Page 65 of Love in the Dark
“What, Sinclair?” I snap, turning back towards my desk. I’m not in the mood to deal with him. Not when my teeth still grind together at the thought of him anywhere near Nera.
She told me yesterday that nothing was going on between them, but I’m still wary. My fists clench at my sides just thinking about it.
Not that I have any right to be possessive of her. Yesterday was a loss of control, albeit a necessary one, and now I can put her behind me. I can do that just as soon as I stop having flashbacks, both physical and mental, of her lips on mine. Of how she’d clung desperately to me when I’d walked back in and claimed her mouth one final time.
“Your little one on one with Nera,” he says and I can hear the smirk in his voice without turning around. “It didn’t exactly exude professionalism.”
I turn towards him slowly, a muscle jumping in my cheek.
“Keep her name out of your mouth,” I snap.
God fucking damnit.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I add, trying to recover from the slip up of my heated correction.
His smirk stretches into a full on grin now and my fists twitch with the need to remove it from his face.
“Very interesting indeed,” he says.
“Get out of my classroom, Phoenix,” I bark. “What I talk about with another one of my students is of no concern to you.”
“It is if you’re fucking said student,” he comments, drolly.
Red hazes my vision and I work to strangle my wrath before it erupts out of me.
“I’d be very careful about what rumors I start if I was you.”
He gives a careless lift of his shoulder, looking as bored as he usually does. “I have no interest in spreading rumors.”
“Then why are you here wasting my time with them?” I take a menacing step towards him. “Unless you have a personal interest in the matter.”
I wonder if that’s what this is about. If he wants her for himself regardless of what she told me. If he does, I don’t know what I’ll do. Protectiveness and violence thrum in my veins, the feelings still completely new to me, and I’m afraid that whatever comes out of his mouth next will result in me getting fired and arrested for assaulting a student.
“I care fuck all about what you’re doing with her,” he says, emotionlessly. But then his shoulders stiffen and his spine straightens, his eyes darkening until they snuff out all the light previously in them. “But if your interests stray beyond her to someone else,” he gives me a sinister smile, “then we’ll have a problem.”
My brows furrow. “There’s nothing going on between Nera and I,” I repeat, “And what are you talking about?”
His teeth grind. “Stay the fuck away from her friends,” he sneers. “Your secret’s safe with me if you do that.”
Something loosens in my chest, something I didn’t realize had been incredibly tight before. It unfurls, bringing both physical relief in the way the tension in my shoulders smooths out and mental release in the way the anger immediately recedes.
“He doesn’t wantme,” she’d said. Emphasis onme.
That notion is simultaneously inconceivable to me and a fucking relief.
It’s my turn to grin now. “Which friend?” I ask, enjoying this turn of the tables. “Thayer?”
“You’re off base, Novak.”
“Bellamy?”
I don’t investigate why I know who Nera’s best mates are. I don’t think I’ll like admitting the truth of why to myself.
“I said—”
“Six?”
“Her name is Sixtine,” he snaps, his glare pinned on me. His left eyelid twitches dangerously. “I suggest you use it.”