Page 23 of Broken Pieces
Not yet.
Maybe he is skipping this class today.
Maybe Samantha texted him and he is busy getting off with her, chasing the same easy distraction he always does.
I try not to care. That he is just another boy with a smirk and fists scarred from bad decisions.
But denial only gets me so far. Because I feel him before I see him.
The air shifts and my pulse betrays me. My body knows he has arrived before my eyes confirm it.
I lower my eyes to my notebook as if it holds the answer to something important. The page is blank, but I stare at it anyway. Staring is easier than looking up at him. Plus it’s safer.
He stops in front of our table.
His shadow falls over my desk, stretching across the empty page, but I keep my head down.
The toe of his boot nudges the leg of my chair. Then again.
A little harder this time, as if he is daring me to acknowledge him.
Still, I pretend not to register it. I let my pen hover above the paper.
Cassie stills for a moment beside me. Then her pen scratches across the margin of her notebook, but it is nothing more than a performance. She’s pretending to doodle, lines and swirls looping over one another. She lives for this kind of theater, the quiet chaos before the explosion.
Zane leans forward, invading my space without hesitation.
His voice drops low, carrying that weight that coils straight down my spine.
His breath ghosts against my ear.“Are you always this cold in the morning, or is it just me?” he murmurs.
A chill slides across my skin, raising goosebumps I try to ignore. I hate that he has that effect on me. Hate that a single sentence from his mouth can slip under my defenses and curl inside my chest. His words move the way smoke does, finding cracks I did not even know were there, seeping through until the air feels heavy and poisoned.
I should push him out.
I should shut him down.
But instead I sit here, every nerve wired tight, furious that he can get past my walls at all.
I keep my eyes down. My pen scratches nothing across the page, my hand steady only because I force it to be. “You talking again, or is that the sound of your ego trying to unzip its own pants?”
Cassie snorts so loud she nearly chokes on her laughter, pressing her pen harder into the paper as if she can hide it there.
Zane laughs too, buried under his breath.
“Feisty,” he says, like he’s proud of me, as if I am not a girl telling him to fuck off but some wild animal he has cornered. He sounds like he wants to poke me with a stick just to watch me snap.
He slides into the seat in front of me, the scrape of the chair loud enough to drag every eye in the room for half a second.
It is the first time he has chosen this spot.
Usually he plants himself at the back, half hidden, all attitude, while he does whatever the fuck Zane Rivera does when he is not busy getting suspended.
Now here he is. Too fucking close for comfort.
He drapes one arm over the back of his chair with lazy confidence, the other spread across his desk, his whole body turned toward me as if I am the only thing worth looking at. His posture is loose, almost careless, but the weight of his attention presses against me.
I force myself to look busy.
