“Hashtag, just saying.”
“Don’t say hashtag,” I admonish her, not for the first time, but I’m sure she can hear my smile.
“Hashtag, sorry, not sorry,” she says just to be annoying.
It has the opposite effect, and I exhale some of my residual anxiety. “Okay, I have to call campus security before David gets up here and scolds me about it.”
“Or, you could let yourself get in trouble with your bodyguard. Maybe tell him you need to be punished. A nice spank—”
“Good-bye!” I squeal, and hang up the phone.
I’m only just calling campus security—a number we were all instructed to program into our speed dial at orientation—when David knocks fervently on the door. I check the peephole before I let him in.
His presence is enormous in the shoebox of a room. Not just because of his height and build, but because of his energy. He chews his bottom lip when he realizes I’m on the phone, and that he’ll have to hold his questions, or lecture, for now. Campus security tells me they’re sending an officer to talk to me, and others to sweep the building and quad, but there’s no point, since Brody lives here.
I hang up the phone and sit on my small twin bed, sagging in defeat.
“What’d they say?” David asks, brows raised expectantly.
“They’re sending someone to talk to me. And officers to look around campus, but…”
“But?”
I sigh. “You heard me when I told them what happened. It just sounded like some guy went into his own dorm and came by my room to talk to me.”
“Some guy who attacked a girl less than two days ago!” David growls.
“I know that. But that hasn’t been proven yet, as far as they’re concerned. It’s not like they’re going to arrest him for knocking on my door.”
David stews in place, realizing the truth of my words, radiating frustrated energy. I can feel his aggravation—it’s there in his tense muscles, the clench of his sharp, rugged jaw.
I feel like an errant child, and I study my fingernails with practiced fascination, scratching absently at my cuticles. Eventually he sits beside me, his heavy arm settling comfortingly around my shoulders.
“It’s going to be fine, kid. Okay?”
I don’t reply. I don’t even remember what fine is anymore.
We wait in silence for campus security, and an officer arrives no more than five minutes later. As I predicted, my account of Brody’s chase and my narrow escape sounds a lot less sinister than it felt.
“Did he say anything other than that he wanted to talk to you?” the officer asks.
I shake my head in defeat.
“All right, Miss Caplan, we’ll have a talk with him and let him know that he should keep his distance from you.”
“Thanks,” I murmur. I wonder how effective that will be.
David asks to speak to the officer in private, and they go into the hall. I don’t bother trying to listen. I already know David is expressing his outrage, demanding that they do more to protect me.
But what can they do? Brody is innocent until proven otherwise, and he had every right to be in his own dorm building, and to knock on my door, apparently.
David bursts back through my door, visibly pissed off. I don’t bother asking why.
He stands there, staring at me, and then he whirls into motion. He opens my closet, then looks under my bed, and pulls out my overnight bag. He tosses it at me. “Pack your shit,” he orders.
I stare at him blankly.
David starts pulling clothing out of my closet and, still, I blink at him in confusion. When he opens the top drawer of my dresser, he freezes and rakes his fingers through his hair, and I remember that it’s my underwear drawer. I rush in front of him and slam it shut. “What are you doing?” I demand.
