Scot and Bothered

8. Then

8

THEN

Brooke loved the university library with an adoration that bordered on fandom. Especially at this time of night. The daylight had slipped away hours ago, as had Kieran and Chels. The library was quiet now; only the sound of the radiators pinging interrupted the gentle scratching of Jack’s pen from across the room.

He sat three tables away, facing her. Just like the past two weeks of classes, they’d gotten into a competitive game of eye contact, glancing up every so often to find the other already staring, and immediately looking away, making her stomach fluttery and her cheeks hot.

Realizing Jack was a TA for her class—and therefore completely off-limits—should have eradicated the fizzing in her chest. But that look of anguish on his face the day he stood up in front of the lecture hall said he’d felt everything she had that night at the party. And that pull, coupled with his moon-dark eyes, captured her entire imagination.

Brooke’s writer brain wanted to fill in all the details of what could be—Jack’s hair mussed, sleeping shirtless, the morning light spilling over his sculpted chest, the blankets bunched around his waist. The way he might look at her while tossing off his Jude-Law-in- The-Holiday glasses.

She wanted to know more about his favorite places in Edinburgh and what he hoped to do with an MBA and if he liked toasties with or without tomatoes. She wanted to know his stories.

It was a line they couldn’t cross—she wasn’t a practical rule follower for nothing—but thoughts of him consumed her every waking minute.

Brooke stretched her neck back and forth, working out the kink from sitting hunched over her computer for so long. She needed to focus. She’d written exactly 186 words of her first paper for Professor McCallister’s class.

Brooke had been coveting a spot in Professor McCallister’s fellowship since her first year here. A chance to work one-on-one with her favorite author, to perfect her craft? She’d be unstoppable. She wanted the Bachelor of Fine Arts, the fellowship, the MFA. Wanted to collect as many letters to add to her name as possible. She wanted it all.

But Professor McCallister’s class was different than Brooke had expected. Harder. Maybe she’d been hoping for a checklist or at least a significant number of bullet points about how to become a fantastic writer. But—while holding class outside under the burnished tree leaves—Professor McCallister had told the class, “After this year, life will no longer have a syllabus, there will be no grades to measure your success. You will have to define that for yourself.”

It’d sent a pang of anxiety through Brooke’s chest. She loved the clear expectations of a syllabus.

The edges of Professor McCallister’s poppy-printed wrap had fluttered in the breeze, and a few stray leaves tumbled by on the still-green grass as she’d said, “To be a truly excellent writer, you first have to experience the world. Dwell in the human emotions of living, of love and joy, of grief and strife. Collect stories, capture details, live presently through the feelings and experiences you encounter. Build your well of adventures and failures.”

Brooke had scribbled down all these gems—but not the failure part. She had no intention of doing any of that.

The blinking cursor in her mostly blank document stared back at Brooke. She wasn’t sure she knew anything about trying new things or taking risks. She couldn’t say for sure that she’d ever experienced the euphoria Professor McCallister had described from doing something brave.

A pop of lightning flashed outside and thunder rumbled in the distance. A shiver raced down Brooke’s spine. Damn. She’d been paying so much attention to Jack and fretting, she hadn’t noticed the rain beating against the tall windows. Looked like she wasn’t heading home soon.

But she didn’t particularly want to wait it out alone…

She glanced across the empty room at Jack again, head bent, rolling a pen between his fingers.

They could be friends. Rohan was her actual TA and no one said they couldn’t spend time together this term. What was it her mom always talked about? Exposure therapy? She could spend time with Jack and eventually his accent and dark eyes would lose their power over her. Maybe they’d just been drunk. Maybe she’d imagined their connection. They were in a completely public place. So what if she could spin vivid fantasies of him lifting her up and the feel of wrapping her legs around his waist as he pressed her against the stacks? She wasn’t that bold anyway.

She stretched her arms above her head and let out an exaggerated yawn, the “aah” starting high and pitching lower as it went—too loud and too long. Jack’s head snapped up at the sound.

“If we’re staying, we’re gonna need snacks,” she said.

That grin that was always close to the surface but so hard to draw out pulled at Jack’s lips. He hesitated, his eyes searching hers like he had the same instinct she’d pushed down. That this might be dangerous if it wasn’t so innocent. “To the vending machines, then?” he asked.

Brooke nodded and couldn’t deny that the feeling in her chest was much more than relief that he’d agreed to keep her company during a storm.

Jack trailed her as they made their way downstairs and Brooke leaned against the black side of the vending machine, crossing one foot in front of the other. “I’m buying,” she said.

He looked at her skeptically, like 65p did not in any way alter the power imbalance between them. But it was a little hard to care when he wasn’t her TA and seemed a lot more like Rohan’s hot flatmate.

She slipped coins into the machine and ignored the way he rested a forearm on the glass and peered through. He punched in a number and crouched down to retrieve his Maltesers.

Jack’s dark head was level with her hip and he looked up, bathed in the vending machine glow, that shadow playing underneath his bottom lip. Brooke’s breath hitched and she wondered what his touch would feel like if he reached out and ran his hands up her thighs. If it would be rough and needy or soft like the worn pages of an old book.

She should not like Jack Sutherland on his knees in front of her quite so much.

Standing, he made a rough noise in the back of his throat as he took a giant step backward and gestured for her to make a selection. She tried to breathe through the tightness in her chest.

Brooke punched in a number, grabbed her chips, and headed for the stairs. If she walked behind him, she was going to break the most basic of rules: friends don’t check out friends’ asses.

“What are you working on so late tonight?” he asked.

“A paper for Professor McCallister’s creative writing class.”

“Mhairi? That’s my aunt.”

Brooke came to an abrupt stop on the stair above him and he nearly crashed into her. A flyer taped to the wall fluttered with their movement. “Your aunt? She’s my absolute idol. Your aunt !” As if Brooke needed another reason to be intrigued by him. “Did you just sit at her feet growing up listening to her stories? Seriously, tell me everything. Spare no detail.”

Mhairi wrote the most beautiful historical fiction novels, always set in Scotland, often with time slips and mysticism, her stories unwinding with a sense of mystery, historical plots, and romantic entanglements.

A slow smile spread across Jack’s face, lifting his cheekbones and nudging his glasses. “Oh, you love her.”

“Don’t say anything. I’m trying to play it cool.” She bit her thumbnail and when all his attention snagged on her mouth, she lingered just one second longer before dropping her hand. “I did ask her to sign my book on the first day of class. Do you think I gave myself away?”

“I’m sure she was honored.” Jack’s eyes danced. She could get addicted to that look.

Light flashed behind her, bright enough to reach her halfway up the stairs, and Brooke held her breath as she waited for the thunder cracking in the distance. She climbed the rest of the stairs and went toward the floor-to-ceiling windows in the back of the room, placing her palms on the glass, tracking the rain sliding down the other side of her hands to help steady her. To keep her in her body.

She was in the library, not out in the open.

“You alright?”

Brooke rubbed a hand over her arm and turned her back to the night, perching on the shallow windowsill that was more of a metal ledge between the top and bottom window. If she couldn’t see into the night, maybe she could ignore those old memories. “Yeah.”

If she could keep all her attention on Jack, she’d be just fine.

“So what’s she like?” Brooke asked, opening her chip bag and crunching one loudly.

“Oh, Mhairi? Uh…” Jack leaned against a table, crossing one leg over the other. “Do you want to know about the summer she let me stay with her on Skye, or the time we took mushrooms last winter holiday?”

“Wow, I’ve never been more torn in my life,” she said dryly.

“The summer, then. Of course.”

Brooke threw a chip at him. He caught it, crushing it accidentally, and had no choice but to inelegantly shove the pieces in his mouth.

Brooke’s laugh had him grinning in response. She pushed a rebellious strand of hair out of her face and when it fell right back, she set her chips down and pulled out her hair tie. Jack’s eyes seemed to trip over her hair around her shoulders and the air suddenly felt thicker, his attention trained on her instead of in the periphery.

She retied the messy topknot, smoothing down the place that’d kept slipping free as Jack looked down at his shoes.

“Maybe another time, actually. I should head out.”

She didn’t have to question the retreat as much as she hated it. He was being smart, walking away before that spark caught again.

“Oh, okay.” She couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice.

Lightning illuminated the room and the boom of the thunder cracked nearly simultaneously. Brooke squeaked, her hands balling into fists and crinkling her chip bag as she moved away from the window.

“Are you alright?”

“No. I hate storms,” she said, her voice much higher than normal. “That’s why I’m still here—I don’t want to go out in the lightning,” she said, her eyes on the flashing clouds. “I got stuck in a bad storm once.”

“I can stay with you.”

“No, it’s fine.” She waved him off. “I’ll just put on headphones and write.”

Lightning flashed, a zigzagging threat across the sky. A clap of thunder rent the room, booming through the walls and vibrating across the floor.

The lights flickered before the room plunged into darkness.

Brooke’s heartbeat roared in her ears, the thunder seeming to reverberate through her chest.

“Do we need to get under the table?” Jack asked. He might’ve been teasing her—it was ridiculous to be afraid of storms at twenty-one—but his voice was gentle.

She tried to scoff but it came out breathy. “I’m not hiding under the table,” she said, but her knees made a liar out of her, going loose and wobbly. On second thought, going under a table would not be the worst thing. Certainly better than passing out.

“I won’t lie—your face is a disturbing shade of green.”

Brooke glanced up at the illuminated exit sign, the only light in the room. “You don’t look so good yourself.”

Another clap of thunder made her jump, her shoulders bunching and her insides curling in toward her spine.

“In that case…” Jack pushed two chairs away from the table, crouched down, and crawled underneath. “Better safe than sorry, I always say.”

Hiding under a table was absurd, but on a scale from zero to panic, her body was responding the same way as when the emergency alert system came over the radio and advised you not to fuck around and find out.

Brooke climbed under after Jack. And since the space was particularly cramped, she had no other choice but to scootch in close. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

She kept her eyes on the flashing clouds, trying to guess where the next strike would blink. It was always like this, where she couldn’t quite disassociate from the fear from that day. The lightning flashed again and the thunder rippled through the room and under her skin.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jack asked, pulling her back from sinking into those memories.

“I got stuck above tree line once.”

“Yeah?” Jack asked, his voice soft and encouraging.

Brooke’s heartbeat fluttered underneath her breastbone. She took a deep breath through her nose. “I grew up hiking the fourteeners in Colorado.”

“What’s a fourteener?”

“A mountain over fourteen thousand feet high. We started doing the easier peaks when I was maybe ten and I got it in my head that I wanted to hike all of them by the time I graduated. I’m not sure my parents were really up for that level of summer excursions around the state, but they were always so supportive of everything I wanted to achieve.”

She dropped her chin to the tops of her knees. “The day we hiked the last peak, everything was just off. My dad’s knee was hurting. We got a late start. The parking lot was full. Everyone in Colorado knows you have to get off the big mountains by noon to avoid the summer storms but I kept pushing. I was so determined to finish this final peak.”

As they watched the lightning flicker across the sky, she picked at the seam of her jeans until Jack wrapped his hand around hers. The touch might have sent fire through her veins under different circumstances, but right now it felt gentle and comforting. The thunder rumbled low and threatening, but she didn’t flinch this time.

“My parents eventually realized we were screwed, but we were too high above tree line to make a run for it. It started pouring and there was nowhere to hide. I can still feel the rain soaking into me, the electricity in the air that made my hair stand on end. We were absolutely the tallest thing on the mountain, and my dad was yelling at us over the noise of the rain to spread out, to crouch down, to only touch the ground with the soles of our shoes.”

“Brooke, that sounds terrifying.”

She took a deep breath and crossed her arms on top of her knees. “It was.” But she didn’t feel that terror on an instinctual level this time. In fact, she felt pretty damn calm. “How did you do that?” she asked Jack. “My brain feels quiet. My brain never feels quiet.”

His quiet hum pressed against her skin. “I’m a really good listener.”

Brooke’s heart tripped at her vulnerable admission. As much as she liked this feeling, she wasn’t sure she should tip her hand like that. “Well, enough about me,” she said. “What are you going to do with your MBA?”

He rolled out his shoulders. “Take over the family tour company.”

“You don’t sound even a little excited about that.”

She felt the weight of Jack’s look on her in the dark, his breathing heavy. “You barely know me, but you’ve seen what my entire family has failed to notice for years.” He let out a long sigh. “But my dad needs me. My brothers would have a conniption if we don’t all run the business together. My life is mapped out before me.”

“You’re doing an entire graduate degree because your dad said so?”

Jack stiffened and then crossed his arm over his chest as he rubbed one shoulder. “I hadn’t put it quite so bluntly to myself, but yes. I suppose that’s exactly what I’m doing. My family’s expectations feel crushing sometimes.”

The darkness couldn’t disguise his defensiveness. His retreat was slight, but Brooke felt the lack of his heat pressed against her leg.

“That’s really hard,” she said. “My parents are almost the opposite. They support me endlessly, but I feel the same way sometimes. This crushing fear of letting them down.” The lightning stole Brooke’s attention, pulling her gaze back to the window. “If no one had an opinion, what would you want?”

“I think I’d dedicate myself to the study of one Mhairi McCallister,” he joked. “Follow in your footsteps.”

She nudged his shoulder. “Come on.”

“I don’t have the faintest clue. I’m not ignoring some deep desire in order to bend to my father’s edict. Even back in school, they handed out aptitude tests like a pick-your-own-adventure, except none of them felt like an adventure and none of them felt like me . Everyone acts like you’re supposed to know what you want to do with your life. I’ve been waiting for something to click into place, but nothing feels quite right. Not guiding. Not teaching. Not classes about financial statements and business plans.” Jack rubbed the spot between his eyes where his glasses pushed down. “I don’t have some great calling or passion.”

Brooke tucked her knees up to her chin again just to keep from reaching for him, smothering this desire to tuck him against her shoulder and run her fingers through his hair. “I don’t think most people really know what they want to do with their lives.”

“ You do.”

“I’m just faking it since I failed chem.”

“Really?”

“No. I’m great at school.”

His faint laugh brushed over her skin.

She recalled the serious-looking camera she’d seen on his desk. “What about photography?”

“That’s not a real job.”

Brooke relaxed her grip on her knees, turning to face him in the dark. “That’s absolutely a real job.”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe for some people.”

He’d said the same thing in his room even with unique and captivating photos strung up on his wall. But he didn’t seem like he wanted to be pressed. “There’s some freedom in not having a grand plan, you know?”

“I feel bound to a life I didn’t pick. I have never felt free.” The anguish in his voice broke her heart in two. And spoke to something she never felt allowed to voice.

Brooke shifted to sit cross-legged in front of him, her knee resting on top of his. “I don’t feel free, either. I feel like I’m running this elaborate marathon sometimes, full of checklists and milestones. And I’ve got to keep my head down and push through if I want to make it to the finish line. I forget to look up every once in a while. Chels and Kieran are on some quest this term to keep me away from the library—”

“They’re doing an extraordinary job.”

She laughed, a low and listless thing. “I moved to Scotland for uni, for this grand adventure, and I haven’t done anything but study. I’ve told everyone I’ve ever met about my big dreams of being an author. And what if I can’t do it? Professor McCallister said to be a good writer, you have to go out and experience life, but I don’t even know where to start.”

“I know places. And I do loads of fucking about.”

“You want to help me broaden my horizons, Jack?” she asked in a sultry and clearly playful tone, but it didn’t stop a prickle of awareness from dancing up her spine when his breath came out like a quiet growl.

“Badly.”

She laughed like he was joking but she wasn’t sure he was. “Okay.”

She wanted him to show her places. To spend more time with him. For him to have a reason to stick around. “And for you…” She tipped her head, studying him.

“Me?”

“We’ll find your passion.”

“While we’re fucking about?”

“Inspiration can strike anywhere, that’s what Professor McCallister says.” Brooke grabbed Jack’s hand and straightened his fingers, laid her hand on top of the back of his, gestured for him to add his other hand on top of hers, and completed the stack with her palm on top. “It’s a pact.”

“Are we in a treehouse in an American movie? Would you like to pinkie promise?” he asked with amusement in his voice.

“You’re right, we’d better.” She hooked her pinkie through his and dragged their hands up to her mouth. His breath caught while he watched her, and god, she wanted to do this for real.

He brought his lips to his thumb, closing the distance between them. He smelled sweet like watermelon in summer. She imagined him leaning farther and kissing her. Imagined the feel of his hand sliding beneath her hair to pull her in, the soft slide of his tongue.

She was supposed to be making a promise but when she pressed her lips against her thumb, their faces inches apart—so close but so far—she made a wish instead.