“Charm?” I snort out a laugh. “Is that what you think you have?”
“And here I thought we turned a corner the other day.” He scratches his chin and I track the movement, wishing it were my fingers running through the coarse hair, the sensation tickling my skin.
“You thought so, huh?”
“I know so. Just like I know you’re not nearly as unaffected by me as you’d like me to believe.” He abruptly pushes to a stand and before I’ve even processed the movement, he’s next to me, leaning down so that when he speaks, his breath is hot against the side of my face. “You can play hard to get all you want, Maisie Rose.” My breath catches when I feel his lips brush against the lobe of my ear. “But make no mistake, this is a game I fully intend to win.” He straightens and I’m both relieved and disappointed by the loss of his nearness.
“I’m not playing a game.” I look up at him, summoning all the irritation I can into the sneer that slides across my face.
“Yes, you are,” he says matter-of-factly, grabbing his bag off the floor before throwing it over his shoulder. “And I’m here for it, so long as you know that when I set my sights on something, I won’t stop until it’smine. So make me work for it. The end result will be the same.”
“Where are you going?” I blurt when he turns on his heel and starts to leave. “We aren’t done.”
“I have class, and you have a date to get ready for.”
“I never said yes,” I call after him.
“Yes, you did, just not with your mouth.”
I hear his soft chuckle seconds before he disappears around the corner.
What the actual fuck?
I pull in a deep breath, trying to wrap my head around what the hell just happened. One second, he’s treating me like just any other lab partner, on his best behavior. And the next, he’s doing... Well, whatever the hell that just was.
I want to be offended that he thinks he can win me over so easily after everything he did to me, but I can’t muster the emotion, no matter how hard I try. Because at the end of the day, I want him to do exactly what he promised. I want him to work for it. I want him to grovel and beg. I want him to chase me until I can’t run anymore. I want to know that at the end of the day, he means what he says, and this isn’t just some sick, twisted game of his.
But no matter what he says or does, nothing will erase the doubt that’s currently eating away every ounce of excitement I felt just moments ago.
Because while I want to believe what he says is true—that he did what he did two years ago to protect me—a part of me can’t seem to accept that his intentions were truly that good. Maybe that was the excuse he gave himself, but at the end of the day, if he truly wanted to be with me, hewould have told me the truth. Instead, he pushed me away, humiliated me, and then spent the last two years basically acting like I didn’t exist, despite the fact that I purposely hooked up with some of his friends in an attempt to hurt him, which I can confidently say did not work.
Hell, I even told him about Trev, about the fact that we hooked up in Macallan’s bed, and yet the next day I saw him and Trev laughing and talking like nothing happened. Which means either he didn’t believe me or he doesn’t care.
Lord knows if I found out Lyric or Char hooked up with Macallan, the whole freaking campus would know because I’d lose my freaking mind. Not that my friends would ever do that to me, but that’s not the point. The point is, I wouldn’t be carrying on like it meant nothing.
Which begs the question, why is he actually doing this? What are his true intentions? And how foolish would it be for me to believe a single word that comes out of his mouth?
Extremely foolish. I have no doubt. And yet, it doesn’t change that I want to say yes. I want to go to dinner with him. Iwanthim to try to win me over. I just don’t want to consider why that is, because I know I’m not going to like the answer.
