Page 25 of Spearcrest Knight

She looks totally unimpressed. “Not one I didn’t want to see.”

I narrow my eyes at her. She’s not implying she’s seen a guy naked? Uptight, stuck-up Sophie? No chance.

“But as charmed as I am by all this,” she continues witheringly, “I have somewhere to be.”

“Fine, don’t come in. Just wait here, okay?”

She narrows her eyes and hesitates.

“Sutton, I mean it. Wait.”

Sophie gives me a long look and doesn’t say anything, but she’s not going anywhere either. So I close the door and sprint up the stairs and to my room. I throw on the first clean clothes I can get my hands on: black sweatpants and a white t-shirt, socks and my old white sneakers I mostly wear when I’m driving somewhere.

I keep the towel around my shoulders, because my hair is still wet, and grab the first set of keys I find in my dad’s office desk. By the time I pull around in the Porsche Boxster, I half expect Sophie to be gone.

But she’s still there, and she actually gets in the car. Her posture screams her discomfort and mistrust. She sits with her back straight and her legs crossed, hugging her backpack to her chest.

Low music plays in the car, the bass pounding like a pulse. I can smell the metallic heat of the car, my shampoo, the warm vanilla of Sophie. My heartbeat quickens, even though there’s no reason for it to.

Her proximity is tantalising. I desperately want her to say something, to give me anything to hold on to and pull on. Every interaction between Sophie and me is always a confrontation, a battle, but this far away from Spearcrest, in the small cabin of the sports car, it’s like the rules have changed.

How do I approach her when she’s this close? Without the Young Kings around us to make sure I never close the distance between us? Without Spearcrest to remind us we belong in different worlds?

The silence stretches on. Sophie says nothing—doesn’t even look my way. In the end, I’m the first one to speak.

“Well? Are you going to tell me where to drop you off?”

“The high street.”

I wait, but she says nothing else.

“Anywhere in particular on the high street?”

“No.”

Since it’s clear she’s not going to give me anything more to go on, I drive on. It’s been a while since I’ve driven stick, but it comes back to me quickly. There’s something grounding about the gear stick, the responsive pedals under my feet. Something comforting about the control I have over the car—the kind of control I could only ever wish to have over Sophie.

She stares out of her window and says nothing.

For weeks, I’ve been wondering where she’s been going—for weeks she’s given me absolutely nothing.

But there can only be one thing Sophie is doing away from school.

Sophie has never dated anyone at Spearcrest. Even if she had done so in secret, I would have known. I would have destroyed anyone who dared go near her. But I’ve never had to, because I worked very hard to ensure everyone would know about the special attention I pay Sophie.

Special attention which keeps her alienated and untouchable at all times.

Not that I’ve needed to workthathard—Sophie keeps herself isolated quite well on her own. Her open disdain for the kids of Spearcrest and her arrogant self-reliance have done well to keep others at bay.

It’s a miracle she has any friends.

But I’m not naive. Just because Sophie hasn’t been dating Spearcrest boys doesn’t mean she’s not dating at all. She might not have the polished sheen and picture-perfect good looks of the prettiest girls in the school, but she’s not bad-looking by any stretch of the imagination.

Her looks are particular: with her thick, dark eyebrows, her heavy-lidded eyes, that austere centre parting and her thick, shiny brown hair. With her long limbs and broad shoulders, she looks almost athletic, but she has the rigid posture of an old-timey schoolmistress. Her strides are long and authoritative. She stands out even when she’s trying to blend in with that sort of awkward arrogance she exudes.

Everything about her is hard and unyielding, but it’s part of what makes her so intriguing.

She makes me want to test her strength, to see how far she can bend before she snaps. But just because I feel this way doesn’t mean the prettiness of her dark eyes, her pouty lips and her smooth skin have gone unnoticed by other guys.

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