Page 50 of The Cheerleader is Off Limits

“Okay.” She puts a hand around her mouth. “He’s not as good with problems, though,” she whispers just as I hear the garage open.

Thank fuck.I feel like I am going to explode over these feelings of dread, and even if Rowan absolutely loses his shit over this, at least I can get this off my chest to the one person I’ve always been able to talk to.

“In your office,” I call out to him before I press a kiss to Isla’s forehead. “We’ll talk more before I leave, okay?”

“Okay, I do have a seven o’clock with Barbie, so you may have to schedule an appointment. Call my office,” she says before hopping off the couch and skipping out of the room.

“Okay, what is going on?” Rowan asks from behind his desk. His fingers are steepled under his chin as he stares at me with a pensive expression.

“I’m just going to blurt it out, and you’re going to tell me how fucked I am.” My heart is pounding in my chest over having to speak these words into existence, even if it is to the one person in the world who can help me navigate this nightmare.

He leans back in his chair and loosens his tie before running a hand through his dark brown hair. “Like… you might need my services, fucked?”

“Yes, exactly that,” I tell him as I begin to pace the length of his office.

“Is someone pregnant?”

“No!” I shake my head vehemently as a different intrusive thought hits me.What if Sloane is pregnant? Or that girl from the bar… or… okay, River, one crisis at a time. You always use condoms. No one is pregnant.“No,” I repeat, mostly to myself in an attempt to slow my rapidly accelerating heart rate.

“Okay whatever it is?—”

“Sloane’s in high school,” I blurt out, but I hesitate before continuing. “Not only is she in high school, butmyhigh school and furthermore,mybiology class.”

I stop pacing to look at him, and he’s completely frozen. He finally blinks his eyes at me a few times as if he has no idea what I’m saying. “Sorry, I think I just spaced out for a second or fucking hallucinated. Run that by me again?” His tone is even, and I imagine this is how he is when he’s in lawyer mode. Calm and collected, even if different feelings are brimming below the surface.

I start pacing again. “She lied about… everything. Well, not everything. What her parents do for a living is true, and she did move here from overseas to live with her aunt and uncle.”

“Holy shit. Is she underage?” His eyes are wide now with a look of complete horror, and I can see the stress all over his face at the thought.

“No, no… thank God,” I groan, trying my best to fixate on that small fact because it is literally the only silver lining in all of this. “She’s nineteen. She moved back here for her senior year.”

I watch as relief floods his face. “Okay… good. That is good,” he says before moving to the corner of the room toward his bar he has set up. “I assume you want a drink?”

“Unless you’re planning to lace it with poison, for now, I’m good,” I tell him as I lie back on his couch with an arm over my eyes.

“Okay, step away from the ledge. You didn’t know, and that will play into your favor if this ever comes out.” He sighs, and I hear the clink of the bottle hitting the glass, then the glass hitting the coffee table in front of me. When I turn my head, I see Rowan has left a tumbler of whiskey for me anyway. “How did you guys… put this together?”

“What do you think?” I grumble.

“Christ,” he groans, “she walked into your class?”

“Like she didn’t have a care in the fucking world.”

Earlier that day:

I’m preparing for my third-period Honors Biology class, which is my favorite block of the day. It’s the class right before I have a free period, and it’s usually filled with juniors and seniors, with the occasional gifted freshman or sophomore. Because of that, the class could probably run itself. The juniors are at their best because it’s arguably the most important year, and colleges look at it the most. Seniors are trying to keep their grades up for the school they've already gotten into, and the freshman and sophomores could probably teach this class better than I could.

Not to mention, there’s usually a handful of my guys from the team, which always keeps the class interesting.

The class is slowly filling up as students file in, when a familiar smell wafts into the classroom. When I turn around from where I’m writing on the whiteboard to check the source, I’m rendered almost fucking speechless.

Blue eyes. Very familiar, stunning blue eyes. Blue eyes that I’d stared into only a few days ago when I looked up at her from between her legs while I fucked her with my tongue.

Suddenly, the room feels very small, and it feels like someone has sucked all the oxygen out of it, because my chest is tightening.

If this is a heart attack, please, just let it kill me.

I take a deep breath, and though my heart is still pounding, I can at least feel a bit of air entering my lungs again. The blood rushes to my ears, and I feel like there’s a ringing in them.