“If you try anything, you will be sorry,” he whispered. The malice is his voice was like a bucket of ice water thrown in my face and suddenly the feeling of his hands and lips on me felt like the kiss of death.
“Let me go,” I demanded. I was angry, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I was angrier about. He shoved me away and when I almost fell, I glared at him but his back was already turned as he walked away as quietly as he’d come. I followed behind at a slower pace so that I could recover from the last five minutes. Fucking hell.
*
The cafeteria was alive with upperclassmen milling around in various cliques. I usually avoided the cafeteria, choosing to spend lunch in the library or anywhere Keiran wouldn’t be. It was usually his routine to torture me at either the very start or end of the day and ignore me during the middle. Still, I thought it was safe to be invisible during that time just in case he ever felt extra sadistic.
I chased around answers for why Willow wouldn’t tell me about this summer as I looked around for her. When I didn’t immediately see her, I knew it meant I would have to risk going further. With Keiran out for my head I was more on edge than ever. All morning I’d been wondering if he was actually serious about taking my virginity for revenge. At least…that’s what I think he was saying.
The idea that Keiran desired me sexually when he hated me so fiercely was impossible to believe. He has to be using sex as a way to humiliate me. It wasn’t about desire. It couldn’t be.
I circled the entire cafeteria looking for Willow when I realized whose table I was unknowingly approaching and before I could avoid it our eyes connected and I suddenly got the feeling that he had been watching me the entire time. I quickly turned around to head back in the opposite direction.
“Stop.”
I froze on the spot. The sound of that command took me back ten years to the playground where I first laid eyes on him. I slowly turned back around to face him and his table of mindless followers.
“Have a seat.” He ordered and pushed out the chair in front of him with his long leg.
“You seriously don’t mean here do you? But we hate her.” The catty girl currently sitting on Keiran’s lap and staring daggers at me was Anya Risdell: head cheerleader, and all-around bitch. I’m sorry was that mean?
“Yes, I mean here. If you have a problem with that you can go sit at another table,” he replied, coldly without taking his eyes off me.
I was still standing a few steps away, thinking of a way to get out of entering further into the lion’s den. When his eyes flickered from me to the chair and back, I reluctantly sat down in the designated chair, letting my displeasure show. He looked only a second away from causing a scene and I remembered all too well the last time he caused a scene in the cafeteria. Don’t go there.
I felt numerous eyes staring between us curiously. Keenan was sitting at the table along with their other friend Quentin, who they called Q. He was a lot like Keiran: silent and brooding. He never really had much to say and sort of moved in silence. No one has ever seen him with a girl on his arm either and so there was a quiet rumor around school that he might be gay. People are idiots.
A couple of other guys and girls were sitting at the table as well but they were all jocks and cheerleaders. Give me a break. Sheldon Chambers, Keenan’s girlfriend was at the table as well. She seemed to be the only person not giving me hostile looks. Instead she was looking at me curiously from her seat next to Keenan.
“Who were you looking for?” Keiran asked breaking me out of my inner musings.
“No one.”
He became eerily silent as he watched me from lowered lids; his face looked like it was carved out of stone as he clenched his jaw muscles. “Is that a lie?”
“No,” I lied again. I didn’t owe him an explanation on anything I did.