Page 4 of The Revenge Plan (Forbidden Descendants 1)

Taken from the University Gazette

There she was again.

From the back of class, I slunk further into my chair so she wouldn’t notice me staring as she entered the lecture hall with her two friends. Tipping my chin down just enough to shade most of my eyes under the bill of my baseball cap, I brought my hand up to my mouth so I could bite down on my thumbnail.

God, she was pretty.

And she was wearing the shirt, which made me smile behind my hand. That shirt was what had drawn me to her in the first place. A crossover from two of my favorite shows, it depicted Lucille, the bat from The Walking Dead, and the Winchester’s Chevy Impala from Supernatural, with text that read, “Dad’s still on a hunting trip.” A fan of both shows, I’d understood the message and laughed the first time I’d seen it, wishing I had a shirt like that.

It’d actually taken me a couple of seconds to realize the material of that shirt stretched across a very lovely set of feminine breasts. When my brain finally registered what I was seeing, my eyebrows perked up and my gaze wandered on to the rest of her.

Since then, I’d been hooked.

As she and her friends found three open seats next to each other near the front, she said something that made the other two laugh. Their reactions had her smiling in satisfaction, which was awesome because I loved her smile. It lit up the entire room.

A band of longing tightened across my chest as I wondered if she was the jokester of the group. And what kind of wit did she have: biting and sarcastic or goofball friendly?

I had no idea. But I wanted to know. I wanted to know everything about her. Like her name. I bet she had a kickass name. Anyone who looked like her must have an amazing name.

She wore her hair down today. As she leaned to the side to fetch a book from her backpack she’d set by her knee, the blonde locks tumbled into her face, and she tucked some behind her ear with one smooth hook of her middle finger as she straightened. She made each move look like art. And as much as I felt like a creeper for always staring, I could never seem to look away whenever we shared this class together.

She fascinated me on every level.

“Yo, man. You hear about Baxter?”

Startled by the interruption as Jordan Rush—a fellow member of the marching band—flopped heavily into the seat beside me, I blinked the girl from my vision and straightened to address the question.

“Uh, yeah,” I mumbled, still shaking my head in an attempt to jostle myself from all the wants and dreams coursing through me. “Car accident. That’s gotta suck.”

Rush snickered in disagreement. “Sucks for him, yeah, but this is an opportunity of a lifetime for you, bro.”

“Huh?”

When I frowned out my confusion, he sighed, rolling his eyes.

“His playing hand is all fucked up. He’s gonna be out for the rest of the year. They’re going to need someone to take his spot as trumpet section leader.”

“What about Chad or—”

“Dude, no one else plays like you. And you gotta be tripping if you think the director doesn’t see that. If you tried for it, you’d get his spot.” Rush gave a low whistle and bumped my arm. “You should totally try for it.”

I pulled back, not having even considered the possibility. But now that Rush had planted a seed…

I shook my head, a part of me instinctively rejecting such a hopeful suggestion, and I laughed it off. “No,” I murmured. I couldn’t advance that far as a freshman.

Could I?

Rush pointed at me knowingly, as if reading my mind. “Think about it,” he said with all seriousness.

Across the room, I saw light hair move from the corner of my eye. I glanced over just as she stood from her chair and crossed the floor to a trash can where she threw something away. Was it a gum wrapper? A phone number some lame loser had tried to give her? The secret to her heart?

Rush chattered on next to me, still talking about band. I didn’t hear a word he said.

Probably just a gum wrapper. Cinnamon flavored, I bet. She looked like a cinnamon kind of girl.

I tracked her as she returned to her chair and sat again, just as a hand waved in front of my face.

“Hey. Wow. Where’d you go there, buddy?”

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