Page 4 of Reasons We Break

Her eyes widened. He realized belatedly that he’d never lost his cool with her before. But he’d been thinking about this all night, and there was only one reason she would’ve done it. And it pissed him off.

“What?” Simran said. “I don’t want anything from you.”

“Bullshit. You let me leave with aknifeyesterday. You could’ve let Kerr see me. There’s no way they’d make you tutor me after that.” He was frustrated. She’d lasted longer than all the others, and for what? They weren’t making progress. It was a stalemate. Why wasn’t she giving up? “What do you want? Me to be grateful? Let you talk fractions so you can get a reference letter? Or”—he laughed as the possibility occurred to him—“you want some free product, is that it?”

She just stared. It pissed him off even worse. And confused him, too, honestly. Most people would have their favour ready to ask. “Spit it out,” he snapped, “or I swear I’m going to the office right now to fess up.”

Her eyes flashed with alarm. “They’ll expel you.”

He knew that. With all his infractions lately, this’d be the last straw. But right now, it felt like the better option. He didn’t need to add her to the list of people he owed. “So?”

She looked down at the table, her expression a mask. Finally, she said, “Fine. You’re right. I do want something.”

“Which is?”

“I want you to try in our tutoring sessions. Or I’ll turn you in, and it’ll be your word versus mine.”

The knot of tension in him loosened. He sank into his seat. Threats, he understood.

Still, he was a negotiator. “I’ll try until the end of this semester. That’s it. No one will expel me for something from a semester ago, especially if they know you held on to it that long.”

Simran shook her head. “You’re underestimating Mr. Kerr’s dislike of you. We’ll go until June.”

Rajan narrowed his eyes. This fucking nerd was driving a hard bargain suddenly, for someone who only appeared to have come up with it five seconds ago. But maybe that was her game.

“Icouldbe bluffing,” Simran added, as if guessing his thoughts. “But would it besobad to just...try, in our sessions?”

She sounded almost hopeful. Rajan had a feeling he knew why. “Ms. Fernandez said you’ve never failed at what you do,” he said conversationally. “Guess you have that sort of rep. Don’t want me ruining it, huh?”

“That’s not true. I haven’t always succeeded.”

“Yeah? Then why’s Fernandez so up your ass?”

He didn’t really expect Simran to give an answer—it was rhetorical, really, sinceallthe teachers were up her ass—but she did. “Once, I overheard her saying some very unflattering things about the principal. She’s been kind to me ever since. Because she’s afraid I’ll tell him otherwise.”

Rajan stared. Simran folded her hands neatly in front of her. In the ensuing silence, it felt like she was daring him to ask,Would you?And the fact that he was wondering it at all made his view of her shift slightly.

He’d thought he was in a unique position to learn the gossip in this school, like what he’d learned about Zach’s family situation recently, because he was always here after hours and between classes, doing detention and running teachers’ errands as punishment. So naturally he overheard their casual conversations, saw the shit they left out on their desks. But Simran did, too. Just for different reasons.

The idea of them having any similarity was disturbing. He leaned back. “Say we do it. How do I know you’ll be satisfied with my ‘trying’? Because teachers usually aren’t.”

“If you’re trying and not doing well, that’s the teacher failing, not you.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he ignored it entirely. “You’re being optimistic as hell, but fine. End of June it is.”

“And longer if you like it.”

“Longer if I—” He gaped. “You’ve got a lot of balls, you know that?”

Simran merely smiled. “Give me a pen.”

Reluctantly, he did. She opened her notebook and started writing.

Wow, they were actually doing this. She was about to find out how stupid he was. A familiar sense of dread rose in him, but he was distracted from it when she glanced at his bruised jaw again. “Did you win the fight?”

Her voice was hesitant. She had, after all, seen him steal a knife. And maybe she’d heard some rumours, too.

Just the thought of what he’d witnessed last night made his stomach curdle. And Zach, well...Rajan suspected he wasn’t going to be a problem for a while. Not after Perry had threatened him at needlepoint. Not gunpoint.Needlepoint. Rajan really had to hand it to Perry for that one. At least with a gun, you knew what kind of pain you were in for.