At no point did I stop and ask myself why I cared. It was simple: she intrigued me, and shefit. With the house, with my found family, and oh so perfectly on the back of my bike. Andrew might think this was a short-term assignment, but I knew better. She was ours now. For good.
27
EVELYN
Returning to my normal life after being kidnapped and taken across state lines should have been weird and surreal. But I’d had more than enough experience adapting back to a normal life after a traumatic experience, so I just breezed into the lecture hall on Monday morning and took my normal seat between Andrew and Brodie.
“Evie babe, you said you’d wait for me this morning, but you were gone when I got up.”
Brodie leaned over and nuzzled into the side of my cheek before he pressed a heated kiss to my skin, and I had to squeeze my thighs tightly against the sudden ache in my center. My body was fully on board with the sexy movie star, while also being into the sexy professor. It was a lot of stimulation and not a lot of sex to go along with it, and I was suffering the consequences.
“I had to head for the library first. I was meeting Nina for a quick study session before class.”
Andrew scoffed, and I swung around on him. We hadn’t spoken since the blow up, and I had no interest in starting now,but that derisive noise immediately pissed me off. “Something to say, Mr. Knightsbridge?”
He smirked and the only response I got was a shrug. Right. Still being an asshole apparently.
Thankfully, Ethan was at the front of the room, ready to roll, and I was able to spend the next hour focused on the sexiest teacher I’d ever seen, while Brodie rubbed his thumb up and down my thigh, my dual distractions for the day.
I barely managed to take notes, and when I laughingly knocked Brodie’s hand away near the end of the lecture, I knew we’d drawn Ethan’s attention, as he paused and glanced up to our spot. For once, though, he didn’t call me out and request I stay behind. Maybe he was realizing how suspicious it looked for me to be constantly singled out when I wasn’t the only one who ever disrupted his class.
When class was over, Brodie linked our arms and flashed a smug smile at Ethan as we passed. I thought I saw a flash of annoyance on the handsome professor’s face, but he got his expression under control so quickly, I might have been wrong. We were supposed to meet up at the library later today, so I’d ask him if everything was okay then.
Brodie and Andrew left me at the door of my next class, which was a makeup class from a subject I usually had on Thursday, and I was surprised when I walked in to find Connor sprawled in the middle row, in the seat I usually occupied. It was the first time I’d seen him since he dumped me onto the back of Haze’s bike, our paths not crossing for the rest of the weekend.
“Hey,” I said softly, feeling weirdly shy. As he lifted his face from his phone, green eyes locked on me, and I was reminded of our time together. Squished in that car. The kiss which brought me out of my panic. The way he’d been so capable as he’d shot that asshole in the head to protect us.
“Hey,” he replied casually, his gaze running over me like he was checking for injuries.
With a shake of my head, I dropped into the seat beside him, on the aisle. “Have I just missed you in this class for the past few weeks? Or did you skip the first quarter of the subject?”
Connor shrugged, letting his phone fall to the desk, but not before I caught a glimpse of a message from what looked like a pretty dark-haired girl. “Maybe it was a bit of both.”
As weird as the response was, I let it go, afraid of disrupting this fraction of peace between us. The professor strolled in ten minutes later, and the room was only half-filled with students, since most of them didn’t care about a catch-up class.
As I pulled out my laptop to take notes, Connor just relaxed in his chair, his long legs extended and spread until our thighs almost touched. I’d been in a trunk pressed against his guy, and there hadn’t been as much tension flowing between us as I felt right this second, with inches separating us.
It took me a few minutes of regulating my breathing to realize I was nervous being near Connor and not because he was an infuriating asshole most of the time. Nope. I had these warm, fluttery feelings for him, that felt a lot like…hero worship.
Oh, fuck.
That wasn’t good, and I needed to stop immediately before he figured it out and used it to make my life miserable. I was under no misgivings that his feelings toward me had changed, outside of slightly tolerating me now. But if I upset the temporary truce, I’d no doubt feel the full force of his annoyance and hatred once more.
The thought of going back to that bothered me. A lot.
By the time class was over, I’d taken two lines of notes and had literally no idea what the fuck we’d just learned. Not that itmattered as I hurried from my chair in the hopes of putting distance between Connor and me.
He gave me no chance though, his long strides catching him up to me before I was even out the door, and he fell into step at my side all the way to the cafeteria. “Are you having lunch with me?” I asked, hoping he thought the heat in my cheeks was from a sunburn.
As if I didn’t have enough shit to deal with—and men in my life, for that matter—that I had to nurse another freaking crush on a guy who was both dangerous and out of my league.
“I mean, we shared a near-death experience,” Connor said with a shrug, staring out across the busy grounds. “I don’t see why we can’t share lunch as well.”
Don’t say it. Don’t say it.“Are you trauma bonding with me?”
Well, fuck. I would have taken another immediate kidnapping to escape my stupid mouth if I could. Connor halted briefly and squinted down at me like I was a slug he’d accidentally stood on. “Sorry, what? What the fuck is a trauma bond?”
Figured this asshole would deal so well with trauma that the thought of sharing a connection over almost dying never even occurred to him.
