Chapter 24

8.5K 241 104
                                    

Sorry it's been so long between updates!  Life is a little crazy at the moment, and it's about to get crazier.  I'm participating in NaNoWriMo next month, so I probably won't be working on any of my other stories for a while.  So to give you something to read while I'm busy and in celebration of Hooked earning almost 12,000 reads, I decided to update again.  It's short, but I think this chapter is kind of cute.  I'll try my best to work on more as much as I can!

~Ari

...

The lie was in place.  All it needed was a little push, and it would be off, spinning itself, digging me a deeper and deeper hole. 

A few days before Christmas, I pushed it.

Jace called complaining of boredom – all his guy friends were out of town or busy with family, so he turned to me, his fake girlfriend, for some entertainment.  I rolled my eyes when he explained the situation, but smiled at the same time.  It was just what I needed to convince Mom that Jace and I were the real deal.  So we made the date for that afternoon.  Tori would come along, too, but she would wait in the car as to avoid my mother’s suspicion. 

At 2:35 P.M., Jace pulled up in front of our house.  I waited by the door until he rang the bell, heard Mom call for me, and opened the door just in time for her to see me hugging Jace.  He beamed at me.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yep,” I replied with a stupid, cheesy, I’m-in-love grin on my face.

Jace looked to my mother and gave her a nod.  “Thanks for letting me take your daughter out, Mrs. L.”

She chuckled.  “I didn’t really have a say. Have fun, you two. Be safe!”

And with that poorly disguised innuendo, I shut the door and hurried toward the SUV.

“ ‘Be safe’?” Jace asked with a smirk.

“She’s a nurse; she assumes that every teenage relationship involves lots of rampant crazy sex,” I replied embarrassedly.  Jace laughed out loud.

“Well, she’s mostly right. But not for you, huh?”

“Not for me,” I confirmed.

“That’s what I like about you, Stella. You’re different.”

I was hit with a flashback of when Gerard and I first agreed to date.

“I’m different,” I said, shrugging.

 

“You certainly are,” he replied.

 

Things were getting scarily close to being real, and I didn’t like it.

“So, what movie are we going to see?” asked Tori as I climbed into the car.

“I don’t even know what’s out,” I admitted.

Hooked ~A Student/Teacher Love Story~Where stories live. Discover now