Page 5 of Darkest Obsession

Judging by the fiery look on Thomas’ face, I probably should have let Sylvia handle this. But something about this Thomas guy makes me feel warm and uncomfortable. He’s a jerk. Look at him just standing there like he owns the place. Ugh.

Sylvia glances nervously at Thomas, but he isn’t looking at her, he’s staring at me with a fierce gaze. Tread carefully, Clover. This is a small school and you have a reputation to look after. His grey eyes roam all over me. His gaze stops me in place.

“Clover,” he says without any intonation. He said my name. I freeze because I don’t actually want to talk to Thomas, or acknowledge him.

“You two know each other?” Sylvia sounds surprised, but it’s more surprising to me that she knows this tall, terrifying asshole.

“No,” Thomas answers. “But she knows… many people.”

The gentle smirk teasing the corner of his lips enrages me. He’s talking about Jude and I haven’t even given my friends details about the Jude situation. They just know I had two one-night-stands that went badly and they think I’m some kind of feminist hero for ‘liberating’ myself. They wouldn’t feel that way if they knew what Jude said to me.

But Thomas knows and I don’t want him blabbing to my friends and making me look like a girl who fell for some dumb British guy’s line.

“You should leave,” I say to Thomas as firmly as I can manage. “We’re practicing now and we have more members coming in for auditions.”

“No chance, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart?! I want to punch his condescending ass face.

Thomas whistles and seven more boys enter the room behind him, dragging those stupid ass ‘ergometers’ behind them. They’re all shirtless with these weird unisuits hanging over their hips, the tight spandex highlighting the pale legs and protruding junk of every guy on the team. Thomas is the only one on the team absolutely covered in tattoos. A knife, a snake, a skull and a fern protruding from his pants. How far does the fern tattoo go?

“Oh my God, EW!” Kola screeches. “They’re right! You can’t be in here! Get these naked mole rats out of here!”

The sight of too many white men in tight pants finally stimulates her to stand up against Thomas. Kola never spent much time around white people before the Fox Academy.

Thomas sticks his headphones on, long brown hair falling to his shoulders suddenly pushed off his face. He has such an annoying face.

Then everything gets worse because the last member of the crew team enters the room — Jude Fox. He looks at me and says loudly. “Hello, Clover.”

The entire team laughs and repeats his words with purposeful mockery. “Hello, Clover.”

“Thomas!” Sylvia protests. “Get them out of here. We’re serious. We have people coming down for rehearsal.”

“Try the basement,” Thomas says. “We have permission from the headmaster to use this room.”

“So? We asked the dean,” Sylvia says.

“Headmaster beats dean.”

Sylvia argues with Thomas for a few minutes, but that gives his annoying ass crew team plenty of time to establish a complete takeover of what should have been our perfect dance studio.

The boys already have their 16 ergometers set up in the room. There’s hardly room for us to step around and Jude has my gym bag slung over his shoulder, ready to complete the eviction.

“Jude, put that down!”

“I’d rather not.”

“Put it down, now!“

My heart races. Why is he taunting me? Isn’t it bad enough that he humiliated me?

“I’m going to see what’s inside.”

Jude unzips my gym bag and hot shame courses through me.

“Condoms, really?” Jude says. I want to sink into the ground. I do not have condoms in my gym bag, but that doesn’t stop the entire crew team from bursting into laughter. I swear I hear one of them mutter the word slut. Sylvia springs at Jude, snatching my gym bag from him. He relinquishes the gym bag to her instantly and then runs his tongue over his lower lip with satisfaction. Asshole.

“Give that back, you big doofus!” Sylvia yells. “And get out of here. All of you.”