His Flower (Rewritten)

Chapter 5

       "Listen Rose..." He started softly, his eyes flickering briefly to the twins who were back to eating whatever they were shoveling pass their lips. "Don't let Rex bother you. He has a lot of issues he needs to figure out."

       I gave him a small nod before turning on my heel and hurrying for the cafeteria's doors. It didn't matter what kind of issues he had, what mattered was he had them against me. The most beautiful boy I had ever met—hated me. Every daydream I ever had was dragging my heart to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

       I felt the hot sting of tears in my eyes the minute I stepped into the empty hall, though I tried to choke it down the best I could. I needed to be alert in case Jason popped out of a locker or something. I didn't need to be boohooing over the fact that my crush wanted nothing to do with me.

       My crush... I didn't even have the right to call him that.

       I bit down hard on my bottom lip to fend off that awful sting in my eyes and hurried toward my locker. I didn't so much as catch a glimpse of Jason the entire way there, which was more than a little relief. I hated how stressful that monster made my life.

       I just finished spinning my combo into my lock and started pulling out the binders for the second half of the day, when that gruff voice that plagued my dreams for the last three nights entered my ears.

       "Rose."

       My whole body went rigid, my hand stopping halfway into the locker. My shoulders were stiff, my breath clogging my throat. I wasn't sure if turning around was a good thing or pretending if I never heard him was better.

       I paused for too long, and he let out an exasperated sigh of annoyance. "I'm not going to hurt you. Relax."

       That was easy for him to say. I wasn't the one who had been yelling at him the day before, then beating my steering wheel until it bruised my hand in vicious anger.

        My hand started moving again, and I carefully, slowly, grabbed the binders I needed for the afternoon before shoving them into my bag. I didn't say anything the entire time, and he waited until I closed my locker and finally turned to face him.

       He was leaning back against the opposite wall, much like he had the day before. His bag was at his feet, and his jaw was chewing a piece of gum so minty I could smell it across the hall. His dark eyes were hard as they watched me clutch tightly at the straps around my shoulders, his hair deliciously disheveled. I tried not to stare, but it was always so hard with him.

        We stared silently at each other for another moment before he finally looked away, his jaw clenching as he did. "Look, Rose, I don't think you should be hanging around us as much as you are... or at all really." His voice was so nonchalant, so emotionless that it tore viciously into my stomach—and his words weren't helping that much either.

       "Oh..." I mumbled softly, my stomaching twisting in nausea. "I just, uh, they just- I thought it was alright if we could be friends..." The words sounded like jumbled nonsense as they left my mouth, an uncomfortable, nervous heat sitting in my lower back.

       He snorted, and crossed those huge arms over his chest, but refused to turn those dark eyes at me. "The last thing any of us need is your friendship." The word sounded like poison slipping off his tongue, or that was just his interpretation of it.

       The sucker-punch he sent straight into my stomach was so prominent I could have sworn it were real. What was it about me that threw people off like this? Even before dad brought me home, Jax had been the only one who wanted to be my friend. But it never hurt as bad as this.