Broken Ever After (2 page)

I think the most disgusting flirting incident I
’d witnessed was Mrs Bradshaw the school receptionist; she was a sixty-five year old widow so no one could blame her for trying, but it was horrific to say the least. I saw him physically shudder when he walked away from her that day, although I remember the sexy smirk he flashed me when he caught me giggling at the whole situation.

“
You find that amusing?” he asked me in his sexy low tone, trying his best to keep his face in a neutral expression and failing.

“
Maybe” I replied equally low with a smirk of my own. He kept walking as I waited at the window for Mrs Bradshaw to pull herself together; he looked back catching me checking out his sexy rear. He flashed me that smirk again, making me blush; he stood tall and ran his hand through his dark and beautifully messy hair before entering the teacher’s bathroom. What I would have done to follow him in there. To run my hands through that hair; to be looking right in to his pale green eyes with hazel flecks around the pupil. To have his lips on mine; his kisses trailing along my jaw up to my ear.

“
I want you, Miss Stevens” he’d whisper into my ear as he’d lift me to the counter top. His lips would follow a line down my throat to my shirt as his fingers slowly worked through my buttons one by one. “Olivia…” I could hear him murmur my name as I tangled my fingers deeper into his hair, sighing as I felt his lips travel over the exposed skin at the top of my bra. Next he’d push my shirt from my shoulders and down my arms; his fingers setting straight to work on the clasp on my back.

“
Miss Stevens!” My eyes focussed on the English book in front of me as I heard my name called in an exasperated tone; I shook my head trying to clear the images now coursing through my mind.

“
Yes?” I cleared my throat and glanced around nervously, taking in that the whole class was staring at me.

“
Oh, you are with us after all.” She glared at me over the rim of her dark framed glasses.

“
Yes Miss”

Shit!
I hadn’t realised the English teacher, Mrs Hastings, had come in and had started taking the register. According to Lily, she had said my name four times before I looked up, my cheeks burned bright as Lily gave me a knowing smile.

I tried my best to listen during class and take notes. Next to Art
, English was probably my easiest subject, I loved to read and could easily spend an entire day lost inside the world of a good book; it was just so hard to focus once those thoughts were in my head about him. Second period wasn’t much better as I had Biology. I was in knots by the time lunch had arrived and I was glad to get outside so I could just sit for a while with Lily, Violet and Megan and think about something other than leaving in a few weeks.

It was a beautiful day so we sat where most of the sixth
-formers hung around; we all got to talking about how Lily was getting on with Scott, how long had she liked him before Megan managed to turn the conversation around to her as she always seemed to do.

I stopped listening when I saw Mr Matthews stepping ou
t of the dinner hall with five high-school girls following his tail, shoving each other towards him and giggling. I groaned out loud halting the flow of conversation.

“
Are we bothering you, Olivia?” Megan’s high pitched, nasal and annoying voice trilled in my ears. I realised I’d interrupted yet another one of her stories about daddy taking her shopping at the weekend. She was the Mayor of London’s daughter (her interpretation – her daddy owned London) and she had him wrapped tightly around her little finger. We weren’t really friends, she annoyed the hell out of me the majority of the time, but she has been Violet’s best friend ever since junior school so she says she can’t just abandon her, she’d feel too bad about it. I put up with her for the sake of Violet; Megan probably felt the same towards me. Not that I cared for Megan’s opinion; we seemed to spend most of our time ignoring or avoiding each other.

She looked down on me, with her eyes so grey that they could have been forged from steel and threatened to slice through me like a sword. I could feel them hacking at my neck trying to take my head clean off as she glanced at my throat.
I wasn’t anyone special in her opinion so I didn’t deserve to be at the school. As far as she could see I was just the daughter of a surgeon and a nurse, an ordinary girl in a school for England’s elite.

“
Umm, no. I just remembered something I was meant to do this morning.” I shrugged and gave her a small smile that didn’t reach my eyes. I hope she noticed that. She did – huffing and leaping right back into the conversation making sure it all revolved around her; I tuned her out again and focused my attention back on Mr Matthews as he walked across the school grounds, watching him from behind the curtain of my hair so I could avert my eyes easily if he looked over.

He beckoned another teacher that he wanted to talk to
, the girls around him automatically disbanded; shaking his head he laughed as they left. He talked to Mr Morris, the boy’s PE teacher and his best friend, for a few minutes before he carried on making his way over to the door situated behind us. I shifted to sit side on to the girls, leaning against a tree so I had a perfect view of his entire walk without even moving my head. As he got closer though I couldn’t help but look straight at him, how was it possible to make just walking from A to B look sexy as sin?

Every time I looked at him it made my heart beat faster
, heat flooded through my cheeks, my breathing became shallow and I had to press my legs together with the warm heat pooling at my centre from just looking at him. I had to try hard to swallow past the sudden dryness in my throat. It wasn’t fair.

I hated being in this stupid school
, I should have left at the end of high-school and chosen to go to a sixth-form somewhere else, but my education was already paid for. I doubt I would have gone anywhere else even if I had the mind to anyway, the prospect of spending another 2 years being near him persuaded me to stay; no matter how tortured it made me feel inside.

I could never actually be with Jamie Matthews so what was the point having those feelings?
I slumped further down against the tree feeling pathetic. I’d never had a proper boyfriend because I just couldn’t feel for anyone the way I felt for him. I had all of four boyfriends but none of them could make me feel how I felt when I looked at Mr Matthews. Maybe because he wasn’t available to me is what made me feel that way; I usually closed myself off to guys that wanted to ‘get up close and personal’, it was hard to let them in after everything that happened to me as a child. I shuddered thinking about that.

‘
It’s just a stupid crush… It’ll be ok when I leave and get to university’ was my daily mantra to keep me sane. The thing that hurt the most was that I could never tell him how I felt. Pain ripped through my chest as I watched him reading through a pile of papers that were just handed to him. I felt so stupid; I couldn’t look at him anymore.

“
I don’t feel too well; I’m going inside to see if registration class is open, I need to sit inside for a while.” I declared as I stood up hugging my arms around myself holding my chest together hoping the pain inside would go away, earning more hatred filled looks from Megan.
Urgh… Bitch
. I mentally took the salad fork from her hand and stabbed her in the eye with it. Repeatedly.

“
Do you want us to come and sit with you? There is still half an hour before the bell yet.” Violet asked.

“
No I’ll be ok” I managed to force a smile, as I switched my weight from foot to foot as he stepped closer every second. “I’m just getting a headache and feel a bit nauseous. Maybe if I put my head down for half an hour I’ll be ok, see you guys in a little while” I smiled again and grabbed my things, after throwing Megan one last glare that I’d hoped would be enough to strike her down there and then.

I looked between Mr Matthews and the door; if I walked fast I could beat him in so I wouldn
’t have to walk with him or follow him down the corridor looking like one of his crazy stalkers. I took off nearly running to get through the door before him and ended up twenty or so feet ahead of him before running up the stairs to get a bit of extra distance from him. I walked as fast as I could down the corridor but I could still hear his footsteps behind me; they sounded a little hurried like my own, his long strides giving him an advantage over my smaller ones.

“
Miss Stevens” he called in that stupid sexy, low tone of his, but I forced my gaze to the floor and ignored him. “Olivia?” he called to me again. I groaned internally.
What the hell am I doing?
Usually I beg for him to stop me to talk to me on my own and it never happens.
Why am I running now?
I kept my head down and carried on walking towards my class; I heard a door click as his footsteps stopped, he must have gone into the maths office so I could relax and afford a glance back. The corridor was empty and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I reached for the handle to open my classroom door and it was locked
, it was never locked. It’s typical that the one occasion I really needed to get in the room, that the door would be locked. Why did it have to be now? When all I wanted to do was hide from the world for half an hour! I kicked it, threw my bag on the floor and leaned my back against the wall sliding down to the floor with my head in my hands.
Why can’t it just be easy?
I only had two weeks of classes left and then a week of exams and it would all be over,
I can do this, can’t I?
There is no need to fall apart now. I’d made it through the last six years with a crush on him; three weeks would be no big deal. I began to tell myself I could get through it. “I can do it… I can do it…” I whispered to myself, thumping my fist against my forehead with every word “I
can
do it… I
can
do it…
Fuck! I can do it! I CAN-
” I jumped and yelped when a voice startled me.

“
Whatever it is you plan on doing I hope it’s A- fun, B- not illegal and C- not too dangerous… But by the psyching up you are giving yourself I’m pretty sure it is B or C.” he chuckled. I never answered him, deciding to think for a minute watching his beautiful smirk fall as he took in my expression. Yup, definitely B. Well as far as school rules went. Can I just blurt it out? No that would be stupid! “Are you ok, Olivia?”

I wanted to scream
‘NO’ at him; I groaned internally again, he was the only person that called me Olivia, apart from my parents when they were pissed at me, I always preferred ‘Liv’ and if anyone dared call me ‘Ollie’ they got hurt. Badly.

The way he said my name made my stomach flip; how he rolled the syllables around his tongue could turn me into a pool of water in an instant. I could feel tears building in my eyes and had to hold in a sob
, I felt so torn.

“
Umm, I’m- I’m fine” I smiled up at him.

“
No you aren’t; what’s the matter?” Concern was all over his face, his brows furrowed while he chewed nervously on the corner of his bottom lip as he studied me; I wanted to leap up to him and kiss him.

“
I… I just don’t feel too well that’s all.” I couldn’t look at him and lie, so I looked down burying half of my face into the crook of my elbow.

“
Are you lying to me?” he crouched down in front of me balancing on the toes of his perfectly shined shoes, resting his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped together in front of him a few inches away from my knees.

“
No” I replied sharply giving away that I was.

“
Hmm… Well I know you aren’t ill as you would have ran to the bathroom if you were going to be sick and I saw you talking with your friends not more than five minutes ago, looking completely fine” he looked me all the way down and quickly averted his eyes; just as quickly he stood upright again and cleared his throat.

Realisation dawned on me hard as I remembered how I was sat. I had slumped down the wall to a squat and I forgot to tuck my skirt underneath myself; he
’d just caught a glimpse of my underwear.
Oh fantastic.
I blushed and stood up straightening out the black pleated skirt of my uniform against my legs, he cleared his throat again before looking back at me with his cheeks slightly flushed. What the hell did he have to be embarrassed about?

“
So, if you aren’t ill then it’s something to do with me as your face fell as soon as you saw me.” Crap, he noticed that?

Yes it
’s you, it’s always you Jamie.
“No, it’s not you.” My voice wobbled a little with the lie and a traitor tear rolled down my cheek that I quickly wiped away.

He folded his arms over his chest defensively.
“Is it because I gave you detention? Because I couldn’t not with the amount of other teachers around at the time or one of them would have given it you. At least I can go easy and just let you study but they would have probably wasted your time with something meaningless; I know you’ve never caused any trouble before and I wouldn’t have giv-” his rambling on and on made me want to scream for him to shut the hell up.