The Promise (Neighbor from Hell, #10)(3)

He didn’t say anything, but then again, he didn’t have to since she was well aware that she’d messed this one up. When he shook his head with a sigh and grabbed her bag, she nearly wept with joy as he gestured for her to move her butt.

“Sorry,” she said, shooting the angry crowd that most likely wouldn’t be asking her to sign their yearbooks a nervous smile.

“She didn’t mean it,” Jackson said, reciting the line that he’d been forced to use since she’d learned to talk and making her once again wonder why she couldn’t learn to keep her mouth shut.

“Let’s go,” Jackson said, wrapping his large arm around her small shoulders and dragged her out of the room before she could open her mouth and say something to make this worse.

Not that she was even sure that it was humanly possible at this point.

“Joey,” he said with a pained groan as he led her toward the cafeteria, “what did we talk about?”

“Many things,” she mumbled pathetically when she saw who was waiting for them in the hallway.

Reed Bradford, her brother’s best friend, the school’s bad boy, breaker of hearts, her neighbor since she was two, and her self-appointed babysitter.

“You find her in time?” Reed asked as he pushed away from the lockers and joined them, making her hate him even more than she already did.

It didn’t matter that he’d saved her from an angry crowd determined to get their revenge, she hated him, always had and always would.

“Yeah, thanks, man,” Jackson said as Joey grumbled a “See you later,” and ducked out of his reach. She hurried toward the cafeteria before she had to listen to the jerk ranting about how she had no business being in high school.

As she was forced to duck inside the janitor’s closet when the angry mob that wanted nothing more than to tear her apart stepped into the hallway, Joey decided then and there that she was going to do whatever it took to finish school early and when she did, she was going to leave this town and never come back.





Chapter 1

Present Day

“Try again,” Reed said, keeping his gaze locked on the sophomore sitting across from him, shifting nervously as she tried to come up with a better lie to explain why she was sitting in his office instead of in third-period Biology class where she belonged.

“It was, umm, already there when I got there,” she said, licking her lips as she tried to meet his gaze head-on, failed, and settled for staring down at her lap.

“You can do better than that,” Reed said, absently tapping the half-empty pack of cigarettes that she’d been caught red-handed with against his desk as he waited for another bullshit excuse that would explain why he’d found her hanging out behind the gym, smoking.

“I really can’t,” she finally admitted with a heartfelt sigh.

“That’s it, Jen? No excuses?” he asked, admittedly disappointed, because he’d expected a hell of a lot more from his favorite repeat offender.

“There’s really no excuse for what I did, Principal Bradford, is there?” she said, giving him a “What are you going to do,” look that had him rolling his eyes because he knew what was coming.

“I mean, I guess that I could blame it on my broken home, but that should really go without saying. Then, of course, there’s peer pressure,” she said, sighing heavily as if the weight of the world rested solely upon her small shoulders.

“You were alone,” he pointed out.

“Which only proves how detrimental peer pressure can be,” she said, reaching over and helping herself to the bowl of hard candy that he kept on his desk.

“I see,” he murmured, leaning back against his chair as he considered her. “And this is really the best that you can come up with?”

“With a public education?” she asked before nodding. “I’m afraid so.”

Reminding himself that smiling would only encourage her, he cleared his throat and tossed the pack of cigarettes on the desk and reached for her folder, noting that it was probably the thickest student file he’d ever come across. He thumbed through it, all while Jen sat there, humming to herself as she waited for him to decide on her punishment.

If it had been anyone else, he probably would have suspended her for a week, but he couldn’t do that with her, because Jen would view it as a vacation. He could have her volunteer to tutor elementary school children again, but he’d learned his lesson the last time. That left graffiti cleanup and detention. Since he remembered all too well what happened the last time she was on graffiti cleanup, he decided to save himself the trouble and settled on detention.

“Two weeks,” he said, tossing her folder back on the desk.

“Of suspension?” she asked, sounding hopeful.

“Detention.”

“Detention,” she murmured as though she was contemplating her choices.

There weren’t any and she knew it, but that wasn’t going to stop her from treating this like a negotiation. “How about one?”

“Two.”

“Now is that two consecutive weeks or can we break this thing down so that I don’t have to miss basketball practice?” she suggested with a hopeful smile that had him glaring at her.

“You’re not on the basketball team,” he pointed out, rubbing his hands down his face and wishing he’d picked a different week to give up caffeine.