Page 43 of Crush
The next morning, I can smell someone’s fear.
Aurora acting strange and making the morning all about her is to be expected. My disdain ripples across the classroom as she straightens her wig—it almost looks real, so she must’ve spent a dime on it—and tries not to be obvious as she dabs the sweat off her forehead.
Must be hot under there, I think with a sly pull to my lips.
She whines about something unrelated to her grooming session over the weekend, complaining to anyone nearby before the professor starts her lesson.
No, the smell of sweat in the air isn’t related to Aurora’s styling drama. What I do notice are the gaps between her demeanor and Belle and Delaney’s responses. Stiff and not nearly as catty as they are every Monday morning, as if the weekend allowed them to charge their bitch batteries for another rigorous week of terrorizing lesser beings. They’re operating on low power today.
“You ready for our meet tomorrow?” Jaxon plops down in the seat next to me, uncaring of the seating assignments. “I could use a win, considering I lost the orchestra seat. Could’ve sworn I had it in the bag.”
I peel my gaze away from the corner where Aurora and her girls whisper to each other, saying to Jaxon, “Is that really a question?”
“Right, I got it. You’ll destroy Brady Academy. Really, I’m trying to distract you from murdering Aurora with your eyes. You’ve gotta stop staring daggers at her, man. People will start to put two and two together…”
Only Jax knows what I forced Aurora to do to herself over the weekend. “You think I care if the student body knows she shaved herself for me?”
“Your father might.” Jaxon shrugs. “I doubt shearing off the princess’s hair is a part of his protocol when it comes to Ember—”
Jaxon chokes.
He didn’t register my hand’s movement until my thumb pressed into the sensitive nerve behind his ear. If he weren’t sitting, he would’ve collapsed onto the floor by now.
“My father isn’t privy to the day-to-day of Winthorpe drama,” I mutter near his trembling jaw. “He leaves me in charge of anything he considers petty. Aurora Emmerson getting in the way of my plans for Ember’s time at Winthorpe is petty.”
I press harder into the nerve.
“Fine!” Jaxon yelps, swatting me away, and I let him. “I agree. It’s petty. Good for you for putting her in her place.”
For the first time in years, I hear the disapproval in his voice. “You don’t think I made the right decision? Aurora wouldn’t have stopped interfering otherwise. I had to let her know I was serious.”
“Sure, yeah.” Jaxon rises, refusing to meet my eye. “You’re the boss.”
Now, I’m sensing disdain. “You’ve done worse.”
Even to my ears, I sound petulant.
“I have,” Jaxon agrees while moving into the aisle. “They’re making us into such good men, aren’t they?”
He doesn’t say who they are, though I’m clearly aware. Jaxon leaves me to mull over his disenchanted statement, and fuck him, he also has me second-guessing my actions.
Was my Noble title making me spontaneously cruel, or is it something that’s rested deep inside the crypt of my heart, docile until I awaken it with the excuse of my father?
I’m saved from the dark turn of my thoughts when a flash of blond enters my periphery. I glance up. Ember hovers in the doorway.
She looks … rumpled, for lack of a better word. Roughed up, for a more detailed one, and not by me.
My stare narrows.
Ember doesn’t look in my direction as she enters and cuts into the aisle, nor does she acknowledge me as she takes her seat at our desk. In fact, she’s acting like I don’t exist.
Well, that’s easy to rectify.
I skate my hand across her bare thigh, edging under the hem of her skirt.
With a vicious, swift move that even my eyes can’t track, she shoves my hand off. Ember’s chin flies up, and she spins to face me, her black-brown eyes hardening into two burning coals. “Don’t you fucking touch me.”
She whispers it with such wrath, my jaw goes slack before I remember to sharpen it at the edges. “Careful, little pretty.”