“Harlow, I don’t want this to be weird.”
“I think it’s a little late for that because it’s definitely weird.” She let out a long exhale. “We got black out drunk and had sex that neither of us can remember. I don’t even know if it was good. Was it good? Don’t answer that.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “This is exactly why tequila is evil.”
“I don’t think it was just tequila…”
“I don’t care if it was battery acid mixed with unicorn tears, the point is…” She stopped, regrouping. “Look, I think we should avoid each other for a while. Until you figure your shit out.”
The words stung more than they should have. “Figure my shit out?”
“Yeah. Your feelings. Your weirdly aggressive questioning about guys from my class and whatever’s made you stand in the rain for an hour to ambush me.”
“It wasn’t an hour.”
“Owen.”
“Right.” I swallowed hard. “What about the wedding?” Jax’s wedding was days away, and we were both in it. It would be hard to avoid each other completely.
“That’ll be…” She trailed off, huffing out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, that’ll be a nightmare. We’ll have to try to avoid each other without making it weird. So basically, we go back to normal. Where you pretend I don’t exist again.”
“That’s not what I want, Har.”
Her expression softened for a second before she reconstructed it.
“I need to go.” She straightened, adjusting her backpack. “Professor Stambaugh will lock the door soon.”
I nodded, stepping aside to let her pass.
She took three steps before stopping, her back still to me. “For what it’s worth…” Her tone was quieter now. “I don’t think it’ll ever not be weird. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe we were never supposed to not be weird.”
Then she was gone, her footsteps echoing down the stairwell, leaving me alone with hundreds of books and the growing certainty that I was completely, irreversibly fucked.
CHAPTER 5
HARLOW
I staredout the rain-streaked window at nothing. My economics textbook sprawled open to page 112, the same page it had been stuck on for forty minutes. The words about supply and demand curves were starting to melt into incomprehensible black smudges that might as well be ancient hieroglyphics.
The house was too quiet. I hated it, but this was the new normal. Jax and Kaia lived in the pool house until after the wedding, and then they moved. Trystan treated the house like a hotel he occasionally remembered existed. That left Syn and me here pretty much alone. Except lately, Syn had mastered the art of vanishing, too.
I should be studying. Professor Stambaugh’s surprise daily quizzes had stopped being a surprise around week two, but I’d barely gotten through half of this week’s material.
Every time I tried to focus, my traitorous brain shifted from supply and demand to Owen, and how freaking good he looked the other day with his infuriating smirk.
I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to remember anything I could from that drunken night, but everything stayed stubbornly fuzzy.
I dragged my eyes back to the textbook, determined to focus. “The law of diminishing returns states that…” The sentence evaporated before I could finish it, replaced by the memory of how he looked at me, like he had X-ray vision.
This was ridiculous. I pressed my palms against my temples hard enough to hurt.
“Hey.”
My head snapped up so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.
Kaia stepped up to the table, glancing at my textbook. “What are you doing?”
“Studying. Or pretending to study. Same thing at this point.” I slammed the book closed with more force than necessary. I was grateful for the interruption. “But I could definitely use a break. How are you feeling?”
She melted into the chair across from me with a heavy sigh. “A little better today.”
