Under My Skin by Judith Graves Read Free Book Online Page A

the door. Brit-the-Brainiac, like a store greeter, smiled at kids passing her desk, but waved them by while she glared bullets at me and Wade. The others didn’t even notice her as they filed out of the room sideways, crablike, to keep me and Wade in their view.
    Wade jumped to his feet, blocking my attempt to pass him. “I don’t think chemistry will be a problem,” he said, a teasing light in his grey eyes.
    “Nice line.” I murmured. “Use it often?”
    “Never. You’re the one and only. Maybe my one and only.”
    “Wow.” I snorted. “The soul mate card. You really think you have girls figured out, don’t you?”
    “Girls, yes,” he deadpanned. “You? Now that could take a lifetime. I’m game if you are.”
    At eye level, I stared directly at his sculpted lips as they formed the flirtatious words and then slanted into a sexy grin. We stood pressed together for a few glorious seconds. My insides quivered. And tingled. And yeah, he certainly did have big, I-give-good-love-bites teeth.
    At least Wade stood a few inches taller than me. A minimum requirement for potential love interests in my book. His presence crowded, demanded a response. We were as close as we could get in public, yet he was too far away. I wanted us to sink into each other. Wade inhaled and his chest rose, pushing against mine. I shivered at the curl of sensations winding around me, binding me, making me lean against him.
    “Eryn, a moment, please.” Mr. Philips came out of nowhere, shattering the moment.
    Wade and I flinched as if firecrackers had exploded between us. My heart thumped erratically in my chest. I let my breath out slowly. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding it.
    Mr. Phillips nodded a dismissal at Wade and, taking my arm, led me to the front of the room. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
    And it has to be now?
    Brit stood there, clutching her books like a shield, her eyes following Wade. Something flickered in their depths. Suspicion? Hatred? When her gaze turned to me, she flatlined her lips as if I were a child she was about to scold.
    “Ah, we’ve already…” I began, still a bit dazed.
    Brit shushed me with a shake of her head. Explanations must be wasted on Mr. Phillips, because if he’d paid attention to his students, he’d have noticed Brit and I hung out by each other’s desks every day. Well, until today.
    I spotted a large manila envelope, emblazoned with my name and practically glowing, on his solid oak desk. My cumulative file. The educational equivalent of a criminal record. I’d become all too familiar with my file’s bulk when I’d made the shrink rounds at my old school.
    I cringed. So much for a clean slate. By now I was probably on a teacher-rotated suicide watch, with the schedule posted in the staff room.
    “If this is about what happened last year…” Mortified, I shot a look over my shoulder, but Wade had already left. My late, great fondness for box cutters remained safely filed away.
    “Obviously physics didn’t happen for you last year,” Mr. Philips said in his Gregorian-chant-like tone—another reason I was failing his class. “Things will be different here at Redgrave High. You see, Eryn, we believe in our students. We believe in their potential…” He eased into full-lecture mode.
    It took five long minutes of teacher rhetoric before Mr. Phillips outlined his plan. It was pretty straightforward. Either Brit tutored me in physics, or I couldn’t take the class.
    “Oh, I can so totally do that,” Brit agreed.
    I glared at her, but couldn’t really object. Brit had a brain, and I needed to borrow it. We agreed to meet every day after school for one hour.
    “What’re you doing for lunch?” Brit asked as we left the room. “We’re starved,” she said, pointing from her bright smile to the skull on her T-shirt who did indeed look famished.
    I didn’t laugh. Not only had she lied to me about Alec, but she’d been giving me the evil eye for talking to