Bitter Sweet Blaire: Teacher/Student Romance

Chapter Twenty-Six

26.

A/N: Hello again, finally I'm updating within a closer time constraint. I really do hope you enjoy this chapter, it's quite long, and it's definitely a build up to the next few, but fantastic within itself (if I do say so myself-which I do). Enjooooy!

I didn't tell Caroline about what had happened on Friday. Even in my dire need for a friend to confide in, the secret she and Miranda were keeping from me hadn't been forgotten. The whole suffer-in-silence thing didn't really suit me, but I'd had enough practice with it around Christian, him being the leading example of course. I'd always known he was a fantastic teacher.

Speaking of-

"Oomph," I mumbled, falling back slightly. It was Christian. Stepping back, aiming my apology down at my feet, I moved to the left so he could pass. Instead, he mirrored my movements, quite intentionally it seemed.

"Don't apologise," he said softly, hand on my forearm, moving closer. "It wasn't an accident." He'd done it on purpose?

"Okay. Can you move now?" I growled back, finally looking up into his molten brown eyes. They held a particularly large amount of amusement in their depths, though it seemed as though this reaction was involuntary. His hand left my arm, and it was back to business. As if in explanation, he raised his eyebrows at another teacher who walked past.

"I need to speak to you, Ms Romero." The 'Ms Romero' that was tacked onto the end confirmed his intentions meant business, which explained the involuntary amusement in his eyes before. Unfortunately, I didn't respond well to authority, as Caroline had taken to kindly pointing out to him some few days ago.

"I have a resubmission to get to, sorry," I shot back. He raised an eyebrow, not believing I could possibly be spending a free period-especially at the end of the day-cooped up in a classroom, resitting an assessment. He'd be right not to believe me. But I'd be damned before I admitted to that.

"After that, then."

"I have cross country."

He sighed, sure now that I was going to make this hard for him. "That's okay, I'll speak with Mr Hadens. I'm sure I can excuse you from that."

"Caroline will be expecting me straight after sixth period."

"Tell her not to."

I furrowed my eyebrows together. "No," I growled.

"No? Hmm, that's defiance. I'll have to give you a detention for that-today, after school, don't be late." Christian turned very smoothly on his feet, uttered a business-like farewell, and walked away, ignoring my calls of protest as he headed for his office. Jerk.

It was a Tuesday, and he'd spent all of the weekend, plus Monday, trying to catch a glance of me; coincidentally, I'd spent all of the weekend, plus Monday, trying to avoid him catching a glance of me. It hadn't gone unnoticed by Christian, who'd raised his efforts. But the last thing I wanted was to go over, yet again, what had happened on Friday. Not telling Caroline wasn't just revenge; I wanted to forget it. And Christian was set on making that a very difficult task. That was strange, even for me. If anything, now that he had seen I was pretending as though it hadn't happened, his favourite method of moving on, I would have thought he'd have dropped it.

I was very, very wrong indeed.

Caroline and Miranda had not waited for me out on the field as the said they were going to do. It was our last free period before the holidays, mid June having arrived faster than I could have possibly imagined, and we were getting restless enough to skip a period of doing nothing. Shrugging, I sent a text to both of them, basically damning them for the rest of eternity, and wandered off on my own.