Chapter Twelve
Maisie
“I need you to focus,” I scold as Macallan once again breaks into laughter at the inkblot image I’m holding up. “What do you see?”
“It’s a fucking blob, Mais. What do you want me to see?”
I blow out a sigh of frustration. We’ve been at this for nearly half an hour, and I feel like we’ve made zero progress.
“Look closer.”
He squints as if that will somehow help him focus better on the image.
“Nope, still a blob,” he announces after a few long seconds.
“You’re impossible.” I mutter a curse under my breath as I shove the image back into my folder and retrieve a new one. “Let’s try this one.”
“I have a better idea.” Macallan snatches the image from my hand, examining it for a moment. “Why don’t you tell me what you see.”
“You’re the one who’s supposed to be assessing the images,” I remind him.
“Humor me.” He flips the paper around.
I stare at the image that looks more like melted ice cream than anything else, but knowing that’s not a sufficient answer, I look harder.
“A night sky.”
He flips the image back around, his forehead scrunching as he tries to see what I’m seeing in the image.
“How in the hell do you get night sky out of this?”
“Look.” I snatch the paper out of his hand and lay it face up on the table between us. “See the specs of white?”
“Yes.”
“If you hone in on just the black spot and not the white paper it’s printed on, it looks like a cloudy night sky with only the brightest stars able to break through and be seen.”
“Hmph.” He makes a noncommittal noise as he stares down at the paper. “A night sky.”
“Do you see it?”
“Not really,” he admits with a smirk. “But I get why you see it.” He flips the page face down. “Let’s try another.”
“Okay.” I pull out another page, flipping it face up on the table. “What do you see?”
“I’m more interested in what you see.”
“You know you will have to do at least a few of these.” I give him an exasperated look.
“I know.” His smirk turns to a pout as he juts out his bottom lip. “One more. Please.”
“What are you, five?” I try and fail to fight the smile that slides across my mouth.
“What do you see?” He taps his index finger against the paper.
“Last one.” I give him a stern look, waiting until he nods before turning my attention to the page.
It’s hard to concentrate when I can feel his eyes on me, watching me, but I refuse to let him distract me, so I press on, focusing once again on the ink blot image.
This one is a little more difficult. At first glance, I want to say butterfly, but that seems too on the nose. A moth, maybe, but that doesn’t really fit either.
“A phoenix,” I blurt the instant the thought comes to me.
“Explain.”
“See here. The wings. See how waves look like flames across them?”
“You’re good at this,” he says after staring at the image for a few seconds.
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” I disagree.
“You are. I stared at the first image for what felt like hours and saw nothing but a blob. You look at it for thirty seconds and it’s a night sky. This one looks like a hairy moth to me, but you look past the obvious and see a phoenix, which I never would have seen if you hadn’t pointed it out.”
“Guess it’s a good thing each image is subjective. You don’t have to see what I see. And it doesn’t have to be some greater meaning. Just look at the image. If you see a hairy moth, then say a hairy moth. There is no wrong answer.”
“Okay, let’s try another one.”
“Okay.” I retrieve another image, placing it face up on top of the others. “What do you see?”
He stares at the image, and while he does, I stare at him. I can’t help it. He’s too beautiful not to. I can still hate him and appreciate how good-looking he is, I justify to myself.
I watch as his gaze narrows, his forehead furrowing in concentration, and I watch as a strand of dark hair falls across his brow, making me desperate to reach across the table and push it back into place.
Everything about this man is complete perfection, much to my dismay. From his messy locks to his unique eyes to the thread of muscle clearly visible through his T-shirt, Macallan Stewart is truly a sight to behold.
“A tree.” The rasp of his deep voice pulls me from my perusal, and I blink, meeting his gaze, which is locked on me, a smile tipping the corner of his mouth like he knows exactly what I was doing.
“Explain,” I say, trying to seem at complete ease when in reality, I feel like I’m seconds away from clawing out of my own skin.
After the other day, and the things he said, I thought.
.. Well, I don’t actually know what I thought.
.. That he’d say something. Flirt with me at the very least. But other than a smirk or grin here and there, he’s acting weirdly normal.
Which is saying something considering Mac and I have never been what one would classify as normal.
“See that way the slivers reach out, arching and twisting in various directions. It reminds me of the branches of an old oak tree. And then the base here.” He touches the page with his index finger.
“Very good,” I say in a way that I hope doesn’t come across as patronizing.
“You see it?”
“I can see why you see it.”
“What do you see then?”
“A coral reef,” I say the first thing that comes to mind.
“Really?” He arches a brow.
“Look here, at the jagged edges of the base and the way it spreads and arcs like a reef might.”
“And here I thought seeing a tree was good.”
“It is good. Again, all subjective. I see a tree also.” I reach across the table and point to a part of the image that looks a lot like a branch. “It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about what you see, not about what anyone else sees.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” He grins and I swear I can almost see the dimple hidden beneath his dark facial hair.
“No, I’m saying it because it’s true.” I start to pull my hand away, but he catches hold of it, wrapping his fingers around mine.
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
I try so hard not to react, but it’s impossible to know if I’m actually successful in that attempt.
“And why would I do that?”
“Have I not been on my best behavior today?” He cocks his head slightly, the light hitting his eyes in such a way that highlights the unique color of them.
“Is that what you were doing?” It’s my turn to cock my head, trying to play cool and indifferent when I’m absolutely freaking out on the inside.
“Have dinner with me,” he repeats again, his thumb sliding across the back of my hand in a way that causes goose bumps to pepper my skin.
“I can’t. I have a game tonight.”
“Then I’ll come to your game and we can have dinner after.”
“My game isn’t until seven. It’ll be ten o’clock before I get out of there.”
“Okay, so a late dinner.”
“I don’t know.” I shake my head. A part of me—the part still completely enamored by one Macallan Stewart—desperately wants to accept. But the other part of me—the part that knows there’s no way this ends well—she’s not quite so convinced that this is a good idea.
“Come on. What do you have to lose?”
More than you realize, I think but don’t say.
“You’d really come to my game?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Seriously?” I don’t hide my surprise. “You don’t strike me as someone who enjoys watching women’s soccer.”
“I don’t. That is, unless there’s someone on the field worth watching.” He stares back at me with such intensity that I find myself pulling my hand from his in order to give myself a slight reprieve.
“Do I want to know which of my teammates you were there for?”
“Don’t play coy with me, Mais. We both know I was there for you.”
“Such pretty words,” I state flatly, having no intention of making this easy for him.
“They may be pretty, but they also happen to be true.”
“So you say.”
“I know what you’re doing.” He leans back in his chair, crossing his arms in front of himself.
“And what’s that?”
“You’re trying to play hard to get.”
“Am I now?” I repeat his stance, pressing my back against the hard wood of my own chair as I cross my arms over my chest.
“You most definitely are,” he says, all too sure of himself. “And that’s fine by me. I’ve always liked a challenge.”
“Is that what I am to you then?” I arch a brow in question.
“Yes.” He disappoints me by saying. “But that doesn’t mean I have any intention of giving you up once I catch you.”
My pulse quickens at his words, despite every pore in my body screaming not to trust this... Not to trust him. I can’t stifle the involuntary reaction I have to him.
“Who’s to say you’ll ever catch me?” I hold a hand out in front of myself, looking over my nails like I couldn’t be any more bored by this conversation.
“Come now, Mais. We both know you can’t resist my charm.”
“Charm?” I snort out a laugh. “Is that what you think you have?”
“And here I thought we turned a corner the other day.” He scratches his chin and I track the movement, wishing it were my fingers running through the coarse hair, the sensation tickling my skin.
“You thought so, huh?”
“I know so. Just like I know you’re not nearly as unaffected by me as you’d like me to believe.
” He abruptly pushes to a stand and before I’ve even processed the movement, he’s next to me, leaning down so that when he speaks, his breath is hot against the side of my face.
“You can play hard to get all you want, Maisie Rose.” My breath catches when I feel his lips brush against the lobe of my ear.
“But make no mistake, this is a game I fully intend to win.” He straightens and I’m both relieved and disappointed by the loss of his nearness.
“I’m not playing a game.” I look up at him, summoning all the irritation I can into the sneer that slides across my face.
“Yes, you are,” he says matter-of-factly, grabbing his bag off the floor before throwing it over his shoulder. “And I’m here for it, so long as you know that when I set my sights on something, I won’t stop until it’s mine. So make me work for it. The end result will be the same.”
“Where are you going?” I blurt when he turns on his heel and starts to leave. “We aren’t done.”
“I have class, and you have a date to get ready for.”
“I never said yes,” I call after him.
“Yes, you did, just not with your mouth.”
I hear his soft chuckle seconds before he disappears around the corner.
What the actual fuck?
I pull in a deep breath, trying to wrap my head around what the hell just happened. One second, he’s treating me like just any other lab partner, on his best behavior. And the next, he’s doing... Well, whatever the hell that just was.
I want to be offended that he thinks he can win me over so easily after everything he did to me, but I can’t muster the emotion, no matter how hard I try.
Because at the end of the day, I want him to do exactly what he promised.
I want him to work for it. I want him to grovel and beg.
I want him to chase me until I can’t run anymore.
I want to know that at the end of the day, he means what he says, and this isn’t just some sick, twisted game of his.
But no matter what he says or does, nothing will erase the doubt that’s currently eating away every ounce of excitement I felt just moments ago.
Because while I want to believe what he says is true—that he did what he did two years ago to protect me—a part of me can’t seem to accept that his intentions were truly that good.
Maybe that was the excuse he gave himself, but at the end of the day, if he truly wanted to be with me, he would have told me the truth.
Instead, he pushed me away, humiliated me, and then spent the last two years basically acting like I didn’t exist, despite the fact that I purposely hooked up with some of his friends in an attempt to hurt him, which I can confidently say did not work.
Hell, I even told him about Trev, about the fact that we hooked up in Macallan’s bed, and yet the next day I saw him and Trev laughing and talking like nothing happened. Which means either he didn’t believe me or he doesn’t care.
Lord knows if I found out Lyric or Char hooked up with Macallan, the whole freaking campus would know because I’d lose my freaking mind. Not that my friends would ever do that to me, but that’s not the point. The point is, I wouldn’t be carrying on like it meant nothing.
Which begs the question, why is he actually doing this? What are his true intentions? And how foolish would it be for me to believe a single word that comes out of his mouth?
Extremely foolish. I have no doubt. And yet, it doesn’t change that I want to say yes. I want to go to dinner with him. I want him to try to win me over. I just don’t want to consider why that is, because I know I’m not going to like the answer.