Page 35 of Devil's Bargain

SIX

“What are you doing here?”

I quickly swipe at my cheeks and look over my shoulder. I’m sitting on the boulder behind the bleachers. The very one where my friends and I go for a smoke sometimes.

“I come here all the time. Why are you here?”

Rick smiles softly as he heaves himself up next to me. I catch a whiff of his cologne. “I was walking past and saw you here.” He fingers a tendril of my pink hair. “You’re impossible to miss.”

I duck my head to hide my blush, but he lifts my chin with his finger, brushing his thumb over my wet cheek. “What’s wrong?”

I tear my chin away even though I would love nothing more than to be lost in him forever. “Nothing.” My skin still crawls from Scott’s touch. I don’t understand how I can hate something so much but get off on it too.

“Okay.”

We say nothing more.

I side-eye him in his letterman jacket. He’s staring straight ahead. His beard has just started to grow back out. I’m struck with the sudden urge to run my fingers over his jaw. “I’m stuck,” I whisper.

His hazel eyes meet mine, searching.

“I can’t, Rick.”

I don’t need to say more. He looks down at his tanned hands, turning them over, brushing his thumb over a faint scar. “I get it.”

“No, you don’t!” I drop my head back and blink rapidly. “Fuck!” I swipe at my cheeks, then laugh weakly. “I’m a mess.”

We fall silent as a group of students walks past on the sidewalk across the grass. I look at Rick again, but he’s not looking at me. He’s staring into the distance.

“I saw you at the game yesterday.”

“You did?”

He meets my gaze. His hazel eyes flick between mine before he nods and says, “Third row up, toward the left.”

I don’t know how to feel. Elated? Stupid? “It doesn’t mean anything, Rick.”

“Doesn’t it?” His eyes… They’re so intense.

I lower my gaze. A fly crawls on my bare thigh, so I swat it away. “I just went to watch the game.”

And fucked my math teacher afterward.

My stomach twists with unease.

He turns his body to face me, drawing his leg up and resting his elbow on his knee. In his hands is a stick which he must have picked up on the way here. He breaks it into two pieces and then three. “Bullshit!”

My mouth falls open. “Wha—”?

“It’s bullshit! You were there for me.”

I was, but I can’t tell him that. We’re friends and nothing more. That’s all it can ever be.

“Rick,” I start, but he cuts me off as he leans in and buries his fingers in my hair. “What are y—?”

He slams his lips to mine.

A breath whooshes out of me, and I kiss him back before my brain has caught on to what’s happening. Rick’s tongue is in my mouth, and his hands are in my pink hair, tangling in the long strands. I clutch his letterman jacket.

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