Page 12 of Burn for You (Flirting with Forever 3)

I don’t know why I feel the need to see how she’s doing, except—dammit, I didn’t like the way that phone call had affected her. Misery was written all over her face, plain for me to see. And the kicker? I’d felt her pain deep in my gut, like it was my own. I don’t understand why, but it reached in and grabbed hold of me, made me understand her better.

Her eyes had been glassy, like she’d been fighting tears as she listened to them. Her lower lip had quivered ever so slightly when our gazes connected. I hate that they have the ability to affect her like that. And then, there’d been some things left unsaid when she’d taken off for the bathroom. She’d tried to act like nothing was wrong, but I know better.

Do I like to poke at her and tease her? Try to ruffle her feathers? One hundred percent.

Had I liked what I’d overheard from her parents in that phone call, though? No. Do I like how they’d made her feel? Fuck, no. As if I’m not already aware of her intensity, of the way she pushes herself—to find out that her parents do it, too, and not in a subtle way? It’d made me angry on her behalf. I’d had the urge to pull her into my arms and tell her everything would be okay, to calm the trembling I’d seen rolling through her body in swift waves.

Yet, how could I possibly do that, be the one to offer her comfort, when I’m the one who is threatening to screw everything up for her? I don’t see a solution because as much as I know she wants the job, I want it, too. My family needs me to get it. They’re depending on me to come through.

I set my pen down and scrub both hands through my short hair, growling to myself. Life isn’t always fair, and one of the two of us is going to learn that in a big way in the next few weeks.

A small noise next to me has me jerking to the left to see Piper has come in, quiet like a kitten, though I don’t know how she’s managed it in those heels of hers. I take a few seconds to assess her state of mind, but she seems to be composed again, as if she’s pulled a mask on, hiding the emotions I’d seen swimming in her eyes.

Frowning, I glance at her out of the corner of my eye. She looks really pretty today. I hadn’t noticed earlier with so much going on, but she’s wearing simple black pants and a red sweater that brings out the pink in her cheeks. Her long hair is down as usual, but it’s swept over one shoulder at the moment. I’ll be damned, but the allure of her neck is still a very heady reality, just like it was when I’d noticed it at the gym. A jolt of something I can only assume is desire moves through me, making my heart pump hard and my dick harden in my pants.

“What are you doing, Damon?”

Um. Is she a mind reader or something? How the hell does she know what I’m thinking about? I’m pretty sure I’m not that obvious. I angle my body toward her and eye her carefully. “I’m sorry, what?”

She points at the notes I’m making and the stacks of books at the side of my work area. “What are you doing with all that?”

I don’t say anything for a few seconds as it registers that she does not know I was thinking about tasting the skin of her neck where her pulse thrums.

Am I totally straying from the book list for my eleventh-grade English classes? I sure as fuck am. We blew through the required reading so we’d have time for stuff the kids are actually interested in. That’s what I’d discussed with Jake about the curriculum—ways to include current literature in our classes. He’d given me the go-ahead, and Piper is probably going to be pissed when she finds out what my idea was and that Jake has already agreed and is onboard with testing things out.

“This?” I wink at her. “Just giving the kids what they want.”

She sputters, “But—” She shakes her head determinedly. “You can’t do that. You’ve veered right off the required reading list.”

“The hell I can’t. The curriculum tells us what we have to cover, not that we have to spend eons upon eons discussing The Crucible or Animal Farm. My classes have already covered everything on the required reading list. I’m satisfied that they’ve learned what they needed to from it.”

Damn, woman. One minute I’m feeling badly for her, and now she’s going to go and ruin all those tender feelings I’d been having and poke the bear. The bear being me. I don’t care what she says. I’ll do what I want, especially since I already have approval. Does she think I’d just willy-nilly do whatever I choose on my own? I’m not that crazy. Probably not a good idea to go completely rogue with the chair position on the line. I chuckle to myself. And that’s exactly why I’d gone directly to Jake with it in the first place.

“But you can’t possibly have covered it the way you need to.”

“I beg your pardon? My students know what they need to know. Besides, some of the older stuff is stodgy and boring. I know there are important lessons and topics there, though, which is why I didn’t skip over any of it. We just didn’t spend inordinate amounts of time on any one book or theme.”

“I’m sorry, did you say old and boring? The classics have their place in our curriculum.” She throws her hands up. “This is what you were discussing with Jake, isn’t it?”

I shrug, irritated that she keeps sticking her nose in my business. And Lord help me, it sounds like she and Sherlock4Love would get along just fine with their love of the damn classics. Remind me to never introduce the two of them.

She huffs, crossing her arms in front of her. “Where’d you get the funding to do this? How do you have all of these books?” She nods her head at all the copies of Caraval and Divergent piled neatly next to me.

I smirk. She doesn’t need to know.

“Did Jake approve that?”

“He didn’t have to approve it because I didn’t go through the school to purchase them.” Sort of true. He did approve that I was doing it. He didn’t help me purchase. I’d raised funds for that all on my own.

She sniffs, and pouts a little for good measure before she finally relents. “I’ve read them. They’re good books. Might be some things to discuss there.”

“Uh-huh.” Now she’s wishing she’d done it too. Instead, she’s stuck going on and on about Fahrenheit 451 in her classes. Don’t get me wrong. We studied everything we were supposed to … we’d just done it at a faster pace than her classes, which has given us time to incorporate a few other books into the plans. We did all of her “classics.” Now we get to have fun.

“You’re infuriating, Damon. You know that, right?”

I can’t help but chuckle. “What was it you said to me earlier? Oh, yeah. Mind your own business, Mathison.”

She squints her eyes at me. “Fine.”

---