Page 110 of Ignition

I didn’t want to inspect why or how I might have looked.

I forced myself to sit back down, even as all I wanted was to grab the other by the collar, too, and shake him. My expression a mask of cold fury, I trained my eyes on the plate—like I hadn’t just rearranged his face for a woman who wasn’t even looking my way anymore.

Whispers flared up as the pair of them scrambled away, and my spine stiffened under the weight of all those stares. I told myself if word got out to my dad, he’d only congratulate me for talking with my fists, but still… What if they found out who I’d lost it over?

Shit.

Panic flared inside me, a jagged knife that scraped my guts clean. My hands shook a little on the fork as the red slowly seeped out of my vision.

Across the table from me, Liam was watching me like I’d grown a second head.

Shit.

Ignoring the apprehension stiffening the back of my neck, I doubled down and feigned a half-shrug.

“I know you hate locker-room talk, but…” He tapped the side of his nose with a finger as his head tilted sideways at me.

My alarm grew teeth, scraping at my bones. The last thing I needed was for him to get curious about the why.

“Why aren’t you defending her?” I narrowed my eyes at him in return.

He pushed his hair out of his eyes and leaned back, spreading his arm over the back of a chair.

“You blew up before I could open my mouth,” he said, hands raised in innocence. It came out easily—maybe a bit too easily for my liking—but I didn’t press the issue, because I had my own skeletons to hide in plain sight.

All my energy was going into not searching for her in the crowd.

I half-anticipated, half-dreaded her confronting me about it over the following days, but Nathan and the other guy had wisely kept their mouths shut, which only left Liam. But by the way she stuck with pretending I didn’t exist, I’d wager he hadn’t told her yet, which was… interesting.

I carried on leaving her notes, hoping she’d rifle through them at least, but god, her envelope overflowed much too often, kicking up a different sort of panic: it was only a matter of time before someone else saw exactly what I had, and decided to keep her.

So the following morning—which incidentally marked the tenth of February and ten days of leaving her notes—it was time to escalate.

With long strides, I pushed through the sleepy throng queuing up at the café counter with a pleasant smile and an apologetic expression, until people let me cut in line, which was the only way I could’ve secured the triple chocolate chip cookie that sold like fresh bread every Wednesday. It just so happened Mia was crazy about them, too.

While everyone was either having breakfast or hurrying to class, I squeezed this into her envelope, careful not to break it, with the note:

Here you go, Miss I-definitely-don’t-have-a-sweet-tooth xx

Don’t eat it all in one bite

I hadn’t signed any of them, and I wasn’t planning to.

With heavy footsteps, I turned and headed to class, ignoring my own locker and sighing from deep in my chest.

Subtlety and patience were not my strong suits.

Even so, I couldn’t help the slow smile as I imagined her face when she’d tear it open, the satisfied little sigh she’d make when she bit into it, the one she reserved for when she really liked her food.

She sat firmly out of my grasp, hair braided down her back in Pri’s signature style, nose scrunched up in concentration as she rummaged in her case and pulled out a pencil, the one that kept getting jammed.

Hmm…

Pri’s eyes slid to me and narrowed, and I gave her a noncommittal nod, before dropping down in a seat at random. Her questioning gaze lingered, making my throat bob, before she shifted to face an approaching blond figure grinning from ear to ear.

Under the hum of everyone settling down, chairs scraping, and the rustle of pages as people opened their notebooks, I caught a sliver of conversation that turned my blood to ice.

“—go together as friends, seeing as we’re all on our own,” Liam proposed, shrugging. Pri huffed something I thought sounded like “boyfriend,” but I could barely focus over my pulse pounding in my ears.