Page 29 of The Broken Note

Not only did mom manage to spoil my entire morning thefirstday she came back, but she turned my bedroom upside down too.

I tiptoed in to get my uniforms and found all my clothes on the floor, dirty and wrinkled. My sheets were ripped from the mattress. Everything under my bed was dug out. Mom claimed she was looking for her wedding ring—as if I didn’t know she’d pawned dad’s ring ages ago.

Because all my clothes had been tossed, the only clean uniform I could find was the old one I’d folded up in the back of my drawer.

I squeeze the strap of my book bag tighter and grit my teeth.

Why did mom have to come back? Why?

“Careful,” a deep voice says.

Moments later, I smack into someone’s palm.

I wake up from my stupor, tapping back into my surroundings. The crowded hallway. The students whispering and watching us. The posters on the wall. The open locker two inches from my face.What? Why am I so close to the locker?

I blink, but the locker’s still there. Open. Razor sharp. It’s only Dutch’s hand cupping my forehead that kept me from smashing into the metal and cracking my head open.

Stunned, I turn around.

Dutch is behind me, face stony. He crosses inked arms over his Redwood Prep sweater vest and stares at me with his predator eyes. Amber honey. Like a lion’s. Not quite golden but close enough. Especially when he stands in the sunlight like he’s doing now.

These prep school uniforms don’t suit him. He’s a freaking beast. A monster, several inches over six feet with two dark slashes of eyebrows and a mouth of pure menace on the bottom of his frighteningly attractive face. With a bone structure so chiseled, and an aura so dark, his bright, blond hair like spun wheat doesn’t belong. And yet it makes him even more arresting.

Light and shadows.

Beast and man.

Both at once.

“What the hell are you thinking about that you can’t even walk straight?” Dutch growls, leaning in close so his minty breath washes over my face.

My body shudders, aching with need for him.

And that makes me angry.

My life is such a freaking crapshow right now, dealing with mom on top of everything else. I don’t have space in my head for another complication.

And Dutch Cross, with his violent presence and his hands that can make me see stars, is thedefinitionof complicated.

I look up at him, falling into eyes so golden, they may as well be endless pools of honey. “Why are you following me around?”

“Following you?” He laughs darkly. “Does it look like I have nothing better to do, Brahms?”

“Itlookslike you’re stalking me.”

His eyebrows twitch. Suddenly, he slams his fist into the open locker and it bangs in my ear. I jump but, before I scold him, his fingers close around my wrist and he pushes me back, slamming me into the locker. He doesn’t use much force, but I still feel the breath knock out of my lungs when he steps into me.

I expect him to yell or punch the locker near my ear.

Something.

But he doesn’t.

“What’s wrong?” His voice is low, coaxing. Unexpectedly gentle. “You look like you didn’t sleep well last night and you’re totally out of it this morning.”

I blink in shock.

“Did you and Vi fight again?”