Page 10 of The Playbook

“The flutes need something cool like that,” Lana sighed.

“No they don’t,” Noah snorted. “I hate the fluttery sound it makes. You need to drop the front row and join the back row with us cool kids.”

I tuned out their spat as we walked out of the room and down the hall. Noah had a thing for giving Lana crap about the flute. I was pretty sure they just enjoyed antagonizing one another, flutes or not.

“You know what, Parker?” Lana raised her eyebrows at him. “I hope you trip and stab yourself with your drumstick.”

He let out a laugh as she waved at me and flounced off to her next class.

“Messing with her will never get old.” Noah grinned down at me.

I shook my head as we walked.

“What’s your next class?” he asked, sidling against me to let Andy Stephens pass by.

I hated that guy almost as much as I hated Nikki. While hot as sin, he was one of the biggest jerks I’d ever met. Last year, he and Julian Webster had glued my locker shut.Like, who does that?My dad had benched them for a game, which resulted in me taking more crap from the fem-bots and the rest of their clique. And of course, all of their goony followers in the school.

“Chemistry,” I said, stumbling as Julian pushed past me, his elbow catching me in the ribs. I knew it wasn’t an accident because he smirked as he passed by.

Noah caught me quickly, his arm around my waist.

“Easy there, Grace. Can’t have you getting hurt when we have such an important performance coming up.”

“Right,” I muttered, wishing I could trip those assholes the next time I saw them.

Scowling, I turned to see Logan sauntering toward us. His eyes darted to Noah’s arm still around my waist, then between us. A frazzled look crossed his face before he disappeared into the classroom.Myclassroom. Chemistry.

“What’s wrong?” Noah asked, finally dropping his arm from me.

“Logan Walker is in my chem class.” I sighed.

“Bummer.” Noah wrinkled his nose. “But at least he’s better than Nikki or Andy.”

“True,” I answered, frowning.Anything was better than Nikki and Andy.

The warning bell rang, so I hitched my bag up higher on my arm, shoving a determined look on my face. One that said I was confident and wasn’t going to take any shit. Noah let out a laugh.

“You look insane.”

“Good,” I muttered, waving him off amid his laughter.

When I walked into the class, Mr. Benson held out his hand to stop me.

“Grace Matthews. Logan Walker is your lab partner. Go have a seat. Table eight.”

I let out a groan, making Mr. Benson raise his eyebrows at me before I huffed over to where Logan was sitting with his nose buried in his phone. He didn’t look up when I sank into the seat next to him. I listened as he let out a soft chuckle at whatever he was reading, then he darkened the screen and looked over at me, a wide grin spreading across his face.

CHAPTER6

Logan

“Look who it is,” I said.

Her eyes flickered to my shirt then to my face, a blush sweeping over her porcelain cheeks.

“I never got the chance to thank you for dumping my lunch on me today.”

“No thanks needed,” she muttered, pulling out her notebook and opening it to a fresh sheet.

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