Page 7 of The One

“You’re here.” I kept my voice low so I wouldn’t attract any unwanted attention, and I crouched down to hide my face from the teacher. “I thought …”

What did I think?

Was I even making any fucking sense?

“I know. I thought I was gone forever too. But here I am.” She rubbed her finger under her bottom lip, and I could be wrong, but it looked like her hand was shaking.

I couldn’t think of anything to reply with. I could only stare at her. At her pretty face and curly light-brown hair and perfect smile with teeth that were no longer covered in braces. Hazel eyes that made my pulse pound. This wasn’t a pounding like the headaches I sometimes got after practice when I hadn’t eaten or drunk enough. This was a pounding that went straight to my dick. Enough so that I had to adjust myself or Lainey would get quite the sight.

My freshman year, when I’d initially laid eyes on her, I’d felt the same way. It was the first day of high school, and we were in gym class. I was positioned across from her, a volleyball net between us, her shorts riding high up her thighs when she jumped for a block. She was, by far, the hottest chick in our school, and as I stared at her, I decided right then and there that she was going to be my girl.

Within a week, she was eating lunch with me at the football table. We held hands after my third home game when she came onto the field to greet me. We almost made out at the homecoming dance, but we were interrupted by her sister, and the opportunity never presented itself again because she’d moved across the country the next day.

“You’re here … for good?” I asked.

I tried to keep my stare on her face, but my eyes had a mind of their own.

Lainey’s brace-less smile wasn’t the only thing about her that had changed. Her chest was twice the size, and I couldn’t stop gawking at it. And her legs, they were longer, and her waist,even as she sat behind a desk in the khaki skirt uniform, looked curvier.

If she’d been hot back then, she was fucking gorgeous now.

Her bottom lip caved inward, and she bit it, nodding. “Dad was hired to run the whole LA office. We’re not going anywhere.”

His job was what had sent them to the East Coast.

“And Penelope?” I asked. “She’s here too?”

For someone who didn’t know Lainey’s face as well as I did, they’d have a very hard time telling the identical twins apart. Eyes, hair, mouth, height, and body were mostly the same—aside from Lainey’s dimple on her right cheek and a freckle to the left of the bridge of her nose. I thought they looked as different as their personalities. Penelope wanted to be the center of attention. She wanted every eye on her at all times and would do anything to stay in the spotlight. Lainey wanted to blend into the background. She was perfectly happy, going unseen and unappreciated.

“I’m sure you’ll see her within the next few periods or hear her in the hallway at least.” She smiled and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, revealing a cartilage piercing she hadn’t had before.

I let out a quiet breath. I wanted to talk to her, and I couldn’t really do that in here, so I asked, “What period do you have lunch?”

“Mr. Cole,” I heard.

Busted.

I slowly looked toward the aisle, where our teacher was standing in between our desks, a stern look on his face.

“Would you like to join the rest of the class?” he asked me. “Or would you like to continue talking through my lecture and spend this afternoon with me in after-school detention?”

I tapped my pencil against my notebook. “Sorry.”

“Miss Taylor, why don’t you stay after class for a few minutes, and we can discuss what you need to do to get caught up?”

“Okay,” she replied.

As the teacher spent the next forty or so minutes boring us from the front of the class, I focused on Lainey, stealing nonstop glances at her. I didn’t take a single note or hear anything the teacher spoke about.

All I could think and see and hear was her.

My mind filled with questions the longer I sat here.

Does she still like me in that way?

Did she ever think about me?

Did she miss me the way I missed her?