Page 102 of Sugar Rush
“I have to take this,” he informed me.
“I’m just going to run to the back and grab my jacket out of Sandy’s office,” I told him, and he gave me a quick nod as he answered.
As I made my way down the eerily empty hall, I could hear the beginning of his conversation echoing behind me.
I wasn’t sure why, but being alone in public buildings always gave me the creeps. It was like being in a school after hours with no one else around. Just unpleasant and unsettling, especially in a place that was usually so hectic and bustling as the youth center. I suddenly realized I’d never come here alone before, never wandered around when it was silent and empty. Each step of my sneaker on the tiled floor was as loud as a gunshot as I passed by the cafeteria, conference room, and gymnasium.
Sandy’s office was a large, neat space in a corner, lined with glass partition walls. I’d been in there a few times, to fill out paperwork or deliver something to her from someone else. The lights were off, but I could see my bright blue jacket folded neatly and sat on her big mahogany desk. Grasping the metalhandle and carefully pushing her door in, I tiptoed inside and picked it up.
The sound of the door clicking closed startled me, and I whirled around to see Andrew, from where he’d presumably emerged from the shadowy corner of the office I hadn’t been able to see into. He flicked up the light switch, flooding the space with bright light.
Standing in front of the only way out, he regarded me with an aloof, oddly distant expression, something that I’d never seen from him before. The eye that Kieran had punched already had a dark purple bruise formed around it.
Fear skittered up my spine like a spider, and my stomach felt like a block of ice settled into my guts.
“Andrew,” I started cautiously. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you, Jordy,” he answered me with a bright tone, like how you talk to a kid. “See, when you texted my mom about your jacket after you left, she was pretty busy. So she asked me to go put it in her office to be sure no one would take it until you came and picked it up.”
When I didn’t say anything, he continued on.
“It was just a matter of waiting for her to leave her phone lying around somewhere, so I could text you from it and convince you to come in today. You’re very easy to influence,” he added, in a very neutral, observatory kind of way, like I was an animal whose behaviors he’d been studying.
“Okay, but… Why are you here?” I asked again, both confused and completely creeped out that he would even come up with a plan to get me alone after everything that had happened. “You don’t even like me, you said so yourself yesterday. So what’s the point of ambushing me like this?”
“You’re right. I don’t like you. I thought I did,” he tacked on, somewhat thoughtfully. “I thought you were different.”
“I told you I’m not,” I reminded him, struggling to keep any of the nerves or revulsion I felt for him out of my voice. Provoking him with my disgust probably wouldn’t be the move at that particularly precarious moment. “I’m just a normal person. I’m not especially sweet or helpful or whatever you thought.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he assured me. “But none of that has anything to do with why I wanted to meet you here.”
A meeting implied that both parties were aware that they’d be in each other’s presence, but I bit down on that particular thought.
“Then why did you want to?”
“It’s not really about you,” he continued on. “Now it’s more about that overly aggressive man-child you’ve been clinging to like a pathetic little whore.”
“Leave him out of this,” I said automatically. “You don’t even know him.”
“Oh, I do know him,” he corrected me quickly. “I’ve known so many alphas like him. They’re all the same. And the omegas that spread their legs for those alphas are all the same, too.”
He was talking crazy again, like he’d started doing the day before at the truck. I didn’t know what to say to make him move out of my way so I could leave, but denying his claims didn’t seem to be working.
“So if I’m a whore that spreads my legs for an evil bully alpha, then why are you so desperate to talk to me? Why’d you wait here for me?”
“I didn’t wait here to talk to you. It’s not about you. I said that. You’re not listening.”
“You want to fight Kieran or something?” I asked, my brows furrowing together. That wasn’t going to go very well for him. Not that I was going to let Kieran get mixed up in this stupid bullshit, anyway. He would be way too eager to beat the hell outof this creep, like he’d wanted to do since seeing him pin me against the couch at that stupid party.
“No,” he said. “Fighting is for animals. I want tohurtKieran.”
“How do you plan on hurting him without fighting him?” I blurted out, annoyed and frustrated with the entire conversation, as well as the cold, fearful sensation squirming around inside me. I was annoyed with myself. I should have complained to someone higher up about his behavior before it had escalated this far, but I hadn’t wanted to cause problems. And now I was stuck in a room alone with a guy who hated my guts for rejecting him.
He blinked, tilting his head and giving me an expression like he was appraising me and the prognosis wasn’t good. “For being so successful academically, you really aren’t that bright, are you?”
He watched me watching him, the silent seconds ticking by slowly and dreadfully until finally awareness dawned on me, and true fear, not the sly licks of anxiety and nerves I’d felt up to that point, raced up my body and gripped me by the throat.
He was going to hurt Kieran by hurting me.
