Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

I backed up, pressing the door again and finding it still not
giving way.
“Are you hurt?” the dark voice asked me.
I shook my head. His tone wasn’t taunting like the others,
but there was something about it that gave me pause.
“Are you going to class?” he pressed, his voice growing
closer. I couldn’t back up anymore, just kept putting all of my
weight into the door.
I opened my mouth. “I have—I have lunch.”
He leaned in close, his body brushing mine, and I sucked
in a breath and put my hands up.
“Let me get the door for you,” he said in a low voice.
“I…” I planted my hands on his chest to keep him away
from me, feeling a crisp shirt, stiff collar, and skin. I let my
fingertips linger a moment too long in the strip of bare chest
where his shirt wasn’t buttoned.
Shit. I moved to pull my hands down, but just then, my
thumb brushed an object—a little ball or…bead—peeking
through the opening of his shirt.
Déjà vu washed over me.
GGrazing it with my finger, I felt another and then another,
tracing the beads on the chain—warm from his skin—down
his torso where the two strains joined into one as it draped
down his stomach.
Wood. I could feel the grooves under the gloss coating.
My stomach dipped. No, no, no…
I couldn’t help it. I followed the line of the beads, feeling
his stomach tighten under my fingertips, and his breathing
quicken.
Reaching the crucifix I hoped wasn’t there, I pinched it
between my fingers, my nerves firing hot under my skin as I
instantly recognized the carefully crafted definition of the
fingers attached to the cross.