What are we? What are we doing? What happens next?
CHAPTER 23
BECK
The morning I finally break us out of the sick bubble we’ve been in, I feel… wrong. Out of sorts. Confused and lost.
After spending almost five days together, three of those days wrapped up in each other the way we were, I feel like I’ve blinked and stepped out of some alternate universe, one where Brody Miller slept beside me, pressed warm and solid at my back, and kissed me softly while half-delirious on cold medicine.
Which is why I tell him he has to go back to his own room well before anyone gets back. Both Fish and Cade have texted me, and I know when they’re both due to arrive, but I don’t want to take any chances.
Not because I want him to leave. But because I don’t. I’m not so deluded that I can’t admit that to myself now.
But because the more this time with him sinks into my chest, the more terrified I get of what happens when Brody starts wanting more from me. Things I can’t give him. Things like open affection and honesty. Or like letting myself want him without conditions or excuses.
So I stand up out of bed Sunday morning and tell him it’s time to go. We’re both well enough to take care of ourselves, and we don’t need to play doctor anymore. Or house. Or whatever the fuck it is that we’ve been doing.
Before he leaves, he leans in like he’s going to kiss me. Like he has—like we both have—far too many times in the last few days. We’ve gotten far too comfortable.
I turn my head and cough into my elbow. It starts as a fake cough, but don’t worry, I get properly reprimanded by a real coughing fit that both hurts and leaves me almost as breathless as the kiss would have.
For the next few days, I do my best to pretend everything is normal. Finals are next week, so if my stress is obvious, no one notices. Everyone on campus is stressed and tired and wired as they gear up for the end of the semester. Well, everyone except Brody. As usual, he walks around with the grace of someone who doesn’t have a worry in the world, like he has all the answers to life’s problems and the final exams that everyone else is dreading. I try to tune him out, to pretend that nothing has changed in our dynamic other than not having time to hook up like we had been before the holiday break.
But Brody doesn’t let me.
He inserts himself into my space with the subtlety of a bulldozer. First by staying by my side and insisting on commiserating about how weak his muscles still feel while we work through morning lift and conditioning. Then by plopping down next to me in the dining hall without an invitation.
Then there’s the library. Caty and I are lucky enough to have a standing booking for one of the private study rooms on thethird floor. I’m midway through a practice test about corporate valuation models when someone pushes the door open without knocking, and Brody strolls in like he was invited. By the way Caty’s eyes light up instantly, I’m assuming he was.
The traitorous bitch.
“Brody,” she says brightly, lifting one brow in a way that makes my stomach flip because I know she’s up to something. “So nice of you to join us.”
I don’t bother pretending to be happy to see him and stare her down. “What is this?”
“What?” she asks innocently. “I saw Brody in the dining hall, and he mentioned needing to study, and this is such a nice, quiet, private space.”
She’s doing this on purpose. She’s doing this because I told her that he and I spent the holiday together involuntarily because we were both sick, which she didn’t buy. So she interrogated me until I admitted that, in a drug-induced haze, we spent what felt like meaningful time together, and I’m all fucked up about it. Caty suggested I not ignore him and talk about my feelings or some absolutely ludicrous business like that, and I am having none of it. So, of course, she’s meddling.
“You don’t even know each other.”
“Nonsense. We both know you, and that’s enough.”
Brody nods. “We’re basically besties now.”
The glare I shoot them would wither even my father. Except both of them grin back at me with equally snarky, knowing expressions that are far too similar to be a coincidence.
I’ve done this to myself, haven’t I? I’ve managed to attract a best friend and a boy…situationthat share the ability to see right through me.
“I hate you both.”
“Uh-huh, I know you do, honey,” Caty says while patting my hand placatingly.
Caty spends the next twenty minutes or so making faces at me whenever Brody isn’t looking. Which should be more often considering Brody is really bad at studying or isn’t even trying to fake it. He glances at me every three minutes like he’s waiting for me to meet his eyes. I don’t.
Except when I flick my eyes over to him to make sure he’s studying, not for any other reason, and catch him watching me. Our eyes lock like magnets, and my face heats when I can’t seem to look away.
Caty snorts and closes her laptop. “I think I’m done for today. I need some caffeine, or I’m not going to make it through my biology lecture this afternoon. You two have fun.”
