Nerd's Badboy Alpha novel Chapter 11

When we reach the school, Alex gets out of his truck before me and opens my door to let me out. He grabs my elbow as I jump from inside the truck to the ground, like a dad helping his little girl. I give him a weird look and wrestle my elbow from his hold. "Stop being weird."

He laughs and ruffles my hair. "You're just extra adorable today, Melvin."

As we walk toward the campus, he takes my backpack from me, and I realize that people are actually stopping to stare at us. Alex doesn't seem to notice. People look at him all the time. Why would he care? Some of them are gawking, some downright hostile. The hostility comes from the females who want Alex Royce to be their boyfriend and there are a lot of them. Their glares feel like a sunburn after a full day at the beach. We pass by a couple of my friends who mouth WTF at me.

"Dude," I tell him when we stop at my locker. "You're going to get me killed."

He gives me my backpack. "You're exaggerating, Melvin. No one cares, all right? This whole hierarchy thing is all in your head. I don't see it."

I sigh. "You don't see it because you're at the top of it."

"Cut it out, bud. You worry too much. No one will mess with you on my watch." He chucks me on the chin and continues by himself down the hall.

The whole time, kids were watching us like we're a South Korean soap opera on Netflix. They look at me, then at him as he walks away, before looking back at me again. Okay, this is ridiculous. I'd really like to be invisible again.

As I turn away to put away some books for later classes, someone tugs on the end of my braid. I yelp and jump, bumping my head on my locker door.

"Oh, sorry," says my friend Molly with a sheepish smile on her face.

Molly Park is small and dark like me and most people mistake us for sisters, except she's Korean-American and I'm not. She's also a were-cat. She can shift into an orange tabby cat at will. "Jesus, man. You almost gave me a heart attack." I rub my head.

"What the hell, dude? Are you dating Alex Royce?"

I scoff. "Yeah, okay. Do I look like the kind of chick Alex Royce would go for? A bunch of hyenas kicked my ass two nights ago and he saved me. Now he thinks he has to look after me forever or something."

"Wow," Molly says, surprised. "That's some old-fashioned chivalry. Like Lancelot old-fashioned. I didn't think roughnecks like him were capable of that."

"He's not a roughneck. He's actually mad-decent. I was sick at home yesterday and he came over to check on me."

Her mouth drops open and she slaps my arm. "And you didn't think to call me, your best friend?"