Define Normal

Chapter Seventeen

Oh my god. This is sooooo long. Longer than the last chapter of Rock Prodigy hahaaa.

Dedicated to drea_smile for making me a lovely cover. Thank you so much!

Enjoy!

Chapter Seventeen

“What is wrong with you lately?” Elle asked, walking beside me as I made my way down the hallway, my steps dragging.

“Nothing,” I muttered, spotting Tally chatting with the football team down the hallway. I froze, searching for an escape when his head turned towards me and he raised an eyebrow knowingly.

“You were going to run away from him,” Elle said, narrowing her eyes at me as I sighed and headed towards my ‘boyfriend’.

“I just wanted to check my hair before he spotted me,” I said, shrugging.

She gripped my arm and we both stopped in the middle of the hallway out of hearing distance from the football players. My gaze met hers, a mild expression on my face as I raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re lying,” she said softly, her eyes focused intently on mine, searching for something I was too good at hiding. “Do you even like him? What about Jackson? The two of you haven’t been hanging out at all lately and every time he sees you, he practically runs in the other direction.”

I shrugged. “We had a fight,” I replied, giving her a reassuring smile. “And I do like Tally.” I wasn’t lying. I really did like Tally but mostly I liked what he told me about his family.

The day after I’d told Jackson that Tally and I had been seeing each other, I called Tally and he’d agreed immediately to go along with it. He’d also told me about his parents who were retired assassins and they happened to pass a few of their skills down to their son. He wasn’t part of any experiment but he knew the risks that came with dating me. Having parents like his helped minimize the danger he was in. Chances were, if Lemon was going to use someone to get to me, he wasn’t going to use my boyfriend who happened to have two very skilled assassins as parents.

Too bad I didn’t want to date him.

“I still don’t believe you,” Elle mumbled as we moved towards Tally and his idiotic friends.

“Hey, babe,” Tally said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and dropping a kiss on my cheek when I was close enough. I resisted the urge to pull away and instead leaned against him more firmly, sending him a bright smile which he returned. “Were you thinking of avoiding me?” he whispered in my ear and I couldn’t help but notice that my heart didn’t beat even a bit faster when he moved close to me. With Jackson, my heart was always racing. The slightest touch would set me on fire.

“Yes,” I answered honestly, making him chuckle.

“You know, you’re not the nicest girlfriend I’ve ever had,” Tally replied lightly, obviously not troubled by my words.

“I’m not really your girlfriend.”

“It’s only a matter of time,” he said and before I could reply, he was facing his friends again, talking about football.

Finally, the bell rang and I untangled myself from Tally before heading towards my class, breathing a sigh of relief that at least when I was on my own, I didn’t have to pretend. I turned a corner and suddenly I was face to face with Jackson who stopped when he saw me, his eyes widening slightly before settling into a flat, cold expression. It felt like he was looking right through me and when he stepped to the side and walked around me as if I was just some stranger in the street, my heart gave a painful lurch, urging me to just tell him the truth.