chapter six

CHAPTER SIX

SOPHIE”S POV

I am almost in Daniel's car when Saya decides to start trouble from the other side of the screen, smiling like she has already packed herself into my life for the summer. She keeps talking about coming over, but the moment she says she wants to meet my boyfriend, I almost laugh in her face.

“Boyfriend?” I say, shifting the phone in my hand while Daniel unlocks his car beside me. “Saya, please forget that dream. Stop waiting for that day.”

“Why?” she asks, narrowing her eyes through the screen. “Are you hiding him from me?”

“I’m hiding from men, not hiding a man,” I say, and Daniel turns to look at me like he already regrets offering me a ride. “All men are scum.”

Daniel’s stare sharpens at once, and I give him the sweetest smile I can manage. “Well… except my Daniel.”

“Don’t put my name inside your madness,” he mutters.

Saya gasps like I have just confessed to a secret wedding, which is painfully funny since she has no idea how close she is to the truth. “My Daniel? Sophie, wait. Is Daniel the boyfriend?”

“God forbid,” Daniel says.

“Never,” I say at the same time, and for one small second, I actually laugh like my life is normal, like Spring Falls is not still buried somewhere inside me, waiting for one stupid mistake to drag it back up.

“Who knows?” I say, looking back at Saya through the screen. “Maybe I’m into girls.”

A warm breath brushes the side of my neck, and every thought in my head crashes at once.I don’t know who is behind me yet, but the shock hits so fast that my fingers tighten around my phone like it is the only thing keeping me from falling apart. 

Adrian’s lips brush my neck like he has the right to walk back into my life after three months and touch me in front of everyone. The joke disappears from my face, Daniel’s expression turns hard in front of me, and Saya screams through the phone loud enough to make my shame spread faster.

Before I can move, Adrian’s hand slides over mine and takes the phone like my shock belongs to him too. He lifts it above my head, smiling down at the screen with the same lazy arrogance that once made half the school worship him and made me wish I had never met him.

“Funny,” he says, his voice low enough to sound private and loud enough to destroy me. “You didn’t sound like that the last time you were screaming my name.”

For one second, I cannot even feel the ground under my feet.

No, this isn’t happening. 

No way Adrian Cole just said that with my cousin on the phone, Daniel standing beside me, and his puck bunnies shredding me with their eyes.

I want to curse him, slap him, grab my phone, disappear, and somehow do all four at once. But nothing happens, because shock has wrapped itself around my throat and squeezed until even my anger feels trapped.

Adrian looks down at me, calm as sin, his smile slow enough to make my fingers itch. “Miss me, wife?”

The word hits me in a place I have spent three months trying to bury.

Wife.

The car park starts turning toward us, one face after another, and I feel the moment change before the whispers even begin. People are not just looking anymore; they are collecting pieces of me, ready to turn my name into the next dirty story on campus.

Daniel steps forward, his voice already dangerous. “What the hell did you just call her?”

Adrian does not even look at him, and somehow that makes everything worse. He is not only humiliating me; he is doing it like Daniel is not worth the energy of being noticed.

“What the freaking hell?” I say, but my voice comes out thinner than the rage boiling inside me.

Adrian lifts it higher, and I hate him so much that in that moment I almost shake. Of course he is taller, of course he is smug, and of course the whole school gets to watch me reach for my own phone like the fool he has turned me into.

“Sophie?” Saya’s voice shakes through the speaker. “What is going on? Who is that? Did he say wife?”

Adrian smiles straight into the camera. “Don’t worry, sister-in-law. We’ll talk properly when you get into town.”

“Cole,” I warn, but my voice does not sound dangerous enough.

His eyes flick to mine, and for the first time, I see something cold under the smile.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

“Bye for now,” he says.

He ends the call and drops the phone back into my palm like he has not just thrown my life into the middle of the car park. My fingers close around it, but the damage is already out, already spreading, already turning into whispers behind me.

I stare at him, and I do not know which part of me is louder.

I stare at him, and I can barely breathe through everything rushing inside me at once; the anger, the shame, the fear, and the disgusting fact that my skin still remembers his mouth.

That is the part I hate most, because Adrian Cole has no right to touch me after three months of silence and still feel familiar. 

The stupid memory of his mouth on my skin.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask, forcing every word through my teeth.

Adrian steps closer, and I hate the way my body notices him before my pride can stop it. His voice drops, smooth and cruel enough to make my chest tighten.

“If you really want to thank me,” he says, “I’d prefer a kiss.”

Daniel’s anger reaches Adrian before his body does, but I am still stuck on the damage already done.

My phone is back in my hand, my cousin is gone from the call, half the school is watching me like I have suddenly become their favorite scandal, and Adrian stands there like he has every right to breathe this close to me.

“What the hell is going on?” Daniel asks, and his voice carries enough heat to make people shift closer.

Of course they move closer, that is what people do when your life starts falling apart in public.

Adrian looks at Daniel for one lazy second, and the disrespect in that glance almost makes me forget I am the one being humiliated.

“This is between my woman and I, freshman,” he says.

For a moment, I do not even know where to put the word.

It lands in my chest, in my stomach, in every foolish place that remembers Spring Falls even when my head keeps begging me to forget.

“Woman?” I whisper, and I hate how small it sounds coming from me.

Adrian looks back at me like my shock is the exact reaction he came to collect.

“Yes,” he says, calm enough to make me want to hurt him. “Woman.”

Anger comes alive in me all at once, because he does not get to do this.

He does not get to disappear for three months, return with that sinful mouth and that cursed confidence, and call me his woman in front of people who already want a reason to tear me apart.

Daniel’s voice cuts through the heat in my head.

“She is not your anything, so quit this madness and leave.”

Adrian does not even look at him this time.

His eyes stay on me, and somehow that feels worse than being touched.

“Is that so? Why don’t we give them a show sweet cheeks,"

The warning in my chest comes too late.

“Adrian, ”

His fingers hook into the belt loop of my trousers, and the world pulls forward with me as he drags me close.

My hands hit his chest at once, but pushing him away is hard when my body is busy remembering the one person I want to forget.

I hate that he smells familiar.

I hate that his face is this close.

I hate that the whole school gets to watch me lose control of a moment that was never mine to begin with.

His mouth hovers near mine, and his voice drops low enough to make my anger feel personal.

“Don’t blush.”

The insult burns through me, but I barely get the chance to throw it back at him before his lips crash into mine, and in front of the whole school, Adrian Cole burns my world down before I can remember how to hate him.