The Taming by Teresa Toten, Eric Walters Page B

even more. I gasped, but I don’t know why, I’d never felt safer.
    “Good night, Katie,” Evan whispered, and then he lifted my chin with the crook of his finger. Small, sweet, sweet smile. “Thank you for a wonderful evening.”
    And then he kissed me on the mouth so gently that I almost fell apart.

Chapter Eighteen
     

     
    W e walked hand in hand. It was harder to move through the crowded halls, but she liked it when we walked that way. I could tell she liked being seen with me. I liked it too, but maybe for a different reason. It was like marking my territory. This belonged to me. This was mine—my girlfriend. Then again, maybe her reasons weren’t so different after all. I knew she liked people—okay, not people, other girls—to know that I was her boyfriend of three weeks.
    Up ahead was a group of girls— the group of girls. They were the ones everybody looked to for direction, the ones who controlled fashion, who decided what was in and what was out and, more important, who was in and who was out. Whether they were strutting the hall like it was a fashion runway, holding court at their table in the cafeteria or strategically posing outside the main doors, they knew they were the nerve centre of the school. All the girls wanted to be them and all the boys wanted to be with them—except for one, me.
    It hadn’t taken me more than a couple of days to figure out who they were. It had taken me even less time to decide that they weren’t the group I was going to hang with. Not at this school. Not this time. I could have if I’d wanted to. I still could. They were mine for the taking, but I didn’t want any. Funny, but somehow not wanting any of them made them want me even more. They were used to having guys stumble all over them, so I was a source of confusion, frustration and attraction. Human nature—if they wanted me before, now that they couldn’t have me they wanted me even more.
    There was a fine line I had to walk when I was around them—I couldn’t ignore them completely or they’d know I was deliberately doing it and thus was really noticing them, but I couldn’t give them too much attention, either. I gave a subtle nod of my head in their direction and most of them flashed me a big smile, which I promptly ignored.
    Katie, of course, wasn’t part of their group. She didn’t have the clothes or the money or the attitude. She wouldn’t have been able to play the games they played—hell, I didn’t even think she knew there was a game going on. Another one of the reasons I liked her.
    “Hey, Evan,” Brittney sang out as we passed by.
    I gave her a disinterested wave.
    “Hello … Katie.”
    “Hi, Brittney,” Katie replied. “How are you?”
    Brittney ignored her, of course. Katie hadn’t picked up either the flirtation in Brittney’s voice or the subtle digs—the hesitation before saying her name, like she didn’t know it, or like Katie was so insignificant that you couldn’t expect somebody as important as Brittney to remember her or answer a question.
    I knew that they wondered why I was dating Katie instead of one of them. Although at this point I thought Katie probably could have become at least an honorary member in their little group—at least if she dropped Lisa and Travis. They were so far down the social evolutionary scale that they could never be much more than what they were. I’d elevated Katie’s status … or, as my father would say, I had increased her market value . I hated when I even thought like him.
    I actually wondered if other people were beginning to see in Katie what I saw. I was giving her confidence, and that confidence was sexy, like an aphrodisiac. She smiled more these days. She was more comfortable in her skin … her beautiful, perfect skin.
    We kept walking. I didn’t need to look back to know they were watching us—thinking, wondering, trying to make sense of us as a couple. Maybe they didn’t know why I was with her instead of them, but