Page 72 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 2

“What’s the plan?” Tyler asked as if I had the answer to that.

I shrugged, pulling my jacket closer together against the wind. “I think I’ll stop at the library before it closes.”

Tyler nodded. “Cool. I could look up some books, too. I have a habit of leaving ‘source needed’ placeholders in all my essays.”

I was equally glad and disappointed when he suggested joining me. On one hand, I wanted nothing else than to sit across from him, pour over my notes, lift my gaze without knowing how much time had passed, and find him focused on his work. On the other hand, I needed to figure some stuff out without his magnetic presence distracting me. And he still had other places to be. “Aren’t you seeing Courtney? It’s Monday.”

Tyler snorted. “Don’t worry about that.” There was something tight in his voice and I couldn’t decipher it.

“Did something happen?” I asked.

Tyler shot me a significant look. Ah. The kiss, then. It was all about the kiss.

We entered the library in silence. It was bright with warm hues from overhead lights and the countless lamps on the reading desks. The library extended into several branches from a long corridor and we walked almost by instinct to the area where the literature on nutrition was.

Tyler pressed the tip of his finger to the spine of a book at the very edge of the bookcase. He dragged his finger from one spine to the next, scanning the titles, and pulled a few books out, then placed them back.

I watched him with rising feelings that conflicted and warred for dominance. I wanted to push everything else aside, forget all the implications, and see where this could lead us. Then again, there was Courtney. There was my family. There were all the years of friendship we’d be gambling with. There were so many roadblocks that I couldn’t even begin listing them all.

Tyler was looking at the back of a book, but his eyes weren’t moving. “Courtney’s been pretty unhappy with me,” he said quietly.

“I figured,” I said.

He shot me a shy smile. “And I’m having a hard time caring.”

Those words lifted my heart for one moment, then yanked it low in the next. Everything we said felt like it was double-edged. Everything came with hope and fear in equal parts.

I nodded to his words, then stepped a little closer. I had never been shy around him. Throughout the years, we had always been close, but we had never crossed those boundaries. We hadn’t done the boyish things in puberty. We hadn’t revealed those things to one another. We had never fooled around with or around each other. And yet, I felt like I knew him more intimately than I had ever known anyone.

We were best friends, for God’s sake. We were supposed to be able to say things to each other. And yet, here I was, lacking every drop of courage I’d once had.

I forced the words out with physical effort. “Why did you kiss me?”

Tyler looked at me apologetically and I regretted the question. It was torture for him, too. Yet the last two days had been a hell of a lot of confusion for me. I couldn’t keep stewing in this mess. “I was drunk…”

I shook my head. “I know that. But why did you do it? What were you hoping for?”

Tyler tucked the book back between its neighbors and lifted his gaze to the ceiling high above us. “Sebastian…” His voice trailed away.

“I’m not angry, Ty,” I said. “I’m not…anything. I just want to know.”

He looked into my eyes and my heart broke for him. But I had to know. Did he want to lift my mood by messing around? Was he only trying to prove a point? Or was there more? I didn’t dare voice those thoughts. They were scary enough in the isolation of my mind.

He gave me a little smile. “Will you believe me if I tell you I don’t know?”

I shook my head. “Just tell me, Ty,” I said. “We’ve been acting weird for two days and I can’t take it anymore. Just tell me that it was a pity kiss to cheer me up.”

His lips parted in surprise, eyebrows rising a fraction of an inch. “Pity?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It meant nothing to you, right? You did it ‘cos Jennifer cheated on me and you didn’t know what else to do.”

“That’s not…why,” he said. “I don’t know what made me do it, Sebastian. We were talking about all those things, soulmates and friends. I don’t know. I just felt like it was something I wanted.”

My chest shuddered. I didn’t know relief could feel so terrible. As the pressure lifted, I drew a deep breath, my lungs burning. It was like I hadn’t breathed fully in two days. But another fear was lurking in my racing mind. “And Courtney?”

Frustration finally showed on his face. Of course, this was touchy. “I don’t know, Sebastian. It’s not like I planned everything out. Can you believe that I wasn’t thinking about Courtney when I realized I wanted to kiss you? Can you believe that she didn’t factor into my decision to go a little gay for you?”

I blinked twice in rapid succession. He was annoyed with me for bringing up Courtney, but I still needed to hear those words. “So, you’re…what?”