The girls we passed looked at Lucas with something more than curiosity. Hunger. Who could blame them?
I certainly felt him next to me—felt that strong, big body so close—even though we never touched. Not even the brushing of arms, though I admit I did come close to faking a stumble so I could lean into him.
But we reached my dorm with no stumbles—faked or otherwise—and I turned to him. “Here we are,” I said, like an idiot.
He nodded, looking up at the four-story building. I didn’t want to leave him, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Have you worked for Bribury long?” I asked.
“Don’t,” he said, turning to face me full on. “You don’t need to do that with me.”
“Do what?”
“The small talk. The stuff you’re doing with all the guys you’re meeting. ‘What’s your major?’ and ‘Where’d you go to prep?’ Don’t do that with me. I’m not like them.”
There was an intensity in his stance, in his face, though it was too dark to see if it showed in his eyes. My guess is it did.
We were standing to the side, at the front of the dorm, out of the lights from the doorway. I liked being in the shadows with him, but I also liked looking at his face. Too much.
“What are you, then?” I asked. “If you’re ‘not one of them’?”
“I’m…” He leaned toward me, took a tiny step closer. Not touching, but God, so close. I couldn’t smell him and I wanted to, wanted to know his scent. Then something stopped him. He moved no further. In fact, he took a step back. I almost cried out for him to come back even though it was mere inches. He ran a hand through that black hair, that too long, not trendy-long, but shaggy-long, gorgeous hair. “I’m…” he began again. But his voice had changed; there was almost resignation now. “I’m not what you need,” he finished.
He turned and walked away from me.
Chapter3
“So like Matt DamoninGood Will Huntingjanitor, or, you know, just skeezy, leering-at-college-girls janitor?” my roommate Jane asked.
“The Matt Damon kind, for sure,” I said. We were sitting on our beds, facing each other across the small room.
“So, secret genius and all that? Deeply, deeply misunderstood?”
I shrugged and pulled one of the decorative pillows my mom had bought for my room onto my lap, as if I needed protection. “Probably not secret genius.” I thought about the awareness in Lucas’s eyes, and what seemed like intelligence. But how the hell would I know that? “At least, I don’t think so.”
“But big, you said? And kind of brooding?”
“Jesus, Jane, he wasn’t Heathcliff or anything.” Was he?
Jane flipped onto her back and stretched her long arms over her head. We were the same height—on the tall side—but Jane had more curves than me. A fact we both hated. She was in leggings and a T-shirt, both hugging her body. She wore her chestnut hair in a chin-length bob, sometimes straightening it, sometimes letting her wild curls run free, as they did now.
We didn’t know each other before we became roommates, but we’d knownabouteach other our whole lives. Our fathers had been deeply entwined with each other when Jane and I were born. And perhaps were again, if my father’s instructions on keeping an eye on Jane were any indication.
For the first week, we’d warily circled each other, knowing we’d been placed together by our fathers, neither of us knowing exactly why.
The second weekend here, we’d gone to a party, gotten a little drunk, and done True Confessions back in our room, where we both agreed to disregard any directives coming from our fathers about each other, and just relax. Be friends. Real friends.
Which was an easy promise for Jane to make—she’d been ignoring her father’s directives for years. Had taken great pleasure in it lately, in fact.
Not quite so easy for me, though.
“Poor Lily,” Jane said, teasing in her voice. “A campus full of respectable, father-approved guys, and you fall for a ne’er-do-well townie.”
“I’m not ‘falling for’ anybody,” I said quickly.
Jane glanced my way and made a half-snort sound, then turned back to stare up at the ceiling.
“And we don’t know that he’s a ne’er do well,” I added. I wasn’t even sure what a ne’er do well was—Jane was always throwing out terms like that—but I figured it wasn’t good.
