“Just inside the parentheses, it’s actually one plus two times h times v to the third power.” Tristan pauses and looks up at me, his eyes practically glowing silver.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he growls as I grit my teeth.
“I mean, like no …” I gesture randomly at his paper as Lizzie looks back and forth between us, tucking dark hair behind her ear and forcing a laugh. “You literally wrote to the fourth power, and—”
“Get the fuck out of my classroom,” he snarls at me, but I’m sorry. I’m not about to walk away and just let him screw up the equation like that.
“You see, v is the frequency being observed and—”
“I know v is the frequency,” Tristan throws back at me, his fingers clenched so tightly around the pencil that they’re shaking. “And I know it’s to the third power. This is a typo.”
“How is it a typo when you’re writing with pencil?” I ask, and he seriously looks at me like he wants to kill me.
“I have literally no idea what you guys are talking about,” Lizzie adds with another giggle, reaching over to run her fingers down Tristan’s bare forearm. He’s taken his blazer off, and in a rare move, he’s unbuttoned his shirt until about halfway down. He’s even rolled up his sleeves a bit.
He glances over at her, but he doesn’t tell her to stop, turning back to look at me in stark defiance.
“You little smart-ass. You think you’re so knowledgeable with your public school education.”
“Clearly, I am,” I retort, lifting my own chin in defiant response. “Because I can see the frantically scrawled page of notes beneath your report. You’ve been messing the formula up this entire time. How do you expect to beat me out for valedictorian when you can’t even get the equation for the brightness temperature of the sun—”
Tristan sweeps his arm across his papers and knocks them all to the floor, panting furiously, teeth gritted at me in a snarl.
“Tristan, don’t, she’s just trying to be helpful,” Lizzie says, attempting to step between us. The look he gives her is cold hell.
“Get out,” he says, and she gapes at him. She glances back at me once, sympathetically, before scurrying out and closing the door behind her. I turn back to look at Tristan, but I’m not afraid of him, not anymore. He’s just a damaged boy with a cruel streak. I … shouldn’t want to hold him close and banish his darkness, but I do.
Fuck me, but I do.
I’ve fallen for the good girl fixes the bad boy stereotype.
I need to take more women’s studies classes at Bornstead. Because I will get in. I will. I absolutely will.
“Who the hell do you think you are,” Tristan whispers, his voice like freezing fog off the bay. His eyes are the same color, like a stormy sky above the ocean. He moves toward me, putting us so close that the toes of our shoes touch. “Coming in here like that, and getting all mouthy with me.”
“Whoever heard of the king of the school being a brainiac, hmm? Your stereotypes are all messed up. Then again, you got the equation wrong, so—”
Tristan grabs me around the waist and pushes me against the counter so fast that my head spins, positioning himself behind me so he can press his hardness against the curve of my ass. Considering I’m wearing the shortest skirt known to man, all I can do is moan as he reaches around and cups my left breast. With the other hand, he slides the pencil horizontally between my lips, so that I’m biting down on it.
“To stifle your screams,” he whispers, and then his right hand dives down and under my skirt, teasing me and making me moan. The pencil really does help when I clench my teeth around it. “You’re too smart for your own good. It drives me nuts.”
I spit the pencil out, and it bounces across the soapstone counters, bumping up against a silver propane faucet.
“Clearly, it does more than just that,” I manage to whisper as Tristan exhales against my ear, rubbing against me. He’s so close to breaking, so damn close. I want him inside of me so badly. I hate that he’s been with other girls and not me. I hate that he’s been with Lizzie. The thought makes me sick. “You like it when I’m a smart-ass.”
“You’re so infuriating,” he whispers, nuzzling against me. “I don’t understand you and your mentality at all. You don’t like money, and you don’t care about status. You memorize ridiculous formulas, and you defend monsters like Harper du Pont. Who are you, and where did you come from?”
“Marnye Elizabeth Reed, from the wrong side of the tracks,” I say, and Tristan yanks me even harder against him. He’s going to be difficult to handle, I imagine. He might be dark in the bedroom. I don’t care. I seriously don’t care. “At your service.”
“Huh, right,” Tristan scoffs, pushing away from me just before the door opens and one of the chemistry teachers walks in—I can’t remember her name, but she waves and smiles at me anyway. Clearly, she can’t see how worked-up I am right now, how hard my nipples are under my black button-up, how wet my panties are. Thank God that lady boners are invisible, right? “At my service. You only heel to one leash, Marnye, and that’s your own. Get the fuck out of here, and let me finish my work.”
Tristan reaches around me to snatch the pencil, spins it around and carefully erases the erroneous four on his paper. I smirk as I straighten my skirt out, turning around and walking backwards for a moment, like a total badass.
“Have fun writing up that physics report with a massive boner,” I say, and then I slam right into the chemistry teacher—that’s right, her name is Miss Terrenova—making her grunt.
“Massive boner?” she asks, and my face flames with heat. “Miss Reed, is that really appropriate conversation to be having in a place of learning?”
“Actually Miss Terrenova, I feel uncomfortable with her in here, like she’s trying to fuck me with her eyes.”
“Mr. Vanderbilt,” Miss Terrenova scolds, but she shoos me out the door anyway, my face flaming. Lizzie’s still there, waiting to escort me back to my room, but she looks confused, like she expected one thing to happen between me and Tristan … and got another.
“Let’s go,” I choke out, before I embarrass myself any further.
I can only take so much humiliation for one day.
Somehow, I figured when I turned eighteen, I’d magically become an adult and seem cool somehow.
Far from it: I feel more awkward than I ever have in my life, like a queen with a plastic crown.
Now, if someone would just reach out and help me fix it …
When Dad shows up for Parents’ Week, I excuse myself to the bathroom and hyperventilate.
He looks so bad … like, really, really bad.
“He’s going to die,” I whisper when Zack comes in and curves his arms around me, holding me from behind in the ladies’ restroom while fat tears drip down my face, and my body shakes with a sudden rush of adrenaline. Find a cure, save him, it screams, but how can I? What can I do? “Zack, he’s going to die.”
“Nothing is for certain, Marnye,” he tells me, his strong voice pulling me back from the edge just enough that I manage to turn around in his arms. He’s got his jersey on again, and I’m back in my uniform for one of the most important games of the year.
Tonight, there are going to be scouts in the audience.
And one of them’s from Bornstead.
So far as I know, it’s possible each one of these five assholes is considering going to the same college as me. Somehow, that makes things even harder. If they all applied to my school, and I don’t pick them … is that a betrayal somehow?
I swipe my arm across my face, but I feel tired. Sort of like Windsor looks nowadays. I’m still worried about him.
“You saw him Zack, you know him.” He narrows his eyes and tightens that full, lush mouth of his into a thin line. Even his sporty grapefruit smell can’t rouse me from the dark depths I’m swimming in. “He looks like a skeleton. He shouldn’t even be here, he should be resting, he—”
“He wants to see his daughter perform, Marnye,” Zack says, lifting my chin up and looking into my eyes. “Your dad is here, regardless of his health, because you are the most important thing in his life.”
“Zack, he’s—”
“Marnye.” His voice is hard, firm. He forces my panic into retreat, and for the first time in nearly a half an hour, I’m able to get control of myself. “Your dad is here to see you dance, not cry.” Zack smiles to soften his words and then cups the side of my face in a huge palm. He’s got those black lines on his cheeks that football players always smudge on, and I smile. I’d be checking him out if I weren’t still stopping myself from crying. “Let’s go out there together, and put on brave faces, okay?”
“Thank you,” I tell him, and I mean it. He sees my vulnerability, and it doesn’t scare him away. We take hands and head into the hall, meeting Charlie at the row of cars outside.
Surprisingly enough, Isabella is standing there with Jennifer and the baby.
“We waited for you,” Jenn says, smiling, and I can’t decide if she’s full of shit or if she just feels sorry for me because Charlie is clearly dying. She left me with just one parent, and he became my whole world, my whole heart … and he’s not going to be around as long as I need him to be.
I won’t lie to you: it takes effort for me to sit there in that car with her.
“I can’t wait to see you dance tonight,” Dad tells me, smiling, the skin on his face crinkling in unfamiliar ways. It’s like he has too much; he just looks gaunt. I should drop out of school and take care of him. The thing is, I know Windsor isn’t skimping on his care. He recently sent me a bunch of profiles for home health aides, so I could pick one to send home to help Charlie with everyday chores.
But … time spent at home with him would be worth more than time at school, right? In the grand scheme of life, quality time with loved ones far supersedes academic endeavors.