For Angelo(9)

Steel was smirking. “You’re lying. Remember the time we were supposed to have lunch at the students’ cafeteria because the one for faculty was crowded?”

“So I changed my mind—”

Steel rolled his eyes. “You were starving as much as I was—”

“You’re exaggerating,” he said brusquely. “I wasn’t starving. I just realized it would set a bad example if we didn’t maintain the barrier between students and mentors.”

“Riiiiight.” Steel’s tone was amused. “You’ve become rather fickle-minded lately, now that I think of it. Like the time we were crossing the street and you changed your mind halfway. You almost caused a four-car pile-up—”

Because he had seen her with the convenience store guy, he recalled blackly. Angelo looked at Steel. “Just drop it, March.” His lips compressed in frustrated anger.

Damn it to hell.

Why couldn’t he stop being so affected?

And why, dammit, did he always end up wanting someone who already belonged to someone else?

“She’s here,” Steel murmured.

He looked up, thinking it was the girl Steel was supposed to meet. But instead he saw…her.





Chapter Three





“Thank you so much for coming with me,” Farica de Konigh was saying as she curled her arm around Lane. She was a naturally affectionate kind of girl, and after having spent some time in Farica’s company, Lane had gradually learned to relax and accept the other girl’s presence.

Although “what you see is what you get” didn’t exactly apply to her newfound friend, what Lane did know about Farica was enough. The first day they had met, Farica had taken one look at her dazed expression and asked in a patently relieved tone, “You have a crush on Angelo Valencia?”

The words had Lane cringing. “It’s that obvious?” she had whispered.

“Only because I saw your face,” Farica had told her with a grin. “I’m so happy you like him,” she had continued. “At least I know you’re not going to be my rival.”

“Ri…val?”

Her voice dropping low, Farica had said, “Only a few people know about this, and if you tell my secret to someone else, I’m going to have to kill you—” Then Farica beamed. “But I have a feeling about you. I think you and I are going to be really good friends.”

They were?

“So I’m going to tell you my secret,” Farica had decided. “I have the biggest crush on Steel March.”

Oh.

“And because you like his friend, we can have a double wedding. Yay, right?”

And the rest was history, Lane thought with a reminiscing smile.

Beside her, Farica suddenly started squeezing her arm. “Oh my God, Lane. He’s there. He’s really there, and he’s waiting for ME.”

Lane grinned.

“And oh my God, Lane, he’s there, too.”

“Who?”

“Angelo Valencia.”

Her head snapped towards where Farica was staring.

Her friend was right.

He was there.

Her fallen angel.

Or at least he had been, but now he was walking away.

Again.

He was always walking away from her, and she just didn’t get it. Didn’t he feel what she was feeling? Was it really all on her side?

She bit her lip, wanting so much to go after him.

But something stopped her, and it wasn’t pride or even shyness. It was something else, something that told Lane the next step…had to come from him.

So please take that next step, she whispered in her heart.

Please.





****





And so their cat-and-mouse game continued. In class, he would do his best to avoid her gaze even though she would not stop staring at him. But every damn day, there would be that one instance he wouldn’t be able to help it.

He’d look at her, and always she would already be looking at him, her rosebud lips seemingly parted in invitation.

Steal my first kiss, those rosebud lips seemed to tempt and taunt him at the same time.

And it would be her first kiss, he thought grimly. Even though she and that boy from the convenience store were going out, he was experienced enough to recognize the signs, had seen innocence defiled too many times to count.

She had never been kissed, and certainly her body had never known a man’s touch.

But the fact remained.

She belonged to someone else.

That first day they had met, he had practically tripped on his own feet in his haste to get back to her. But from across the street, he had seen her with the boy, and they had their heads together, talking with a kind of intimacy that only people who were exceptionally close could do.

And when he had spoken to the boy, saw the love in the younger man’s eyes, Angelo’s worst fears had been confirmed. Even now, the taste of bitter defeat still hadn’t left his mouth, and just thinking about it made him murderous.

She was everything he didn’t want in his life, dammit. She would only bring him nothing but trouble, he thought savagely. He knew all this, dammit, so why the hell couldn’t he put an end to this game?

All it would take was a single moment to show her that he was not what she imagined him to be, a single moment for her to know what he already knew.