The Bad Boy with a Heart of Gold

✖ Chapter 20 ✖

PART THREE: THE APPLE NEVER(?) FALLS FAR FROM THE TREE

My eyes squeezed tight, trying to resist the onslaught of sensations running through my body. The truth was that it was screaming at me that this was where I belonged, in Sawyer Logan's arms. Nothing else in my life had set me aflame like this. Not competing with Toni. Not getting academics awards.

This was why I always avoided contact with him, because the pull was always there and I didn't have room for him in my life.

So I went against the very nature of what my hormones dictated and tore away from his arms. I whirled around and even though he was giving me a certain look, the kind I couldn't mistake for anything else but interest in the way my dress hugged my body, I still managed to catch my breath enough to ask him, "What are you doing here?"

His eyebrows went up. That definitely had come out a lot sharper than I'd have liked. The little smirk on his stupidly beautiful face told me I'd screwed up by showing him I was affected. I folded my arms.

"It's a dance," Sawyer said, not even hiding that his eyes were traveling well below my neck and lower. "All the student body is invited, isn't it?"

Was that a pun? I felt like it was.

"No," I said as I gritted my teeth and pointed at the space between us. "I mean here."

He shrugged. "Saving you from a sure fall, apparently."

I squeezed my hands around my arms. Well, wasn't that a little too late? He should have stayed the heck away until graduation and I'd have avoided falling for his stupid pheromones.

"You shouldn't be here," I blurted out. It was a second too late to realize that he had as much right to be there as I did.

"Why not?"

And because I was in full automatic idiot mode, I didn't think the question through. I didn't see it for the opening it was to change tack and be reasonable about the fact that this wasn't my private party. That him coming or going didn't really have any semblance of importance for the grand scheme of events in my life. Instead, I reacted the way I usually did. By lashing out and in the process, revealing much more about the unstable nature of my thoughts than silence or diplomacy would have.

My stupid mouth opened and out came, "Because we have reputations to uphold. You as the philanderer who gets his name graffitied all over bathroom stalls and me as someone who really shouldn't be seen around someone like you."

Sawyer took this like a punch to the solar plexus that drove him one step back.

I wanted to take it back as soon as I said it. It happened sometimes with me. But I never took anything back, because even if everybody got offended I tended to say exactly what I felt. And it just so happened to be the case here. He was a womanizer and I was trying to remind myself more than I was trying to insult him.

"Wow, princess. This is a new low even for you," the ice in his voice washed over me and gave me a shiver. "I thought we'd reached an agreement."

"The agreement was that I'd tutor you and nothing else." My defensive mode was turned on and engaged for combat. I added, "Not you showing up everywhere I go and pretending we can be something."

I cringed at the hard glint in his eyes.

"Something?" He snorted and regained the one step he'd lost. And then he drew closer still and I squared myself. "What? Friends? You've made sure to let me know time and again that it's beneath you. I don't know why I even keep trying."

"Yeah," I said to his face. "Why do you?"

I desperately wanted to know. And yet from the way I asked, he'd think I was being sarcastic. Challenging. I couldn't think of a single time that would make him think we could be friends. I was just not nice to him. Not when we were kids and definitely not now. Why did he try? Why was he always there? Close enough that I could touch him if I wanted. Close enough that I could lean on him if I wanted.