𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒, 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐰𝐚𝐲

SIX

——— "WHAT IN GODS NAME IS THIS?" Hayden irked from where she stood in a library isle as she eyed the books she was ordered to reorganise. She flipped the book over to stare at the cover in her hands, a frown of distain on her face.

"What are we looking at?" Charlie inquired as he turned into the isle, strolling towards her and making his way to peer over her shoulder. His tall body towered over to easily see the book cover and title. A laugh instantly escaped his lips.

Hayden, finally taking notice of the boy behind her, turned as she felt the warm breath of his laugh brush up against her shoulder. She tensed ever so slightly, turning to glance at him with a grimace. "Are you seeing this?" She heaved out, "this is supposed to be a high school!"

Charlie's face tinted red from his everlasting chuckles, a humorous shrug falling off his shoulders. "Well its perfect- most do a lot of finding themselves in high school," he noted, "emotionally, physically, mentally and, as we can see here, sexually-"

The boy suddenly let out a sharp groan as Hayden shoved the book into his hands and his stomach, stopping his words. Still, a brief laugh escaped his lips. Charlie watched as the blonde shuddered and shook her head, rolling her eyes with a spin in her heel. Her grumble didn't go unnoticed by him either as he followed shortly after her slow stroll through the isles.

"Two more hours of this," Hayden huffed in reluctance, glancing over her shoulder at Charlie momentarily. She gave him a distasteful look, shaking her head, "I'm definitely not going to survive two hours more of this..."

Despite her obvious exasperation and the way her statement was most definitely directed to him, Charlie Conway couldn't help but see the smallest smile twitch in her lips before she had turned to face away from him. Once again, her countenance had, unfortunately, been hidden away from his eyes.

"I'm going to pretend like you didn't say that," Charlie nodded, his eyes narrowing as he walked closely behind her. He had a mischievous gleam in his eye, and not like Hayden could see, but every inch of his face down to the smile had flashed a plan.

Charlie skipped in his step to move forward in a quick motion, falling right beside her. Her body tensed immediately, but Denny refused to cast a glance at him as she hummed to herself and tried to focus on the task at hand. He waited as they strolled to the end of the isle, and just as Hayden Burke were to turn into the next isle, Charlie's hand grasped hers tightly, tugging her the complete opposite direction. She yelped.

"Charlie, what are you-"

"For the sake of making this more bearable, Princess, just follow me," Charlie instructed as if she had a choice, still pulling her along isle per isle until he lead her up to the upper part of the library; A place in which seemed restricted as they ducked under a red rope that stretched across the entrance of the stairs.

"Don't you think this thing is here for a reason?" Hayden grumbled as she nearly tripped along a step after quickly ducking under the rope to try and trail his quick footsteps. Charlie gave a nonchalant shrug.

"They should make that reason more clear then," he waved off.

The upper floor was dark, more dim than the rest of the library as most of the bits of light that shun upon it came from the wide ceiling to floor windows on the other wall. But nonetheless, it wasn't like the darkness had blinded them- in fact, it was still perfectly visible to see everything up there- which was the biggest problem to Hayden Burke.

"Conway, I swear if you get us another detention-"

"I thought you didn't get detention, Princess," he quipped, glancing back at her momentarily with a smirk as she narrowed her eyes at him, reluctantly walking along with his pull. She gave him a scowl.