Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Mrs. Miller, my guidance counselor, heard what happened on the soccer field yesterday.
During our first session, when she tells me that I need to clean her apartment for the next few weeks, I’m not surprised.
My new friends told me that this is what Miller does. She abuses her power in small ways and no one says anything to her. Because Leah is always busy with her conferences and so she has given Miller – who lives on campus by the way – the full rein of this place.
I should probably keep quiet and leave Miller’s office now that we’re done.
I’m not her favorite person and rightfully so.
I created a scene on the soccer field. And on top of that, I played wrong and got put in my place.
For which, I’m not at all mad at Arrow. I’m not.
I mean, he didn’t have to be such a jerk but he was right. I wasn’t trying to play for the team. I was trying to play for him and that was wrong.
So the best course of action is to leave. But I don’t.
Because I want to say something first.
“You know, I know you hate me. I know you think I’m trouble and I don’t blame you. I get it. I’m here, aren’t I? But Leah and Arrow, they wouldn’t treat me any differently just because I lived with them.” I lick my lips. “I just thought you should at least know that.”
Miller looks up from her desk. She already has a notebook open and an old-fashioned-looking ink pen poised in her hands.
“The fact that you called your principal and your coach by their first names tells me everything that I need to know.” Her eyes are narrowed.
“A lot of people here don’t care about what the students did before they were sent to St. Mary’s.
They’re ready to give these girls a second chance.
But I’m not one of them. What you did and the reason you’re here define you.
And so I’ll be watching you very, very carefully. ”
And then she goes back to her notebook and I get up from my wooden chair – she has special chairs for her sessions with the girls – and leave the room, with things even worse than they were before.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
I just wanted to make sure that she didn’t blame the Carlisles for any of my bad behavior. But lesson learned. I’m not going to say unnecessary things now. Not in front of Mrs. Miller.
And I’m going to learn to call Leah and Arrow by their proper designations. I’m going to fucking remember that she’s my principal now and he’s my coach.
My coach. My coach. My coach.
Hours later, I’m still repeating that in my head as I climb up the ladder to retrieve a book, all the way in the back of the library.
And maybe because my focus is on my new coach, my foot slips on my way down and my book plunges, crashing down on the floor with a thump, and I know that I’m going to be next.
I know that in two seconds I’m going to fall and break my neck and I clench my eyes shut and grab the rung of the ladder hard, squealing and oh my God, I…
Out of the blue though, everything stops moving, and I feel a hand – a big, giant hand – on my lower back.
A warm hand.
No, wait. There are two hands.
Yes, two of them, one on the small of my back and the other on my front – my stomach, stabilizing me and the ladder.
With my chest jerking up and down, I pop my eyes open and dip my head to look at them, the arms grabbing my tiny body and keeping me from falling.
They are bronzed and dusted with dark hair, darker than the dirty blond hair on his head. There are taut veins lurking just under his sun-kissed flesh.
God, they’re muscled and thick, his arms. And it only gets better from there.
His arms only get stronger and more curved and flexed the higher up I go, toward his shoulders, bursting out of his gray t-shirt.
And I realize he caught me. He caught my fall.
At the thought, my eyes whip up and land on his face to find him staring at me.
“You caught me,” I repeat my thought on a broken, panting whisper.
His dark eyes flare. “You were falling.”
I was going to thank him but something else slips out of my mouth. “I didn’t…”
“You didn’t what?” he rasps.
“I didn’t know that your eyes could do that.”
“Do what?”
I study them for a moment. I study their color, the dark flecks, his ever-expanding pupils, the thick, forest-like eyelashes surrounding them.
“Become dark like that. Navy blue. I-I always thought your eyes looked like the summer skies. Like lazy Sunday afternoons and bike rides and…” I trail off when his hold on my body flexes. And I realize something else.
That he’s touching me.
I mean, that’s obvious; he just stopped my fall, but I hadn’t realized that his hands are splayed wide on my torso. And that his fingers are so big and large and so dominating in their presence that when he dips the pads of those fingers into my flesh, I feel it all over.
I feel it so much that I suck in a breath on parted lips.
“You like my eyes, huh?” he murmurs, watching my mouth for a second.
And I can’t help but nod. “Yeah.”
“Summer skies. Sunday afternoons and…” He pauses, a slight frown appearing between his brows. “And what was the last one?”
“Uh, bike rides,” I say automatically.
Something about my answer makes him move his thumb on my belly, and if I wasn’t already holding in my breath, I would swallow it down now.
I would swallow it and destroy it and never breathe again because he’s moving his thumb, circling it. I know it’s only through layers of cloth but I never thought the slight scrape of his digit against my body would be so hypnotizing.
“Bike rides, yeah,” he rasps, nodding. “That’s quite the list.”
“I –”
Those eyes of his become heavy then, hooded, as he replies over me, “I mean, I’m used to my groupies screaming my name and all the things they want me to do to them but you’re the first groupie to wax poetic about my eyes.”
My spine straightens up at that.
Great.
He’s mocking me again.
“I’m not your groupie.”
“It’s okay. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m just that charming. Girls can’t stop thinking about me.”
“Charming. Yeah, I don’t think you need to worry about that with me. I can definitely resist your supposed charms.”
He ignores me, his lips stretching into a smirk, his thumb drawing circles around my belly button. “What else do you like about me? My cheekbones, perhaps? That seems to have a devastating effect on the female population.”
I tighten my fists around the rung of the ladder. “You know, you’re such a jerk.”
He leans closer, the heels of his palms pressing even further into my body. “Did you also have my wallpaper on your computer? Your phone maybe? Isn’t that what schoolgirls do?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them?”
“I’m asking you. You’re a schoolgirl too, aren’t you?”
I glare at him and he chuckles.
“It’s okay, you can tell me. And maybe I’ll do that thing for you that every groupie wants me to do.”
“What thing?”
His thumb tucks into my belly button. “Sign my name on your chest.” He lowers his voice a little. “Right where your heart is.”
My heart – my witchy, witchy heart – races and my chest tingles and I get up in his face before I do something like whip off my shirt and ask him to write on my body.
“You know what? Just let me go.”
I don’t know how it’s possible but his beautiful, wretched eyes smirk at me as well. Before he lowers them. “You do know that you’re wearing soccer cleats.” He looks up. “Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And are you aware that you’re not supposed to?”
I exhale sharply and I bet he can feel that. I bet he can feel every little twitch of my body because he hasn’t let me go yet.
His hands are still holding me, causing my skin to heat up, causing my anger to spike up too. “Why, is that another one of your rules?”
He shakes his head slowly. “No. It’s common sense. You don’t wear them off the field. Because they make you fall.”
I know, okay? I know. I know you’re not supposed to wear them off the field. I don’t need him to tell me that.
I don’t need him to keep holding me like that either.
So I throw him a sweet mock-smile that again makes his lips tug up on one side. “Thank you for the impromptu lesson, Coach. Now, are you going to let me go or not?”
He nods his head in acknowledgment. “You’re very welcome. And I will. Once you get down on the ground. Safe.”
So I do.
I climb down the ladder and get down on the ground. So I can get away from his hand, and him and all these rioting feelings inside of me.
Rioting and provoking and restless.
As soon as my feet are on the floor, his hands leave me, sending a rush of cold to the spots where he was touching me. But I don’t pay attention to that. To how stupidly bereft I feel now that he’s not holding me and saving me.
Instead, I bend down to retrieve my fallen book and clutch it to my chest, standing far away from him. “Where did you come from?”
My question is spoken with agitation, which is completely the opposite of how he appears.
Just like at the bar after he insulted the girl, he leans against the bookcase and folds his arms across his chest, bunching up his pecs.
“I was in here looking for a book,” he replies, all calm and unruffled. “Lucky for you.”
“A book on what?” I ask, again slightly agitated that he can look so collected when I’m all flustered.
“On soccer.”
I frown. “You mean for coaching?”
“Yeah. For coaching.”
He says coaching with clenched teeth and I hold the book to my chest even tighter. “Are you really my soccer coach now?”
“Looks that way.”
“How?”
Like, I understand the breakup – as hard as that still is to believe – and his suspension from the team. But I don’t get how all of that led to him becoming a coach at St. Mary’s.
He clamps his jaw for a second before he says casually, “Because Mom thought teaching a bunch of schoolgirls would be a nice way for me to spend the time while I’m here. Recovering from injury. And what can I say, I can never refuse my mom anything.”
“But that still doesn’t…”
Oh, it makes sense.
It completely makes sense now.
Leah is doing to him what she did to me.