Attached At Heart (Wildflower #3)

Ten Years Ago

ten years ago

BLAKE

“Bold move sitting in the front row of a lecture hall that has a capacity of several hundred people. You could sit anywhere, and you chose right here in the middle, huh?”

The voice was close to me. Too close, actually. I usually sat in the front row in lectures because it meant no one dared to sit next to me, but a backpack clunked down in the chair one over from mine, and I had a feeling this girl was here to stay.

“I’m not paying thousands of dollars for this course just to fuck off in the back during lecture,” I muttered without looking up from my computer screen. “I don’t think that makes me bold. Just makes everyone else look like they don’t take shit seriously.”

A soft laugh rang through the air, trickled over me like a spell, and I couldn’t help it; I lifted my gaze to see who plopped down next to me. And damn, what I found was not going to be good for my GPA.

Looking over at me was a sapphire-eyed goddess with an ironic twist of her lips and long, blonde braided hair that had me dumbfounded. I’d never seen a woman this gorgeous in my entire life and certainly had never had one talk to me before.

“Well, that’s something we have in common,” she said, unfazed by my brusque reply. I wasn’t used to that. But I…liked it? “I’m not paying to fuck off in the back, either.”

I stared at her, because honestly, what else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t ask her to move; I’d already been passive-aggressive—a Minnesotan’s worst quality—about it, and she hadn’t gotten the picture. I couldn’t outright ask her to move, and I sure as hell didn’t want to make conversation and encourage her to stay. So I just…stared.

Fuck, I needed to stop staring.

“Don’t worry.” She put her hands up in a defensive move, her lips curving into a knowing grin. “I’m not going to distract you.”

But that was exactly what she did.

For the rest of the class.

And then the rest of the year.

And eventually, the rest of my life.