When Fates Entangle (The Alderidges Book 1)

Two: Flirting

PRESENT

VERENA

Asael Alderidge is an evil man. 

Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration but to me, he is no less than evil. He is petty and still held a grudge over what happened last year.

I underestimated him, he proved himself otherwise. That's it. It should have ended right there, but he has made it his mission to turn my life upside down.

It's not like he fails me in exams or anything like that but he always picks on me, whenever he asks a question, his eyes fall on me first, silently mocking me, challenging me to answer it.

I do. I take his challenges head-on. I don't cower from him and sometimes defy him at every point, disobeying him which irks him so much.

He is a good teacher and I really appreciate that about him but that's it. Besides that, I love irritating him, seeing his eyes narrow at me as he tries to control himself.

"Verena!" Zahria's voice floated inside my room as she banged on my door. "Wake up!"

Rubbing my eyes, I picked up my phone to check the time and all my sleep vanished when I realised that I was going to be late for class.

"What the hell!" I shouted back, jumping off the bed. "Why didn't you wake me up?" I went over and unlocked my door.

Zahria was all dressed up, ready to leave. "I thought you were awake! And I got busy making breakfast."

Usually, I wake up as soon as my alarm goes off, and then I spend more than half an hour locked in my room, showering and dressing up hence she must have thought that I was already awake.

"Shit. Shit." Mr Alderidge is not going to let me get away with this. His class is the first one and even though I have never been late to his class before, I know I am in trouble.

"You go ahead. I will be there soon." I told her.

"No." She frowned. "We can go together. I'm sure he won't scold us."

"No. Just go, I will join you."

We both wasted a whole minute arguing about it before I finally managed to convince her to leave and I got ready as quickly as possible and made a run to the class.

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.
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Reaching the class, I halted outside it, panting from all the running I did and leaned against the wall. I was already late, might even take another minute to calm down now.

Once my breathing had slowed, I very slowly and cautiously pushed open the door, just a little bit, enough for me to peek inside.

Sure enough, Mr Alderidge was already teaching, his back towards the class as he wrote something on the board.

Okay, I can get inside, take a corner seat, and hope he doesn't notice me and everything will be fine.

I can do this.

With a small mental prep, I opened the door, keeping my eyes on him, making sure he doesn't turn around and stepped inside.

Now almost every student's eyes turned to me and I held up my index finger to my mouth, begging them to be silent.

Maybe it was my lucky day for no one spoke anything and focused back on the class.

Sighing, I took a seat nearby and glanced at Zahria who sat a few rows ahead of me and she offered me a sheepish smile.

I pulled out my books and notebooks, ready to take notes when Mr Aldridge turned around, pushing his spectacles up his nose and his eyes scanned the room.