The Bad Boy with a Heart of Gold

✖ Chapter 7 ✖

I was a girl on a mission and Sawyer knew it. After Mr. Davies and the Principal put the carrot and the stick in my hands, the former went out to find Sawyer with the news and... well, let's just say the latter proved elusive. At some point I saw Mr. Davies catch Sawyer in between periods, only for the boy to dash into the restrooms. It'd have been funny if I didn't have skin in the game. But now I did.

So I chased after him, too. Except with more wits than my favorite teacher. See, he didn't know the things about Sawyer that I did. Like for example, his hiding spots.

I knew he had detention all this week, which meant he'd be late for his part time at papa's car shop and I would have to make sure that the tardiness went on his file and his pay was docked in turn. That was why this week was dead and gone, I wouldn't get him to start working on his academics even if I bound him to a desk and smacked him up the head with a book. But I did have to make sure we got started next week. That would give me only one month to turn him around and spin this into a heartwarming story for my early admission college applications.

Time was already ticking. With that in mind I stood at the edge of the school building, overlooking the large expanse that was both the baseball and football fields of Metro High. All the people I never wanted to hang out with usually spent their lunch time under the bleachers. This went anywhere between the kids with questionable hygiene, the ones who wanted to find a shady but somewhat isolated place to make out and fondle each other, and the ones who just wanted to be alone.

At any given time, Sawyer could fall into one of the last two categories. I had a high probability of finding him there.

I gripped my bag's handle hard and marched away from the protection of the building, into the blasting sun of a clear noon in Central Florida, until it gave way to the shadows under the bleachers. I tried not to make eye contact with anybody I found. That was, until I found my prey and he made eye contact with me.

Funny, because when he did I felt like I was the one in danger.

His eyebrows went up as I stood in front of him. Slowly, and I knew it was just to get on my nerves, he looked me up and down. As if he couldn't quite believe that I dared join him under the bleachers. He was sprawled on the mottled grass, propped up on his elbows as he smoked a cigarette. Which was totally against school policy.

I dropped my bag and bent forward. Before he could react, I'd taken the cigarette right off his lips and thrown it on the ground, putting it out with my shoe. This did not seem to affect him, contrary to how I thought he'd react.

"Why do you do this stuff?" I asked him, wiping the hand that touched the thing against my jeans. "Don't you know these things kill?"

He snorted and leaned his head back, exposing the long chords of muscle of his neck. When he looked back at me he was smirking. "I'll die of something anyway."

My whole face scrunched up. "You're seventeen, for Pete's sake. If you're trying to sound cool, know that I think you sound like a little kid trying to imitate a jaded movie actor, or something. It's dumb."

Sawyer rolled his eyes and pulled up to sitting cross legged. He ran a hand through the long locks of blond hair he never kept brushed and sighed.

"Princess, if you're here to talk shit at me I'm gonna ask you to turn your pretty ass around and take it away."

I sucked in a sharp breath that was more a warning to myself than to him. This was why dealing with him was never a chore I looked forward to. He always tried to shock me. Ever since we were kids, he'd always try to spew something out of that mouth of his that would make me run or cry, or preferably both. And although he'd stopped having the intended effect a couple of years ago, when I finally learned to look at him with more contempt than dread, he still had the power to make my temper flare.