Chapter 17 Haven
Haven
“He’s not going to call.”
I look up guiltily from the phone I definitely wasn’t checking. “What?”
Kai’s jaw is tight, his highlighter abandoned on the open textbook between us. “Rooke. That’s what you’re waiting for, right? His call?”
Every alcove and study desk inside the college’s library is crammed with students—either hunched over textbooks, or typing furiously on laptops, or staring into space with the hollow-eyed look of someone questioning their life choices.
Normal midterms chaos.
Which is ironic, because nothing about my life is normal anymore.
“I’m not waiting for anything,” I lie.
“Sure.” He picks up the highlighter again and goes back to frowning at a psychology textbook like it personally offended him. “And I’m not thinking about putting my fist through his face.”
I toss the phone Bastian gave me back into my tote bag and drag my hands through my hair.
Since yesterday, me and Kai have just been existing in the same space. Making sandwiches. Studying. Watching TV without actually watching it. And while we went to sleep in the same bed, there was a swathe of no man’s land between us.
I told him I was going to campus early to study, and he grabbed his stuff and tagged along like I couldn’t be left alone for fear of inadvertently getting him tossed in jail again.
Wish I could blame him.
I still haven’t forgiven myself for making such a reckless, dumbass move.
But I also can’t stop checking my phone.
No messages.
No missed calls.
Nothing.
Bastian said he’d call. Told me to answer when he did. In the woods, after he—after I—
My thighs clench involuntarily at the memory.
…you will answer when I call…
That was Saturday. Today’s Tuesday.
Three days of cortisol-spiking radio silence.
Is this part of the game? Making me wait, making me wonder, making me check this fucking phone every five minutes?
I try to pay attention to my essay. Bastian announced the details of his midterms the week me and Kai escaped to the coast. I had more than enough time to get it done, but I only finished it late last night.
My plan was to review it this morning, but my mind refuses to stay on topic.
First, the silence at the Airbnb felt like it was smothering me. So I left and came here.
But it’s even worse in here.
Coughs. The scratching of pens. Low murmurs.
Someone’s laptop plays a video they forgot to mute before they hastily silence it.
I rush to my feet, shoving my things into my tote.
Fuck it. I’m handing in this essay as is. If Bastian wants to fail me, so be it.
Kai looks up, plucking the highlighter from his mouth and frowning when he realizes I’m leaving. “Where you going? Your class only starts—”
“Gonna get set up,” I cut in.
“I’ll walk you,” Kai says, hurriedly stacking his books under one arm.
“You don’t have to—“
“Like hell I don’t.”
There’s something possessive and a little desperate in his voice. Like he needs to prove he’s still here, still fighting, still mine…even after everything.
I want to tell him I can handle Bastian. I mean, I’ve been doing it without his help since I got back to Agony Hollow.
But I hear myself say, “Okay,” instead.
Kai’s hand finds mine as we walk up the stairs to the second floor. His palm is warm, slightly sweaty.
He’s nervous…which makes two of us.
“You’ve got this,” he says as we step onto the landing. “Your essay’s solid.”
“This is Bastian we’re talking about. Nothing will ever be good enough for him.”
“Fuck him.”
The knot in my stomach has nothing to do with my essay, and everything to do with the man waiting in room 102.
The hallway is crowded with students heading to various classrooms, their anxious chatter bouncing off the high ceilings. Bastian’s lecture hall door is closed, but students are already filing in.
Kai comes inside with me, and we both glance toward the lectern.
It’s empty. Bastian hasn’t arrived yet.
God, how I hope he won’t.
We sit in the second row, near the aisle, and my eyes go to the door every time it swings open to let a student in. No one says a word as they find their seats and arrange their blue books and pens with the grim determination of soldiers preparing for battle.
When Bastian arrives, he scans the lecture hall with the detached interest of a wolf surveying a herd of plump sheep.
Until those eyes land on me.
Hunger flickers in his gaze.
Then his attention shifts to Kai, and his expression smooths into amusement instead.
Bastian’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes as he approaches us, moving in a way that makes my clit pulse.
“Mr. Jordan.” His voice carries across the room, turning heads. “This is a closed exam. Enrolled students and proctors only. Unless I’m mistaken, you handed in your resignation last week.”
I feel Kai stiffen beside me, his hand tightening on mine like Bastian is threatening to physically rip us apart.
“I’m just—“
“Leaving.” Bastian stops a few feet away, close enough that I can smell his earthy cologne. On cue, it triggers sense memories I really don’t need right now. “Unless you’d like to explain to the registrar why you’re attending a class you aren’t enrolled in?”
“It’s fine,” I whisper, squeezing Kai’s hand before releasing it. “I’ll text you when I’m done.”
Kai looks at me, searching my face for permission or reassurance.
I guess he finds what he’s looking for because, after a moment, he nods tightly.
“I’ll be outside.”
“Adorable,” Bastian murmurs, just loud enough for us to hear.
Kai’s jaw clenches. I think he’s going to say or do something that’ll set off a chain reaction of violence and severe consequences. But he just shoots Bastian a look of pure venom before leaving the lecture hall.
I watch him leave with wide eyes.
When my gaze goes back to Bastian, his dark eyes are gazing at mine with an intensity that causes pins and needles to shoot through my fingers.
“You have two hours,” Bastian says, his eyes taking too long to move away from mine. “Make them count.”
Bastian’s midterm is brutal. My hand cramps around my pen as I scribble about attachment theory, cognitive dissonance, and the psychological impacts of trauma bonding.
The irony isn’t lost on me.
Bastian prowls the aisles like the fucking predator he is. Every time he passes my desk, my skin prickles with awareness. My nose twitching at his scent. My thighs pressing together at his presence.
But he doesn’t pause. Doesn’t look at me any longer than he looks at anyone else. Doesn’t do anything that could be considered unprofessional.
Which is somehow worse.
By the time my essay is done, my brain feels like it’s been put through a meat grinder.
A few students have left already, and I wait for a few minutes to time my leaving with someone else’s.
But those still left are staring at their exams with the thousand-yard stares of soldiers still trapped in a war zone.
“Five minutes,” Bastian says, returning to the lectern to sit on the edge of the desk. His gaze roves through the students before landing on me. Then dropping to my closed book.
His lip twitches into a smirk.
He’s enjoying my fear.
Fucking asshole.
Swallowing, I force myself to my feet and head to the desk to hand in my blue book. He watches me the entire way, that smirk staying right where it is. My heart is thundering inside my chest by the time I’m near enough for him to speak.
But he doesn’t say a word.
I retreat, stopping near the doorway, waiting for him to call me back.
But he does nothing. His eyes are on the rest of the class, like I mean absolutely fuck all to him.
What the actual fuck?
…you will answer when I call…
But he hasn’t called. And now he’s acting like I don’t exist.
“Time’s up,” my professor says.
I know he can see me, but he acts like I’m invisible. Students line up to hand in their essays before streaming over to the door. I move aside for them, flattening myself against the wall.
Watching him. Waiting for him to say something—fucking anything.
Bastian stays at his desk, sorting through the stack of blue books with an expression of profound disinterest until the room finally empties.
He doesn’t look up. “Need something, Miss Lee?”
I don’t know why I can’t stop myself storming over to his desk. Why I can’t stop the words spilling out of my mouth.
“You haven’t called.”
He sets down the book he was holding. When he looks at me, there’s nothing in his eyes. Even when that dark gaze dips to my mouth, there’s no heat. No hunger.
Just…nothing.
“And?”
“In the woods,” I blurt out. “You said—”
“I remember what I said.”
“Then why—”
“Because I have no need for your desperate little cunt.”
My face burns with shame.
I should be furious.
Should tell him to go fuck himself.
Should storm out and never look back.
Instead, I’m pressing my thighs together, trying to ease the sudden treacherous ache between them.
What is wrong with me?
He gets to his feet and comes to stand beside me. I don’t dare look up at him until he speaks in a low, dangerous rumble. When those first words leave his lips, my eyes are drawn to his like a magnet.
“The next time I want to sink my cock into some pathetic trailer park whore, I will give you a call. Until then, Miss Lee, that closeted simp in the hall will have to keep you company.”
Bastian’s gaze rakes over my face like he’s taking note of my flushed cheeks, my wild eyes, my trembling lips.
I don’t trust myself to speak, or my legs to carry me.
But I can’t stay here, either.
I force myself out into the hall. When I see Kai leaning against the wall across from Room 102 looking like he’s been counting every second of the past two hours, I nearly collapse with relief.
“Hey.” He pushes off the wall when he sees me. “How’d it go?”
Terrible. Confusing.
Oh, and apparently I’m fucking broken.
“Fine,” I mumble.
Kai falls into step beside me, and we head for the stairs. “Did he speak to you?”
Yes. He called me a desperate whore. And I liked it.
“He was…” I struggle to find the right word. “Being an asshole again.”