I grinned and hooked my hand around her hip, taking advantage of our closeness to pull her closer to me.
Her pupils dilated, and the confidence in her demeanor went from one hundred percent to almost nil in a matter of seconds.
She blinked, her eyes going to my hand, and I wondered if I should remove it.
But then Briana hissed. “Didn’t take you long to move on, did it?”
Belle turned, then placed her delectable ass against my dick, and I had to will my body to stay under control.
I dropped my hand and fisted it at my side just as Belle said, “Extreme circumstances brought us together.”
“It’s only been a day.” Briana paused. “This has been going on a lot longer than a day if you’re already buying him underwear.”
Briana did have a point.
“Umm,” a hesitant voice said from somewhere beside us. “I’m really sorry to do this, but your yelling is disrupting other customers. We’re going to have to ask you to take it outside.”
I jerked my chin in the direction of the doors. “Go on ahead, Briana. I have a few things left to get.”
Briana, pissed as hell now and obviously thinking that this was way more than it was thanks to Belle’s words, stomped off indignantly.
Belle turned back around and took a giant step backward.
Yeah, she was uncomfortable with my touch.
Shit.
Had something happened to her?
I knew that one of the first times that I remembered seeing her was when we were in middle school—at the time, I’d been a freshman and she’d been a few years younger—and she’d actually punched me in the throat and threatened to do it harder if I ever touched her again.
I wondered if she remembered me.
Which had my mouth running before I’d even had a chance to think about what I was saying.
“Do you remember punching me in the throat when we were younger? I was probably thirteen or fourteen and you’d just nearly been clobbered by a bunch of football players,” I explained.
Belle’s head twitched as she sifted through her memories.
Then her eyes widened as she said, “You tried to help me up.”
I nodded.
“That was a bad day for me,” she admitted. “I’m sorry.”
I hadn’t realized.
I mean, I knew that the football players had been assholes. They’d seen a young girl—and Belle was young. She was all of ten or eleven at most, that I knew for sure because it’d been the talk of the school—a young kid arriving at the high school to be placed as not a freshman, but a sophomore. And, they’d decided to be giant assholes to her instead of thinking about the girl as young, in a new school, and scared.
Me being the kid that always—and I do mean always—was getting the same treatment that they’d given her that day, I knew how bad it could get and be.
Belle hadn’t lasted more than two days, though.
After her parents had learned that she was being practically tortured all day and not learning a damn thing, they’d pulled her and put her in a school that was made for students exactly like her—smart as fuck.
She’d graduated with honors from what I’d heard.
“So you remember me?” I guessed. “You remember everything else, too?”