Unspoken (The Woodlands) by Jen Frederick Read Free Book Online

down to our now customary seats in the front.
    I shook my head. “Were you fighting?” I whispered, not wanting anyone else to hear me, particularly not the two freshman girls who sat behind Bo and me and had clued in to what a magnificent addition he was to the homo sapiens species. I actually saw one of them give the thumbs-up toward heaven the other day in class after Bo leaned over the table to pick up a piece of paper that had floated off. You could bounce a quarter off that ass.
    Bo leaned close to whisper back, “Yes. Why are we whispering?”
    “Isn’t it illegal?”
    “The Casino,” Bo explained in a normal tone, not caring who heard him. “Different regs there.”
    “Like no regulations?”
    “Pretty much.” He nodded and started to cross his arms but winced when he realized his hands were too tender to be tucked into his body.
    I bit my lip to keep from asking a bunch of nosy questions. “Do you need me to take notes for you today?”
    “Yeah. Do you mind?”
    I shook my head. “When you e-mailed me and said you would be too sore for class today, I thought it might be something else.”
    Bo gave a hoot of laughter. “Nope, but it was all consensual. You jealous?”
    Yes, I was , I thought sourly, but I didn’t want to admit it. For some reason, now that Bo was my lab partner, I’d begun assigning other ownership thoughts to him. What a crazy thing to do. I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t have a good comeback other than the truth, which I certainly was not going to share. Conveniently, the professor began his lecture, but Bo leaned over and whispered, “Nothing to be jealous about, Sunshine.”
    Sunshine? Bo slouched against his chair and spread his legs wide, brushing up against mine. He slung his right arm over the back of my chair. If I leaned backward, I could have pretended he was hugging me. Concentrating for fifty minutes was a bitch. At the end of class, I quickly packed my belongings, afraid that if I spent one more minute with him, I’d throw him down on the table and see what bruises he had hiding under his shirt today. And if I could kiss them to make them better. If I spent even one more minute with him, I would be, as Ellie had put it, toast.

Chapter Five

    AM
    D ESPITE OUR BIG TALK OF partying all week, Ellie and I stayed in and watched movies when the weekend rolled around. While we watched actresses drum songs on the bottoms of cups, I shored up my anti-Bo defenses. I made a new list of excuses why I shouldn’t be crushing on him and ran through them each morning. None of them were very good, but that wasn’t the point. If I could make it through this semester without tearing my clothes off in biology class, the little white lies I told myself would be worth it. When Monday rolled around, I intentionally arrived late to class and sat in the back. I didn’t remember much of the lecture, as I spent the whole time staring at Bo’s head and wishing I was sitting right next to him. Bo turned around once and found me in the first pass. We stared at each other for what felt like an eon but was probably seconds. I couldn’t read his emotions but I knew what I was feeling. Regret.
    On Tuesday, I met up with Ellie back at the apartment after classes were over. When I came through the door, she shot me a pleading glance.
    “What’s up with the puppy eyes?” I peered at Ellie, who was standing with her hands clasped in front of her next to the paisley sofa we’d bought from a garage sale on the west side. It was so hideous—blue with red floral paisley designs all over looking like grotesque snails—that we both agreed it had circled around to awesome. Plus, it was super comfortable. We theorized the person who’d bought it was colorblind and sat on it and felt as if he was lying in marshmallows. Then he fell in love and his new partner made him throw it out. At least that’s the story that Ellie and I made up.
    “I need to ask you for a huge favor.” Ellie looked pitiful