Puck (Broken Hill Boys 1)

The room fills up and bodies take all the chairs around me. I scrunch up my face as some kid from my old History class sits down beside me and turns to me with a smile. No. He’s fucking insane if he thinks I’m going to sit here and chat with him about his killer weekend playing online video games with some twelve-year-old boy across the country.

The door swings open once again and I can’t believe my luck when Courtney strides through the door with a welcoming smile for Miss Blakeley.

Fuck me, I’m constantly forgetting how damn beautiful she is. What I wouldn’t give to have that smile directed toward me.

Courtney begins scanning the remaining chairs and the second she sees me sitting in the back of the room, her smile fades from her face.

Maybe corrupting the perfect princess can start a little earlier than I had intended.

Courtney starts making her way across the classroom to the only available seat left in the room. I turn to the guy beside me, narrowing my eyes and give him the look that I know for a fact can bring grown-ass men to their knees. “Move,” I demand.

He turns at the sound of my voice and his eyes bug out of his head. He scrambles for his things and dives out of the chair, and in his desperation to get as far away from me as possible, he bolts across the room and launches himself into the seat that Courtney was just moments from taking.

She gasps at his sudden intrusion and she’s left standing in the middle of the room, wondering what the hell just happened.

“Come on, Courtney,” Miss Blakeley says. “Hurry up and take your seat so we can get started.”

Her mouth drops, clearly not loving being reprimanded by the teacher, but nonetheless, she swivels around to figure out where she should go. When she sees that the only available seat in the classroom is now right next to me, her features drop. I didn’t even try to hide my amusement.

Courtney walks across the room slower than a toddler walking towards a doctor with a needle and I pull out her chair, unable to rein in the wide grin on my face. “Real mature,” she grumbles, dropping into the chair. I have a feeling she’s being sarcastic and referring to the way I frightened the kid out of this very seat, rather than complimenting my chivalry.”

“Don’t look so happy to see me,” I tell her.

Her glare flicks across to me. “I’m not happy to see you.”

“Could have fooled me. You seemed pretty damn pleased to see me on Friday night.”

“Friday night was a mistake,” she murmurs, trying to keep her voice low as to not draw any unwanted attention to the topic of conversation. “It was an error of judgment after way too many shots of Vodka, and it will never happen again.”

I slide my arm across the desk in front of her while I turn in my seat to face her front on, the move slightly caging her in. “And what if I want it to happen again…and again, and again?”

I watch as her chest rises and falls with deep breaths before she shoots daggers at me once again. “It’s never going to happen, Landon.”

Well, damn. The only person to use my real name is my mother. no one in school dared to speak that name since I was a kid, either that or they don’t remember it. Courtney here seems to be the toughest chick or the dumbest chick around, but that doesn’t explain why I liked my name on her lips so fucking much.

“What’s this chip on your shoulder?”

She looks back toward the front of the room, pretending to listen to Miss Blakely as she checks off the students’ names, but there’s no doubt about the fact that she’s still hyper-aware of me, she always is. “I don’t have a chip on my shoulder.”

My arm falls to the back of her chair as my eyes narrow on her, realizing that I’m a little more interested in her response than I have the right to be. “You’ve glared at me every single day since Kindergarten. Believe me, there’s one hell of a big chip on your shoulder, baby.”

“I’m not your ‘baby,’” she declares. “And if you really must know, it’s because you’re an ass.”

“Really? So, I was an ass all the way back in Kindergarten?”

Her chin raises as she focuses heavily on the front of the room. “Yep.”

I watch her a little closer, trying to figure out what I could have done in the past to piss her off when it clicks; the very first day of school. Courtney was upset, scared maybe. I’m not entirely sure, but that very first day, I walked up to her and took her hand, gently prying her away from her parents. She smiled at me and in that instant, I could have sworn we were best friend. And then it happened, Samuel Kingston came in with his big ass monster truck and I narrowed my eyes. My monster truck was bigger and I was damn well going to prove it. I marched over to that sucker, and made sure he knew that I was going to be the king of kindy. When I went to proudly boast about my win to my new friend, she was gone. What did it matter? She was just a stupid girl anyway, but deep down, it crushed my little five-year-old soul. I’ve never forgotten it and because of that, I never spoke to her again.