of his six year old Fiat— a car Braden said was a stupid drain on Adam’s finances considering Adam was a student at Edinburgh University and getting parked in the city was a nightmare.

Adam Gerard Sutherland, by the way, was Braden’s best friend.

I’d had a wee bit of a crush on him since I was ten so I was more than a little mortified

that Braden had sent him to rescue me from this situation. Not that I should have been

surprised. The two of them had traded that job back and forth since I was tiny.

“Adam,” I blanched, wiping at my face to make sure I’d gotten all the tears.

The way his dark eyes studied me and his jaw clenched, it didn’t matter. My eyes felt

puffy and red and obviously were. “Braden’s sorry. He’s in a meeting he can’t get out of,” he

said as he approached. He wore a clean, wrinkle-free t-shirt and faded jeans. Adam was too

clean and neat to become a typical grungy student. Even his old banger of a car was clean and

tidy inside. “He phoned me. I have a free afternoon. Come here, sweetheart.” Without asking,

he pulled me into him and I immediately nestled my cheek against his chest and held on tight,

trying not to cry.

“So where is this little shit?”

I pulled back from him, suddenly wary now that he was here and obviously furious. “What

are you going to do?”

“He’s fifteen?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen.” He curled his lip in anger. “I can’t hit him, but I can scare the absolute fuck out

of him.”

Braden and Adam cursed a lot, and they’d always cursed a lot in front of me. Mum would

kill them if she ever found out how much they cursed. Luckily for them it had been drilled

into me since the age of zero that you didn’t curse in front of Elodie Nichols, and I’d never

repeated the words Braden and Adam used around me. To be fair they limited their curse

words to the basics—I’d heard way worse at school. Today in fact, and they’d been directed

at me.

I felt my eyes start to water again.

Adam saw and his eyes narrowed. “Els, where is this boy?”

I sighed heavily. “Around the back of the building, behind the lunch room.”

“Right.” Adam strode in through the gates and I hurried after him, ignoring the curious

gazes of my fellow students, and the excited chatter as they guessed that the clearly older

Adam was here on my behalf and something was about to go down.

My cheeks burned with embarrassment, while my heart pounded in anticipation for a little

retribution for the worst morning in the history of my entire school career.

When we rounded the corner of the building, Adam stopped and stared into a crowd of

seniors. The fourth and fifth years gradually turned their heads towards us, their eyes

widening at the sight of me with Adam.

“Which one?” Adam asked flatly.

“Brian is the one with his blazer tied around his waist.”

“The tall, blond kid with the bottle of juice in his hand? The one that looks like a prick?”

“That would be the one.”

“Little…” Adam growled under his breath and marched toward Brian, hands clenched into

fists at his side. Brian’s friend nudged him and he turned toward Adam and instantly paled at

the sight of him. When Adam reached him, he towered over Brian by at least five inches. He

bent his head, his face close to Brian’s, and whatever he said made the seniors around him

grow wide-eyed.

“Well?” Adam suddenly asked loudly.

Brian mumbled something.

“Louder, you lying little shit.”

“I didn’t have sex with her,” Brian cried. “I didn’t touch her!” He turned and caught sight

of me watching and his eyes seemed to plead with me to call Adam off. “I’m sorry! I lied,

alright!”

A murmur from the crowds drew my eyes past Brian to the lunchroom doors and my

stomach dropped when I saw Mr. Mitchell standing there watching Adam. Adam must have

seen him too because his head came up. He didn’t, however, back away from Brian.

“Who are you?” Mr. Mitchell asked in a belligerent tone, walking toward Adam. “You’re

not allowed on school grounds.”

“I was just having a word with Mr. Fairmont here. We’re all good.” Adam shrugged as if

he wasn’t a twenty-one year old who’d just gotten through threatening a sixteen year old.

“Brian, are you okay?” Mr. Mitchell asked.

“Uh, fine, Mr. Mitchell,” he gulped and took a step back from Adam toward the safe

proximity of the geography teacher.

“Adam,” I called now, wanting Adam gone before he got into trouble.

I drew Mr. Mitchell’s gaze and his face clouded over. “Miss Carmichael, you know quite

well you aren’t allowed visitors during school hours.”

“Sorry, Mr. Mitchell.”

“I’m just leaving.” Adam shot Brian one last warning look and then turned and casually

strode toward me. Taking his time. Adam didn’t like to be told what to do. When he reached

me, he put an arm around my shoulder and had me walk him back to the school gate. No one

was whispering or giving me dirty looks now as we passed. They were all looking at me as if

I was extremely cool. I mean, I must be right, if I had Adam Sutherland’s arm around me and

he’d shown up at school to scare the truth out of Brian.

I grinned and Adam caught it, his soft laughter making me all warm and fuzzy.

“Feel better then?” he asked as we came to a stop.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“What were you doing at a party anyway on a Saturday night?”

I frowned at his proprietary tone. “I’m fourteen, Adam. It was a friend’s birthday.

Anyway, I didn’t know seniors were going to be there.”

He nodded. “Just be careful, eh.”

“Yeah.” I lowered my eyes, feeling bad that he’d been dragged into my teen drama.

“Come here.” Adam pulled me to him again and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead before

he hugged me close. Now that I wasn’t bemoaning my morning and crying on his chest, I was

suddenly fully aware of being crushed against him. He smelled amazing and his body was

hard with lean muscle. It felt good against mine.

A weird, tingling feeling erupted in my lower belly and my skin suddenly grew incredibly

flushed. I jerked back and tried to cover my awkwardness with a tremulous smile and a goofy

wave.

Adam gave me a quizzical smile and then said, “Anytime you need me, you call, okay?”

I nodded.

“Okay, sweetheart. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye.”

He grinned at me again and his grin caused another wave of weird tingling to spread over

me. As I watched him get into his car and drive away it occurred to me that my crush on

Adam had just intensified. My brain was no longer the only thing attracted to Adam. My

hormonally-charged teenage body was now too.

Chapter 2

Adam’s brow was puckered as he lifted his head from the diary but he gave me a small,

amused smile. “I don’t know how I feel about sexually awakening a fourteen year old. It’s all

a bit Lolita-like.”

I laughed at his discomfort. “It’s not as if you felt the same way about me back then.

Anyway, now that I’m yours, would you really have preferred if some other guy gave me my

sexual awakening?”

Now his brow knit together completely and he glanced back down at the pages. “Good

point,” he muttered.

“Here.” I handed him another diary, open to more than half-way through, and took the one

with my fourteen year old thoughts out of his hands. “This is from the year after that.”

Saturday, September 23rd

I am this close to screaming at Adam to stop treating me like a sister. I’m not his sister! I wish he’d just get that already…

I took a deep breath, holding the mascara wand away from my eyelashes. Staring at myself