Page 30 of Look What You Made Me Do

Ella sighed. “Oh, Cam, what have you done now?”

Normally she received a phone call as a bit of a heads-up before one of Cam’s teachers sent him down to see her.

“Jesus Christ, Ella. Nothing. Just forget it.”

Cam turned away and Ella wished a sharp knife had been handy to cut her tongue out. She stood abruptly. “No, wait.”

He was seeking her out? Voluntarily? Her pulse picked up at the thought. “I’m sorry, Cam. Please come and sit down.”

Cameron glared at her and the chair and then back at her before sullenly acquiescing, slumping himself down with as much teenage surliness as was possible.

“You wanted to see me about something?”

Cameron nodded and she waited patiently for him to start. He sat staring morosely at the ground, his shaggy overgrown hair obscuring his eyes from her gaze. Ella detested the latest mullet craze the male students had all embraced so heartily. Her mind wandered to Jake’s uber-short cut and she wished she had the power to line all the boys up and shave every single head.

“Cam?”

“Do you know who Jake’s chosen yet?” The question was fired at her with his usual hostile edge, as though everything bad in the world was her fault.

“No.”

Cameron snorted. “He hasn’t given you a peek at the list?”

Ella ignored his belligerent tone. “No.”

“But… you’re the principal. Doesn’t he have to check with you about it?”

She’d not spoken to Jake all week. She’d seen him a couple of times when she’d gone to the field on her regular vape-confiscating rounds but had deliberately kept away from him, including avoiding the bar on Friday night. He was here in her school performing a necessary evil and she was grateful, but she was acutely aware of both their baggage and her attraction and she wasn’t about to put herself in the path of that truck.

“No, he doesn’t. He’s the expert. It’s his team. We’ll all know in a couple of hours.”

“Has he hinted at all, maybe, that I’m in?”

The desperation in his voice vibrated through the air like a tuning fork. She’d never seen Cameron so gung-ho about anything. So motivated. Ever since she’d dragged him from Trently, he’d lived with a permanent scowl, so this interest was heartening. “I haven’t spoken to him all week.”

She regarded the boy/man who just wouldn’t let her in. He was so big, already a foot taller than her and growing out of his shoes at a rate of knots. “You really want this, don’t you?”

Cameron looked up from the floor. “Yes, I do.”

Ella swallowed as emotion welled in her throat. This was only the second time in two years he’d looked her straight in the eye. The other time had been after their mother’s funeral, when he had told her he hated Rachel, despite the tears streaming down his face. She’d tried to reach out, to gloss over what their mother was but he’d just turned away.

“Well, you’ve practiced hard. You’ve stayed standing. I think you’re in for a good chance.”

Cameron shook his head. “But what if I’m not? Can’t you… can’t you use your influence with him?”

A hot prickle burrowed into the base of Ella’s spine. “My influence?”

Cameron looked at the ground again. “You know him from Trently. And… I see the way he looks at you. Maybe a… favor might help convince him.”

Time whirred to a halt. A pain sliced through Ella’s chest as if Cameron had picked up a knife and rammed it straight through her heart. She could barely breathe as the full implications of his suggestion twisted the knife.

“You want me to use sex to get you in the team?”

Ella felt as if she was watching the scene from a great height. She couldn’t believe how calm she sounded, how composed, when her heart was breaking.

He shrugged. “It worked for Rachel.”

His words fell like stones into the silence and Ella drew in a shaky breath. It was like he truly didn’t know that he’d insulted her more deeply than she’d ever been before.

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