Chapter 1
I swear I was minding my own business, just walking down
Mill Ave toward a restaurant I promised I’d meet my calculus study group. The
February air was warmer than usual, so I’d been able to wear a long dress
instead of needing jeans or a jacket, but all of that couldn’t have prepared me
for him.
I’d just walked through the breezeway area of the Brickyard
building when I found my back pushed against the wall. Given my past, I
should’ve come out swinging, maybe went for his balls, but instead, I let his
spicy scent engulf me as his soft lips pressed against mine. His hands tangled
in my thick auburn hair as he tilted my head to deepen our kiss.
Aside from his cologne and his lips, I didn’t get a good
look at him before I found myself in this position, but I yield to him anyway.
Just as I start to melt into his embrace, he pulled away just enough that his
warm breath still touched my swollen lips and I could lift my heavy lidded brown
eyes to take in his teal eyes.
Holy shit.
I didn’t even know someone could have eyes that were so
unreal. My breath caught in my chest as I stared into his blue-green eyes, the
black ring around his irises making the color look even more incredible. Too
long, jet black hair is swept over his forehead and I thought I’d just fallen
in love.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, holding my gaze. “Can you see if there
are any guys on the street looking around like they lost something?” he
requested.
Shifting my eyes over his shoulder and slightly down the
sidewalk, I saw what he was asking. Two extremely large, extremely scary men
were arguing with each other and gesturing back toward our direction.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“Okay,” he nodded, reaching down to lace his fingers through
mine. “Ready? One…two…three…GO!” he whispered loudly, taking off back through
the breezeway leading back toward the Arizona State University campus. Before I
was fully able to register what was going on, I found myself being dragged with
him, running at my top speed to keep up.
“What’s going on?” I called after him.
“Where’s your car?” he shot back.
“I walked from my dorm,” I supplied, starting to pant with
the exertion of the run, my adorable bejeweled flip flops cutting into the tops
of my feet.
“Shit,” he cursed, shooting a quick glance behind us and
changing course. “We’ll have to lose them on the train,” he said, pulling me
toward the light rail station and pushing me on ahead of him just as the doors
on the eastbound train closed.
As the train lurched into motion, I finally looked back in
the direction we’d come to find those same men running toward the station.
Luckily, we’d been much faster than them. Before I could catch my breath, the
station that would drop us off in the thick of campus approached and I found my
hand, once again, entwined with the stranger beside me.
“Get us to your room,” he commanded, pulling me from the
platform toward one of the liberal arts dorms. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t
a liberal arts major.
“This way,” I groaned with an eye roll and dragged him in
the opposite direction, still not entirely sure why I was just going along with
him. “Wait,” I stopped in the middle of a busy walkway, soliciting angry
glances and people dodging us to continue on their way. “Why am I doing this?”
“Help me, please,” he turned me toward him again and
pleaded, those dangerous teal eyes keeping me from refusing him. “Once we get
somewhere safe, I’ll explain. I promise.”
“Fine,” I allowed, knitting my brows and pulling him toward
my room again, weaving through lunch time University traffic.
“Shit,” he choked when we finally approached my dorm. “Honor
dorms.”
“And?” I asked with a slight sneer.
“Nothing,” he shook his head and continued to follow me.
“You’re too hot to be smart enough to live here.”
“I promise not to take offense to that,” I said, leading him
through the courtyard area toward my room on the sixth floor. The dorm had the
best set up to hide out my new friend. My scholarship had me living with three
other girls in a suite-like set up. My assigned roommate, however, was playing
house with her boyfriend of three minutes off-campus, which meant that I had
the equivalent of a single.
As soon as we breached the door to my bedroom, I broke from
him and folded my arms over my chest. I couldn’t think about how cold my hand
felt now that it wasn’t in his. I was smarter than this. I shouldn’t be losing
my shit because he kissed like some kind of God. It just meant he had practice,
lots of it.
After watching my sister for the last seven years give up a
chance for a better life over and over again for me, I knew that getting
tangled up with the man in front of me would be a colossally bad idea. He’d
already involved me in whatever he’d been running from, and dumb little me had
run right along with him. Did bad boys have stupid elixir on their lips that
had inexperienced girls following them wherever they led?
“You’re safe,” I said, finding my voice for the first time
since we made it to my room, which somehow seemed smaller with him in it. “Explain.”
“Thanks,” he nodded, sitting on my absentee roommate’s bed. “Why
do girls think it’s okay to lie?” he asked me, point-blank.
“That’s not explaining,” I answered, tapping an impatient
toe on the thinly carpeted floor.
“Whatever,” he mumbled before taking a deep breath. “There’s
this girl-”
“That’s already been established, can we get to the part
where two big ass guys chased after us? Or maybe just to the part where you
thought it was okay to accost me on the street and drag me along for the ride?”
I interrupted, trying and failing to keep the anger out of my voice. Now that
we were out of the situation, I was mad. “I had plans, you know. Plans that I’m
now missing thanks to this little clusterfuck you’ve pulled me into.”
“I’m Finn, by the way,” he offered, giving me a smirk that,
I’m sure, made most girls swoon. But I wasn’t- fuck, who was I kidding, I was
totally one of them. “And I didn’t see you trying to pull away. In fact, I
believe there was avid participation from your end,” he pointed out, causing
whatever warm and fuzzy feelings his smirk set in motion to die on the spot.
“Regardless,” I rolled my eyes and signaled for him to
continue.
“And you are?” he prompted.
“Pissed off and about to kick you out of here unless you
tell me why I needed to find you shelter.”
“Fine,” he sneered, but sparkle in his captivating eyes gave
away how much our banter was affecting him. “So, I have this friend,” he paused
to stand and clear his throat before he began pacing the length of my room in
front of me. “He had this girlfriend, and well…”
“You slept with her?” I asked, not able to hold back the
disgust in my voice.
“No! Fuck no! But, she made him think that we had to make
him jealous. It back-fired on her, and he dumped her. But, then she showed up yesterday
with her dad claiming that I got her pregnant,” he rambled, running his hands
through his already disheveled hair. It was so black against his pale skin that
it didn’t look real. I actually had to fight my own instincts to reach out and
run my fingers through it. “…there was a fight and it turns out that her father
is a very dangerous man who thinks his little skank of a daughter is a
princess. So I have to wait another six weeks so she can get an amnio DNA test
that will rule me out as the daddy,” he finished, stopping in front of me as my
mind tried to fill in the blanks of his story I’d missed while I’d been day
dreaming about fondling his hair.
“Hey! Why do you have
to call her a skank? She’s probably just a scared girl who doesn’t want her dad
to know that she tried to dupe her boyfriend,” I defended.
“Really? You’re defending her? So it’s okay to push
parentage off on me because I didn’t drop to my knees and beg her to let me
fuck her when she tried to stick her hands down my pants?” he asked a string of
questions calling attention to the fact that he probably was the victim in this
scenario.
“Okay, you’re right,” I sighed. “So she didn’t just lie to
make your friend jealous? She really did want to hook up?”
“Hook up? That’s adorable,” he smiled a full grin for the
first time and it was only slightly mind blowing. “I think her plan was for him
to show up while I had her bent over the back of my couch because about five
minutes after I pushed her off me, he showed up calling out for her as if he
expected her to be there waiting for him.”
“What a bitch,” I breathed, moving to my bed and sitting
down. “No one has the right to touch you without your permission,” I shook my
head, trying to clear out the memories playing through it.
“Hey,” he whispered, calling my attention to where he was,
now kneeling in front of me and searching my expression. “Are you okay? I didn’t
mean to hurt you or scare you. I’m sorry I didn’t ask permission before I forced
my lips on yours. I, I was just desperate to disappear and you were right
there. I didn’t mean to take advantage of the situation,” he said, his eyes
wide with some unknown emotion.
“I wasn’t talking about that, but thank you,” I offered him
a small smile, touching his shoulder briefly but pulling back when awareness zinged
through me. His eyes still held mine captive as we seemed suspended in the
moment. My pulse raced and my breaths came heavier as something seemed to shift
in the air.
“Britton,” I croaked.
“What?” he asked, a little dazed as he sat back from me,
shaking his head.
“My name. It’s Britton.”
“Oh,” he smiled again. “It’s nice to meet you, Britton.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Finn,” I agreed, smiling back
at him.
“So, can you hide me for a few weeks?” he asked, shooting me
a hopeful look.
“Six weeks isn’t a few weeks, it’s several,” I pointed out.
“Semantics,” he waved off.
“Won’t people miss you?” I asked, crossing my legs and arms
at the same time.
“I’ll keep in touch, but, honestly, no,” he said, making me
a little sad that he could disappear for six weeks without anyone in his life
really missing him. If I went missing for six hours, my sister would be tearing
apart the entire Phoenix Metro area to find me. I know that because it
happened, unfortunately.
I didn’t have much, but at least I had people who cared
about me. If I was to believe the person I just met was trustworthy, he had no
one.
“Yeah, you can stay,” I agreed. “What are you going to do
for clothes?” I asked the obvious question.
“It’ll be taken care of,” he assured me, flopping on the
empty bed again.
“Okay,” I said, more to myself than to him, lying back on my
own bed and staring at the ceiling.
