Chapter One

It was there again.

Sitting on my math textbook was a pristine white paper folded in half. 

I didn't need to touch it to know that it was thicker than any paper I've held before or that it was rough to feel. 

Or that it held another threatening message. 

Dread washed over my petite body as I stood staring at it and wondering what I'd find inside this one. 

I've been getting this threatening, creepy notes since the beginning of this week and I won't lie and say it doesn't scare the hell out of me. 

I don't want to open this one and read the fear inciting words I know I'll find written inside it, signed off with with another smiley face. 

Other students bustled around me, getting their books out of their lockers and scooting off to their next class. 

I pushed the annoying piece of paper off my textbook to a far end of my locker space.

I took the text book I needed out before shutting my locker with more force than was needed, causing it to make a loud bang and causing other students to pin me with questioning looks and raised brows. 

Well, party's over guys, turn your eyes to something else!

I took my book and went off to my next class ignoring their eyes. 

Recently, I've been getting this feeling that someone is watching me and then the notes started coming and they kinda proved me right. 

Whoever is behind them knows everything about me, what I do in my privacy, who I see, what I eat and I don't even know what they fucking look like. 

Goosebumps rose on the skin of my arms at the creepy thought and I tried to rub them away with my palms as I took a turn leading to my class. 

I must not have been looking where I was going, still pretty preoccupied by the white paper sitting in my locker, because next I knew I'd bumped into someone.

More like a solid wall of muscles. 

I raise my eyes, an apology sitting at the tip of my tongue, only to come face to face with him. 

The Caden Adam Jones. 

His deep forest green orbs are just as I remember them, dark, deep, endless, as they bore into my boring gray ones like he could see deep into my very soul. 

It scared me to think that he could.

His grip on me tightened for a quick second till it almost became painful but I was too lost in his beautiful eyes to notice.

It might bruise and leave a dark patch by tomorrow but it didn't matter to me in the moment. 

His hands that had stopped me from falling held my waist for several heart beats before he broke whatever spell it was that had held us together for longer than the few seconds it took to mutter our usual hi.

Once he realized it was me and not some shapely, hot cheerleader in his arms, he pulled his hand off my body like it suddenly scalded him.

No surprise there.

"Jade." He muttered.

That was it and then he walked right past me like I was a plague. 

I should be glad he still remembers my name, deemed it a worthy memory. 

But I wasn't. 

It's not like I expected more than that from him though, judging from his attitude towards me since he came back into town, but somehow it still hurt something deep inside me to remember that sometime in a distant past, that we'd been friends. 

I couldn't bring myself to stomach the term 'best friends', but that's what we'd been.

He always acts like we were strangers now, maybe mere acquaintances, like the years we'd been best friends didn't happen and had not meant something to him. 

I bent and picked up my fallen books.

Beside my textbook lay a matte black book that wasn't mine.

It had tiny silver lines running across its surface. It looked expensive, like all his things now do.

It must have fallen off his hand when I bumped into him. And he'd been in too much of a hurry to get away from me to have noticed. 

The book looked smaller than your average note book and the cover was thicker too.

It was just like he liked all his things- classic, masculine and black. 

I was tempted to open it. Hopefully, I'll sneak a peek of something from his new life, the one he'd shut me out of but I subdued the urge and shoved it between my books. 

Doing that would only serve to hurt me more than he already does.

As I made my way to my class, I realized  how many minutes I must have spent in this hallway.

Ughhhh, now I have to run to class. 

Shit, I'm really late this time. 

The class was already on when I ran in, no thanks to that  distraction back there and then I had to endure a walk to the back of the class to the only empty seat and that was after a lecture on the need for punctuality from Mrs Beckham.

I hate being put on the spot for any reason and being late to this class is a free way ticket to exactly that. 

I focused more on making myself invisible in the class than I did to what Mrs Beckham was explaining at the front of the class. 

The class went by in a blur and thankfully Mrs Beckham didn't notice my absent minded self through it. 

I go through my other classes like this, worried sick about the note in my locker and what it says.

It's not like I go around making enemies. 

I don't even think I should have any because all I've been doing since this junior year is trying to be as invisible as possible. 

And it's funny that the only person I want to be visible to doesn't want to see me.

If only he knew how I counted the years, waiting for him to come back to me.

Now he is, but not to me.

He's not my Caden anymore and I have to accept it.

No, he's our school's resident bad boy and I'm the 'nobody'.