I looked at her boots and only then realized what she was wearing.
I’d been too focused on her hair, her body, her face, those kissable lips, and those honey-sun-colored eyes.
But now that I was looking, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking how cute she looked in them.
“If you weren’t wearing boots, I would’ve taken you the long way. It sucks to have wet feet all day,” she admitted.
Just as she said that, a flash of white caught my eye.
I narrowed my eyes, then started to run.
I made it to my brother’s side just in time to intercept the punch a big motherfuckin’ jock was aiming at his face.
I pushed him hard out of the way, and he went stumbling because he wasn’t expecting it.
Then I hauled my brother up to his feet and looked him in the eyes.
“You okay, East?” I asked.
Easton blinked.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “I’m okay. Watch out!”
I threw an elbow out and took the guy in the sternum.
“Don’t fuck with me,” I ordered the big fucker. “I’ve trained for my entire life in Jiu-Jitsu. I could take you down so fast and hard you wouldn’t even see it coming.”
And I had.
Up until my dad died last year, he’d forced me to.
I’d never been appreciative until this year when my father died, and I had to become Easton’s protector.
Easton, my scrawny little bookworm brother that could solve a Rubik’s cube in thirty seconds, but couldn’t throw a punch to save his life.
“You should probably back off, Acer,” I heard Beckham’s voice sound from behind me. “He means it. And he lives next door to us. My dad will notice if he has any bruising from fighting and ask him about it.”
Now that stopped ‘Acer’ flat.
“Fuck you,” Acer growled, then stalked off.
I rolled my eyes and then turned back to my brother.
“What the fuck?” I asked. “What happened there?”
Easton sighed and pushed a hand through his hair.
“I was walking, man. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and ran right into him. It was my fault,” he grumbled.
I sighed. “Seriously, Easton. Pull your head out of your book every once in a while and pay attention to your surroundings. That’s going to come back and bite you in the ass one of these days.”
Easton flipped me off, and with a muttered ‘thanks’ he walked off, not bothering to look back.
“So you have a brother living with you?” the girl who’d stayed at my side asked curiously.
I looked over at her to see her studying Easton’s rapidly departing back.
“No,” I grumbled. “Easton’s mom is in the military. She was overseas, and Easton was staying with my father. Then my father died, and now he’s back with his mother, who was able to retire from the military. In the beginning, before we knew if she could come home or not, I had started the emancipation process in the hopes that Easton could live with me, but they wouldn’t allow me to ‘keep’ him.”
Beckham frowned. “That sucks.”
“It does,” I agreed. “But it is what it is. Where’s the office? I have to go get my schedule.”
She took me to the office and stayed with me long enough to show me where my first class was, then hauled ass to her own class.
The rest of the day was spent bored as hell.
Unlike what I looked like, I was smart. That meant that all of these classes that I was attending—honors English, Calculus, and all of the other ‘smart’ classes I could get my hands on, weren’t something that most people could not pay attention in.
Most people weren’t me, though.
Apparently, along with my dad’s bad attitude, Easton and I also got his smarts.
Though, Easton used his for good while I used mine for whatever the hell I wanted.
By the time lunch rolled around, I knew that this year was going to seriously blow.
There was one bright spot, though.
And that happened to be the girl with the curly hair and honey eyes that made me want to reach out and curl her in tight to me.
She looked up and saw me staring from across the room and gestured me over.
I shook my head and went into the hot lunch line, grabbing my food and going to the opposite end of the lunchroom from where she was.
But she ignored my obvious rebuff and came to sit with me.
“You’re too good to sit with me?” she asked.
I took a bite of shitty mashed potatoes.
“What part of ‘I’m bad news’ did you not understand? Plus, I won our bet,” I said. “You owe me a trip around town. You can either borrow your parents’ car, or you can go for a ride on my bike.”
Her eyes seemed to gleam. “You have a motorcycle?”
My lips tipped up at the corner. “Sure do.”
“Oh, boy,” she whispered. “Are you eating?”
I looked down at my less than appetizing food and grimaced. “Yeah.”
“The snack bar line is way better,” she admitted. “From now on, you should get your lunch from there.”
I picked at my food.
“I would if this shit wasn’t free for me,” I admitted. “Having no money ain’t no joke. I’d like to keep the money I do have since it’s not like I’ll ever get anymore unless I get a second job.”
She tilted her head slightly sideways. “If you don’t mind me asking, how are you living next to me without any money?”
“Easton’s mother,” I said. “Dad’s life insurance bought the house. I have a sizable income from his pension. But Easton’s mom is providing me with weekly groceries, motorcycle insurance, and every once in a while, a free meal or two. As long as I stay away from her son.”
“She doesn’t like you?” she guessed. “She thinks that you’re bad news, too? Are you?” she wondered.
I grinned widely at her. “Maybe.”
Overall, my day wasn’t complete shit.
In fact, I ended up having three classes in total with Beckham, one of those being our last class, meaning we could walk home together.
Only, my day was turned to shit almost the moment that our houses came into view.
Why?
Because her father saw us walking next to each other and lost his shit.
“Beckham, inside,” Foster ordered.
Beckham sighed. “See you tomorrow, Troup.”
“Yeah,” I agreed as I watched her go.
It wasn’t until she was all the way inside that her father, Foster Spurlock turned his narrow-eyed gaze to me.
He tucked his arms across his wide chest and let me have it with both barrels.
“Did some checking up on you,” he said. “Quite a rap sheet you have.”
I clenched my teeth.
He had no fuckin’ clue why I had the rap sheet.
He didn’t know that, at night, before I was emancipated, my foster brother and his dad would take turns beating the shit out of me when I was asleep. He didn’t know that the time that I got kicked out permanently, the motherfucker had been trying to grope the younger foster kid he had in his care.
He didn’t know shit about me and was only assuming by a few pieces of paper on a computer that he knew me.