Inhale, Exhale - By Sarah M. Ross Page 0,32

drug charge. Christian has no record, but lots of his friends do. I’m sending a pic to your phone.”

He sounded familiar, but until I saw his picture it didn’t click. He was one of the guys from my rival high school who paid me to hack in and change his grades so he could pass and graduate. He and a few of his buddies also approached me about a year ago and asked me to break into the police station database and wipe out their possession with intent to sell arrest record. It wasn’t Christian who was arrested, but it may as well have been.

“JT, you’re my hero, man. I actually know that piece of shit, though I doubt he’d remember. He’s a stoner loser, and I’d bet money he was the new dealer Tonya found and that she was the one who delivered those flowers to Jillian’s desk.”

“Yeah, but you can’t go to her with this. If you don’t have any proof, she’s never going to believe you.”

I ran a frustrated hand through my hair. “No matter what, he doesn’t deserve Jillian. He’s nowhere close to being good enough for her, and I can’t figure out why she’s with him.”

Did she honestly think she didn’t deserve better? Or that she’d just been with him for so long, she was stuck? God, I hoped it wasn’t ‘cause he had a huge dick or anything. Though, I couldn’t see her being that shallow.

“Dude, just let me know if you need me to dig further. You know I’m up for it.”

“All right, thanks, JT. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I punched the steering wheel as I drove. I wanted to out him to Jillian. To tell her what he was really like: a loser who couldn’t even work for a D to pass high school and who was friends with drug dealers and possibly was one himself. I didn’t think she knew anything about this, and if I told her, it would make me look petty and desperate to break them up. Neither of which would work in my favor. I mean, it was over a year ago, and I hadn’t seen him since. For all I knew, he wasn’t even friends with those people anymore. I didn’t believe that for a moment, but I was stuck. I dropped the matter for now, but wouldn’t hesitate to tell her the second I found a shred of proof he was still doing that shit.

Because she was worth it.

She was worth putting my Plan aside and the realization of that terrified me. That girl drove me wild. She knocked over every boundary I’d set for myself, and I couldn’t get enough. It was all I could do to restrain myself and not throw her in the backseat of the car where we both wanted to be. And that’s what made this whole thing that much worse. I knew she wanted to kiss me, to do more than kiss me. I doubted that if I pushed, she’d stop me at all. But then as I approached her car, I saw that sweet, bashful smile on her face and realized it wasn’t meant for me.

She wasn’t mine.

But fuck that. I couldn’t just let her go. Not without at least seeing what she felt and where I stood. I had to try. I’d never forgive myself if I gave up on her without so much as letting her know that she drove me the best kind of crazy, that I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and that I wanted to spend time with her and know everything about her.

The rest of the week was…awkward to say the least. I didn’t know where we stood, or what she expected of me. I tried to go slow, play it by ear, let her take the lead and hope she wanted to head in the same direction as me. With me.

But when I walked over to her cubicle early the next morning with a cup of coffee for her, she stiffened at my presence. I let my fingers brush her hand as I passed her the cup, but she backed away. Clearly, we were no longer in the same place. She regretted last night. It was obvious.

So I did the best thing for both of us: I pretended like we didn’t have enough sexual tension to fill a room. I shoved how much I craved touching her to the back of my mind. I pushed away the amazingly tantalizing scent of her