by Bea Paige
Two dimples appear in his cheeks as he smiles languidly with a lazy kind of self-assurance. He totally thinks I’m checking him out, and I am, just not in the way he thinks. I’m cataloguing his face and filing it in my memory in case I need to refer to it at a later date. I’ve learnt to be smart, making sure when I meet a new person, I take my measure of them because you never know when you might need that kind of information.
Here's what I know in the few minutes of checking him out: he’s approximately my age, seventeen max because although he’s tall, broad, he still has the remnants of youth in the smooth skin of his face. There’s not a single facial hair in sight. He’s clearly in trouble with the law and given the way his gaze keeps flicking to the Rolex watch sitting on his lawyer’s wrist, I’m thinking theft is his crime of choice. He fancies himself as a bit of a ladies’ man. Those dimples in his cheek might work wonders on other girls, and probably women, but it won’t work on me. Beauty is used to hide a multitude of sins, and I’m not as impressed by it as other chicks my age appear to be. He's scared. That tell is harder to decipher and he’s doing a good job at trying to hide it beneath the cockiness, but the way he taps his foot is a big giveaway.
“You here for me, beautiful? Want my number?” he shouts across the room the second my gaze lands on his tap-tapping foot.
Hmm, bravado, another interesting tell. He doesn’t like anyone thinking he’s weak. Make everyone think you’re brave, confident, and they’ll believe it even when you aren’t. A tool I use often enough myself.
I don’t answer him, but I give him a knowing smile as I regard him.
Next to him, the good looking lawyer who has concern written across his face, looks over at me. He gives me an assessing look, his dark eyes narrowing as he regards me. I raise an eyebrow at him as he smooths a hand over his beard. The cocky, dimpled shithead, who’s almost as tall as the lawyer, looks between us.
“Bit young for you, Bryce,” he says with a smirk.
Bryce? On first names with his lawyer then. Bryce shakes his head and clips the boy lightly around the ear.
“Don’t piss me off. You’re pushing your luck already, son.”
Ah, not a lawyer. Pretty sure they’d get the sack for whacking their clients. So, who is this man? My interest piqued, I watch and wait.
The boy laughs. “Son? You might be looking after me, but you ain’t my dad, so stop pretending you are. I don’t need you here, arsehole. I’ve been looking after myself long enough before you lot came along.”
There we have it, the fit bloke is his foster parent. Pretty sure I’ve never come across a foster parent dressed in Armani, looking like he’s just stepped out of the pages of GQ Magazine. Well, shit just got interesting.
“Wrong, you need me, and Louisa would never forgive me if I let you come here alone today. So suck it up, concentrate on the matter at hand, and stop giving that pretty little thing over there, fuck-me eyes. I’m pretty sure she’d chew you up and spit you out,” the man called Bryce says, turning to give me a wink.
I can’t help but smirk, which only seems to piss Dimples off even more.
“Pretty sure I’d let her,” the boy bites back before giving me a smile that absolutely shows me that he would, and that he’d enjoy it. “Name’s Sonny,” he says as an afterthought, before being frogmarched into the courtroom on the other side of the hall.
The moment the door slams shut, the world filters back in and I notice that everyone seems to be staring, making a judgement about the boy who was just dragged into the courtroom and the girl with a scowl on her face.
“Should learn some manners. This is a court of law and not some playground for a bunch of delinquents,” some snotty-nosed woman says as she walks past me.
“Whatever,” I mutter, leaning against the wall, all of the wind knocked out of me suddenly.
What the hell do any of these arseholes know anyway? Apart from that dude Sonny, who’s clearly looking for a distraction from his shit day, I’m the dregs of society. I’m a delinquent just like the woman said, and this delinquent is about to join the notorious Oceanside Academy, otherwise known on the streets as the Academy of Misfits.
Fuck my life.
Grab the first book in the complete Academy of Misfits trilogy here: https://books2read.com/AcademyMisfits1
Author Note
So, what did you think? I hope you enjoyed Malakai and Connie’s story. As soon as they introduced themselves to me in Family (the final book in my complete Academy of Misfits trilogy) I knew I had to write their story. Their chemistry leapt of the pages from the second they appeared. I hope you felt the angst between them, the push and pull, their passion, their chemistry and soul-shattering love. We all dream of that kind of love, don’t we?
As a teenager I grew up on romance movies and my mum’s Mills & Boons books, both of which influenced the genre I ended up writing stories in. I’m a hopeless romantic at heart, and Malakai and Connie’s story allowed me to indulge that part of me. It was hugely rewarding to write.
As always, thank you for continuing on this journey with me and my characters. Most days I’m still awed that people actually want to read what I write. So, to you, dear reader, I am indebted.
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Once again, thanks for sticking with me. Here’s to plenty more stories to come.
Love, Bea xoxo