Her mouth dropped open, and her lips pulsated like she was a goldfish. “I don’t know where—”
“Where what? Hell, Anna, if you couldn’t see it when it was under your nose, then there’s no hope for you, is there?” I finished sweetly.
“How dare you?”
Her snap had me smiling at her. I shouldn’t take pleasure in her irritation with me, but I did.
I had no idea why she wanted me to know Cain was doing great with his life and that Maria and Adam were so fucking happy in their miserable marriage, all I knew was that I didn’t want to hear her bullshit.
“You should probably soak that shirt before the stain sets in deep,” I pointed out, eying the white shirt which was splotched with coffee, and the navy pants which wouldn’t stain but were damp.
She peered down at her stomach with irritation. “Never mind—”
“I need to be getting ready to go meet my friends, Anna. It’s been…” I settled on the word, “Interesting catching up. I’ll see you for brunch with Robert tomorrow, won’t I?”
Before she could answer, I got to my feet and moved over to the door. Sure, it was rude, but I opened it and just waited for her to join me, which she did with a huff. She snatched up her bag, dumped the cup and saucer on the trolley, and swept out of the room like Scarlett O’Hara. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I called out as she sailed out, and when she pinged for the elevator, I locked up and pressed my back to the door.
“Well, that was weird,” I muttered to myself before I took another sip of coffee.
As I cast a glance over my room, I saw she’d dropped something on her armchair. I didn’t have to reach out to pick it up and see what it was.
A picture from a sonogram.
If she was pregnant enough to need a sonogram, then it was too late for Maria to have some accident.
As I studied the image, I wondered who the father was. Because, whoever he was, I knew without a shadow of a doubt it wasn’t Adam.
It’d take more than a couple of sly comments from his mother to make me doubt Adam. I knew he wasn’t a saint, but his loathing for Maria was clear for anyone to see.
Which proved that Anna, like always, was blind where her son was concerned. As for me, I wasn’t.
And never would be.
THEA
The bio lab looked out onto a corridor. A long one. The school colors of scarlet and yellow lined the walls, which a bank of windows overlooked. The view beyond always grabbed my attention because I loathed biology with a passion. So much so that even though I didn’t like the people in my school that much better, I preferred to watch the clusters trudge down the hall on their way to wherever.
As usual, I was sitting alone. When it came time to collab, the bio and chem teachers had started having to assign partners because everyone refused, point blank, to work with me.
So it was something else to hate me for. Now, no one could work with their chosen friend, they were split up and reassigned to make sure the black sheep had someone as a partner.
It was a bitch, wasn’t it, when I was the one who’d been vilified when Cain had actually been sent to jail for what he’d done.
I still couldn’t make sense of that logic, but who was I to question the elite might of Rosemore Academy’s student body?
The thought had me clenching my teeth a little as Dr. Leviston droned on about protons and neutrons and some other crap that bored me senseless. I needed to concentrate, but I couldn’t. Today, I just wasn’t in the mood.
Not only did I want to be in the water, but there was something in the air.
Something that put me on edge.
As I randomly doodled on my notepad, little bubbles of water that gathered in a swirl at the center of the page and then burst as they drifted to the surface, a noise pricked my attention.
Even after what we’d done together, it still irked me how hypersensitive I was to Adam. Maybe, if I was being honest, I was even more so than before.
Just his laughter had the ability to rake my nerve endings.
Knowing it was him, I looked up and caught his eye as he began to stroll down the corridor outside the lab. Not unsurprisingly, there was