CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The next few days dragged by slowly. 

Despite the fact that it wasn't even October and school had just started, it was their last year and the work-load was piling up faster than ever. But for the first time since the year began, Hannah wasn't bothered with her homework. She had been in school for exactly seven minutes and was dreading seeing Ashlyn or Gabriel.

Although she and Ash had fought before in the past, Hannah had always apologised. But this was different, she had refused to give in over the weekend and was anxiously waiting for the moment they had a shared class.

'Maybe I should just say sorry,' she thought with a sigh as she stared at her vacant eyes in the empty toilets. With a shaking hand, she carefully coloured her lips with a nude lipstick and tried to smile at her reflection. It didn't work though as her eyes began to shine with tears.

She felt like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. Hannah had tried to talk to Cam about her friendship with Ash the previous evening but he had been distracted, something lurking on his mind. She knew something was up with him but he was keeping it to himself and although it was dumb, it made her feel unimportant. Why couldn't he tell her? Didn't he trust her?

With a sigh she carefully smoothed out her neat hair and beamed, her sad eyes morphing into a controlled radiance. With the façade of perfection, she left the toilets and made her way to her form class. 

An hour or two later, on the other side of Pemrose, Rayne was walking through the corridor between his classes. His thoughts were occupied with the never ending amount of things that needed to be done, homework piling as the weeks went by. He was snapped out of his thoughts however by the not-so-pleasant sight of Ashlyn and Gabriel lip locked close to his locker.

Pulling his beanie lower on his head, he quietly slid to his locker and unlocked it; thankful they were too preoccupied with snogging each other to notice him. Gabriel was the sort of person to pick on anyone smaller than himself and Rayne was glad he had managed to avoid him and his dumb jock friends so far.

As he pulled out his creased Organic Chemistry textbook, he faintly recalled Carter mentioning how Hannah was Gabriel's girlfriend. His lip curled up in disgust at their complete lack of decency as he shoved his locker closed with his elbow. 'Not that their pathetic love lives have anything to do with me,' he thought, rolling his eyes.

The bell rang loudly, vibrating across the corridors but it wasn't quite loud enough to stop the pair. Students began to form in groups around them, loud whispers trailing the air. "Why cheat on your girlfriend where everyone can see?" he heard a random girl from his form class mutter and Rayne couldn't help wondering the same thing.

As he was pondering this the hallway suddenly dropped silent – causing him to look back and notice the previously mentioned girlfriend standing there, some textbooks against the crook of her arm with her mouth dropped open. Hannah looked absolutely outraged, as though she never expected them to stoop so low but Rayne vaguely made out the expression in her eyes before it was quickly masked: hurt.

'Oh so they wanted her to know?' Rayne thought, slightly confused at the turn of events. 'Jesus! There's way too much drama at this school.'

Dodging the many students loitering around waiting for a scene to unfold, Rayne began walking away. He didn't give a shit about Pemrose's Queen Bee and her Barbie clan. He noticed that Hannah also turned around unfazed, about to begin walking to her next class when Ashlyn opened her lip-glossed mouth.

"Yeah, run away from everything like you always do. Guess you're so used to be being unwanted by mummy dearest that running from your problems is no big deal anymore."

At the very mention of her mum Hannah's back stiffened as she tensed up, clearly uncomfortable; a fact Ashlyn duly noticed and took advantage of. The crowd began murmuring amongst themselves and Rayne was rather astonished that such an innocent-looking prep could speak with so much venom interlaced in her words.

"Yeah that's right, your mother. Jasmine Adem: the single most famous and successful fashion designer across the world who publicly denies ever having a child. I guess even your flesh and blood doesn't want you, eh?" Ashlyn spat, clearly enjoying the gossip she was spreading against her former best friend of over five years.

Rayne assumed the rapidly growing crowd was expecting Hannah to walk away slowly as she was usually so calm and collected but she didn't. She turned around slowly; her head raised high and her eyes narrowing tightly. Even Ashlyn – with her mouth open ready to spout more taunts – was silenced by the intensity of anger in those dark orbs.

Too bad the same couldn't be said for Gabriel; he obviously had the IQ of a fence post and not an ounce of tact. "I don't blame her for being ashamed of you though honeybee. Anyone would be, I certainly am. Especially because of that thing where, y'know, you never put out. Being a prude isn't cool, babe," he grinned maliciously.

Rayne's eyebrows rose in surprise – he had always known Gabriel Slade was an asshole but that was low, even for him. Cameron snarled loudly, evidentially wanting to rip him to pieces but before he could leap, Hannah put out a hand to stop him. Standing as tall as she could manage, she slowly walked up to the former best friend and ex-boyfriend.

Hannah glared up at Gabriel, which under any other circumstance would have been rather comical since she wasn't a hair over 5'4" but she somehow managed to look intimidating all the same.

She punched him in the centre of his face.

The two hundred pounds of muscle, 6'3" football captain was knocked out by a girl one third of his size and the entire crowd gasped in shock. Ashlyn squealed next to him, like a pig about to be butchered trembling in fear.

"I'd rather be made fun of for the rest of my life for being a virgin than be the sort of person who would happily get together with their best friend's boyfriend. And I recommend you shut up about my family that you know nothing about if you want to keep that plastic face in place, Ash."

Rayne smirked, he always had assumed Hannah was a complete slut by the amount of guys always hanging of her. Who would have thought that the Queen Bee was a virgin, didn't have the perfect life like everyone assumed as well and had the strength to knock out the strongest guy in school?!

She walked back with her head held high, almost daring anyone to retaliate but the silence was deafening. Cameron looked at her in pride before bursting out laughing, the sound echoing across the school.

His laughter seemed to break the silence that seemed to suffocate Hannah. She could feel all eyes on her, looks of shock and some of disgust. Although she had always been one of The Elite, Ashlyn and Gabriel were rulers of the school and she knew half the student body would hate her now.

She couldn't believe Gabriel had actually announced that she was a virgin, her cheeks were heating up just thinking about how embarrassing it was. She saw Mohammad grin at her and cupping his hands around his mouth, he yelled out. "Looks like Queen Bee finally cracked."

Hannah smiled slightly at him, glad that this all happened regardless of how much it hurt her emotionally. She needed to get away from all the pressure to be perfect before it suffocated her.

Looking slightly to the left to avoid watching Ashlyn sneer at her, she noticed the strange boy she was paired up with for the English project watching her with a different expression than everyone else.

Rayne Parker looked at her with admiration shining from those brilliantly green eyes.

Cameron tugged at her arm, pulling Hannah towards the school nurse's office to help with the throbbing of her knuckles. He was talking about how proud he was of her for standing her ground like he'd always taught but she couldn't concentrate on a word. All she could think about was how different Rayne was from everyone else and wondering why on earth that should even matter to her.