Page 14 of All Saints: Pledge

“Oh um, yes miss,” I say loudly for effect, “the restroom is just through that door.” Li takes my hint and heads off while I try to square my shoulders and wade into the crowd with my tray.

Kendall’s stride doesn’t falter. In his suit, he looks intimidating and seven years older than the guy recently graduated from high school. Elegant but cruel with his hair is swept back, spotless turnout and ferocious eyes locked on me.

Why does he always look like he’s going to eat me?It’s like I’m Red Riding Hood and he’s the Big Bad Wolf come to claim his meal. I lift my chin in a show of bravado I don’t feel. I haven’t done anything wrong. He’ll stalk right past me and grace the loo with his wrath. Surely?—

His big body presses me back into the catering hallway. I give ground, glasses rattling on the tray.

My body screams that he’s too close and far too angry. Prey sensing a predator, my body instinctively wants to escape anything related to Kendall. I brandish the tray between us and offer what I hope is a disarming smile.

“Champagne?”

He passed four trays on his way to me.

He takes the tray and sets it on a serving platform near the door to the kitchen. There’s nothing between us now and I can’t go backward unless I want to end up in the serving station.

“Go home,” he says, his eyes dropping from mine to run once, perfunctorily, over my body. I don’t think he means just from serving. It’sanotherwarning, and it gets my dander up.

“I don’t want to go home,” I say, tilting up my chin. “I like it here.”

His eyes flash. And now I worry that he thinks I mean I like ithere, sandwiched between his body and the wall. His eyes drop back down, and I’mpretty surehe’s eyeing what little cleavage he can see under the tux jacket. Something primal settles across his face for a flash so brief, I wonder if I truly saw it at all. Longing? No, that’s too soft. Something more like possession.

Goosebumps break out across my skin, proving yet againthat there is something wrong with me. Unlike the sweet and full feeling I have around Dominic, this tiny nugget of thought of beingownedby Kendall’s big body is… doing things to my insides. Things I absolutely refuse to investigate any further. He ismy enemy. He hates me. And sure, maybe he’s a boob man, but it doesn’t affect our mutual feelings. He wants me gone from Oxford, and I want to stay.

“Your volunteer shift is over,” Kendall says, eyes still on my chest. I should correct him. Mostly, I just want to escape all these veiled threats.

“So did I pass?” I can’t help asking.

His eyes glitter as they meet mine. “Wouldn’t you like to know? I’ll take your jacket.”

Fine.

Bastard.

Within the tiny confines of the space Kendall has allotted me, I struggle out of the tuxedo jacket. Or I attempt to. I’m well and truly stuck. The more I try to escape the fabric, the more like a straightjacket it becomes. I struggle and twist, and soon, true panic starts to well in my stomach. I feel like I’m about to be strangled by this monstrosity of a garment.

Kendall’s hand reaches between us, and I freeze while his fingers graze the front of my coat. Is he…is he going to touch my boob? Am I going tolet him?

Panic surges through me as I realize I’m completely paralyzed, my eyes fixated on his finger lingering above thefabric covering my—oh God—myheaving chest. I’m gasping for air, and it’s as obvious as if I’m wearing a corset on Bridgerton. Am I really going to allow this man, who despises me, to grope me while I’m cornered?

His forefinger brushes against my skin, dipping just inside the jacket.

No one hasevertouched my boobs, except for Joe Gazorski who honked them like they were made of rubber over my sweater in 10thgrade at a dance. Nothing like this subtle brush of skin against skin that has everything inside my body tightening and coiling in a most alarming manner. I shouldn’t be allowing this. Not from him. I know what happened the very last time I let this person touch my body, and I’m inzerohurry to repeat it.

Helena 2.0 isnota pussy.

I reach out and slap his hand away, just as his finger dips behind the material and runs between my skin and the coat. As his hand falls, the jacket comes open like magic. He’s undone the single button with three fingers. I’d forgotten the inside button.

I swear something like satisfaction sits on his stupid smirky mouth a moment too long. It’s like he’srelishingin my response. Loving that I’m yet again proven inferior.Can’t even get a coat off.He’s messing with my head, and I need to leave.

I shrug out of the coat and shove it into his hands. Pushing roughly past his shoulder, I run smack into Dominic. We’ve amassed a small audience. Behind Dom, a wide-eyed Clara regards Kendall with open jealousy. It probably looked like he was feeling me up. Absolutely cracking, as the Brits would say, that everyone here got to witness my complete humiliation.

“Everything okay?” Dominic asks, reaching out to steady me. Hisdark eyes dart between me and Kendall, a challenge there if I say I’ve been wronged. I believe he’d slay dragons for me if I asked.

“Just turning over my uniform,” I say with false cheer, looping my arm through his. As if it’s perfectly normal for your shift manager to undress you with his eyes and his hands in a public corridor while you hyperventilate.

Clara doesn’t look convinced, but she is forced to turn back to a person approaching her tray. I’m given a reprieve on that front too.

“Yeah, alright,” Dominic says, casting one more distrustful look at Kendall. He allows me to pull him away. “Li texted she thought she got you in trouble.”

---