The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy novel Chapter 196

I work hard to fight my grin, wanting to be serious, but his own smile brings mine forward. “I know,” I whisper, nodding, “I saw you with Daphne.”

“Oh my god,” he mutters, taking a deep breath before slowly releasing it. “I thought my heart was going to pound through my chest when she came in.”

“Why!?” I ask, laughing. “Daphne is really nice –“

“Because she’s a girl – it’s like meeting…I don’t know, a gigantic whale, or a unicorn or something. Even if you know it’s nice you still don’t know what to do – what it’s going to do –“

“We’re unicorns to you?” I squeak, pleased to death.

He laughs, shaking his head. “Almost nearly as mythical,” he murmurs. “To me, at least.”

I narrow my eyes a little, suddenly struck by something. “That was one hell of a kiss, Jackson,” I say, tilting my head and wrapping a hand in the fabric of his shirt, possessive, “if it was your first one.”

His mouth twists a little and he looks away for a second. “Well, no,” he murmurs and I gasp a little at the drama of it all. “I knew…I knew one girl. For a little bit.”

My eyes go wide and a thousand questions are instantly on my lips, but they all fall away when he turns back to me.

“Please,” he murmurs, shaking his head, his eyes a little sad. “I…I will tell you about her, okay? Just…not right now. Not when I’ve just found you, and…there’s so much else to explain first.”

I nod, agreeing to it, though my hands tighten their grip on his shirt. I find that I do not like, at all, the idea of this singular other girl. It is somehow, bizarrely, worse than Luca’s fifty anonymous women.

So, I let him move on from it, because I’m…honestly not sure I want to know. At least, as he says, not right now.