Forbidden Attraction (Book 1)✔

♤Chapter 48♤

Julia was in the middle of telling me how she'd spent the day with her boyfriend and what they did, but for the life of me, I couldn't focus.

It wasn't the loud music and shouting people. Nor was it the half-naked bodies running about the place. Everyone forgot to mention that it was a pool party until I found out from Jess. Jess who tried to force me into one of her bikinis. For one, I didn't care how close I was to her, I wasn't going to wear her bikini, and they couldn't fit me anyway.

What I'd learned was, this party was thrown in honor of finals week that was coming up for the seniors. Being the gods of high school, or so they felt, they had their exams a whole two weeks before the rest of the student body. Why? I couldn't figure it out. And was I jealous? Yes, because I wanted to be done more than half of these people, but I had to be one school year younger.

I say 'school year' because there were seniors who I was older than. It made no sense.

But the reason why it was hard keeping up with what my friend was saying was because of Christian.

Chris, who I could feel staring at me from across the room.

Since it was a pool party, most people were outside and could only walk through the kitchen to go out there, so some of us who weren't swimming were in here.

I was sitting on the counter, leaned in close to hear Julia over the bass from outside. Chris was staring me down. I felt it before I saw him and after I spotted him, I couldn't un-spot him. Even though I wasn't looking, I was aware of his every move. It didn't matter if he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

Thankfully though, I tuned in when Julia was telling me they went ice skating and her boyfriend, Kolton, ended up hurting his wrist. It was an eventful day for them but he's fine. I asked her when I was going to get to meet him and she said he was coming to the party, so that's something I was looking forward to.

We talked a little bit more and she told me about him. I already knew he used to go to our school, from what I've heard. He was a year older than her and he went to some university in New York. I swear, everyone lives in my city but me.

A few minutes later she had her phone in hand and let out a weird excited sound that had me snickering as she announced he was outside. She went to go get him, and sighing, I finally looked full-on at Chris.

Surprisingly, he hadn't been looking at me anymore but a second later, his eyes met mine. I curled my finger at him and he didn't say a thing before he was leaning away from the wall and swerving around the kids in his way.

I covered my mouth against a laugh when someone came sliding across the floor and he had to take a quick step back so he didn't get run over. The guy had bubbles covering him from head to toe and flying everywhere.

"I'm gonna need you to cut back on the staring," I said, swinging my legs back and forth to play off how my body was reacting to him being close to me.

We'd been keeping our distance from each other since we spotted the other when we got here. It wasn't because we were avoiding each other. I didn't know why exactly, but it wasn't because we had sex and were still struggling to accept that it happened. In real life. Definitely, not that.

"Ari," he said, his expression guilty as he stopped in front of me. He didn't come too close or touch me, even though I knew he wanted to.

I tilted my head back to stare at the ceiling. "Please, don't start."

"I'm so sorry," he said anyway.

Sighing heavily, I moved my braids over my shoulder and reached up to make sure my bun was still secure enough. It felt suspiciously heavy like it was falling apart, but it was just me being paranoid.