Which was something January Denane wasn’t entirely privy to. The way I’d watch the boy next door was not a secret by any means, but she’d laugh and wave her elegant hand flippantly as though it was nothing but a crush.
Perhaps she was right. Perhaps she might have thought differently if she knew about the pictures in my walk-in. I didn’t much care.
Inside, I kicked the death traps off, wincing as soon as I planted my feet on the ground.
With a groan, I sank to the floor and inspected the red splotches on my heels, rubbing at the aching soles of my feet.
I shot a glare at the shoes, then dragged myself to the pantry in search of carbs—something our school didn’t have much of.
With a pack of cookies and a glass of milk in hand, I headed upstairs to get my dunk on.
“Girl,” Cory called, her footsteps clomping up the aged wooden stairs outside my room. “Did you see Marnie today?” She pushed open my door, scowled at the cookies on my desk, then hurried over and nabbed one. “Sad panda or what?” she mumbled around it, then moaned.
I tugged the package closer. “I did, and where’d you go? I waited for you after class.”
She smiled, pieces of chocolate smearing her perfect teeth. “Silas needed a proper hello.”
I snorted, dunking a cookie into my crumb-littered milk.
The plush green rugs interrupted the clop of her heels as she swayed her hips to the en suite. “Gonna tidy up before he comes back from Jude’s.”
She took her time, so I turned my chair, staring out the small gap in the curtains to the mansion next door. Moonstone white with ivy crawling over its exterior that was so dark green it was almost black, the home was big enough to house most of the school.
A hedge was sandwiched between our properties. Along Crest Road, most of us had land that sprawled behind each home right to the water, yet our wood and stone giant sat much closer than necessary to the Delouxe’s home. I mean, it was no wonder I was obsessed with the guy.
To have a specimen like that so close yet still out of reach would drive anyone insane. For years, I’d been given so many tastes but nothing to actually eat, and I was starving.
Cory’s footsteps ceased outside the bathroom in the tiny hall near my walk-in.
Her eyes zeroed in on my clothes. “Wait a second.” She switched on the light in the closet, then looked at me with her mouth gaping.
Shit. I must have forgotten to cover my Jude wall. “What?”
“I can get down with this obsession of yours.”
I raised my brows, chewing a cookie.
She sighed. “Okay, more like I’ve learned to accept it. It still borderline creeps me out and makes me scared for you. But this?” She stabbed a finger at the wall inside. “How the hell do you know he’s a Slytherin?”
I thought that would have been obvious. “I took the test for him.”
Cory hadn’t been there when I’d started reading Harry Potter in the seventh grade. It was my very first obsession. I’d walked into many a door and tripped over a bag or two in the halls during middle school, one of them being Silas’s.
Jude hadn’t even looked up from his tablet.
Meanwhile, Silas had been annoyed I’d squished his banana muffin. I’d been annoyed I’d irreparably bent the pages of my book in the process. Thankfully, Mom bought me another copy.
Cory knew this about me, about my personality. When I really liked something, I loved that something.
But the way she was staring at me now, as though she’d never truly seen me before, struck a nerve. The pang of it rippled all the way to my eyes.
I wouldn’t let her make me feel crazy.
“Look,” she started, but I jumped up and ran downstairs to the kitchen.
Unsure what it was I even wanted, just that I knew I needed away from that weird look in her eyes and the note of concern in her voice, I opened the fridge and stared at the contents inside.
She followed, leaning a hip against the island behind me. “I knew you liked him, but I didn’t think it was this…” I could see her nose crinkling without looking. “Bad.”
“I don’t remember asking for your opinion,” I said, perhaps a little too coldly.
I heard her expel a loud breath, and I snatched a squeezy strawberry yogurt before slamming the door.
“Okay, I’ve gotta go.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, concentrating too hard on unscrewing the plastic lid.
Cory lingered a moment, and I tossed the lid into the trash, only turning around once I heard the front door close.
Back in my room, I slammed the door of my walk-in and sucked voraciously on the yogurt, crossing to the floor-to-ceiling doors.
Mostly, I kept the curtains half closed, but I opened one to see a sparrow dancing across the wooden railing outside. A flash of movement caught my eyes moments later, and I braced a hand on the doorframe, the yogurt hanging between my teeth.
Jude was on the balcony that faced mine, a steaming mug of something in his hand, staring at the ground as he slowly paced.
But even better than this rare sighting… he was shirtless.
Packed muscle shifted in his abdomen when he lifted his free hand to drag it through his tousled hair. His skin gleamed golden in the afternoon light, highlighting every defined inch of his muscular biceps and taut shoulders.
Then he stopped with his back to me, and my forehead pressed into the glass of my door.
As if he’d felt my burning stare, the way I was soaking in every facet of him, he turned a little, narrowing his eyes at me over his shoulder.
My breath hitched, a tumbling exhale fogging the glass. The yogurt fell from my mouth and splattered to the floor.
I could’ve pulled the curtain shut or backed away, but there was little point.
I’d been caught, and if I were being honest, I totally wanted to get caught.
I waited for him to scowl, to shake his head and march back inside the room that wasn’t his but maybe now was, but he didn’t.
His lips, dipped in sin and temptation, lifted into a smirk that pulled a strange wheeze from me.
He sipped his drink, lifting the mug into the air my way, then went back inside.
Tripping over my feet and stepping on yogurt, I hurried to my desk. I plucked out the sketchpad I seldomly used since the eighth grade and skimmed past less than stellar drawings of hearts and rainbows and stupid self-portraits to a blank page.
There, I drew what I’d seen inked into Jude’s skin. It was rough, but it didn’t matter. I tacked either side when done and hung it next to a picture of him holding a trophy from last year’s playoffs.
Then I traced them, the three black and gray snakes that intertwined into some kind of diamond, as though I were touching his skin. Shaded birds had taken flight above the snakes’ mouths, and stepping back to stare at the picture, I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, I’d seen something like this before.
I woke up choking and flew upright to wheeze, “What the hell?”
Mom continued to assault my room with my hairspray. “You slept through your alarm, twice, yet my use of your hairspray wakes you?” She paused with the can in the air, tilting her head this way and that as she inspected her updo of twisting red curls in the mirror above my desk. “I’m leaving, and you should be, too.”
My eyes widened as I glanced at the clock and jumped out of bed.