Page 170 of On His Schedule
My mouth falls open for a moment. “After our first tutoring session?” I ask, not sure I’m following correctly.
He shrugs nonchalantly. “I always wanted you.”
A smile falls on my face, chest warm, heart aching, and then I inhale. I look down at the pencil and then back at him. “Really?”
“What?” He leans back. “You’re surprised?”
I chew my bottom lip, trying to think. I quickly mutter, “If I tell you, promise not to judge me?”
He leans forward for this. “I won’t ever judge you, baby,” he says with a bright, patient, and excited smile.
I nod, looking down. “Gianna,” I swallow, “has always had pictures of you––”
His smiles. “I knew it, Lucy. I fucking knew it.”
“Knew what?” I blush.
“That you liked me before you even met me.”
I try to hide the flustering that’s happening in my chest right now. The pictures of him around my house did not help me in this situation. Not one bit. At all.
He says, “That’s why this was meant to be.”
I look up at him, heart pulsing in my fingertips. Meant to be? I think heat’s crawling up my neck. His eyes travel around my face.
“I think our time is up.”
I look up at the clock and nod. He’s right. It’s two minutes past our starting time.
God, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this man. He’s making me feel things I didn’t know were possible. Everything else in my life has fallen second to him, and I’m scared. I’m terrified, shaking in my bones because of the way he looks at me.
Math. I focus on math. I turn the textbook and read him the first question. But we’re still smiling at each other like we’ve come to a conclusion of some sort. What conclusion? I’m not sure, but I think the answer is swimming around inside my heart.
Chapter 34
Benson
Thesessioniswindingdown. We’ve done forty minutes of real Stats and Lucy is, with her pencil cap between her teeth, marking my last problem correct. My pencil has, somewhere in the last two minutes, drifted off my own page and onto the corner of her notebook page, where I am drawing a small heart. She catches me but doesn’t say anything.
She marks the problem correct and slides the page back over to me. My pencil pulls back to the edge of the table.
“So, dinner tonight?”
Her face falls. “I told Gianna I would eat dinner with her. And — oh my god — I told Rowan last night I would come to dinner tonight.” Her eyes widen in horror.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Rowan will get it.”
She starts turning red. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I say so that she stops worrying. “What’re you doing after this?”
She sighs. “Moving my things back into the apartment.”
“Want help with your bags?” I offer.
She looks at me.
I smirk. “Only if you want me to.”
