Page 110 of Fraternizing with the Enemy
“You couldn’t handle me being straightforward.”
I actually laughed aloud at that—and the fact that Logan couldn’t look me in the eye when he said it. “More likeyoucouldn’t handle?—”
I cut off as I faced forward, immediately locking onto a table straight from the door. My eyes recognized them before my brain could put names to faces, and for a long moment, the world was a flutter of exclamation points and question marks. A lot of question marks. Because what I was seeingsodidn’t make any sense.
Maisie and Connor.
At the same table.
Holding hands.
Connor’s hand was stretched across the table, their fingertips brushing in a way that looked totally shy, but totally intentional. Maisie looked up at him through her lashes, lips parted in an almost state of wonder.
The same expression I’d worn on my face a time or two when I looked at Logan.
Why was she looking at Connor like that?
Maisie’s gaze pivoted to mine almost as if magnetized, and she jerked her hand back out from underneath Connor’s, mumbling something under her breath.
“Do you know them?” Logan asked me, but I barely heard it.
I found myself crossing the distance, everything else falling into the background except for the two at the table. “What is going on?” I demanded before I even arrived before them, glancing between the two. “Seriously.Whatis going on?”
Maisie straightened. “Madison?—”
“Don’tMadisonme,” I snapped, gesturing at the now empty spot on the table where their hands had been. “No, you’re going to explain whatthatwas, while explaining what—oh, dear God.” I all but smacked my hand to my forehead. “Please just tell me you’re not here on a date.”
“No!” The word ripped out of Maisie, and she grabbed at a book that I only just realized was on the table. “Of course not. I’m tutoring him, see? Math.”
That was definitely a math book, all right. And the notebook open on the table with Connor’s scrawl seemed legitimate, too. Did I seriously imagine them holding hands? Or was Maisie passing him an eraser or something? Some of the heated rush in my head began to ebb. “Tutoring,” I echoed, slow to believe. “Jade never said.”
“Jade doesn’t know,” Connor returned flatly. “No one does.”
I blinked at him and the calm way he sat there. Calm, like always. How could he be so calm? “You have a death wish, you know that?” I told him, voice low. “What if I was someone else, huh? Someone with a phone that’d send a pic to Babble?”
Maisie flinched—good, at leastsomeonewas aware of how disastrous that’d be—but Connor barely even blinked. I wanted to grip his shoulders and shake him. This wasn’t just his life he was messing around with. He was bringing Maisie into the fold by sneaking around—was he truly that careless?
Something else occurred to me then. “That’s what happened in the hookup closet, right?” I almost whispered, narrowing my eyes. “It was Maisie, right? You were tutoring in there? What the hell is wrong with the library?”
Maisie shot Connor a look at that, liketold you.
Before I had a chance to carry on, a sudden, feather-light touch ran down the back of my arm. For the first time since walking through Expresso’s doors, I remembered the boy I’d come in with. “People are beginning to stare,” Logan whispered to me.
My stomach knotted at the sound of his voice, but I refused to let it show. If any ounce of weakness appeared on my face, I had a feeling Connor would latch onto it.
Connor stiffened, his gaze finally, finally swiveling up to latch onto mine. “Don’t tell Jade,” he said.
Don’t tell Jade. Don’t tell my best friend that her boyfriend was secretly meeting with another girl behind her back. To add another secret to the list of things I kept from her. “And why not?” I folded my arms across my chest to hide my shaking hands. I wouldn’t have dreamed of confessing it to Jade, of course, but some part of me wanted to squeeze Connor.
“If you tell her about the tutoring, I can tell her about him.” Connor’s gaze went from me to Logan, who still stood over my shoulder. “I’m pretty sure I remember you telling Jade you’d stop seeing him.”
I tried to gauge his sincerity. “You wouldn’t,” I said finally. “I know you, Connor. You’re too much of a peacemaker to snitch.”
Maisie sat up. “I would.” She had a strong poker face as she stared me down, planting her elbows on the table. “I’ve done it before. My best friend runs Babble, after all. I could have her posting about it in minutes, just like last time.”
I almost, almost smiled. Maybe Maisie would’ve done better in the Top Tier than I thought.
Fear, though, was what had my lips settled into a flat line. Because I believed her.
