Page 13 of Branded
School and my brain didn’t fit. I wasn’t dumb, not by any means, but I was dyslexic and that made it challenging to read for fun…or for homework-slash-work-work personality tests that were important because they were critical to the flow of the team and because Hazel was the shit and had asked me to complete them because they were important to her.
Still, no joke, Marcel had gotten to go to a wreck room and bust shit up.
I’d gotten homework.
Probably, if I’d disclosed the fact that sometimes the letters swam on the page and or flipped themselves over or decided to look like another letter, she wouldn’t have given me the packets.
But I hadn’t told anyone that.
Hadn’t let it define my life in a long time.
Not since I’d thought that dyslexia had made me dumb. Not since everyone around me had thought the same.
Big. Oafish. Dumb.
Those three went together.
“My guess is that you either over or under-watered her,” Oliver was saying. “Are the edges of her leaves changing colors?”
I narrowed my eyes, stopped thinking about my fucked-up brain. “Why do I feel like you’re sabotaging me already?”
A wolfish smile. “Because I’m going to win this competition again?”
“Theo won last year,” I pointed out.
That smile faded. “Only because I wasn’t competing.”
I leaned back against the wall, crossed my arms. “Why do I feel like you have a big part to do with the entire organization now growing flowers?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Oliver said innocently.
Right.
He just wanted to regain possession of Mac, an adorably ugly (and very creepy) underwear-wearing, plastic teeth-sporting blue creature that he’d won in the first plant contest and had to give up to Theo since the studious forward had won last season.
I didn’t give a shit about Mac—though, if I did somehow manage to not kill the flower with my black thumb, I would be damn sure to take my bragging rights to the nth degree.
Everyone would be hearing about my victory.
But since that wouldn’t happen, I’d just do my best to draw out the planticide for as long as possible.
Poor little petunia was fucked.
“Well,” I said, “as illuminating as this conversation is, I do need to go.”
Oliver stopped, brows drawing together. “Aren’t you going to dinner with the guys?”
Right. Fuck. I probably assumed that considering that was what I always did, but I’d snuck out and I was going home to lick my wounds and…
“I’m actually a little tired.”
Hell.
Now concern registered on Oliver’s face.
Fuck. I should have known better. I was never tired. I prided myself on being an Energizer Bunny who never stopped, on the ice and in the locker room and at home and?—
It would warrant concern I didn’t want to draw if I was tired.
