Prom Ever After - Dona Sarkar Mills & Boon Kimani Tru

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why and would snap at her when she pursued it too fervently. Ash started to think it was because they had started getting teased for being boyfriend-girlfriend because they were together so much of the time.

      Hurt that he was so offended at being called her boyfriend, Ash had started to pull away from him and had hung out with some of the more popular kids...Billy Walters included.

      She’d started to walk to Pacific Place mall after school with her new friends to people-watch and make comments at random strangers, rather than going home to watch TV and do homework, as she always did with Seb.

      It had been awesome to finally feel like she belonged. A total thrill to have every day be a total unknown. She knew she was getting set up for a good place in the high-school food chain and it felt great.

      On the last day of eighth grade, she was walking down the hall with some of her new friends when she overheard Billy Walters and his cronies start slamming closed all the open lockers while kids were still trying to empty them out. She’d never liked it when Billy harassed people who hadn’t done anything to him, but up until then she’d never cared enough to stop him.

      She’d looked down the hall and had seen Sebastian spot Billy and his gang as they started toward his locker. Sebastian hurriedly started emptying everything into his backpack. Ash heard Billy call out to him, by a very derogatory name.

      Sebastian turned as white as Ash had ever seen him.

      She’d looked from her former best friend to the group of guys who were now backing Billy as they stalked toward Sebastian.

      She saw something she’d never seen before in Sebastian’s eyes. Fear. In an instant, she realized what had been causing Sebastian’s weird behavior that year. And she knew that she needed to do something to make sure Seb never felt that fear again.

      She’d gone after the guys and stepped between them and Sebastian. She’d stood in front of Billy, half his size, and smiled sweetly. She’d whispered some nonsense under her breath. When he’d leaned down to hear what she was saying, she struck. She kneed him under the chin, punched him in the solar plexus, then flipped his entire body over her shoulder.

      Just as she’d done to pass her green belt test for tae kwon do the week before.

      After Billy’s body hit the ground in front of his shocked friends, she’d planted her left foot, clad in her first pair of high heels, in his chest and said quietly, “Bully someone again and see what happens.”

      Her father had been proud of and impressed by her.

      Her mother had been convinced she’d go to jail.

      Billy had never again looked her in the eye.

      Her so-called new friends never spoke to her again.

      Sebastian had grown six inches that summer and had never gotten picked on again...but had never stopped trying to make it up to Ash ever since.

      Six

      “I am your hero, go ahead and admit it.” Sebastian dropped a giant gizmo that looked like an old-school soda machine on the drafting table.

      “I don’t want a soda. They’re bad for you, anyway. This is what you had to show me?”

      When Ash had received a text from Sebastian asking her to skip lunch and meet in the drafting classroom, she’d been expecting... Well, she didn’t know. But it certainly wasn’t a soda machine.

      “Do you even know what this is? Hint—not a soda machine.”

      “Slushees?”

      “No.”

      “Frozen yogurt?”

      “Stop thinking about food!”

      “I’m supposed to be eating curly fries right now—just tell me.”

      “It’s a 3-D printer!”

      A 3-D printer. Ash’s curiosity was piqued. “There’s such a thing? What does it print?”

      “Stuff in 3-D.”

      “Thank you, Wikipedia Brown. Like what stuff?”

      “Like...” Sebastian paused for effect. “This sketch for example!”

      He slapped down a gorgeous sketch of the lehenga modified and shown in a 3-D perspective using their CAD software. He’d spent the past three evenings working on it at Ash’s place after school with Sonali.

      It was even better than Ash had imagined it would be. And so much better than the schoolfront they were supposed to be working on. She’d taken over the school project so Sebastian could focus on the dress, and she had to admit she’d been having a lot of fun with designing a new entrance. Too much fun, probably, since none of the ideas she’d had were very practical.

      Sebastian logged in to his PC and sent the sketch to the printer and pressed a series of buttons.

      “How do you know how to do this?”

      “The internet has all the answers,” Seb replied as he made sure the printer was turned on. “We’ll see if it knows the right answers anyway.”

      Ash watched in amazement as drops of some weird liquid started dropping, then accumulating and sticking together at the base of the strange machine.

      “That’s plastic and acrylic. It’s going to shape the dress.”

      Ash continued to watch. She could see the hem of the dress taking its shape. “I see it!”

      Even Sebastian looked surprised at his handiwork.

      “Wow, I never thought this would work just like in the YouTube video.”

      “Where did you get it?” She squeezed Seb’s arm. He flexed it tightly in response under her fingertips. She held on for an extra second, loving how he always wanted to protect her.

      “The drafting department just got it from a donation. This local start-up sank and had to start giving up its stuff. I promised Mr. Watkins I’d clean the auto-shop garage if I could borrow it during lunch.”

      “Seb. No.” There he went with the heroics again. She needed him to know she was willing to do her own bargaining punishments. “I’ll do it. You’ve done enough for me.”

      “Too late. You’re not the kind of girl who is ever going to clean a garage floor. Not while I’m around anyway.”

      Ash opened her mouth to protest.

      “Anyway, he thinks we’re printing our school sketch, so we need to do that, too. Why don’t you work on making sure it looks kind of finished?”

      For once, Ash didn’t complain and started up the CAD software on her PC. She couldn’t believe Seb was doing garage cleanup for her. He wasn’t even getting anything out of this—it wasn’t his dress, or his date’s dress. Knowing Jessica, she’d chicken out and not ask and he would remain dateless. She still didn’t understand why he hadn’t asked anyone yet. Any girl would say yes.

      Sebastian, however, didn’t seem put out by it at all. Instead, he seemed really happy and sat with his hands folded under his chin, watching the dress get created, an intensely focused expression on this face.

      Ash, in the meantime, deleted her more lame ideas, such as a moat and drawbridge, from the CAD drawing of the school and verified that all of Sebastian’s great ideas were still in place.

      She straightened out the pillars and archway and saved her work. It wasn’t great, but at least they wouldn’t fail. It was a hundred times better than the boring, boxy, ’70s architecture the school was made with right then anyway. When she turned back to see how the 3-D dress printing was going, she gasped.

      The lehenga bore no resemblance to what it had been. It was halter-style, came in at the waist, left a sliver of midsection visible, and then flowed into a mermaid-tail skirt that just erupted into

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