Forbidden

Chapter 30

30

It was official.

Trigonometry no longer was able to tickle some sense of appreciation out of me; not when I had bigger things to think about. And by bigger things, I meant Liam. His likeness refused to disappear from my brain, or the way he held my hips against him in the janitor’s closet, or the way he kissed me—

Smack!

I jumped and looked up at Mrs. Collins, the Trig teacher, who was glaring at me behind her gilt framed glasses. I sat up straighter; even though she was human and I was wolf, she never failed to scare me with her awkward half man, half woman face.

Her bright yellow metric ruler lay on my desk and the glare she had for me made Liam disappear out of my mind completely.

“Miss Grant,” she said scathingly, her beady black eyes boring into my skin.

“Um, yes m’am?” I gulped.

“Pay attention. This is the fifth time I’ve called your name for the lesson. If you want to slack off, don’t come into my classroom.” She gave me one final look before she turned back to the board. “Triangles can be measured—”

I tuned her out, construing an interested look to my face, when inside I was nothing but. As soon as she’d disengaged my attention, Liam came swimming back into my thoughts like a fish in a river.

I sighed, trying to keep up my façade of interest in whatever the hell Mrs. Collins was saying while I fantasized in my head about kissing Liam.

Mmm, those lips.

Something hit me in the back of my head.

“Ouch!” I yelped, rubbing my head with the palm of my hand, and spun on Tegan.

She’d pulled her bright pink hair back out of her face and held a yellow 2B pencil in her left hand, tapping it suspiciously on the desk.

“Answer your freaking phone,” she hissed at me, wrinkling her nose when I swore under my breath.

All the same, I reached for the phone that wasn’t hidden in my pocket properly and hid it under the desk as I tapped the screen, so Mrs. Collins wouldn’t see me.

I had a text message, from heart, i.e. Liam.

That’s strange, I thought to myself. Why was he texting me now?

I opened the message.

It read:

                                                Meet me by the Line after school. Liam.

I frowned at the message, but obliged to go anyway, tucking the phone into my pocket.

Tegan tapped me in the head again, probably nosy-ing around to see who texted me during class, but I ignored her, my mind already drifting off to thoughts of Liam.

#

The Line actually wasn’t a far walk away from my house.

When Tegan and Hayden disappeared together into the house, I decided it was time to leave.

That’s how I found myself walking through the forest, brushing my palms along flowers and leaves, my boots crunching the dying leaves that were floating from the mammoth trees above my head.

Everything was dying, all the leaves had torn away from their trees and now floated in the wind and the flowers were giving us one last final note, but even they were dying. Autumn was rolling into the forest with a vengeance, taking all traces of balmy summer with it.