All Over Again

| Chapter Fourteen |

Ruth couldn't focus on anything for the rest of the day.

Her mind was stuck on that dumb writing contest she knew she would never join. And instead of understanding it enough to leave it alone, she continued to fester over it. Ideas were bouncing around her head like kids in a jumpy house and she couldn't capture them fast enough. She begged them to stop jumping, but they only laughed in her face and jostled around harder, shoving more and more brilliant ideas into her mind, each one better than the last. Her fingers were burning now, and that familiar urge to write scorched her hand and plagued hellfire throughout her body.

"You can't," Ruth whispered to herself. With a soft groan, she tucked the stupid flyer under her book and dropped her head onto the 400 pages of Anatomy I information. The highlighter in her hand fell to the ground beside the metal table she picked under her favorite tree. She didn't even bother picking it up, too caught up in her own thoughts.

But she didn't have to.

Someone else had done it for her, and they made it a point to press the highlighter firmly back into her hand after doing so. Whoever it was had warm fingers and a deep, husky voice that haunted her daydreams and danced around beautiful nightmares.

"You can't what?" a familiar voice asked smoothly.

Ruth turned her head, trying not to appear as surprised as she felt as she looked up into the blank expression of Raffo, who looked better than he should have. It had to be legal, Ruth thought, looking the way he did. With his hair wisping over dark, brooding eyes from the slight breeze and his backpack slung lazily over one shoulder as he loomed over the table. He slowly retracted his fingers from Ruth's while she sat there, gaping like a dumbstruck fish.

It wasn't her fault she couldn't comprehend he was there, patiently waiting for her to respond. She hadn't expected him.

But then again, she never expects him. They always met at the unlikeliest of places and she could never prepare herself to talk to him.

Well, she tried once.

And that didn't really work out too well.

She flushed at that and was quick to raise her head now, clearing her throat. "Nothing. I uh—I was just thinking about school is all."

One dark brow rose skeptically and Ruth bit the inside of her lip at the relatively attractive motion. He dropped his backpack on the other side of the bench across from where Ruth sat, and then popped a seat there too. His fingers pushed his hair away from the darkness of his eyes and out from between the long strands of his lashes in a simple movement to battle futilely against the wind. Her heart skipped giddily at him wanting to sit with her, and it took every ounce of her willpower not to smile like an idiot.

And then another thought crossed her mind. One that made her want to do anything else but smile.

"Aren't you supposed to be with Mirana?" she blurted out randomly, her question blunt. Way to be subtle, Ruth.

Both of Raffo's eyebrows pushed together, furrowing with confusion. "No. Am I supposed to be?"

Ruth was quick to try to correct her mistake, fumbling over words as she clumsily rubbed her sweaty palm against her jeans. "No. You're just always with her, is all. So I just assumed—"

"Ah, you assumed. Again. You're pretty good at that," he interjected, pointing out that she, once again, assumed something about him instead of just letting him be him and do whatever he wanted.

Her cheeks flushed to a dark pink and she dropped her gaze to the beaded necklace around his neck, unable to look into his amused gaze. He tilted his head when he took her in this time, noting the striking way the apples in her brown cheeks blossomed to a prepossessing rose as her curly lashes brushed along the milky skin. She could practically sense his hot gaze swiveling smoothly over each perfectly, imperfect curl that seemed to frizz up from the relentless wind and she really hoped it didn't look bad.