by Hart, Callie
How would they ever suspect that I would have fought back against Jacob Weaving and actually left a mark? It’s such an unlikely scenario that I don’t blame anyone for overlooking it.
With Alex’s early meeting with his social worker, he couldn’t give me a ride this morning. I’m sorting through the books in my locker, trying to track down my English Lit text book, when I sense the presence on the other side of my locker door. Alex promised to come find me as soon as he arrived at school, so I assume it’s him. Who else would it be? I glance down, prepared to see his white Adidas sneakers on his feet, his ankles casually crossed as he leans against the wall of lockers beside me, waiting for me to close the door and finally look at him. But…the shoes I see there aren’t Alex’s. No way, no how. He might have had a meeting with a social worker this morning, but I know my boyfriend well. He wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a pair of brown polished leather shoes. Sensible shoes. And khakis? Absolutely, categorically, no fucking way.
I slam the locked door closed, my hackles up. If someone wants to fuck with me this morning, then they’re really going to wish they hadn’t. However, standing there, waiting politely for me to notice him, is an unfamiliar face. A guy with dark hair, cropped close and swept back in a very clean, almost military cut. He’s wearing a white button-down shirt so well ironed that there isn’t a single wrinkle in sight. The record bag over his shoulder is brown leather to match his shoes. Everything about him looks clean and wholesome. I’m almost surprised there isn’t a little black name tag over his left breast pocket, informing me that he’s a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and would I like to take a moment about of my busy day to talk about our lord and savior?
The guy breaks out into an unnaturally wide smile. “Silver.” He says my name like it’s the answer to a question, though what the question might have been I have no idea. I find out almost immediately, though. “The girl who tamed Alessandro Moretti,” the guy says, tipping his head to one side. “Is Silver your real name, or a nickname?”
I clutch my books tight to my chest. “I’m sorry. You are…? I didn’t realize we had another new student.”
His broad smile transforms, adopting a more sinister edge, at odds with his missionary attire. “If only Raleigh High knew how lucky it was,” he muses. “Alex and myself in the same year? I’m sure things around here are about to get much, much more interesting. I’ve already heard Alex got himself shot taking down a gunman in the library. He’s always been a bit of a do-gooder but that really is taking the piss.”
Do-gooder? What person in their right minds would call Alex a do-gooder? “You know Alex?”
This guy doesn’t look like the kind of person Alex would hang around with outside of school, either. The hair, the clothes. The guy’s stiff, rigid posture makes him look like he’s got a stick shoved three feet up his ass.
He rolls his eyes, pretending to remember his manners. “Apologies. I don’t know where my head’s at today. I’m Zander. Zander Hawkins. Alex and I go way back. It was a real nice surprise to find out he was a student here when I registered. Always nice to see at least one familiar face when you find yourself in strange new surroundings.”
There’s definitely something off about this guy. It’s not the clothes, or his crew cut, or the stiff, off-kilter way he speaks. It’s all of it, combined together, that just feels wrong. Like an act. With so many months spent on the peripheries of the school, absolutely no one daring or stupid enough to talk to me, I spent a lot of time watching people. Wasn’t like I had anything better to do. After a while, I got really good at understanding how people worked, what made them tick. How their body language was often a precursor to their actions, giving away what they were going to do next.
This Zander Hawkins guy doesn’t seem to have any body language. He’s reined in so tight, I get the feeling he’s counting out each time he blinks inside a minute to make sure it’s not out of the ordinary. Whatever this is, this bizarre charade he’s acting out, he’s faking it.
“You went to Bellingham, then?” I squint at him, trying to place him there. The Roughnecks have played against the Braves more times than I can count. As a member of the Sirens, I visited the Bellingham school campus whenever we had an away game, and I never knew what to make of the place. The building itself is way older than Raleigh—stone-built, solid, with creeping vines and ivy snaking up the walls. Stained-glass windows everywhere, throwing bolts of color up the walls of the high-ceilinged hallways. The place looks like something out of a gothic nightmare.
Half the students in attendance at Bellingham are from rich, well to-do families and have their noses permanently stuck up in the air. The other half…let’s just say they’re from a lower socio-economic tax bracket and their noses are usually firmly glued to a coke mirror. Despite how he’s dressed right now, I’m guessing Zander hales from the later demographic.
“Actually, no,” Zander says. His eyes are burning into my skin in a really weird way. He’s studying me so intensely that his scrutiny is almost unbearable. “Alex and I know each other from a different…institution.”
I don’t understand. A different institu—oh. Oh! He knows Alex from juvenile detention! Zander grins mischievously when he sees the realization dawn on my face. “Yeah. Nice vacation spot,” he says airily. “Me and your boy had some good times. He isn’t beatin’ on you, is he?”
“I’m sorry?”
Zander points to his face, gesturing to his jaw and neck. “Quite the bruise collection you’ve got going on there. Looks pretty gnarly. I never thought Moretti’d raise a fist to a girl, but I guess you never know.”
I cover my jaw self-consciously, arranging the collar of the thick, cable knit sweater I picked out of my closet this morning higher around my neck. “Jesus, no. Alex would never hurt me.”
Zander seems to think about this. He seems to think a lot before he opens his mouth. I get the feeling that a word doesn’t make it past Zander Hawkins’ lips without having been thoroughly vetted and designed for a specific purpose first. “Then there’s someone in Raleigh who probably ought to be walking around with an armed detail right now,” he observes. “Alex is pretty mellow most of the time. Until he really isn’t.”
“Alex knows I’m handling it,” I tell him. My voice drips with ice. I don’t know why, but I don’t think I like this guy.
A thick silence falls over the hallway. Takes a moment for me to notice it over the beating of my blood in my ears. Zander’s little disguise slips for a second, amusement burning off him like warmth from a flame as he looks at something over my shoulder, his eyes tracking something as it approaches. I’m unable to resist; I turn and look.
The crowded hallway splits apart, everyone making room for Jacob as he makes his way toward his locker. His head is held high, defiance and anger roiling in his eyes, daring anyone to mention the fact that he’s got a split lip, a black eye, a deep cut above his right cheekbone, and a broken fucking nose.
“Holy shit,” Zander mutters under his breath. “Someone must have taken a tire iron to that poor fucker’s face.”
“No.” I try not to smile, but my smug-levels are almost off the charts. “I’m pretty sure it was just their fists.”
“THE FUCK ARE YOU ALL STARING AT?” Jacob’s roar echoes down the hall, startling Abigail Whitley, who just so happens to be standing closest to him. “I got tackled in football practice. Big fucking deal. Let’s all just mind our own fucking business and get on with the day.”
No one questions him. No one asks how he took so much damage to his face with one bad tackle. No one dares to refute his story. The king has spoken.
Jake always makes a point of leaning against his locker each morning, leering at me and making lewd, disgusting comments about me to his dumbass football buddies, but not this morning. He doesn’t even glance in my direction as he rummages in his locker, head down, then snatches his backpack up from the ground and scurries off to class.
“Well, w
ell. I’m pretty good at math, but I just tried to multiply five foot six against six foot three and the numbers just won’t seem to add up. Seeing is believing, though, right?”
When I spin back and face Zander, the sardonic look on his face says it all. The bruises on my neck, jaw and hands, coupled with the mess that was once Jacob Weaving’s perfect fucking face tells a tall tale. One that’s not so easy to wrap your head around. Zander’s figured it out in no time at all, though. “You really did handle it, didn’t you?” he says, laughing.
“Yeah. I guess I did. And I’ll keep on handling it for as long as I need to. Alex doesn’t have to worry about me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to class.”
Zander Hawkins grins devilishly, stepping to one side so I can get past him. “Of course. Heaven forbid I make you late.”
* * *
I forget all about Zander Hawkins the moment I lay eyes on Alex in AP Physics. He very rarely smiles inside the walls of Raleigh, choosing to maintain his blank, indifferent exterior in front of the other students, but he treats me to the smallest hint of one as he weaves his way between the desks and slumps himself down into the chair beside me on the back row.
He smells like winter. Like fresh pine needles, and the cold, and the color green. As always, my insides do strange things when he locks eyes with me, and I feel myself come alive.
His dark, wavy hair is tumbled from the wind, and his cheeks are flushed, telling me that he just came in from the cold. When he takes his leather jacket off and slings it over the back of his chair, I can’t tear my eyes away from his bare arms, covered in ink, strong and corded with muscle. I flush when I remember what it feels like to grab hold of those shoulders of his and cling onto him while he fucks me.
He looks at me, well, catches me openly staring at him, actually, and his small smile widens just a little. His eyes dip to my neck, hidden beneath my sweater, but he doesn’t say a word about what happened yesterday. I could kiss him for avoiding the topic. I don’t want to talk about it. From here on out, I don’t want a thing Jacob Weaving does to ever mar the time I get to spend with Alex. His dark eyebrow forms a crooked arch. “What’s got you looking so red in the face?” he whispers. Like raw silk, his voice is that perfect combination of rough and smooth that makes my skin break out in goosebumps.
“My red face has absolutely nothing to do with you.” My response is mild, seemingly uninterested, but Alex chuckles ominously under his breath. He doesn’t believe me for one goddamn second. “You seem like you’re in a good mood,” I tell him. “Your meeting went well?”
“It did. Jesus, you’re squirming in your seat like you need a good fucking, Argento. If I’m not responsible for all the fidgeting, then I’m gonna have to find the guy who got under your skin this morning and murder the fuck out him.”
Well, shit. The classroom’s full of other students, all within earshot, and Alex hasn’t muted his volume any. Did anyone else just hear him say that? I can’t tell. If they did, then no one’s stupid enough to turn around and gawp at him. They all know better. My face is really on fire now, though. “Oh my god, Alex. Keep it down!”
He's utterly deadpan. “My voice? Or my dick?”
“Your voice!” Lord, I must be a frightening shade of purple…
I knew he’d try to be cool about the fact that Jake pinned me by my throat against a wall. I told him that was what I needed, and I’m so glad he listened. But I also assumed he was going to be moody and surly today. This version of Alex…it almost seems carefree. Happy, as if he’s just decided to stop worrying about all of it. Honestly, I’m too relieved to be offended that he doesn’t seem all that bothered by what happened. Maybe this won’t end up being a big deal after all.
“Good,” he whispers. At least he’s trying to be quieter. “’Cause there’s no way my dick’s gonna behave itself. That thing is well beyond my control. I’m lightheaded twenty-four seven these days. Most of my blood now lives in my cock because of you.”
Fuck me, he’s in a really good mood. He looks at me intently, stripping me down, focusing on my mouth, and I realize that I want him. Right here, right now, so bad that it almost hurts. And from the pleased smirk on his face, apparently he knows it.
“All right, reprobates,” a voice calls from the front of the class. Mr. French has arrived while I was staring hungrily at Alex. He stands at the front of the class in front of a television that he must have wheeled into the classroom with him. “You’ll be glad to know I am massively behind on all of my paperwork, so I have a treat for you today. You’re going to be watching a documentary about rocketry, kindly made by the mathematicians at NASA, while I sit in the teacher’s lounge and finish up on some admin. It’s very dry and potentially boring, but I’d encourage you to pay close attention. You’re going to be writing a thousand-word essay on the finer details of this documentary’s contents, and I’m expecting some mind-blowing work from you all. Be warned, my friends. This is rocket science.”
A chorus of deep groans go up around the class, but Mr. French pointedly ignores every last one of us. All of us except me, that is. He gives me a coolly appraising glance as his eyes sweep over his student’s faces. “I expect you all to behave yourselves. That means no talking, no note passing. And absolutely no fighting.”
Hah.
Does he think I’ll leap up out of my chair the moment he leaves and start throwing punches? If he had any sense he would know I only lash out at others when they’re threatening to penetrate me against my will. We all wait in grim silence as he cues up the documentary on the television screen. A long time ago, I would have been excited by the prospect of an hour in the dark, watching a movie about how rockets are built. Now, I’m more interested in an hour in the dark next to Alessandro Moretti.
Mr. French sets a baby monitor down on his desk, casting a warning glare over his shoulder. “I’d love to think I could trust you all not to act like a bunch of demented, hormone-riddled baboons, but sadly I know better. This thing is the Rolls Royce of baby monitors. I can hear my son fart from fifty paces with this thing, so don’t even think about screwing around. I’ll be back to check on you in half an hour. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the majesty of physics. Take notes.” He hits play, then turns out the lights as he exits the classroom.
One of the Apollo mission rockets appears on the screen, and Alex’s hand closes around the leg of my desk, pulling it closer to his own. I have to quickly shift my legs in order to shunt my chair over with the desk as the same time.
“What are you playing at, Moretti?” I hiss between my teeth.
“Just getting comfortable.”
He’s sitting at the desk I always claimed for myself, back before he showed up here and stole it. The same desk I dumped my bag on top of the day I met and spoke to him properly for the first time. We’re tucked away in the back corner of the class, where no one can see what we’re up to in the dark. Sure, there are another two people sitting to my left, and there a full row of students in front of us, too, but no one bothered to turn around to see what we were up to as my chair legs scraped the floor just now.
We are, for all intents and purposes, invisible. “Put this over your legs,” Alex commands. He hands me his leather jacket underneath my desk.
“Why?” I take it, doing as he instructed, a little nonplused. It’s freezing outside, but Darhower doesn’t skimp on the energy bill inside the school. The classroom’s perhaps a little too warm right now.
“No questions,” Alex replies.
A moment later, I feel his hand sliding up my thigh beneath his jacket and all becomes clear. “Oh my god. Alex, what the hell?”
He drapes his arm around my shoulders, drawing me close to him. “Shhh, Argento. Sit back and enjoy the majesty of physics.”
His fingers work quickly at the button on my jeans. The Apollo rocket on the screen begins its take-off sequences, its boosters roaring loudly out of the television speakers, masking the sound of my fly being unzipped.
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br /> He cannot be serious right now. He cannot be about to do what I think he’s going to do. He—
My mind goes blank as his hand slips down below my waistband, inside the thin material of my panties. Oh…oh, holy fucking shit. I catch my bottom lip between my teeth, holding back a startled breath as Alex’s fingers deftly work their way down between my legs, searching out and finding my clit.
I look over at the guy sitting next to my left: Gareth Foster is staring intently at the screen, tapping a pen against his notepad, completely oblivious to the fact that the girl sitting next to him is getting her pussy stroked.
Alex rests his chin on my shoulder, angling himself so that he’s facing me in his seat. “Relax, Argento. No one cares what we’re up to.”
“Alex, this is… this is…” God, he sweeps his fingers up, flicking them over my clit, and I forget how to fucking speak. It’s one thing fooling around pawing at each other like sex crazed animals up against a brick wall outside Harrison’s Home Hardware, but the streets were deserted then. There hadn’t been a soul in sight. There was no one in the music room, either. Sure, we ran the risk of getting caught, but it was a small risk. There are twenty other people in this room right now. The risk of getting caught is massive.
“Alex…”
Either he doesn’t hear the pleading note in my whispered voice, or just doesn’t heed it. He presses forward, sliding his hand further down inside my jeans, and groans breathlessly when he discovers how wet I am. He presses his lips up against the shell of my ear and mouths a string of words that nearly make me come on the spot.
“I want your pussy on my tongue, Dolcezza.”
I know perfectly well that he’d drop down onto his knees underneath our desks and get to work if I’d let him. I wriggle against his hand, unable to escape the pressure building between my legs. Alex knows exactly how to touch me. The small, tight circles he rubs against my pussy are designed to make me squirm, and they’re doing their job perfectly. I feel like I’m floating up out of my chair and being driven down into it at the same time. This is too much. Too, too much…