The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy novel Chapter 282

“I hate that,” I murmur, working to press myself closer to him, even though that’s not really possible. “I hate the idea of you scared, and alone, and talking to girls when I was just like…half a city away.”

“But you were engaged,” he says, his voice strange – I think a little amused? I don’t know. I can’t quite parse it.

“You knew about that?” I ask, looking up at him wide-eyed.

“How could I not?” he asks, grinning at me. “You were all over the media – and it’s all anyone would talk about, especially as it got close.”

“Well,” I say, smiling myself a little too and reaching up to stroke my fingers through his hair. “What did you think about it?”

“You’ll be disappointed in me, Ari,” he murmurs, lowering his face and taking a sniff of my hair. “I didn’t really think about it. It was all very far from what I had been instructed to think was important, what I could understand – a royal wedding…” he shakes his head. “I didn’t have a way to understand it, why it was important.”

“Oh, come on,” I say, shoving his shoulder a little, my smile deepening. “You must have thought something.”

Jackson grins at me for a long moment before he breaks, looking away from me like he can’t hold my eyes while he admits it. “Fine,” he says, heaving a little sigh. “I thought you were…very pretty.”

“Pretty!?” I say, grinning and sitting up straighter with a happy squeak. “You thought I was pretty!?”

“Just in passing,” he mutters, still not looking at me, a faint blush on his cheeks. “I saw a few pictures on the covers of magazines –“

“So,” I ask, quieting down, sitting up straighter and resolving to be good. “How’d you spend your time off? Did you hang out with the guys that you lived with?”

All I want in the world right now is to sit right here in my mate’s lap, listening to him talk for hours, spinning out the story of his life. I’d listen for days, if time and circumstance would let me, even though I know they won’t.

“In my time off,” Jackson murmurs, thinking back on it and raising his hand to my hair, petting me again, “at first, I just sat alone in my room. But then the guys I lived with – they were kind, but…a little rough, you know? They told me I’m a sad sack and that I was being a creep, just sitting in there in the dark. They made me come out into the communal living room, which is where I discovered…television.”

“What!?” I gasp, unable to keep from laughing a little. Jackson laughs along with me, though, giving a self-deprecating little shrug. “You didn’t know what television was!?”