

“Did you just transfer here?”

“Yes.”

“Which school did you go to before?”

“Bridgeport.”

He cocks his head at that. “But you live here…” he trails off, raising a brow when he realizes how tense my shoulders are, my hands twitching with the urge to smack his fingers away from my head. “Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“No.”

But even as I say it, it feels like a lie. It’s one thing having to deal with him every day at work, on my territory, but being here with him at this big ass school where he’s considered a king, where he can do whatever he wants and nothing and no one will stop him…

Now I’m afraid of him.

He continues to crowd me, and I look away, narrowing my eyes when I catch the look of disgust on that cheerleader’s face. Madison, as Rachel told me. The pretty blonde girl standing on the sidelines with her pretty friends, their judgy little eyes picking me apart from the top of my cap to the bottoms of my sneakers. I shouldn’t care what they think, and I don’t, but damn it, I don’t fit in here and they all know it.

Now more than ever, I wish I could go back two months, back to when Valerie was alive and our lives weren’t falling apart at the seams. I wish I could stop her from crossing that street and prevent everything that happened afterward. I wish I could wake up from this nightmare I’m trapped in.

“What’s wrong?” Kai asks, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Nothing.” I dip around him in an attempt to escape, but he easily snatches my waist and puts me right back where I was.

My back hits the locker again, our defiant gazes crashing together, his forearms caging me in on either side of my head. I glare up at him, my eyes burning with anger at the fucking nerve on this handsy asshole.

“Why are you so upset?”

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