chapter 8: Feelings

I looked up.

Jaxon was at the far end of the hall with two of his teammates. He was in his usual state, jacket open, bag over one shoulder, expression that gave nothing away to anyone who wasn't watching carefully. The kind of composed that came from years of practice.

He was talking to Cora Vance.

She was standing very close to him with one hand on his arm and her head tilted at the angle girls tilted their heads when they wanted to look both beautiful and earnest at the same time. She was saying something. Whatever it was, she had his attention.

He hadn't seen me yet.

As I watched, he said something back. Brief. Whatever it was made her laugh, and she moved her hand from his arm to his chest, fingers flat against the front of his jacket.

He didn't move her hand.

Something tightened in my chest that I had no business feeling. I identified it immediately, labeled it precisely, and told myself firmly that it had no place here and no foundation and no right to exist.

It did not listen.

"Breathe," Nadia said beside me, very quietly.

"I'm fine," I said.

"Of course you are."

I looked away before Jaxon could turn and see me standing there. I fixed my eyes on the classroom door ahead of us and kept walking and told myself the tightness in my chest was just yesterday catching up with me.

Just the bruise. Just the exhaustion. Just the accumulated weight of a week that had been too much from the first moment.

Not him. Not his hand moving her hand away, or not moving it. Not the space between those two things.

I pushed through the classroom door and sat down and opened my notebook to a blank page.

Behind me, distantly, I heard Jaxon's voice in the corridor. I couldn't make out the words.

I didn't try to.

First period passed the way bad mornings passed.

Slowly, and with full awareness of every minute.

I sat in my seat and looked at the board and wrote down things I wouldn't remember later because the part of my brain responsible for retention had quietly excused itself and left behind only the image of Cora Vance's hand flat against Jaxon's chest and his complete failure to remove it.

I wrote the date at the top of my notes. Underlined it twice. Told myself I was paying attention.

I was not paying attention.

Nadia sat two rows back and to the right. Once, when the teacher turned to write something on the board, she leaned forward and set a folded piece of paper on the edge of my desk without a word.

I opened it under the table.

Stop thinking about it. You're doing the face.

I wrote back. What face.

The paper came back thirty seconds later. The face of someone trying very hard not to feel a thing they are definitely feeling.

I folded it up and didn't respond and absolutely did the face for the rest of first period.

The hallway between first and second was busy enough that I almost missed him.

Almost.

Jaxon fell into step beside me without warning, appearing at my left shoulder the way he always appeared, like he materialized rather than walked, like space simply rearranged itself around him and he arrived without effort.

"Don't," I said, before he could speak.

He looked at me. "I haven't said anything."

"You were about to say something that starts with *about this morning* and ends with something I don't want to hear."

A pause. "You saw that."

"The whole hallway saw it."

He was quiet for exactly two steps. "Cora is a pack member. She approached me. I wasn't going to make a scene over nothing."

"I didn't say anything about a scene."

"You didn't have to." His voice stayed even. "You're doing that thing where your jaw goes tight and you look straight ahead instead of at the person you're talking to."

looked at him. Deliberately. "Happy?"

He looked back. Something moved in his expression, brief and unidentifiable, there and gone. "Ecstatic."

We walked another few steps in silence. The crowd thinned slightly as we turned into the east corridor.

"She's going to be a problem," I said. "For me. Not for you."

"I know."

"And you let her stand there with her hand on you in front of half the school the morning after—" I stopped. Reordered. "The morning after yesterday. Which already has people talking."

"People are always talking."

"About me," I said. "They're talking about me, Jaxon. Damien is telling anyone who will listen that I started it. Cora is going to decide that whatever you said in that hallway was nothing, and she's going to make that point at my expense. And you standing there letting her touch you gives her exactly the ammunition she needs to do it."

He stopped walking.

I stopped too, because the sudden absence of movement beside me registered before I decided to respond to it. I turned to find him looking at me with an expression I hadn't seen before. Not the cold composure. Not the controlled blankness. Something that was paying closer attention.

"You're not upset because of Cora," he said slowly.