Chapter Seventeen – Reese #2
This girl… what’s someone like Logan Crew doing chasing after her?
Is it for the challenge? I don’t see it at all between them, and if I’m honest, the thought of him chasing after her simply to hook up with her fills me with a rage I can’t quite describe.
I’m no poet, but I recognize the signs as they build around me.
I wait a moment before I say, “I’m sorry, I can’t let you work on your own.
College isn’t just about learning new things—it’s also about learning to work with the people around you.
Group projects, as much as you might not like them, will help prepare you for whatever position you end up in once you graduate. ”
It’s what my professors told me when I was in college, thrown into group projects I loathed with my entire being.
They never cared if someone didn’t participate, if that person didn’t actually do any of the work.
Someone like me, and apparently someone like Wren; we would much rather do it by ourselves. Loners.
Wren looks as if she wants to argue with me, but she must hold it in. She decides to go about it another way: “Okay, how about switching groups?”
Ah, so that’s what this is about. She doesn’t want to be paired with Logan, something I can’t really blame her for, but at the same time, she’s the one who chose her group. She could have gone with anybody… and she agreed to be in a group with Logan.
I hedge, “Has something happened between you and…” I pretend to forget his name.
Can’t act like I know all about them; to her, I’m nothing more than a professor.
She has no idea the amount of things I know about her, nor does she know that I’ve been in her house and installed cameras and microphones, and have since listened to many conversations she’s had with her roommate, Sloane.
“Logan,” she tells me, and I nod along. “Uh, nothing has happened. I mean, not really. I just… I get the feeling he’s going to be deadweight. I’m going to do it all myself anyway, so if we’re not in a group together, I won’t have to deal with him at all.”
“Besides sitting next to him in every class?”
She looks away and shifts her weight around, crossing her ankles and tucking them beneath the chair, quite a meek display.
Frankly, I don’t know if someone like her would make it through one of my hunts, but I can say with one hundred percent certainty, that if she’s in one of my hunts, I don’t think I could give her the same choice I give everyone else.
I want her to run… and I want to chase her.
“I’m sorry, Wren, but unless there are extenuating circumstances, I can’t let you work by yourself or switch groups. If I let you do it, I’d have to let everyone do it, and I don’t have it in me to grade sixty papers and sixty presentations.”
The corner of Wren’s mouth tugs downward in a cute frown. “I don’t think everyone would want to work alone—”
“Maybe not, but I have to treat everyone equally. Unless you fear for your safety working with Logan, I’m afraid I can’t help you.” I wait a moment, letting what I said sink in before I add, “Do you fear for your safety?”
“No,” she’s quick to say, along with shaking her head.
“No, no. It’s not that. I…” She swallows hard, and then she bites her bottom lip, and I hate how I let my gaze fall, noticing the way her teeth nibble on that lip.
“It’s complicated. I was just… I just wanted to work alone. I think I work better alone.”
“I can understand that, but you have to trust me when I tell you that people like us, if we want to go far in life, we’re forced to work with people we might not like, or people we might not be on the same level as, intelligence-wise.”
She sighs. “I know.”
“I do commend you for coming here and asking. It’s more than most students would do.
” I lean forward and set my hands on my desk.
“If you need help, if you need anything, it’s why I’m here.
I might not be able to let you work by yourself, but you can come to me for anything else.
The semester is only beginning, but I can already tell you’re one of a kind. ”
Hmm. Was that a bit too much? Laying it on too thick? Too flirty?
She smiles softly and reaches to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she says, “Thank you for your time, Professor.”
“Reese,” I tell her. “Seriously, Reese is fine. Calling me Professor makes me sound like I’m fifty years old or something.”
Wren blushes, but she doesn’t say anything else. She stands, and I stand with her. She is slow to walk toward the door, so slow that I manage to beat her to the door. I set a hand on the knob, about to open it for her, when I stop and angle my head down.
Standing here, we’re side-by-side. Alone. It makes every nerve inside my body go haywire, to the point where it becomes painful for me to resist the urge I have to touch her, to take her… to make her run for me.
Take her to the woods, away from the hustle and bustle of the college and surrounding city, and tell her to run as fast as she can. We wouldn’t even need a maze with a choice at the end. All we’d need is the crisp, clear night air and the quietness that comes only with nature.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted,” I say. It’s a good thing I have the chilly doorknob to focus on, otherwise I might be tempted to do something I most definitely shouldn’t—at least not while here, in this building. Not while I’m pretending to be Professor Scott.
Because that’s what I do: pretend. I’m not this nice, gentle professor. The real me is wilder, rougher, much more of an animal. Vicious and bloodthirsty, some might say. It’s in my blood, my very DNA.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “I knew it was a long-shot, but I still wanted to try.” She gives me a soft smile after that, and that smile, gentle as it is, has the power to knock me clean off my feet if I’m not careful. I don’t know that anyone has ever given me a smile quite like that before.
I want to say more, I want to do anything I can to keep her here with me longer, but I know I can’t rush things. I can’t overstep, not yet. Not until I know more about her, not until I know how she’ll react, whether she’ll be receptive to the darkness within me.
“Well, like I said, if you need anything, I’m here.” I open the door for her and lean against it with my back, so she’ll have to walk by me to get out. A weird move, maybe, but I can’t pull myself away just yet. “And remember, I need your group’s topic by the end of the week.”
“I know,” she says—and I bet she does. I bet she never forgets anything like that. This girl doesn’t need a scheduling planner; she keeps it all in her head, tucked away. A rare breed these days. Wren steps past me, into the hall, and when she does, she looks back at me. “Have a good day.”
She pauses, like she’s mentally weighing something. It’s only after a few seconds that she adds my name, “Reese.” And then she walks away like she didn’t just give me a treat by calling me that.
“You too,” I say, watching as she hurries down the hall, away from me.
As I watch her go, I have to wrestle with my inner demon. It’s that demon that wants to immediately give chase, to run after her, catch her, and then… do something new. Something I can’t say I’ve ever wanted to do before.
Claim. Take. Mark. Do whatever I have to so the world will know.
She’s mine.