He holds it out to me.
I take it with hands that I have to will to stay steady. “You didn’t have to—”
“It made me think of you.” He reaches up, takes a gentle hold of one of my curls, as has become his habit. But this time, he doesn’t stretch it out and let it boing back into place. Instead, he simply worries it between his fingers.
Our eyes meet, and suddenly the room feels about twenty degrees hotter. My breath catches in my throat, and I bite my lower lip in an effort to keep myself from saying—or doing—something we’re not ready for.
Except Jaxon looks like he might be ready for all kinds of things, with his gaze fastened on my mouth and his body swaying toward me just a little.
And then he’s reaching out, pressing his thumb against my lip until I get the hint and stop biting it.
“Jaxon.” I reach for him, but he’s already across the room, his hand on the doorknob.
“Rest that ankle,” he tells me as he opens the door. “If it feels better tomorrow, I’ll take you to my favorite place.”
“Which is?”
He quirks a brow, tilts his head. And doesn’t say another word as he slips into the hall and closes the door behind him.
I stare after him, the scrolled-up piece of paper he gave me still in my hand. And wonder how on earth I’m going to keep this beautiful, broken boy from cracking my already battered heart wide open.
26
The Uniform
Doesn’t Make the Woman,
But it Sure Does Bring
Out the Insecurities
Pants or skirt?
I stare at my closet and all the clothes neatly lined up in it, courtesy of my cousin. I know I should have done this last night, but after a giant plate of nachos followed by three episodes of Legacies and a marathon gossip session over my jam-packed day, I didn’t have the energy to do much more than lie in bed and think about Jaxon.
I turn toward my desk—and the paper Jaxon brought me yesterday, which is lying directly under the copy of Twilight he sent me. Not because I don’t like it but because I like it too much, and I don’t want to share it with anyone. Not even Macy or Heather.
It’s a page ripped straight out of a copy of Ana?s Nin’s journals—I don’t know which one, because the heading doesn’t say. I almost googled it yesterday to find out, but there’s something special about not knowing, something intimate about having only this one page of her diary to go by. To have only these words that Jaxon wanted me to see.
Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence.
The page has a lot more than that simple phrase on it, but as I read and reread it about a hundred times yesterday, these are the words that jumped out at me over and over again. Partly because they were so swoon-worthy and partly because I’m starting to feel the same way about him. About Jaxon, whose deepest thoughts and heart and pain seem to so closely echo mine.
It’s a lot to take in at any time, let alone on my first day, when my mouth is dry and my stomach is churning with nerves.
Which is why I’m currently standing here, in front of my closet with absolutely no idea of what to wear. Because I obviously worried about the wrong first-day stuff…
Do the girls usually wear their uniform pants or skirts here? Or doesn’t it matter? I try to remember what Macy wore the last couple of days, but it’s all a blank besides the tropical-print snow pants she wore for the snowball fight.
“Skirt,” Macy says as she walks out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her head. “There are wool tights to go with it in the bottom drawer of your dresser.”
I close my eyes in relief. Thank God for cousins.
“Awesome, thanks.” I slip one of the black skirts off the hanger and step into it, then add a white blouse and black blazer before going over to my dresser for a pair of black tights.
“If you wear the blouse, you’ve also got to wear the tie,” Macy tells me as she opens one of my dresser drawers and pulls out a black tie with purple and silver stripes on it.
“Seriously?” I demand, looking from her to the tie and back again.
“Seriously.” She drapes it around my neck. “Do you know how to tie one?”
“Not a clue.” I head back toward the closet. “Maybe I should go for one of the polo shirts.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll show you. It’s a lot easier than it looks.”
“If you say so.”
She grins. “I do say so.”
She starts by draping the tie unevenly around my neck and wrapping the longer end over the shorter end. A couple more wraps and a tuck and pull through—all narrated by my cousin—and I’ve got a perfectly tied tie around my neck…even if it is a little tight.