He blinks. “She’s on the list, sir. She doesn’t need?—“
“Take her off.”
“Of course, sir.” He works the keyboard in front of him, tapping away with two fingers like he’s only just learnt to use a keyboard. I wonder what his previous job was.
I exhale hard. “Sorry, Adolf.”
“It is fine, Mr Slater.” He doesn’t look up. “Miss Pemberton has been removed.”
I drum my fingers once on the desk. Then stop. A question repeats in my mind, but I’m not sure I want the answer. Still, I ask, “Was Blesk okay? Miss Bellamy, I mean, when she came down yesterday?”
Adolf sighs hard. “She was crying, sir.”
I stare at the desk for a moment, a sharp sensation dragging through my chest. “Dammit.” I force a smile. “Thank you, Adolf.”
As I walk towards the sliding doors, he calls, “Mr Slater!” I turn. A hint of something—knowledge, perhaps—curves his lips.“Would you like me to put Miss Bellamy on the guest list?”
I lift a brow, finding it hard not to punch myself in the face for what happened yesterday. “Aren’t we optimistic?”
He gives me a measured look—the kind my dad gives me. Ben Slater. The man who fought the foster system to get me and won. “In my experience, sir, people don’t cry over people who don’t matter to them.”
I hold his gaze for a second, then nod once. “Put her on the list, Adolf.” I turn and make it almost to the sliding doors before I stop. I don’t know why I stop, but?—
I turn back around. “Adolf.”
He looks up from his desk.
“What did you think of her?”
He looks out into the distance. For a moment I see a young man, thinking about a girl. “Beautiful, Mr Slater.” He grins. “Inside and out, I would wager.”
My heart squeezes. I look at him for a moment, nod, then head for the sliding doors.
Couldn’t agree more.
My trainers hit the pavers, rhythmic and determined. I walk to campus, my bag slung over my shoulder, mind rotating the same three questions. Do I pull her aside and chat with her? Wait until after class? Am I going to come across as desperate?
I am bloody desperate.
Twenty minutes later—beat my walking record—I am nearly at class. The scent of freshly cut grass clings to the morning air as I round the corner of Block F, then I freeze. Blesk is sitting with Jax. She’s dressed in black leggings and a white lace dress that barely covers her arse, and— Images assault me: that mini-dress, no leggings. The lower curve of her arse would show. My cock stirs.Fuck.
Feet,move.I stand here like a fucking idiot stunned because she simply exists. I think about yesterday, about her teary eyes, guilt claws inside me. I clear my throat with a grunt meant for myself. That long, golden hair is up in a high ponytail. She is squinting slightly into the morning light, one hand picking at the lace seam of her dress, not posing or repositioning or— She is just completely focused on Jax and their conversation. She is fucking mesmerising to everyone around her and she has no idea.
I want to go over there. I also want to turn and jog back to my apartment. Sit with my hangover. Have a fucking bourbon. Hate myself again. Like I deserve.
I approach them, my stomach bottoming out at how closely Jax is sitting to Blesk. I have fuck all right to this feeling of jealousy.I have every right.I know that rationally.She is mine.I tighten my jaw.
Then tense up when she laughs at him.
At him.
He’s making her laugh.
I made her cry.
And he is making her laugh.
Fuck. Fuckidy. Fuck.
