“Gemma!” The headmaster walked out of his office with his nephew following closely behind him.
I quickly averted my eyes away from Isaiah, although I couldn’t ignore the dip in my stomach when our gazes collided. “Isaiah will be giving you a tour of the school, and then he will take you to your room to make sure you are settled.” He glared at him once before giving me another warm smile. “I’ll be sure to check on you later before lights out.”
My lips gently tugged upward as he turned and began storming down the desolate hallway, leaving me alone with a guy my age for the first time in...ever.
Isaiah and I stood beside each other for a few painfully awkward seconds before he broke the silence with his cool voice.
“Did you enjoy the conversation?” he asked, his head tilting to the side as he scrutinized me. His blue eyes twinkled with something that should have warned me off, but surprisingly, I kept a hold of his stare.
“What?” I asked, feigning confusion.
He smirked, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. I followed the flicking of his chin to the wooden bench I was sitting on seconds ago. “When I went into my uncle’s office, you were sitting wayyy over there.” His gaze met the spot I was in when I had first sat down. “But when we came out, you were pushed all the way up to the door. So, I’ll ask again.” His eyebrows rose for a split second as he casually placed his hands in his pockets. “Did you enjoy hearing that I fucked a teacher?”
Did he really just ask me that?
My tongue was heavy in my mouth. Like if I were to speak, my words would tumble out in the wrong order.
The fluttering of my eyelashes tickled my cheek as I continued staring at him. The longer we looked at each other, the harder my heart beat. The pounding was deafening. It was so thunderous I wondered if he could hear it too.
After a few more seconds, Isaiah laughed under his breath before rolling his eyes. “My uncle was right. You are a good girl.”
My fists instantly clenched with his words.
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped, feeling the skin of my palm split open from my nails. I gasped at my outburst and looked behind me, as if Richard was going to pop out of a hidden corner and drag me to the basement to repent for my sin of not only talking to Isaiah with such a harsh tone but for just talking to him in general.
When I turned back around and met Isaiah’s face, he was grinning wildly. His white teeth glimmered behind his perfect blush-colored lips.
“Hmm,” was all he muttered before reaching down and grabbing my bag. He spun around and began walking down the hall. I followed after him because I wasn’t sure what else I was supposed to be doing. But I was still agitated that he had provoked me, and even more so that I had acted on it.
The hallway grew darker the farther we walked, as if we were stalking toward the pits of hell. The strangely bare walls stole my attention before I found myself standing below a large staircase that had dark, wooden, decorative handrails that seemed to go on for forever.
Isaiah glanced back at me, still sporting a smirk between his chiseled cheeks, before he began hopping up the stairs like an Olympic athlete, holding my one suitcase in tow. His long strides pulled him quickly, and I struggled to keep up, but before long, we were standing on the landing with two more sets of stairs on each side.
“To the right is the girls’ wing, and to the left is the boys’.” I nodded, and he continued on. “We aren’t allowed to go to the other wing except for special circumstances. But some of us break the rules.” My brow crinkled, and he had a hard time keeping his face straight. “As in, boys sneak into the girls’ rooms, and sometimes the other way around…depending on the type of girl.” He started inching toward the right set of stairs, walking backward as he smiled at me. “We won’t have to worry about y
ou doing that, though. Right, Good Girl?”
I ground my teeth and inhaled all the oxygen that I could.
He laughed, and I wasn’t sure I liked the way my heart squeezed at the sound. I was naive, and I had a hard time reading people, but I knew he was making fun of me. And I didn’t like that. Not one bit. It made me feel small, and I was really freaking tired of feeling small.
“Stop calling me that,” I bit out, crossing my arms over my chest.
He chuckled and hastily turned around and skipped up the rest of the steps. I waited a few seconds, calming down the heat stirring in my belly before stomping up the rest of the stairs. He was all the way at the end of the hallway by the time I reached the top, but I could hardly see him through the thick darkness.
The hallway was long and deep, laid with dark-red carpet underneath my feet. It was bathed with an eerie light from the few sconces on the wall in between each set of doors, and if I believed in ghosts, I would certainly be feeling a little bit uneasy at the moment.
“Are you coming?” Isaiah shouted. “Or are you afraid of the dark?”
I didn’t answer as I crept along the soft floor, running my finger along the grooved, walnut-colored wood. So far, St. Mary’s seemed like an old medieval castle that was turned into a boarding school. And for all I knew, it was. Each door I’d passed was thick, dark wood with intricate carvings in the mass of them. They each had iron-clad doorknobs with chains attached at the bottom, and for the first time since setting foot in this place, a chill raced down my spine.
I was a few steps away from Isaiah, the warm glow of a lantern light shining on the side of his face, making him that much more beautiful. I gritted my teeth at the thought that came through, but it was suddenly gone as the sound of one of the chains ricocheting off another came from behind me. Panic set deep into my bones, and I ran straight into Isaiah’s hard chest, bouncing off him like I’d hit a brick wall.
“Whoa,” he blurted as his strong hands wrapped around my upper arms, steadying me.
I gasped at the touch. Sparks flew. Heat sourced from his palms, and when he let go, I instantly took a step back.
“Isaiah?” a girl whisper-yelled. I quickly spun around and saw a pretty girl with long lean legs step out of a door. “Sneaking into the gi—" She stopped talking when her eyes dropped over to me. “Oh. Who’s this?”