Bad Boy Burn

4 || 'B' for Boarding

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Olivia POV

"But I want to get to know you again...Olivia."

My eyes shot to his face in surprise. Talk about being confusing! Now he said he wanted to get to know me when just five seconds ago he had been doing everything he could to avoid me. His statement felt very spur of the moment and I wasn't sure how genuine it was. Neither was I sure of whether I actually wanted to get to know him again.

"We'll see," I said simply after a couple of seconds. He could interpret that as he would.

I turned around back to the bookshelf before I could wait to see his expression. He was silent for almost a full minute as I busied myself sorting books. If I followed my method carefully I calculated that I could be finished in exactly seven and a half minutes.

The chair scraped against the floor as he stood up, advancing towards me. I refused to look at him, continuing to pile books onto shelves in alphabetical order.

Tom picked up a book from the 'B' section to look at the title.

"What do you think you're doing?" I hissed, wacking his arm with the book in my hand. He was messing up my perfectly thought out plan.

He cried out in surprise, dropping the book he was holding. It fell to the floor with a thud.

He looked up at me in dismay, honestly, you'd think I killed a puppy or something with the way he looked at me. "What's your problem?" He hissed right back, bending to pick up the fallen book.

"There is a method to what I am doing right now Tom, you can't just sort books willy nilly," I snatched the book back from him and placed it in its rightful position on the shelf.

"Once a control freak, always a control freak," he muttered as he turned away from me.

I gasped in outrage at his audacious insult. "What did you just say?" I narrowed my eyes and advanced on him, backing him into the window at the edge of the bay.

He raised his hands in surrender. "Just commenting on how...thorough you are in your planning." He smirked down at me.

Although I was the one who had backed him up into a corner, I still had to crane my neck to meet his eyes. When we were younger, I had always been an inch or so taller than him. I was pretty sure he was nearly a foot taller than me now.

I huffed, deciding to let his rude statement go. There was no point getting worked up about something that a stranger said. And he was pretty much a stranger to me.

We didn't speak much for the remainder of our detention, he just watched as I meticulously sorted the books. As predicted, I was finished in about eight minutes. I put the extra thirty seconds down to me being unnerved by Tom's unwavering gaze and sometimes losing my focus slightly.

"Well," I said, dusting off my hands. "Now we can go," I gave him a sweet smile that probably looked faker than Donatella Versace's lips.

His brow creased for some reason and he stood up slowly.

I turned on my heel and left. Honestly, he was such a slow coach! I wasn't waiting for him, I had way more important things to do; like grovel to my parents.

I could feel him following me but it was only when we burst out of the library that he grabbed my elbow to stop me.

"Hey," he spun me around to face him.

We were standing far too close for comfort. I took a step back.

He crossed his arms and smirked at me. "Me and some mates are having a little, er, get together Friday night."