Chapter 4 #2
Another almost-smile ghosted across his face and vanished just as quickly. Outside the closet, laughter swelled, then faded again. I resisted the urge to cover my ears.
“So,” I tried, “why Northern? Did you move here from—”
“We don’t need to do this.”
“What, have a conversation?”
“Make small talk. I know what you’re trying to do and I’m not giving you answers.”
I swallowed. “I’m not…” I glanced away guiltily. We both knew I was going to work up to asking about the expulsion, or at least asking around it. “Doing whatever you think I’m trying to do.”
“Then stop asking questions.”
I went quiet again, chewing on my lip. I wondered if Ainsley was going to come looking for me sometime soon. She had to be wondering where I was by now. I couldn’t even text her since I’d given her my phone to hold earlier in the night because I didn’t have any pockets.
“This is deeply uncomfortable,” I mumbled.
“Stop talking about it.”
“Well, it’s a little hard not to acknowledge what’s happening right outside.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to narrate it.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t if you were capable of making any form of conversation.”
“Maybe I’d be willing to talk if you weren’t trying to interrogate me.”
“I wasn’t interrogating you,” I said. “I was making conversation because I’m currently locked in a closet while your cousin makes out with someone ten feet away.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“It sort of is,” I muttered. “You’re the one who shoved me in here.”
“Would you rather I left you out there for Katie to find? Because I can promise you she’d handle your breaking and entering much worse than I did.”
I gaped at him. “I was not breaking and entering.”
He rolled his eyes and looked away. “Yeah. Sure.”
“You’re acting like I broke in here to rob you or something. I was just—”
“Going through things that aren’t yours? Trying to find some gossip about the new kid in town to laugh about with your friends?”
“Wow,” I said, my voice hollow. “You really took one look at me and decided you know everything there is to know.”
He raised his brows. “Because I do. You’re a prep school girl with the perfect life. Everything is handed to you on a silver platter and you think because your daddy’s money can buy you whatever you want that you can walk all over everyone else.”
“My life isn’t perfect!” I shot back, bristling. “Just because I go to a private school doesn’t mean I float around in some bubble of happiness!”
“Oh really, princess?” He stepped forward, taking up the very limited amount of personal space I had. I couldn’t even breathe without touching him.
We stood there in silence as I tried not to think about how close he still was. All I could smell was his cologne and I could practically feel the muscles in his arm flexing as he pressed a hand against the wall right behind my head.
“So what,” I said, forcing my voice steadier, “you just go around assuming the worst about everyone so you’re never disappointed?”
He huffed a laugh. “You say that like it’s a bad strategy.”
“It sounds exhausting.”
He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was flatter. “It works.”
I studied his face in the dim light, the scar in his eyebrow, the way his mouth seemed like it was set in a permanent frown like he didn’t even remember how to smile.
I was so curious about his past that it was almost burning me up inside.
I was desperate to ask him about it—whether the rumors were true, whether he really had been expelled, and if not, why he wasn’t trying to correct people on the truth. But I kept my mouth shut.
The first, and less noble, reason was that I was still a little terrified of his reaction. Rumors didn’t come out of nowhere, so even if they were exaggerated, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know why everyone assumed he was so violent.
But the second reason was because I realized that for every assumption he made about me, he was probably used to people making similar ones about him.
He took one look at me and decided I was a spoiled brat, while my friends had taken one look at him and decided he must be a delinquent.
I wouldn’t be another person quizzing him on that tonight.
Outside, the flat finally went quiet. No laughing. No kissing. Just the low hum of something electrical and the sound of someone moving around farther away.
Cole listened, still as a statue.
Then he shifted back, just enough to give me breathing room. The loss of his closeness was almost as jarring as having it.
“I think they’re gone,” he said.
“Thank goodness.”
He waited a beat longer than necessary before reaching for the closet door and cracking it open. Clear.
“Go,” he said. He stepped back, giving me space for the first time since he’d dragged me in here. I slipped out, my legs stiff, my heart still racing. I glanced back at him one last time, but he was already turning into his room, his back to me.
I took a deep breath, pasted a smile on my face and walked through the living room toward the door to the stairs, already rehearsing my “I got lost looking for the washroom” story I’d be telling Ainsley, Clementine and Reese.
“Goodbye, princess.”
I didn’t justify him with a response. I just gritted my teeth together and pressed on, vowing to never return to The Corner Cup again.
Then again, I’d made that promise before and it hadn’t gone too well.