Chapter 4 #3
Jace sits down, eyes already drifting to Lola’s lunch bag. He squints at it, then at her. “What’d you bring today?” he asks, tone casual.
Lola rolls her eyes, but a smile teases her lips as she scavenges around. “Why do you always want my food?”
“Because you always have better food,” he says easily. “And because I didn’t eat breakfast.”
“That sounds like a you problem.” She pushes the container towards him. “Pasta salad. Homemade. Don’t get excited.”
He leans closer peering in. “Looks good.”
She laughs. “Because it is. Now, are you going to try it or just stare at it all day?”
“Fuck yes,” he says instantly.
She hands him her plastic fork. “If you complain, you’re cut off.”
Jace takes a mouthful, chews slowly, then looks up at Lola with that crooked smile he only ever wears around her. The one that doesn’t try too hard.
“It’s actually good,” he says, like that surprises him.
“Told you,” Lola says, snatching back the fork.
The rest of us watch them, with that mixture of curiosity and amusement, as if they’re witnessing something they don’t fully grasp.
I hardly notice any of it.
My attention never leaves Red.
She’s sitting there pretending the room is more interesting, eyes drifting everywhere except where I am. She’d prefer to watch the doors. The windows. The clock. Anything but me.
I lean back in my chair, eyes fixed on her unapologetically.
She knows I’m watching. I can tell by the way her shoulders tense just a little.
Noah squints at us from across the table, brows pulled together. “Where were you two? Whitman was doing that head tilt thing she does when she’s pissed.”
Jace doesn’t even look up. He takes another mouthful of pasta, chewing slowly. “We skipped.”
“The period would have been boring as shit. It usually is,” I say.
The moment the words leave my mouth, I feel it.
The stern look Red gives me is both furious and fucking beautiful at once. The kind of anger that sharpens her features instead of softening them.
I know exactly why it hit a nerve. Sam is all about school. Grades. Futures. Structure. She believes in earning her way out of this place. Skipping classes is everything she hates. Careless. Wasteful. Proof that some of us don’t give a shit about the things she works so hard for.
Jace reaches across the table and yanks the fork straight out of Lola’s hand.
“Hey,” she snaps. “What the fuck?”
“You’re taking too long,” he says, already stabbing another bite.
“That’s my food.”
“You offered.”
“One bite.”
He grins. “I’m on my third. Deal with it.”
She lunges for the fork, misses, then scowls at him. “You’re such an asshole.”
“You love it.”
She scoffs, shaking her head and muttering something under her breath about putting poison in the next thing she brings to school, but she’s smiling despite herself.
Sam doesn’t look at me again. Not once. She laughs with Lola, talks to Noah, and it eats away at me.
Every second she pretends I don’t exist, it digs deeper, clawing under my skin in a way I can’t shake.
Fuck, I’d even take another slap if it meant she’d acknowledge me.
By the time the bell rings for the day, I’m more than ready to get the hell out of here. My patience has run out. My head is pounding. Everything feels tight in my chest, in a way I don’t want to unpack.
I’m leaning against the lockers, waiting for Jace to grab his shit.
I have no idea what the fuck he’s doing in there when he hasn’t pulled a single book out of his bag all day.
He’s rummaging around like he’s lost something important, which is bullshit because nothing in that locker has ever been important.
I scroll through my phone, not really reading anything, just passing the time.
I feel it.
That shift. That awareness that doesn’t come from sound or sight. Pure instinct. The air changes. My spine straightens before my brain catches up.
Red.
I lift my head as she approaches, clutching her books close to her chest like armor. Her eyes lock onto mine, sharp and furious, with no softness in them.
She stops right in front of me, close enough to see the tension in her jaw and the faint flush high on her cheekbones.
No hello, how are you? Just coldness.
“We need to work on the assessment,” she says, flat and clipped. All businesslike. “I don’t care about you, and I wish I didn’t have to work with you at all. But I care about my grade. So this is happening whether either of us likes it or not.”
Each word lands clean and precise, like she’s rehearsed it.
I shrug, relaxed on the outside even though I’m watching her too intently. “You worry too much.”
Her eyes flash. “I am not failing because you think school is a joke.”
I tilt my head, take my time examining her. The tight grip on her books. The way her shoulders are squared, ready for a fight. “You really care about this.”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. Only the truth. It catches me off guard more than it ought to.
“Fine,” I say finally. “We’ll work on it.”
The relief flashes across her face before she can stop it.
“When?” she asks.
I shrug again. “I don’t know.”
“Oh my god, you are so frustrating.”
I smirk. “Tomorrow afternoon. But you’ll need to come to my house.”
The words barely leave my mouth before she stiffens.
“I am not going to your house.”
I smirk, knowing this is the moment it clicks for her that I’m not giving an inch. “Then I guess we fail.”
Her glare could cut glass. She hates that I’ve cornered her with the one thing she can’t walk away from.
And that only makes it sweeter.
She lingers there for a moment longer, jaw clenched, eyes burning into my face before spinning on her heel and storming down the hall. Red hair swinging as she leaves.
A gentle sense of satisfaction settles in my chest as her boots echo down the hallway.
“Did she say yes?” Jace asks, slamming his locker shut as if he actually pulled something useful out of it. Which he didn’t. He never does.
I push off the locker and roll my shoulders. “She didn’t say no.”
Jace snorts. “That’s not the win you think it is.”
My eyes remain fixed on the end of the hall where she vanished.
“She’ll come,” I say finally. “She wants that grade more than she wants to hate me.”