Page 38 of Billionaires Don't Date Cheerleaders

Well she is his guide

Paige

Being his guide doesn’t automatically make them friends

Sloane

It would be kinda depressing to not be friends with him as his guide

I have to spend all my time at school with him

Alisha

Well you don’t HAVE to

Sloane

??

Alisha

I mean… he’s been here for weeks. He should know his way around by now

Fiona

Makes one wonder why he wants to stick around you so much

I glanced at Jude, who was sitting next to me on the cot in the nurse’s office. They couldn’t be right, could they? He didn’t have some ulterior motive to spending so much time with me, right? No, he just needed me as a guide, and that was it. Of course, that was it. What other reason could there be?

“Is the ice too cold?” Jude asked.

“What?”

He brushed my ankle, which was propped on an ice pack. “Is it too cold? Or too warm? I can?—”

“It’s fine,” I said. I was pretty sure he was starting to feel guilty about kicking me now that my ankle was swelling up, but I didn’t blame him. I knew he was just trying to help in the bestway he knew how. “Actually, I’m surprised she hasn’t told us to go back to class yet.”

“I told you before,” Jude said. “Hanging with me offers some perks.”

“Like a get-out-of-class free card?”

“Well, maybe not get out of class entirely, or we wouldn’t be in this mess,” Jude said. “More like take a longer than necessarily needed absence from class.”

“Like when I got out of class early to rescue you from being locked out.”

“Exactly. Look how much I’ve helped you already.”

I laughed and shook my head. “Nobody has ever accused you of being humble, have they?”

Jude laughed as well. “Definitely not.” He ran a finger along the bottom of my leg, causing goosebumps to appear. He blinked a couple of times. “Actually, sometimes it feels like there’s almost nobody who knows me at all anymore.”

I stayed silent for a moment, not quite sure what to do with that statement.

“Why do you say that?”

Jude shrugged, his eyes trained on my ankle instead of on me. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course, it matters.”