“You ready to go, baby?” The words came out all low and rough.
Uh, yeah. I’d go anywhere with him.
I beamed up at him, picked my backpack up off the floor, and hoisted it farther on my shoulders. “Yep. All set. Let’s get this day over with. I have two exams and a presentation. I was ready for today to be over before it even started.”
Darryn chuckled as he tossed his arm over my shoulders, guiding me out of the house and closing the door behind us, leading us in the direction of campus. “You’re going to do great.” He glanced down at me. “Don’t think I’ve seen anyone study the way you do. You make all the rest of us look bad.”
“Pshh.” I waved him off, swaying a little into his side as we walked wound up in each other. “My classes are just rough. If I didn’t study this much, I’d for sure fail, and the last thing I want is to have to take any of these classes over again. No, thank you.”
He kissed my temple. “Smart girl.”
I grinned up at him. “I like to think so.” I attempted a wink, but I was pretty sure it was one long blink.
Darryn howled, his laughter so thick I felt it seeping into my chest. “You are too much, Misha Crosse. You know that?”
We walked like this most days, stealing a few moments close together before we both had to go our separate ways to our different classes. We grabbed just a few minutes together, laughing and goofing around. It was the perfect way to start the day, with his face one of the first things I saw every morning, before he tucked me to his side and walked us toward campus, like I was a piece of him and he was a part of me.
I exhaled in contentment, and Darryn pulled me closer. I felt no hesitation snuggling farther into him. It was beginning to get colder, the fall air turning crisp, the leaves beginning to change. I lifted my face to the cool breeze and just relished the turn of the season, and this turn in my life.
I’d been so fearful about coming back to school. And look at the way things had turned out. What if I’d refused Indy’s invitation and instead stayed in the suffocating safety of my parents’ house, attending a community college, giving up my kids, my goals for the future?
Losing all that would be awful. But the most horrifying part of it all would be the fact that I would never have met this man had I not stepped out and been brave.
I made the decision right then and there, that was what I finally needed to be.
Brave.
Darryn seemed to sense my inner turmoil, and he somehow managed to pull me even tighter to his body. “What are you thinking about?”
I chanced peeking up at him. Nerves tumbled through my stomach, a chaotic scramble of fear and insecurities and hope. I smiled, and it felt almost forced. “Just thinking about you,” I said.
He chuckled, and he buried his face in my neck, leaving a little trail of fire where he nibbled his lips along my skin. “You better be thinking of me, since I can’t think of anything else but you.” He squeezed my side. “What do you say we make it a date night? Go grab a bite to eat and maybe catch a movie or something?”
“Yeah, that would be great.” I chewed at my lip, and the rush of redness I felt blossom on my face had nothing to do with the shyness that had plagued me my whole life, but instead was the stark evidence of the true worry I felt at finally telling Darryn. “I actually have been needing to talk to you about something,” I confessed quietly.
He frowned and slowed, stopping fully to turn and face me. His head canted to the side as he studied my expression. “I don’t think I like the sound of that, Misha. You aren’t letting me take you to dinner with the intention of breaking my heart, are you?” He said it causally, playfully, but I didn’t miss the undertone of fear that laced his words. His own insecurities were evident in the unease that sparked in his eyes.
I loved all of Darryn’s confidence, craved it almost, after all the years I’d lacked it myself. But the truth was, I liked the vulnerability he was now wearing, too. It made him seem real. Genuine. This boy-man-god, in all his glory, the one who stole my breath just as easily as he’d stolen my heart, was not just a figment of my overactive imagination.
“I couldn’t possibly break your heart,” I whispered, averting my gaze to pluck a piece of fuzz from his shirt.
It was my heart on the line.
With caution, I peered up at him, feeling so shy and exposed. But I had to finally lay it all out. Trust him so he could trust me.
Was I really ready for this? To lay myself bare? At his feet?
Would he trample all over my heart when he knew?
Was it worth the chance?
“You just need to know something about me before we go any further.”
His expression turned unreadable, but I felt every single one of the muscles in his body fire, rigid as they flexed, tension winding him tight.
For a moment, I thought he was . . . angry?
Darryn softened, and he lifted his hands, touched my face so softly. Still it scorched me through. “Nothing you can tell me will change the way I feel about you,” he promised, locking our gazes. My breaths turned ragged as he backed me up against the wall of the lecture hall building.
His promise infiltrated my spirit, and I swallowed hard, nodding before I lifted myself to my toes and pressed my mouth to his. It was meant to be innocent, sweet, but Darryn deepened it, swiping his tongue across the seam of my mouth. On a gasp, I opened, then melted as he pinned me to the wall with that glorious body. His tongue skimmed and danced and played against mine with an intensity that I wasn’t close to expecting.
Darryn, the one who’d saved something inside me.
And I felt it pumping, full of life, full of hope, my heart so full I thought it would burst right in my chest.
He pulled back, fisted his hands in my jacket collar, and jerked me toward him. His voice was fierce at my face. “Nothing,” he promised again.
Then he turned and left me standing there, panting, as I watched him disappear in the hustle of students emerging from another class.
Thankfully I had the support of the wall to keep me from dropping to my knees.
Dear. Lord.
I bit at my lip, fighting against the satisfied smile.
“You got some of that for me?”
The voice barely cut into my senses, and I blinked, wondering if it had really been intended for me, but something inside me was sure it had. I turned my head toward the sound of it, and a guy I’d never seen before stood ten feet away, looking directly at me.
“Should have known better than to have bet against Hunter, but something about you looking all innocent in the picture he had of you had me laying down my money in your favor.”
Hunter.
The mention of his name punched me in the gut. I clutched my stomach, bent at the middle. My heart careened to a stop, tightening in my chest in a ball and making it impossible to breathe. I tried to, but I couldn’t get anything down as the air got locked in my throat. I felt light-headed. Sick.
So long. It’d been so long and no one had said a word. I guess I had started to believe no one ever would.
I struggled to draw a breath into my lungs. But the air was gone as the realization of what this stranger was implying seeped into my consciousness.
“You owe me,” he said, like he had the right to even speak to me, and he took a step forward. Confidence dripped from him, that sickening kind that made people choke on it, it was so overbearing and wrong. “Why don’t you come back to my place and I can show you exactly how you can make it up to me?”
Horrified, I felt my mouth drop open in the same second that tears sprang to my eyes, so heavy they blurred my vision of the guy leering at me like I was a nothing, just a plaything to be used up and tossed aside.