Page 18 of Never Broken

I gently took her wrist and slid it off my shoulder, easing her disappointment with an irresistible smile and an offer. “You know, Iwasjust thinking you look like you need a break.”

5

HER

Ishould have known when the knock was five minutes late.

From my desk littered with chemistry notes, I shouted, “Come in,” in the most annoyed voice I could conjure up. The nerve of that little trollop actually trying toclean my roomwhile I was in it. I’d have to move my study session elsewhere, or I’d never be able to concentrate with her passive-aggressively slamming her mop and bucket around, clogging up my nostrils with that acrid cleaning solution she always used.

Of course, when the door opened, I instantly knew I’d never be able to concentrate anyway.

Worse, I couldn’t possibly be feeling and looking less sexy in my flannel pajama pants with the frayed bottoms and gray camisole, complete with a toothpaste stain over the nipple. But that was what I was wearing when, instead of a pouty-lipped maid, the guy of my very ridiculously inappropriate dreams loomed tall in the doorway instead, wearing one of those soft, thin T-shirts with the buttons at the neck, one that seemed to inexplicably fit him despite having come out of a communal binand clung artfully to his collarbone, his biceps, and every single infuriating place I’d made up my mind to never, ever look.

I gasped and practically leaped out of my chair, banging my hip on the side of the desk. Smooth as usual. “What are you doing?” I demanded. It was a totally stupid question and yet somehow, at the same time, the only appropriate one to ask.

“Oh, this is your room?” he asked evenly, expression unreadable, setting down the vacuum and bucket full of cleaning supplies. “I had no idea.”

I rolled my eyes. “I find it very hard to believe that you don’t have this place memorized by now. And where’s the maid?”

“I told her she looked like she could use an hour off.”

“I wish she’d take a month,” I scoffed, folding my arms in a closed-off posture that was the exact opposite of how I really felt when I was around him. Like my entire body was blossoming, stretching toward his light and heat and complete and total forbiddenness. “But why areyouhere?”

“There are just some things I find irresistible,” he said darkly, his stunning amber-gold eyes under those long lashes still averted from mine ever so slightly—but I knew that didn’t mean he wasn’t looking.

I swallowed.

“And chemistry is one of them,” he finished.

Same here.

“I know you didn’t ask your dad if I could tutor you.”

“But I?—”

He held up his hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I know. So I’m going toshowyou.”

My mouth went dry. Of course I’d decided not to ask my dad, to pretend that the request had never been made. There was too much risk that he’d say yes, and I didn’t trust myself around the boy for a second—to say nothing ofhim. Not askingfor permission—though it still left me saddled with o-chem—removed a temptation I was desperate to dodge.

Except now here he was anyway. Was the universe trying to tell me something? If so, the universe must hate me. The same way it hated Rebekah Roth.

“So are you here to tutor me or clean my room?”

“That’s up to you,” he said. “And me. See, I have a deal for you: I tutor you for an hour. If you haven’t started to understand o-chem after that, I’ll clean the room, and you don’t have to deal with you-know-who. If you do,youclean the room. Either way, it’s win-win.”

“But I don’t know how to clean the room.” Really?Thatwas my best objection?

“I’ll teach you that, too.”

I was too mesmerized by the way the sunlight from my bedroom window was making his hair glimmer to think about whether his proposal made any goddamn sense.

Half in a daze, I pulled the white wicker chair over to my desk and collapsed back down into my own, flipping open the dreaded book to the even more dreaded chapter. “Thing is, I understand what the chemicals are and where they go. I just don’t understandwhythey—” I turned back when I realized he hadn’t budged from the spot on the carpet where he stood, just outside of my room.

“May I sit down?”

This boy was breaking my brain, and we hadn’t even started yet. He had talked his way into my room with a deal worthy of a real estate mogul, and now he was waiting for permission to sit in a chair. But a kid who had grown up in slavery had probably been scolded countless times for sitting on the furniture without permission. It was probably automatic. Or maybe it was just a test.

At least he hadn’t addedmiss.

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