Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 777(@200wpm)___ 622(@250wpm)___ 518(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 777(@200wpm)___ 622(@250wpm)___ 518(@300wpm)
His jaw tightened. Anger flashed in his stormy green gaze. My stomach hollowed out, warning me that I should turn back before the waters got choppier, but I stayed my course.
“I thought you might—I mean, my mom said—I mean…” I thrust the container of muffins toward him. “I made you some muffins.”
Scowling, he looked at the container, then back up at me. “You made me muffins,” he reiterated flatly.
I nodded. “Banana muffins. They’re really good.”
His eyebrows rose. “Yeah? Good enough to make me forget my mom’s dead and it’s my fucking fault?”
My heart dropped. My face fell. The muffins would have, too, but the top of his desk caught them.
“That’s not true,” I said on impulse.
His gaze filled with hate. It wasn’t really me he was mad at, but in that moment he needed to punish someone, and I was standing in front of him looking like the perfect target.
He took the lid off the muffins and stood up. My heart started racing because he was standing so close to me. I shifted awkwardly, unsure what he was going to do. I tried to remember the other stuff I wanted to say, the stuff about how I was there if he wanted to talk.
But as I was trying to remember how I wanted to offer him comfort and support, he was grabbing one of the muffins I made him and moving to stand in front of me.
I didn’t even try to move. I never dreamed he would be mean to me just for trying to be nice, so when he grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled it out, I just stood there not knowing what to do. He smashed the muffin against my chest, then crumbled what was left in his hand and dropped it down my shirt, coating my training bra and my tummy with sugar, nuts, and muffin crumbs. My shirt was tucked into my skirt, so the muffin was trapped inside.
Everyone saw what he did. People started laughing—just a stunned guffaw at first, but then laughter erupted from every kid in the room.
I stood there with the crushed muffin trapped in my shirt and tears welling up in my eyes.
Landon smirked, malice in his eyes. “You know what? You were right,” he said. “That did help.”
I went back to my desk with tears sliding down my cheeks, my face and ears burning with humiliation. I gathered my stuff as quickly as I could and fled the school. I had a phone for emergencies, and I had to call and ask Mom to come get me.
Even though Landon was a massive jerk that day, I told myself I wouldn’t hold it against him if, when I went back to school, he had reflected on how unnecessarily mean he had been and apologized. I knew he was hurting, and Mom explained in the car on the way home that when some people are in pain, they lash out. It doesn’t make it right or fair and I certainly hadn’t deserved that treatment, but maybe it was just the way his grief was coming out and I shouldn’t take it personally.
Unfortunately, that apology never came.
I wasn’t even on Landon’s radar before, but he certainly knew I existed after that. He terrorized me every chance he got—just with pranks and making fun of me back then, stuff that made him look cool and made his dumb friends laugh, but when we got to high school, his harassment took a weird turn.
I went to a school football game with a couple of friends sophomore year. Landon isn’t on the team anymore; he got in trouble too many times for fighting, but he was back then. I didn’t look as awkward anymore. No more braces, just straight white teeth. No more training bra; mercifully, my B-cups had finally come in. I was by no means the kind of girl who attracted male attention as soon as she walked into a room, but I didn’t look so much like the before version of Mia from The Princess Diaries anymore.
It was a different setting than the one he was used to seeing me in. I guess I thought that was why, when he caught my eye and walked over after the game, he invited me to come to the afterparty at his cousin’s house. He told me they had a sweet pool so I should go home and get a bathing suit.
I was excited.
Looking back, I feel a little stupid because it was obviously a trick, but despite all the crap he had pulled over the years, I didn’t look at Landon through a suspicious lens. Maybe I even had those stupid high school love stories in my head where the popular asshat notices the nerdy girl and stops being an asshat because, clearly, he now sees her for the beautiful person she has always been and he’s madly in love with her.