Hopeless(30)

He points a celery stick at me and cocks his eyebrow. “This is true. A gradual introduction to the perils of society will help cushion the blow. We can’t release you alone into the wild when you’ve been pampered in a zoo your whole life.”

“Nice analogy.”

He winks at me and bites his stick of celery. “Speaking of analogies. What’s up with your locker? It was covered in sexual analogies and metaphors today.”

I laugh. “You like that? Took me a while, but I was feeling creative.”

He nods. “I especially liked the one that said ‘You’re such a slut, you screwed Breckin the Mormon.’”

I shake my head. “Now that one I can’t lay claim to. That was an original. But they’re fun, aren’t they? Now that they’ve been dirtied up?”

“Well,” he says. “They were fun. They aren’t there anymore. I saw Holder ripping them off your locker just now.”

I snap my gaze back up to his and he’s grinning mischievously again. I guess this is the secret he was having trouble holding in.

“That’s strange.” I’m curious why Holder would bother to do such a thing. We haven’t been running together since we spoke last. In fact, we don’t even interact at all. He sits across the room now in first period and I don’t see him at all the rest of the day, aside from lunch. Even then, he sits on the other side of the cafeteria with his friends. I thought after coming to an impasse, we’d successfully moved on to mutual avoidance, but I guess I was wrong.

“Can I ask you something?” Breckin says.

I shrug again, mostly just to irritate him.

“Are the rumors about him true? About his temper? And his sister?”

I try not to appear taken aback by his comment, but it’s the first I’ve heard anything about a sister. “I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve spent enough time with him to know he scares me enough to not want to spend more time with him.”

I really want to ask him about the sister comment, but I can’t help which situations my stubbornness rears its ugly head in. For some reason, probing for information about Dean Holder is one of those situations.

“Hey,” a voice from behind me says. I immediately know it isn’t Holder’s, because I’m indifferent to the voice. About the time I turn around, Grayson swings his leg over the seat bench next to me and sits. “You busy after school?”

I dip my celery stick into a blob of ranch dressing and take a bite. “Probably.”

Grayson shakes his head. “That’s not a good enough answer. I’ll meet you at your car after last period.”

He’s up and gone before I can object. Breckin smirks at me.

I just shrug.



I have no idea what Grayson wants to talk about, but if he’s thinking he’s coming over tomorrow night, he needs a lobotomy. I’m so ready to just swear off guys for the rest of the year. Especially if it means not having Six to eat ice cream with after they go home. Ice cream was the only appealing part to making out with the guys.

At least he’s true to form. He’s waiting at my car, leaning up against my driver’s side door when I reach the parking lot. “Hey, Princess,” he says. I don’t know if it’s the sound of his voice or the fact that he just gave me a nickname, but his words make me cringe. I walk up to him and lean against the car next to him.

“Don’t call me princess again. Ever.”

He laughs and slides in front of me, gripping my waist in his hands. “Fine. How about beautiful?”

“How about you just call me Sky?”

“Why do you have to be so angry all the time?” He reaches up to my face and holds my cheeks in his hands, then kisses me. Sadly, I let him. Mostly because I feel like he’s earned it for putting up with me for an entire month. He doesn’t deserve a whole lot of return favors, though, so I pull my face away after just a few seconds.

“What do you want?”

He snakes his arms around my waist and pulls me against him. “You.” He starts kissing my neck, so I push against him and he backs away. “What?”

“Can you not take a hint? I told you I’m not sleeping with you, Grayson. I’m not trying to play games or get you to chase me like other sick, twisted girls do. You want more and I don’t, so I think we just need to accept that we’re at an impasse and move on.”

He stares at me, then sighs and pulls me against him, hugging me. “I don’t need more, Sky. It’s fine the way it is. I won’t push it again. I just like coming to your house and I want to come over tomorrow night.” He tries to flash me that panty-dropping grin. “Now stop being mad at me and come here.” He pulls my face to his and kisses me again.