Perfect | Book 1

10 |

There is a moment in everyone's life when they question themselves over something. Their genius or naivete, but something. Currently, Chord was questioning why he thought watching that one last episode of How To Get Away With Murder - a good seven times in a row - was a good idea. The reason for that is he had overslept, which caused him to run late for school. Normally, this wasn't so bad.

The reason he was up shit creek right now due to his idiocy was that he barreled into none other than Dakota Delacroix.

If Xander was a wolf, then Dakota gave the aura of a great white shark. Chord was rooted where he fell, after he tumbled to the floor, wishing the floor would just swallow him up.

Dakota was scary. Really, really scary. Though Xander made him nervous for obvious reasons, meeting eyes with this person made the blood in his veins run cold. The aura that came off of him was dark and dangerous, matching his face perfectly. Not to mention despite running into him head on, he hadn't been moved at all. He was built like a damn truck.

His hair was as dark as onyx, almost to the point it had a purple-like tint, falling just shy of his shoulders. His eyes were a mixture of brown and green, sharp as knives but endlessly hollow. Like they came from the bottom of a tomb. Both of his ears had black taper gauges and Chord also saw a pair of snake bites under his lower lip.

No matter when or where you saw him, Dakota always had that intimidating, angry look on his face. And he was currently looking at Chord like he was one second from murdering him.

Oh, shit. I'm gonna die. He's gonna kill me. He looks pissed off. . .

There were numerous rumors about who exactly Dakota was. No one ever approached him- not when his face was so scary. He was a bit older than the rest of the senior class, and that was because he was held back a year because of being in juvenile detention for some unknown crime he committed. According to the rumors anyway.

So he wandered the halls a lot, and everyone walked as far from him as they could when they came across him. No one knew if it was true, but everyone believed it was. Or that he was involved in a gang.

Up to this moment, Chord had managed to not see him up close. But now that he had, he could see where the claims stemmed from.

Chord himself didn't hold rumors too much, but that didn't mean having Dakota glare at him like he wanted to eviscerate him wasn't nerve-shattering. Because it was.

"I-I am so sorry. I didn't mean to run into you!" he fumbled as he rose, moving around Dakota as he followed suit. "E-Excuse me!" Before Dakota could say anything else, he ran off down the hall to first period.

I'm never oversleeping again. I want to live.

-----

When lunch came around, Chord was making his way to the library to meet Scarlett. He had to make a detour to get his lunch from his locker, and he only had to look behind him a couple of times while doing so.

So far, no sign of Xander since that confrontation in the bathroom, but Chord had a feeling sooner or later his luck would run out. Still, his luck so far had been good.

As he approached the library, he felt his heart start to race. He hadn't seen Scarlett since the movie night Friday, so this was the first he would be seeing her after she kissed him.

She kissed him. She kissed him. Him. Suffice it to say, if one assumed he was still freaking out over it after spending the weekend doing that, they'd be correct.

What did that mean though? It was bad enough he wasn't sure if that night was even a date - since Scarlett never said and he didn't want to assume - but now things just got more complicated.