“You need me to walk you to the nurse?” he offered. “Looks like you got cut there. Maybe we should make sure you don’t need stitches?”
“Is it that bad?!” I frantically reached into my purse and pulled out a mirror, examining my lips and panicking when they seemed to be growing more swollen, throbbing harder by the second.
“Nah, it’s not that bad,” he said with a half-smile, his eyes pausing on my mouth and making me a million times more self-conscious. “Here, come with me.”
That day began like any other day – boring and ordinary. But then it all changed the second he took my hand and pulled me down the hall. Electric currents ran from his hand to mine, chasing up my arm and settling in my heart before flurrying around in my stomach. Beaumont Mason was touching me. Taking me with him, wherever we were going. Taking care of me: a nobody freshman.
“What’s your name?” he asked in his slow Southern drawl.
“Dakota,” I said, before pretending I didn’t know his. “Yours?”
“Beau.”
The tardy bell rang as we ran down the empty halls. Normally I’d have been freaking out about being late for class, but in that moment, I couldn’t have cared less.
“Where are we going?” I giggled like the shamelessly giddy schoolgirl I was.
He stopped us short of a side door to the cafeteria kitchen. Everyone knew students weren’t allowed in there, but he just walked in there like he owned the place.
“Gramma,” he twanged. His full lips twisted into a mischievous smile, suddenly showcasing the slanted scar above his upper lip. “You still here?”
“Beau, baby, is that you?” A hairnet donning woman with a jovial smile and generous plump curves appeared from behind a prep counter. She appeared to be more amused than anything else. “What are you doing in here, boy?”
“Need some ice, Gramma.” He nodded toward me, and I suddenly realized we were still holding hands.
The white-haired woman grabbed a plastic sandwich baggie and went to the freezer, filling it full of ice and handing it to him.
And then he dropped my hand, making me realize just how quickly you could miss something you’d only had for a tiny fraction of your short little life.
I reached for the bag, but he pulled it away, opting to place it over my lip for me, as if I couldn’t do it myself.
I drew in a tight breath when the freeze burned my cut.
“You two better get to class,” his grandmother warned. “Beau, you know you can’t be in here.”
He flashed her a teasing smirk and leaned across me, grabbing two fresh cookies off a hot baking tray and slipping one into my jacket pocket.
She swatted at him with a dishrag, “Now you stop that, boy. You know darn well those are for lunch.”
I took the makeshift ice pack from him and gave my lips a break from the cold as I followed him back out to the hall.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Second floor. Room twenty-three.”
“I’ve got gym.” He lingered a bit, his golden gaze dropping to my lips again. He lifted his callused, son-of-a-farmer hands to my mouth, running his fingertips over the cut and sending a shower of sparkling excitement into my every fiber. “Let me walk you to class.”
“But the gym is on the other side of the building.” It didn’t quite register that he was showing interest.
Shut up, Dakota. Let him do it.
He shrugged a single shoulder as the corner of his lip raised, showing off a single deep dimple in his cheek. “I’m already tardy. What’s another couple minutes?”
“We’re going to get detention if they see us in the hall together without passes,” I said, ever the nerdy, goody two-shoes.
“You haven’t had detention yet?” he asked as we walked toward the stairs.
“Of course not.”
“It’s practically a rite of passage. Everyone needs to get detention at least once.” He slipped his arm around me as we walked. “All the cool kids get detention.”
An inward cringe took over me. I was not a cool kid, nor would I ever be. To Beau, I was just a new face around school, but I knew how everyone else saw me. Soon enough he’d find out I was a dorky girl with clothes that didn’t fit right, and he’d move on to a cheerleader or beauty queen type who’d better suit his impossibly cool reputation. I’d seen the way everyone always looked at him. The guys wanted to be him and the girls would kill for a date with him. Even from afar, I saw how he made everyone feel like they were the only person in the whole entire world, and experiencing it firsthand, I got it.
“Thanks,” I said as we stopped outside my English class.
“Sorry about your lip,” he said.
“It’s okay.” I stared up at him through my lashes. He could’ve done a lot worse to me and I’d have forgiven him ten times over. That was the kind of power that boy had over me, and I’d only known him all of ten minutes.
“Maybe when that lip is all healed I can take you out,” he said, forcing my stomach to fall to my shoes and a Christmas morning smile to capture my lips. “What are you doing this Friday?”
Nothing.
“I don’t know,” I said, digging my toe into the linoleum tile. I’d never been asked out before, and I didn’t have the slightest idea if I was supposed to pretend to be busy or how to act like I wasn’t ten seconds from freaking out right then and there.
“You’re supposed to say, ‘Going out with you, Beau’,” he teased.
I laughed, hanging my head as my cheeks burned hot from the attention he was giving me.
“I need to get to class,” I said, lifting my eyes to meet his. My teeth raked against the cut of my bottom lip, tasting dried blood and reminding me how awkwardly uncool I probably looked right then. But I didn’t care.
Beau stood, locked in place, as he watched me disappear into my classroom. And just like that, he’d captured a part of me that would never let go as long as I lived.
Chapter Six
Gravel crunched outside the barn as I shoveled clumps of dirt and hay to make way for fresh stuff. The sun had come up just an hour before, but I’d been working outside since just before dawn. I wiped the thin layer of sweat off my brow and headed out to the front of the house, driving my pitchfork into the earth and ambling toward Dakota.
“Surprised the place isn’t locked up like Fort Knox,” she said, climbing out of her car. She turned back, glancing at the long, tree-lined drive. “I was expecting a gate at the very least.”
I squared my jaw and shrugged. “All I need are a few cameras and a couple of ‘no trespassing’ signs. Most folks out here leave me alone. The locals are pretty protective. It’s the outsiders I’ve got to worry about.”
“You don’t worry about stalkers?” she lifted a single arched brow.
“My fans are good people, Dakota.” I smiled and slipped my hands into my front pockets. “I get a lot of folks that drive by, but no one’s ever come up and bothered me. I’ll put a gate in soon I suppose. Not that I particularly need one.”