That Infuriating Feeling: An Academic Rivals to Lovers Novel (Chasing Feelings Book 2)

Chapter 16

Oli

She was shaking. June was absolutely shaking as she shoved me out the door and shunned me away, and I couldn’t think of any other damned thing as I walked through campus. The only thing cuter than her bright red cheeks was the way she pretended to be pissed at me. But she wasn’t very hard to see through. She wasn’t angry, she was flustered.

By me.

I felt like an evil villain watching my plan unfold, except I hadn’t planned to do any of this. Matter of fact, I planned specifically to not do any of this. But it was official, I was a goner. There was no way in the devil’s hot hell I was going to be able to keep myself from falling for this girl. She. Was. Perfect.

Perfect.

Like she was made for me. Like she herself was an omen that good things were coming my way, that all my hard work was going to pay off. She was intelligent, strong in that unassuming but very potent kind of way, adorably weird, always mumbling to herself and having one-sided conversations with the air. And beautiful. That certainly didn’t hurt. She was 17,000/10 beautiful.

My lovely daydream was cut abruptly as I entered the dorm room. Jonah whipped his head to see me in. “Where were you last night?” he asked.

I froze halfway through the door, remembering I’d told him I needed to run out because I thought I left my jacket on a bench in the quad. Shit. I wasn’t keen to hear his thoughts on the whole situation with June. All he and Kai would do was fill my head up with bullshit and scare the poor girl away, and just when I was starting to get close to her. Kai would probably follow her on Instagram, something I hadn’t even dared to do, and then I’d have to explain to June why exactly my friend in Madrid knew who she was or cared to follow her. Telling Jonah meant telling Kai, and I wasn’t ready for it all to snowball just yet.

“I…uhm…” I couldn’t say I was with Noah, because why wouldn’t I have invited Jonah? I couldn’t say I was staying with a different special someone. I’d never hear the end of it, and I wouldn’t have the false answers to his questions. Fuck, I hated lying to him. “I ran into…Max. From English class. I was at the bench.” I looked down at myself. “No jacket. Uhm. I ended up at Max’s for a beer and fell asleep.” Good. Yeah. That sounded good. I closed the door behind me and walked to my bed.

“Right…” Jonah looked me over as if he didn’t believe me but didn’t care to ask further questions. I’m sure he wanted to know what I was up to, but he trusted me enough to know I’d tell him when I was ready. Plus, he was likely already making assumptions.

“And you?” I knew he hadn’t done a fucking thing since I last saw him, but I hoped he might have. “Done anything noteworthy this morning? Any plans for today?”

“Not a singular one. Want to stay in the room all day and work on music?”

Good. His mind was off my recent whereabouts. I sat down on my bed and let my feet hang to the floor. “Maybe we should get you out of here for a bit, try being around people.”

He grunted.

“Jonah, how are you going to be a lead singer if you can’t even leave the room?”

“I can leave the room, Oli. I’m fine with the world. It’s the people I can’t stand. And that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m talented. As long as fans don’t come running up to me, I’ll be able to do what I do best.”

I shook my head. “How modest.”

“It’s not a question of modesty. It’s a fact,” he said plainly. I chuckled, and he shrugged, the picture of sad innocence. “You’re good at things too. This is my thing. I’m good at it. Is that so wrong to say?”

“S’pose not.”

Jonah’s top five moods had always been cocky, awkward, sobbing like a child, rude, and head over heels in love. He rarely displayed anything between those markers. Cocky was actually one of the good ones, and he didn’t intend to sound so full of himself; it just always came out that way. But it meant he wasn’t hysterically crying or freakishly uncomfortable, so I’d take it. And since he was in such a good mood, I made him a compromise. We could work on music, just not in here.

Much to my surprise, he agreed, and some time later, we were seated with Noah at a picnic table in the middle of the bustling quad, all hooked up with separate headphones to the audio splitter plugged into Jonah’s laptop. Noah and I scooched in on one side of the table. Jonah sat on the other, splaying his notebooks and pens like a total nerd.

Song analysis. Perhaps one of Jonah’s favorite activities. He always had a thing for the ins and outs of music, which is why he was so good at what he did. I didn’t hate it, but I preferred jam sessions. Noah was just happy to be here, and I was just happy to get Jonah outside.

But our work didn’t go as I’d expected. While I typically listened intently, taking note of the drums and each outstanding accent, today I found myself spacing out, thinking about the dark shadow created between June’s legs by her long T-shirt as I knelt in front of her. I scratched under the headband of my earphones, able to imagine nothing more than the sensation of my fingers gliding over her skin as I rid her of that damned thong. I wanted to eat it, for fuck’s sake.

An hour passed and my cheek began to sink into the heel of my hand, my brain throbbing with things better left for privacy. Even Noah was starting to slump.

“Hear that chord progression?” Jonah asked with full enthusiasm, sliding one side of his headphones back on his head. “How it guides the harmonies and creates that tension there?”

Noah nodded. “Oli,” he said. “Did you catch that boom-ka-dum before the waaaauu? And then the dug-a-dum-dum-bts-k.”

Shit. I had not been listening. “Sorry, what?”

“The boom-ka-dum,” Noah repeated. He looked at Jonah for approval. “Jonah?”

“I don’t really speak drums,” Jonah mumbled. “But yeah.”

Still, I said nothing. I couldn’t possibly muster up enough energy to pretend I was thinking about anything besides June.

Noah groaned, dropping his forehead to my shoulder. “I’m getting kinda tired anyway. My tummy is rumbling.”

“Yeah. I think we’re done here,”I said. I mindlessly gathered my things alongside Noah who was already snatching his backpack from its spot on the bench next to him.

Jonah humphed and closed his computer, swiveling his lean body out from underneath the table as he said under his breath, “You weren’t even paying attention.”

“I was!” I said immediately, defense swimming to my ears.

“Noah was.” Jonah cocked his head.

“Thank you, Jonah,” Noah said far too enthusiastically, clutching his hand over his chest. “And he’s right.” Noah turned to me. “You’re all spacey, Oli-gator.”

Fuck. The only thing worse than not being able to get my mind straight was noticeably not being able to get my mind straight. “Sorry, guys.” I shook my head. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Ah, right,” Jonah said. He smirked, and then he did something I never thought I’d see in my life. He placed himself next to Noah and nudged his shoulder. Jonah nudged Noah. Warmly. “Oli was at Max’s last night.”

“Ooooh. Maaaax!” Noah nudged Jonah back, and Jonah rolled his eyes with a half-smile. “Max sounds sexy.” Noah winked in my direction.

“Nope.” I swung my bag over my shoulder. “Absolutely not. It’s not like that. We’re…acquaintances.” I could’ve just said friends, but the truth is, I didn’t know a fucking thing about the guy except that he had English on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

“Sure,” Noah drawled, side-eyeing Jonah and fisting an imaginary cock into his mouth.

“Acquaintances,” Jonah added, nodding back at Noah and letting his tongue fall flat over his bottom lip. It was hands down the strangest interaction I’d ever seen. I should’ve just said we were fucking friends. “Except…” Jonah snapped his head back to me. “I’d be surprised to see you acquaintingwith anyone who’s not June.”

“Exactly,” I spat. “I didn’t acquaint with anyone.”

“Exactly?” Jonah parroted. “So you agree? You only want to do it with June?”

I clicked my tongue and turned in the direction of a campus cafe. God, I couldn’t even lie to these guys without them getting on my case.

◆◆◆

June

This was why I never went out.

Getting out there, socializing, and surviving the entire outing was hard enough. It took physical effort, and only occasionally was it worth it. I guess I didn’t have a horrible time last night. Honestly, it was kind of funny. Until it was just plain humiliating. But the afterthought, the overthinking, the sinking hangover, post-outing, lonely Sunday full of pure, unfiltered mortification? That was unbearable. I could feel it in my cheeks, in my heart, guilt I could hardly explain, embarrassment I couldn’t take back or change. Interacting with other people wasn’t the worst part. It was having to interact with myself after it was all over.

I spent the entirety of Sunday, Monday, and all of Tuesday morning thinking about it. I arrived at history class and simply acted like a bitch to Oliver to cover it up. It was my usual tactic, of course, but today, I had to pull out the big guns. Hardcore ignoring, lots of mean glares, the rudest comments I could think of. I knew I did a good job because, usually, my snippy attitude egged Oliver on. Today, it truly pissed him off. I’d call that a success.

By early evening, I found myself glaring at him with my arms crossed over the library table, feeling no less pissed than I was this morning and wishing I could be doing absolutely anything other than working on this project. He had a giant textbook open in front of him, his fingers pinching the page as he scanned the words. I don’t even know what the fuck he was looking at. We were well past the research phase, and he should’ve been paying a whole lot more attention to our essay.

“Done,” he finally announced, slapping his book shut.

“About fucking time.”

“You know, from what I’ve understood, The Dark Ages were a time of relative stability. You really shouldn’t ruin that for us, you little plague.”

I sent a fake smile his way and placed my fingers on my laptop to resume my work.

“What’s going on, June?” he asked, speaking sincerely now. “You’ve been in a horrible mood all day.”

I didn’t answer. I had no idea what he was talking about. I began typing away on the shared document that he also should’ve been working on.

“June.”

Yes, yes. Very important document here in front of me that I was looking at, unable to pay attention to anything else.

“June, you’re acting like a bit—”

“Excuseyou?!”I slapped my hand on the table so hard it stung all the way up to my elbow.

“You are, and you have been all day.” So sassy. “Are you upset about something?”

Upset about something? Upset about something? I was just about to keel over, I was so hungry. An entire day of shitty classes, homework on homework, and now this. Now I had to sit in the library with fucking Oliver and work on this ridiculous project, as if I didn’t have a million other things to be doing, here in the aftermath of our horrendous weekend.

“I just hate looking at your ugly face,” I snapped.

He straightened out in an instant, his face pulling tight. “Close your laptop. Right now.”

“No. If I close my laptop, that means I’m just sitting here with you for no other reason than to sit here, and we both know that would never happen.”

He stood without another word, snatching my computer and piling it on top of his own books and materials, carrying them away as he walked between the bookshelves.

“Oliver!” I followed him all the way into the back corner, trying and failing to get my computer back as I tugged on his arm and swiped at his hold. He stuck the pile on a shelf too high for me to reach and looked down at me, folding his forearms in front of himself. “That’s not funny, Oliver!” I shouted quietly, searching for a way to climb up. Nothing. Just walls of books on three sides of us, no part of the nook strong enough to bear my weight.

“You’re stressed out,” he said.

“What an anomaly.” I grabbed the tallest shelf I could and placed my foot on a lower one, trying to use it as a stair, but I slipped. He caught me. I nudged him away and tried a new method of jumping like an idiot. He shoved my shoulder, pushing my jumps off axis.

“It’s sophomore year history class, Juni. Chill out.”

I did pause at that, burying my chin in my neck. “Did Oliver Awad, the most tightly wound man on the planet, just tell me to chill out?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the stress.”

“Says the man who set aside two days for planning and one for outlining?” I grabbed onto his folded arms and tried to climb him like a ladder to my laptop. My efforts were pathetic, really, and he swatted me down easily, but I kept trying. “The man who calculated how many words we need to type each day to stay on track? The man who—”

My sentence was stopped abruptly by two hands around my head and a foreign set of lips on mine. I pulled away quickly, stiff as the bookshelves that surrounded us. Oliver looked at me with quite a bit of intensity. It seemed he was waiting to see my reaction, to know if he should continue or start apologizing profusely. I didn’t want to hear him speak, quite frankly. That’s what I told myself. So, I pulled him back in and let him part my lips with his own and…“Ooh.”

In mere seconds, he had me lifted, my legs wrapped around his hips as our kiss became something deep and ravenous. He grabbed me hard every place he could, and my arms flailed as I scrambled for a position fitting enough for this insatiable need I suddenly felt between my legs. I hated how delicious he tasted. It was a good thing he didn’t have his stupid piercing in, because I might’ve accidentally ripped it out with how vicious my kiss was. He slammed my back into the bookshelves, and I whimpered, grabbing his dense head with two hands and grinding my hips into him desperately. Unbelievable. This was fucking unbelievable.

“I want to murder you,” I whispered as my lips smeared across his.

“I want to fuck you,” he answered, moving his mouth down to my neck.

Squeaky little sounds escaped me as he licked and teased my skin, his teeth digging into me, sending a shock to the seam of my jeans.

“I hate you,” I whined.

“You’ll be thinking about me in bed tonight.”

His mouth trailed back to mine, and I took his lips in another biting bind. I was probably doing a horrible job kissing him, given I was too busy chomping down on his fucking soul. I held on tight as his hands slid from under my ass up my bare back, gliding underneath my shirt and burning my skin. I was entirely enveloped in him, consumed by him, trapped by him. I would most certainly be thinking about this in bed tonight, and I was already pissed about it.

Finally, he lifted me off of him and set my feet down on the floor, taking the waistline of my pants in his fingers.

“Jeans. Stupid jeans,” he muttered, pulling me in by my belt loops and leaning down to kiss me again.

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re too tight. I would’ve liked to take away all that stress you have from working so hard, to make you come right here between these bookshelves.”

I felt those words on my clit as I placed my hands on his chest, moving them up to wrap his shoulders. “What a shitty day to forgo a skirt,” I joked, though I didn’t think any of this was even remotely funny.

He chuckled evilly at that. “There’s always next time.”

I nodded without thought. We stood nose to nose, and an odd pull begged me to fall into him again. I couldn’t help it.

Just one more kiss,I told myself. Just one… Just… Oooh.