“Who are you?” Mr. Mitchell asked in a belligerent tone, walking toward Adam. “You’re not allowed on school grounds.”
“I was just having a word with Mr. Fairmont here. We’re all good.” Adam shrugged as if he wasn’t a twenty-one year old who’d just gotten through threatening a sixteen year old.
“Brian, are you okay?” Mr. Mitchell asked.
“Uh, fine, Mr. Mitchell,” he gulped and took a step back from Adam toward the safe proximity of the geography teacher.
“Adam,” I called now, wanting Adam gone before he got into trouble.
I drew Mr. Mitchell’s gaze and his face clouded over. “Miss Carmichael, you know quite well you aren’t allowed visitors during school hours.”
“Sorry, Mr. Mitchell.”
“I’m just leaving.” Adam shot Brian one last warning look and then turned and casually strode toward me. Taking his time. Adam didn’t like to be told what to do. When he reached me, he put an arm around my shoulder and had me walk him back to the school gate. No one was whispering or giving me dirty looks now as we passed. They were all looking at me as if I was extremely cool. I mean, I must be right, if I had Adam Sutherland’s arm around me and he’d shown up at school to scare the truth out of Brian.
I grinned and Adam caught it, his soft laughter making me all warm and fuzzy.
“Feel better then?” he asked as we came to a stop.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“What were you doing at a party anyway on a Saturday night?”
I frowned at his proprietary tone. “I’m fourteen, Adam. It was a friend’s birthday.
Anyway, I didn’t know seniors were going to be there.”
He nodded. “Just be careful, eh.”
“Yeah.” I lowered my eyes, feeling bad that he’d been dragged into my teen drama.
“Come here.” Adam pulled me to him again and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead before he hugged me close. Now that I wasn’t bemoaning my morning and crying on his chest, I was suddenly fully aware of being crushed against him. He smelled amazing and his body was hard with lean muscle. It felt good against mine.
A weird, tingling feeling erupted in my lower belly and my skin suddenly grew incredibly flushed. I jerked back and tried to cover my awkwardness with a tremulous smile and a goofy wave.
Adam gave me a quizzical smile and then said, “Anytime you need me, you call, okay?”
I nodded.
“Okay, sweetheart. I’ll see you later.”
“Bye.”
He grinned at me again and his grin caused another wave of weird tingling to spread over me. As I watched him get into his car and drive away it occurred to me that my crush on Adam had just intensified. My brain was no longer the only thing attracted to Adam. My hormonally-charged teenage body was now too.
Chapter 2
Adam’s brow was puckered as he lifted his head from the diary but he gave me a small, amused smile. “I don’t know how I feel about sexually awakening a fourteen year old. It’s all a bit Lolita-like.”
I laughed at his discomfort. “It’s not as if you felt the same way about me back then.
Anyway, now that I’m yours, would you really have preferred if some other guy gave me my sexual awakening?”
Now his brow knit together completely and he glanced back down at the pages. “Good point,” he muttered.
“Here.” I handed him another diary, open to more than half-way through, and took the one with my fourteen year old thoughts out of his hands. “This is from the year after that.”
Saturday, September 23rd
I am this close to screaming at Adam to stop treating me like a sister. I’m not his sister! I wish he’d just get that already…
I took a deep breath, holding the mascara wand away from my eyelashes. Staring at myself in my dressing table mirror, I exhaled slowly and mentally coached myself to calm down. As much as I tried, I could not stop the wild flutter of butterflies in my belly. I gave up and leaned back into the mirror to liberally apply mascara since it was the only makeup Mum would let me wear. I had long fair eyelashes so no one could tell how long they were until I started wearing black mascara. They were long and now that they were black they made my pale blue eyes even bluer.
Hopefully the mascara also made me look a little older because, even though I was tall, I was still skinny with small boobs and had a smattering of freckles across the bridge of my nose that made me feel about five years old instead of fifteen.
I had a date tonight. My first date. With Sam Smith who was a sixth year, meaning he was two years older than me and he was cute and cool and I really, really liked him.
As much as I could like any boy who wasn’t Adam.
Not that Adam was a boy any more.
A knock sounded at my bedroom door as I ran a brush through my long hair for the hundredth time. “Come in!” I called, somewhat agitated since I thought it was probably my Mum, who seemed to be at once both more excited than me about the date, and also more concerned.