A Kiss at Midnight (Delilah and Caelum) novel Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

My face drops instantly.

“Oh, absolutely not.”

“It’s your worst grade.”

vouries

I groaned at this, my head dripping onto the table for half a second, before adding. “That class makes me physically ill.

“Which explains why your grade are this bad.” I lifted my head slowly, glaring at him but he doesn’t back down as he stares right back at me without blinking.

The audacity this boy carried inside of him needed to be studied

Caelum gives a very very suble eye roll that I almost missed, as he opens the textbook between us, sliding it down toward me. “Before we get started on anything complicated, I need to know just how much you actually understand.”

I smirk lazily. “Probably more than you think.”

Five minutes later, I realized what a big lie that was

Caelum had written down what he called a simple equation on a loose sheet of paper before pushing it toward me.

“This is basic probability,” he said calmly, “solve it.”

I stared down at the numbers with furrowed brow, then back at him, just to move my gaze back down at the paper again.

What the fuck was that

Why were there fractions, or letters

Who even in their freaking mind got out of their time and peace of mind to invent anything called statistics or maths, and why had nobody reason with them how insane they sounded.

Maybe we won’t be going through the torture

“This is easy?” I asked, totally baffled.

“Yes.” He mutters out blankly.

“How very unfortunate.”

“Delilah,” he says, his tone almost stern as he looked unimpressed.

“Fine, damn.”

I grabbed the pencil before staring back down at the equation, the room stayed quiet, well, except for the faint scratching of my pencil against the paper, while Caelum reaches for his poetry book again.

And honestly, the fact that he was casually reading poetry during his fee time told me absolutely everything I needed to know about him.

Psychopath behavior,

My attention drifted from the paper in front of me to him as I pretended to think. His glass sat right low on his nose, while his eyes moved across the page in concentration, his expression remained calm, relaxed and completely unaffected.

Chapter 16

Meanwhile I was fighting for my life against numebrs

“Half of this shit looks made up,” I mutters under my breath.

i

“It isn’t.”

I rolled my eyes immediately. “I wasn’t actually asking.”

“Tragic.”

You son of a …ugh

How did someone this quiet still manage to be so fucking ass annoying?

Returning my focus back to the paper in front of me, I spent another couple of minutes trying to solve the questions, and after a while, I finally shove the paper toward him, letting out a very dramatic exhaustion.

“There.”

Caelum sets the book back down before taking the paper from me, his eyes scanned over my answer silently. And then slowly, his brows pulled together.

Oh no

That expression never meant anything good

“How.” he asked ever so slowly, “are you this bad?”

Well, excuse you?

I glare at him in offense. “Wow.”

“You got not even a single question right.” I stared at him and then snatched the paper back.

Okay

Maybe he had a point

But still

Crossing my arms over my chest. “You don’t sound so confident now.”

He leans back in his chair, looking mildly irritated already. “I told you this is going to take some time.”

“But Mrs Malachi and your little cult friends act like you’re some kind of genius.”

“Genius, yes. A magician…” he corrected flatly. “No.” I snorted quietly at that. “Unfortunately,” he continues. “I do not posses some kind of supernatural ability capable of fixing years of terrible academic decisions overnight.”

“Why does that sound highly targeted.”

“It was.”

Bitch

He pulled the paper back toward himself and began circling several things in red pen, and let’s just say the amount of red on the page looked violent.

Carlin glance up briefly once he was done. “Every end of the week,” he starts off, “I will be giving you an assignment on

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Chapter 16

everything we have learnt during each weekly session.”

My head snapped toward him. “Excuse me?”

“You are to complete them during the weekend, and submit them to me by the beginning of the week.”

I bite at the wall of my mouth from saying anything. Once again reminded of the fact that I needed his help.

He takes out another paper and starting writing the equations out again. “Watch carefully,” he said, this time his voice softens a bit. Not the emotional kind of way, more like focused.

He began patiently explaining each steps, slowly writing and occasionally pausing to point at certain parts of the formula. And annoyingly enough, it actually started to make a bit more sense.

Not fully, just enough to stop my brain from threatening to shut down.

“This part here,” he says, tapping on the page lightly with the pencil, “is where you keep making mistake. You’re pushing through the equation instead of trying to understand why the formula works.”

I frowned sligyly at this, before nodding once. “Oh.”

“Do you understand now?” He glance up briefly at me.

“A little bit.”

“That’s progress.” There was something oddly satisfying about the way he said it, and I could tell he meant it

It was almost like he was rooting for me not to fail, which was new.

He slids another question toward me. “Try this one.”

I stared down at it before looking back up at him, and I wasn’t sure why I asked him this, but I find myself saying before I could rethink my word. “And if I fail again?”

His gaze lifts up, holding mine for a second or two. “You probably will,” he admits calmly, “but at least now you have an understanding why this time.”

I pulled my gaze away from his, staring down at the paper, before attempting to solve the questions just had he had shown. Minutes pass by, and by the time I finished the second set of questions, my brain was genuinely fried.

Statistics should’ve counted as psychological abuse

I pushed the paper toward Caelum with a sigh, dropping the pencil beside it. “There. If this is terrible, lie to me.”

He takes the sheet without saying anything at first, eyes moving carefully over each answer. While I watched his expression closely, or tired to.

Reading him was annoyingly difficult, since his fave barely ever changed half the time.

A few quiet second pass by before he grabs his pen and started marking the page, one tick, than another, and then several very unfortunate crosses.

This already looked bad

Once he was done, he set his pen down before turning the paper slightly toward me.

“Three out of ten.” I stared at the page and I wasn’t sure why I felt a dampness in my chest.

My shoulders sank a little before I could stop it, and I quickly leaned back in my chair like I wasn’t bothered.

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