“This is Danyella Schaeffer speaking,” she says, all formal and shit. I find myself grinning as she nods her head and replies diligently. “Of course, Ms. Vanguard.” Another pause. “Okay, thank you.” She hands the phone back to me.
“Don’t forget to call me just before bed,” Tess reminds me as I roll my eyes to the sky.
“Sure.”
There’s a long pause there where I’m afraid she might say something horrible like I love you and I’ll be forced to sputter out a response. I give a hasty goodbye and hang up before she can get the chance. Danyella offers up a sympathetic look.
“At least she cares.” She pats the grass beside her, and I sit down. We were supposed to discuss the, uh, medial preoptic brain thingy or … something, but I’d rather not so I decide not to remind Danyella.
“Lumen asked me if I was really into her,” I admit, and Danyella turns to look at me, pushing her glasses up her nose and waiting for me to continue. My phone buzzes again, and I feel my heart rate speed up as I lift it to check. It’s from Parrish, again.
Whatever you said, you pissed her off. I’ll let you know if she leaves to head over there.
I smile for a brief moment at the idea of Parrish looking out for me, and then frown hard after. Why would he let me know about Tess if he didn’t think I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be? I glance over my shoulder to see Chasm leaning against the trunk of a tree with his phone in his hand, head bent over the screen.
“Well?” Danyella queries politely.
“Just a minute. I need to check on something.” With a sigh, I push up to my feet and move over to stand beside him. It only takes him a second to look up, and I reach out to pluck the phone from his hand.
Why would you even ask me that? is the most recent text from Parrish. The one before it, sent from Chasm’s phone says Do you like her?
Her? Who’s her?
“This isn’t about me, is it?” I ask as Chasm snatches the phone back with a slight curl of his lips. He looks like Parrish when he does that, and it bothers me. “It is about me. I knew it.”
“This isn’t about you,” he snaps back, shoving his hair back from his forehead and giving me a look. With his fingers playing in his hair, I take note of the tattoos that stop at his wrist. It’s like, he only has them in places where they could be hidden easily. Coincidence? “I’ve got a crush that you don’t need to know about.”
“Oh?” I ask, planting my hands on my hips. I can strike a fierce ass pose with my half-black and half-lime green hair. Gamer Girl Extraordinaire. “Why not? Because she is me?” I’m grinning as I ask, but not because I really think his crush is me. Not even.
“She’s pretty much the exact opposite of you,” Chas says, lifting both of his dark brows up and playing with one of his lip rings with his tongue. “Good grades, athletic build, outdoor interests. Not some Ashnikko simp with a crappy Twitch channel.”
“Mm-hmm,” I murmur, crossing my arms over my chest. “She’s all that, huh?”
“She dresses up for parties,” he adds as I laugh. There’s this weird tightness in my chest that some might mistake for jealousy, but I have no idea where that would come from so I brush it off and keep smiling. “I like blondes so, she checks that box for sure.”
He slides some gum from his pocket and pops a piece into his mouth, offering another up to me. I wave my hand to decline it, glancing over at Lumen. That would make sense, if he were crushing on her. Everyone else here is. That, and didn’t she climb into his car at the coffee shop like she’d been waiting for him? I remember, too, how bitter he seemed when I asked about Parrish at the party, and he told me that he was likely with Lumen.
A lightbulb goes off and I let out a whistle.
“What?” he asks, glancing over at me with those gorgeous amber eyes of his. Like, they’re brown, but they’re so light, as if someone placed a golden overlay atop his irises. When they catch the sun, ugh. Not fair how pretty he is.
“Lumen wants to know if I’m into her. I think she might ask me out for real.” I clasp my hands together behind my back and turn to look at Chasm. “Unless you can think of a reason that I shouldn’t?”
He stops chewing his gum for a moment and just stares at me. Our gazes lock and I start to feel sweat form on my lower back. What the hell is going on here? All I want to know is if he’s into Lumen or not, but he’s looking at me like I’ve asked something completely different.
“A reason you shouldn’t?” he repeats, and then something else in Korean. And then, “shit, fuck it.”
Before I know it, his hands are on my shoulders and he’s turning me around so that my back is to the trunk of the tree. As I turn my head to the side, all I can think is how his fingers look, leaving indents in the stiff fabric of my blazer. It feels suddenly hot out here, the sunlight long and sticky, leaving droplets of sweat to slide slow and agonizingly down my spine.
Chasm leans in toward me and my breath escapes in a rush. My hands automatically go to his t-shirt, fisting in the fabric and feeling the tight, lean muscles underneath. He very carefully reaches up and touches two fingers to the side of my face, turning my head back so that I’m looking right at him.
There’s nothing stopping me from kissing him, right? Like, he’s not my stepbrother. He isn’t my sister’s boyfriend. He’s just … a guy from Whitehall Academy.
Also, how did I go from having kissed nobody to having kissed … well, it’s about to be three people, isn’t it?
My lids feel suddenly heavy though, and my limbs relax as Chasm’s fingers grip my shoulder just a bit harder as his other hand slides across the curve of my waist. The fabric drags across my sticky skin, making me gasp. The sound hits Chasm’s lips and he lets out a small groan, moving ever closer to my mouth. I can almost taste him it seems like. I can certainly smell him, like peppermint ice cream with dark chocolate chips. Oh my god, I really do have a fetish for pretty scents.
Our lips brush—and I mean just barely brush—like a kiss of the wind before it’s gone, and Chasm is pulling back with a look of horror on his face. His lip curls like he’s just remembered who I am—his best friend’s hated stepsister—and not Lumen or whoever else his blonde, good-grade getting crush is.
“Fuck, what did I almost just do?” he murmurs as I shove him back and he stumbles, dragging his arm across his mouth like he’s lost his damn mind. He’s made out with—and probably screwed—dozens of girls and somehow, I’m the one that he just can’t stomach to touch?
“Why does everyone keep telling me how nice you are?” I blurt out, fisting my hands in my skirt as I struggle to pull in a deep breath. Calm, Dakota, stay calm. Only I’m wildly and irrationally annoyed. “You’re a useless manwhore who copies his best friend because he doesn’t know who he is on the inside.”
Chasm whistles at me again, but it’s most definitely not in appreciation this time. Somehow, I feel like I see the front of his pants tented before he turns away from me with a scowl of disgust. “Here we go again,” he throws over his shoulder, scanning the horizon like he’s looking for the nearest escape route. “Keep throwing insults, Little Sister. See how far that gets you with me: fucking nowhere.”