“Scarlett, I’m fine. Really.” He grabbed my hand, lowering it and the towel from his face. And he didn’t let go.

“You swear?”

His fingers tightened around mine. “I swear.”

I took a deep breath. Somehow him holding my hand had calmed me down. I looked down at our hands, but I was a little distracted by the fact that he was still wearing just boxers. And no shirt. I stared at his six-pack. Stop staring at his abs!

My gaze quickly darted back to his face. “Okay. But if you’d let me clean the cut I’d feel a lot better.”

He smiled at me. “Trying to get me all alone, Scar?”

I laughed. “You wish.”

“I mean...” He lightly nudged me with his shoulder. “Yeah…I do.”

He wanted to be alone with me? It felt like my heart was beating in my throat. I smiled up at him. This felt like the perfect time to lean in and kiss him. No, it wasn’t how I really expected my first kiss to go. With his face bloody and him wearing barely any clothes. But now I couldn’t picture it any other way.

I almost leaned forward, but then I remembered one tiny issue. Operation Too Hot to Handle. I couldn’t kiss him yet. Not until I came clean. I never wanted him to think I only kissed him to make Axel jealous. “Do you think maybe we could go somewhere to talk in private? I need to tell you something.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just…” my voice trailed off when I saw Liam hop up into the ring.

No.

The bell dinged and some boy I didn’t know climbed up on the ring next to Liam. He looked like a freaking linebacker. Who was setting up these matches? This didn’t look like a fair fight at all.

They both pulled on their gloves.

“Liam can’t do this,” I said.

“He’ll be fine,” Jacob said. “If you haven’t noticed, he’s grown a foot over the summer.”

“But that guy looks like a Russian power lifter.”

Sophie leaned forward. “He really does. Is he a freshman? I haven’t seen him around. He looks too old to be a teenager.”

Jacob laughed. “Yeah, he’s new.”

“Huh.”

I could tell that she was trying to weigh whether or not hooking up with the huge new kid would make Mr. Halifax jealous. But this wasn’t the time for that! And I really doubted that her hooking up with a younger guy would make our teacher jealous.

“You guys!” I said. “He’s going to slaughter Liam.”

O’Reilly jumped back up onto the ring like he hadn’t just been knocked out a minute ago. “Next up in the ring we have Liam Hunter versus Pavel Semenov.”

“Oh,” Sophie said, her eyes lighting up. “He literally has semen in his last name. I bet boy explodes.”