Chapter Four Thiago
Chapter Four
Thiago
I couldn’t resist.
I couldn’t resist the chance to be alone with her, even if it was just for half an hour.
And when I saw the chance, I took it without thinking twice.
I missed her—her laughter, her silliness, everything about her.
Maybe I couldn’t touch her or kiss her, but I could still have her near me. And I needed that.
I thought I’d lose my mind when Taylor told me she’d walked to school. I wanted to shake some sense into her and ask her how she could be so stupid, so irresponsible, so reckless. Didn’t she realize Julian was crazy? He was on the loose and obsessed with her.
To say the cops were doing a shitty job was an understatement.
They weren’t doing their job at all. They’d minimized it, calling it kid stuff.
C’mon! Was it kid stuff to drug a girl and record her, and post the images online?
Was it kid stuff to blackmail high school students to get information out of them?
The whole thing gave me a bad feeling, and I knew deep down that Julian would pop back up sooner or later. What scared me was that he might come for Kam. I loved her, and she refused to admit how dangerous things could get if Julian found her on one of her goddamned walks through the woods.
And now I had her sitting in the corner of my office, inflating balls for gym class and kicking them away noisily when she was done. She was trying to provoke me, but I wasn’t going to play that game. She thought she was angry?
Well, I was even angrier.
The things we said to each other, everything we’d talked about just two weeks ago—had I lost my mind? Hadn’t I promised myself I’d consider her off-limits? Then why was I so dead set on getting close to her?
Nothing could happen between us. When would I get that through my head?
I glanced over at her. She was staring out the window.
I guess she’d decided she was tired of following my orders.
Her light-blond hair hung loosely at her shoulders.
She kept toying with it distractedly, pulling it up and letting it fall.
That was something she did when she was bored or stressed, I’d noticed.
More than once, I’d stood at my window watching her, and it wasn’t lost on me that she liked to sleep turned in my direction, where I could see her.
Was she doing it on my behalf? How often I’d wished for an invisible bridge between her room and mine—so I could slip into her bed, hold her until she fell asleep…or touch her until she moaned my name in pleasure. Dammit.
I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable, and she looked away from the window and back at me. She was just about to say something when the door to my office opened and my brother walked in with a scowl on his face.
“What the hell are you two up to?” he asked, looking back and forth between us.
I knew what he was thinking, and I could see the relief on his face when he saw that we were across the room from each other.
“I’m planning tomorrow’s game, and your girlfriend is blowing up those balls over there.” That sounded nasty, and I had meant it to.
Taylor looked over at Kam, who stiffened in her chair.
“Why the hell is she in here with you?” he asked me.
“Taylor…” Kam said, trying to stop him from overreacting.
“She’s in trouble,” I interrupted her, already sensing where my brother was going.
“Detention is supposed to be in the afternoon, when school is over,” he grumbled.
“Tay, your brother changed it so I could go to work,” Kam explained. That silenced him for a few seconds, but then he decided to challenge me further. “Fine. I want to do my detention in here, too.”
I thought it over. True, I’d been dying to spend time alone with Kam, but I didn’t know if I could control myself when I was alone with her, and considering the conversation we’d just had, I decided to play along.
“Fine, sounds good to me.”
“What?” Kam said, perplexed. I was afraid she was giving us away.
“Something wrong?” Taylor asked, glaring at her. “You don’t want me here?”
Kam fired back: “It’s every free period for a month, Taylor. I don’t think it makes much sense for you to trade one afternoon in detention for a whole month here.”
I couldn’t tell if she didn’t want to take the blame or if she wanted to be alone with me. He was outraged and turned to me: “A month?! What the fuck is your deal, Thiago? Don’t you think we’ve been punished enough this year? You’re my fucking brother! What’s your goddamn problem with us?”
I didn’t really know what to say, and before I could come up with something, the bell rang, ending our conversation. Kam walked over to Taylor and said, “Come on, I don’t want to be late again,” trying to pretend he and I weren’t staring each other down.
“Thiago, let it go,” Taylor said. “Enough with the games. I’m being serious.”
“Fine. I’ll let you off the hook, Kamila, if you promise not to do again what you did this morning.”
She sounded angry when she said, dead serious, “I’d rather lose my free period than my freedom. I’ve got to go to class.”
She walked past my brother and stomped off.
I looked down and shook my head.
She could be unbearable when she wanted to.
My brother walked up to me, looked me in the face, and said, “Stay away from her, Thiago, or I can’t make you any promises.”
He left before I could respond.
I felt guilty. And sad. And furious.
I wondered if Kam knew the effect she was having on us.