Free Everything: A Singed Wings Novel by Erin Noelle Page B

a headache, I spent the rest of the night locked in my room, even eating dinner in there, so I didn’t have to answer my parents’ questions about my day at school or listen to Ashlynn ramble on and on about meaningless shit. Then, the next morning, I woke up an hour earlier than normal and got dressed, leaving my house before sunrise.
    Parked in the back corner of the school parking lot, I waited inside my truck until I saw her red car pull up, and watched as she hopped out and rushed to the building, chin tucked to her chest as she tried to escape the cold, harsh wind. Grabbing my backpack, I followed suit, bolting inside and up to her classroom, hoping I’d get to her before Mr. Carroll did this morning.
    I couldn’t wait any longer. We had to talk.
    And I really needed to taste that sweet little mouth again.

 
    IT WASN’T QUITE seven in the morning and I was already exhausted. I hadn’t been able to sleep worth a shit, tossing and turning as I worried myself sick over the Everett situation. At five-fifteen, I’d finally given up and pushed through a half-hour run on Lindsey’s treadmill in the garage, but instead of clearing my head and invigorating me, all it did was give me more time to analyze, reanalyze, and then overanalyze the same damn crap I hadn’t stopped thinking about since the previous aft
    ernoon.
    Unlocking the door to my classroom, I stepped inside and flipped the light on then sighed as my gaze immediately honed in on the seat he’d sat in yesterday. My head shook with disappointment at my lack of resolve. The entire drive from Lindsey’s house to the school, I had vowed to myself I wasn’t going to allow him to preoccupy my thoughts all day, and even though I knew that task would be damn near impossible, I hadn’t even made it five feet inside the room before I was already mulling over what I needed to do.
    The night before, after an apartment hunt that’d come up empty, I’d relaxed in a hot bubble bath with a glass of wine, hoping if I could find my inner calm-cool-and-collected self, I could process the day’s events more sensibly, with the mature, levelheadedness of an adult woman. Keyword: adult.
    I’d reminded myself no less than a gazillion times that afternoon and evening that I was supposed to be the adult in this situation. No matter how old he looked or mature he seemed the night I met him, and regardless that the age of consent in Texas was seventeen, which he had to at least be if he was a senior, I was a twenty-five-year-old woman with a masters degree, while he was a high school student. My high school student. My high school student with a girlfriend .
    So why am I not more disgusted with myself over this? And why am I most upset about the fact I can’t go back up to that bar to see him again? And why can’t I stop thinking about him, even though he’s a lying, cheating asshole?
    The way he held me captive with just his intense gaze. How his hungry kisses ignited a raging inferno inside me. The power that hummed in my veins when I drew his cock between my lips and sucked him deep to the back of my throat. Images of him, of me, of us , swirled in my head, a kaleidoscope of forbidden desire.
    A knock on the door interrupted my wayward thoughts, and as I whirled around, mostly expecting to see the ever-attentive Liam checking on me yet again, I hissed in a sharp breath at the sight of a disgruntled-looking Everett looming in the doorway. Wearing his standard tattered jeans that hung just right off his hips with a navy thermal that clung to his strapping shoulders and chest, he looked like he’d jumped out of the shower and came straight here with his damp, disheveled hair and the dark stubble lining his jaw.
    “We need to talk,” he demanded, as he entered the classroom, the door automatically closing behind him. “Now.”
    “I, uh, I don’t…” My words dissipated into thin air as he grew incredibly near, stopping less than a foot in front of me. The clean,