As I brushed past her, a cloud of her sweet scent enveloped me, and for the second time in five seconds, I nearly lost my composure. But I had to stay focused, which was especially tough right now. The urge to kiss her overwhelmed me, and I grazed my body against hers, causing her to stumble backward.
“How do you know them?” she said, glancing at the door, and I took the opportunity to eye her up.
“Who?” My mind had emptied because all I could see, smell, and hear was her. This was how hot women dumb men down.
“The blond…” she frowned as if trying to remember a name, “James.”
“Oh,” my heart sank. Why did she wanna talk about those fuckers? “The Yorks.” Then it occurred to me that she really didn’t know who they were, which was going to be interesting when she found out. Maybe I should tell her.
“Yorks? Oh, is that his name?” she said sweetly, and I caught a hint of bashfulness as if she maybe did like him or was flattered that he asked her out.
“Yeah, they’re not good people,” I told her as she seemed a little nervous and lengthened the space between us, which was probably a good thing because I didn’t know if I could keep my hands off her.
“Really? In what way?” she pressed, and I was about to answer when she added, “I mean,” she made a cute face as she started to relax around me, which would make it harder for me to watch and tease her, which was why I was assigned a room in Morgana in the first place. “He seems like your average jock, like, ew,” she screwed up her pretty face, “like the disgusting Warwicks.”
I had to suppress a smile, but she caught my smirk anyway. “Yeah, the Warwicks are a different league altogether,” I mumbled, wondering if I should tell her the truth. She’s gonna see us together one day. “Yeah, I mean…I kinda know them.”
“Who? The Yorks or the Warwicks?” she asked enthusiastically as she walked ahead of me. I had the opportunity to perv at her ass.
“The Warwicks,’ I replied, and she groaned as if she disapproved.
“You don’t seem like a jock,” she added as we walked past the kitchen and common room to find them empty. “When do you think everyone else will arrive?”
“I don’t know. Maybe next week.” I was guessing because I had no idea, and I didn’t really care. I liked the campus being half empty, and Morgana won’t be fully housed because that was the plan.
She placed her foot on the bottom, then looked back at me, catching me for the third time staring at her ass. I mean…it’s right there in front of me, so how could I not look at it? She narrowed her pretty green eyes at me in a waring glare, and I thought, at first, it was because she just caught me in the act of perving. Until she asked, “How close are you with the Warwicks?”
“A little,” I downplayed it, but the Warwicks were basically my family, and I couldn’t hide how close we were forever.
“They’re not nice, you know,” her eyes moistened as grief flashed behind her eyes before she turned her back to continue climbing the stairs.
“They…” I started, unsure how to word it, “are rich.” That’s the best I could come up with. She’s right. They’re not nice.
Privileged, entitled, spoiled, angry, and have never experienced a lack of anything, except maybe their father’s attention. But who hadn’t experienced an absent father? Their mother always tried to compensate for what their father lacked.
At least she was reliable. In fact, around this time, she would be calling her golden boy son to remind him to get a date for the Charity Ball that their mother organizes every year. The golden boy would complain and make excuses, trying to avoid it, but would end up going anyway with a girl he doesn’t like to an event he doesn’t want to attend, just to endure the other wealthy guests who try to make conversation. The advantage of being an outsider was that I wasn’t a puppet forced to perform while my rich family pulled the strings. Freedom.
Adina snorted, and that laughter uplifted me again, like a magic spell flooding through every cell in my body, and I had to hold myself back from grabbing that body and pulling her close.
This was not going to work if I kept thinking of her in that way.
“Yes, that is true. They are rich,” she mumbled as she rested her hand on the door handle.
I wasn’t ready for this. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her. I opened my mouth to say something, but I knew I shouldn’t. “I’ll see you later,” I said, trying to sound less depressed than I actually was.
She glanced back at me, and I saw a look on her face that I didn’t expect. “I hope it wasn’t you who broke into my room, then,” she said in a warning tone.
“Your room was broken into?” I played dumb and internally scolded myself for being so stupid. Of course, if I revealed the connection between the Warwicks and me, then she might think that I was part of the whole scheme to terrorize her. Also, we stole her handgun, so I bet she’s freaking out about that. Dumbass. But we were masked, so hopefully she won’t figure it out.
“Yeah,” she sighed irritably, opening her door, and I couldn’t read her face to know if she believed my lie or not. “Bye.”
“Bye,” fuck, this was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. Walk away from one of the hottest chicks at Castlehill, which wasn’t really saying much since half the campus was empty, but still, she was fine. Fine with a capital F. Jeezus, even internally I sound like a geek weirdo.
I went back to my room with my tail between my legs, shut the door behind me, and slumped onto my bed, feeling down. Under my mattress, I found a small foil and some cigarette papers, and I started to roll a doobie while Turnstile pounded through my headphones. Even though Turnstile wasn’t as heavy as I usually like, their sound still did the trick this time.
It only took ten minutes of noise and dope for the heavy feelings for the girl down the hall to fade, but fuck, this whole plan was gonna be harder than I thought.
14
