Where We Left Off (Phoenix Falls Series Book 1)

I quickly shut my locker as I hear the doors to the hallway swing open.

This year’s class of sophomore boys is truly terrifying. I think it’s because they’re taller than the juniors, and the seniors are too depressed to care about keeping up a reputation anymore. I’m only a freshman but everyone can see the hierarchy. I know exactly whose radar to avoid this Fall.

I don’t know the one at the front but he has black hair, big shoulders, and he’s dripping with rain. Suddenly, he pulls his arm back and then slams it forward, launching the basketball in his hand like a missile. It whacks down on the floor so hard that it is re-propelled against the ceiling, before it bounces along the rest of the corridor away from its handler.

I don’t blame you little guy. Keep bouncing.

“Get that for me?” Shoulders is talking. It’s pre-period so the hallway is rammed and, almost comically, the entire corridor turns to see who he has graced with his attention.

My mouth goes dry.

He’s leaning back with the two other alphas and he’s staring dead into my eyes. The one to the right snorts like that’s the best joke he’s heard in the past four weeks. Dirty blond tousled hair and eyes that look like they could cut you. He thinks that he’s a stud, but he has the ugliest smirk that I’ve ever seen.

And to the left?

Tate. Coleson.

The tallest boy in the school, whose chocolate brown hair is in perpetual disarray. Rich tan skin, long black eyelashes, and a silver chain with a little cross dangling over the buttons of his shirt. I stalk-watch him every morning from my bedroom window.

The boy across the street.

Tate folds his arms across his chest until the patter of the basketball completely ceases, and then he turns his gaze to me.

A luscious grip tightens painfully in my chest.

Before I can turn myself off and on again in a bid to find some coherent words, I watch Tate shoot Shoulders with a withering look, lips parted like he’s about to say something, but then we’re figuratively saved by the bell.

A junior grabs the ball and runs it back to its owner, a puppy dog look in his eyes that begs Please let me join the team!

And then the actual bell sounds.

I immediately turn right and speed-walk down the hallway, the ominous thud of the basketball pounding again and again behind me as the sophomores dawdle their way to their next poor unsuspecting teacher. For some reason I hope that they’re on their way to a male teacher. I don’t like the thought of Dirty Blond anywhere near the female staff.

*

I walk my bike to the back of the house and then come around to the porch, unlocking the front door. I wash the school germs off my hands, make a drink, and then head to my room.

I have my favourite Breaking Benjamin CD already in my stereo so I hit play as I shrug out of my uniform and look at the house in front of me. Are my curtains open? Yes, but I’m not putting on a show. Tate’s mom, Pamela, and her new uniformed boyfriend work late every day, and Tate has extracurriculars until it’s almost dark out, so no one’s going to see me.

I don’t know what sports he plays on which days, but I know that he does almost everything. Football. Basketball. Swimming, but that’s off campus. His arms were built to lift heavy things, and he has the biggest hands that I’ve ever seen. I watch them like a vulture as he handles his food in the cafeteria.

I sit on my bed once I’m out of my school clothes and I pick up the book that we’re reading in Literature. I finish off the remaining sections in less than an hour and then reward my torture with a non-school book for fun. I shimmy down against my pillow until my neck is at a dangerous ninety degrees and I read until my mom is home and the outside is dark enough for me to need to put on a lamp.

Then I hear it. The door across the street slamming shut. I smile as I feel a little fire ignite in my belly.

I always hear him when he’s leaving.

I crawl to the edge of my bed and rise from my crouching position so that I can see his porch through my window.

He has something tucked under his arm and he looks really pissed off. He looks pissed off every night.

I see him walk to the top step of the porch and then he pauses. Mmm. He’s wearing the long-sleeved top which goes under his football jersey, giving me an explicit eyeful of his insane quarterback shoulders. He’s slipped into a pair of blue denim jeans – the proper workingman’s type, not the showy designer ones – and his tan hands are flexing like he’s cracking his knuckles one by one.

Then he looks right at me.

Shit, shit, shit!

I jolt like I’ve just been electrocuted, my heart bouncing like that goddamn basketball, and I throw myself back against my pillow, shuddering hard.

That is the hottest boy that I have ever seen my life. I spend a lot of my time wishing that I wasn’t straight because the guys at school totally suck, but for Tate Coleson I make the exception. How did he get so big? I bet he’s going to have loads of fun doing who-knows-what with all of the other popular people tonight. Some girl is going to get the full-force of his up-close attention and have the best night ever. He’ll definitely kiss her. Maybe he’ll do even more.

I grab my baby-pink teddy bear and clutch it tightly to my chest.

I don’t look out of the window again for the rest of the night.