“Please.” I snort. “You and your band of thugs seem to thrive on that sort of thing.”

For a long minute, he just stares at me.

“My friends might seem a little thuggish to you,” he says, his voice quiet, “but that’s your opinion—and it’s pretty shitty for you to say so.”

I shake my head. This conversation was going nowhere fast.

“Look, what do you want from me?” I ask, crossing my arms.

“I want you to say what you really mean,” Smith says. He takes a few steps closer to me, then stops.

I feel frustrated tears in the back of my throat, so I stand up and turn my back to him before saying, “I think it’s stupid that you’re blowing off classwork or wasting time on girls or hanging with losers like J. D. You need to try focusing on school for once, Smith. You shouldn’t screw up this opportunity when you’re so close to finishing up.”

“I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

I can hear him take a step closer and I whirl around to glare at him. He is practically prowling, catlike, toward me, and I start backing up until I’m almost caged into the corner. Somehow, it’s the opposite of menacing. It’s suddenly very hot in this room.

“Besides,” Smith says, his voice barely above a whisper, “this is really none of your business.”

“Please,” I scoff. “This is absolutely my business.”

“Yeah—how, exactly?”

“I’m your teacher. It’s my job to care about your well-being.”

“Oh?” Smith’s openly grinning at me now. “You want to tell on me for not doing my homework? Are you going to call my mommy, too?”

“Don’t make fun of me,” I say quietly. “I just—I don’t want to see you make a big mistake and get yourself in trouble and . . .”

I trail off because, really, there shouldn’t be any other reason for me to be concerned about whom he surrounds himself with.

“And what?” His voice is so low, it’s a half growl. I shrug.

“And nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

I throw up my hands. “Can you please stop cussing in front of me? This is ridiculous.”

Smith rocks back on his heels. “You’re ridiculous. I don’t get you—and I don’t know why I keep wasting my time.”

“You want me to tell you that I care about you?” I snap, folding my arms over my chest. Against my wrist, I can feel my heart slamming up against my rib cage. “Fine. I care. A lot. Probably more than I should.”

Smith looks at me then—like, really looks at me, starting at my still-bare feet and letting his gaze travel up over my skirt and blouse. When it settles on my face again, his eyes convey something like determination, tinged with something else. Something like need.

“I probably care a lot more than I should, too,” Smith says.

He shuffles forward again and I take a shaky breath. My back is to the wall, and my palms are splayed against it now. The painted cinder blocks feel far cooler than my skin, which is apparently beginning to overheat.

“Care about what?” I ask.

Both his hands reach up and cup my cheeks. He strokes the skin along my jaw with his thumbs and steps closer, pressing his torso against mine.

“About you. Fuck, Hyacinth, all I do is think about you,” he says gruffly.

I can feel my lower lip tremble. I shouldn’t be letting this happen, but I’m paralyzed to stop it.

He leans in and breathes my name against my lips. His breath is minty and tangy, like toothpaste mixed with something tropical. I have to hold in the whimper that’s bubbling up inside me. Instead, I reach up to clutch his biceps, hoping my nails digging into his skin will make him realize what he’s doing. What we’re doing. What we shouldn’t be doing.

But, instead, the opposite seems to occur.

His eyes flash from denim to midnight when he feels my grip, and before either of us can do anything else, he lowers his lips to mine. And there’s only one word in my head when he does.

Yes.

He’s gentler than I remember from before. His lips are warm and lush as they try to convince mine to respond. For a moment, I feel frozen in place—then the forces within me that have been begging for this take over. I grip his shirt in my fists and sort of shudder as his tongue flicks out and lines the seam of my lips. I open for him without any pretense and he growls his approval, diving into my mouth like I’m something he has to devour.

His hands coast over my back and down to my ass, pressing me into the wall and himself into me. I feel his erection, insistent and hot, against my core, and my nipples harden against the confines of my bra.

“God, you’re sweet,” he whispers against my mouth.

And I’m not sure if it’s his voice that breaks the spell or my own conscience, but I’m suddenly pushing hard, forcing him back away from me. Even after he’s let me go and stepped away, I keep pushing, like I need to get him as far as possible. Like I don’t trust myself to be as close to each other as we are.

“What the hell was that?” I sputter, moving away from the corner of the room. “Why did you—how could you—Jesus, I can’t even form a coherent thought.”

“That good, huh?” He smirks.

I glare at his smug grin.

“No. It wasn’t ‘that good.’ It was that inappropriate, maybe. That wrong, for sure. That unbelievable, that ridiculous that—”

“Okay, okay.” He holds up both hands. “I get it. I’m sorry.”

“No, you don’t get it. That’s the whole point.” Furiously, I stomp over to my desk. “You think that you can just do what you want, and maybe you can. But I can’t. This is my life. My life. Don’t you get that?”

“Yeah, Hyacinth. I get that. Trust me.”

He’s gone a little quiet, but he looks anything but repentant. In fact, now he just looks pissed.

“You may not think I ‘get’ your life, but here’s one thing I get for sure—you have absolutely no idea what you want.”

I open my mouth to protest, but no sound comes out. Instead, I say nothing. Instead, I watch him walk away from me and out of my classroom. It isn’t until the door shuts behind him that I whisper aloud to the silent room.

“I want you.”

Chapter Twelve

The Power of Distraction

Four more weeks. Four more weeks. Four more weeks.

This is my new mantra. I just have to get through the next month. Yesterday afternoon, I met with Caroline for my second evaluation and she assured me that everyone was pleased with my performance.

“You’re going to be a great teacher, Hyacinth,” she’d said, patting my hand. “You just need to believe in yourself.”

I’d nodded and smiled, pretending that I was completely focused on the words she was saying and not the memory of Smith’s mouth and hands and body on mine.

For the remainder of my student teaching, Caroline assigns me to lunch duty, which is both good and bad. It’s good because it’s a distraction—it prevents me from zoning out and thinking about things I shouldn’t be thinking about while I eat my bologna and cheese sandwich.

It’s bad, however, because I’ve been assigned to the first lunch shift—the shift Smith attends. Since he’s only a half-day attendee, he’s been lumped in with the open campus students who go to the community college in the afternoon. The work-study program eats on first lunch, too, so the cafeteria gets pretty crowded.

I’m sitting at the faculty table, watching a group of sophomores conduct some sort of disgusting snack cake eating contest, when a tray clatters onto the table next to my brown-bag lunch. I look up, and Jeremy Christopher smiles down at me before plopping on the bench.

“Hey, fellow lunch-duty buddy.” He nudges my arm with his elbow. “Nice to see you out and about—you usually eat lunch alone.”