5. Sabrina
5
SAbrINA
T hat wasn’t the first time I ended up soaked in the middle of a long day at campus.
Back in the fall, Rachel tripped me right in front of a puddle and I got wet from that.
But having her boyfriend push me into the fountain was a new low.
All my papers were soaked. Ink was smeared. Notes were lost. Since Professor Angus required us to handwrite papers, all the progress I’d made on my assignment due the next day was gone.
Even my laptop suffered. While it hadn’t gone into the water with me, the case wasn’t enough to insulate it from damage in hitting the concrete.
When I finally got home, wet and itchy from my clothes slowly drying all day, I found my laptop acting up from the impact. All my recent work was gone.
That was why when Dad came home from work, he raised his brows in surprise at how he found me.
I sat at the kitchen table, scowling at my laptop as I rebooted it, then was forced through an update. Propping my foot up on his chair, I carefully balanced an ice pack on my knee that was severely bruised from smacking against the fountain wall on my way in.
“I would ask if you’ve had a long day again,” he said as he entered, “but that seems pointless.”
I nodded, leaning toward him as he gave me a side hug and a kiss on the top of my head. “A very long day.”
“What happened?” he asked as he sat in Mom’s chair, pointing at my knee.
“I…” I sighed, unable to tell him the truth. Honesty was something I stuck with—always. But I couldn’t own up to the fact that I suffered from bullying, constantly. Whether it was from Tiffany or that rough-looking punk who knocked into me in the hallway without so much as a sorry or offer to help me pick up my stuff, I was a victim, whether I wanted to be or not.
I couldn’t tell my dad the truth that I was picked on because of him or who we were. Being poor was one thing. The fact that I was at this university at all was a “grudge” from the other students who viewed my getting a scholarship as an excuse or a favor. Like I couldn’t belong there without the money to pay for it myself.
I couldn’t admit to him that my peers judged me as “trash” because he was a garbage collector. His job was a decent one. A solid one. He wasn’t beneath anyone else in society, dammit.
“I tripped,” I lied.
It would break my heart if my parents ever knew how poorly I was treated.
Turn the other cheek.
In one ear and out the other.
I had to stick with those mottos.
I refused to let them get to me.
“Tripped?” He arched one brow, skeptical.
“Yes. I was hurrying and I just…” I shrugged, then mimed something falling flat.
“You never hurry.”
Dammit. I can’t lie to him.
“I was today. Elise and I were getting lunch, taking too much time talking about the internship I want to try to get.” That part was the truth.
“Oh, there’s no trying about it.” He got up, smiling. “You are successful no matter what you put your mind to, Sabrina.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I could always count on him for a vote of confidence. But tonight, I needed peace and quiet to redo my paper for Professor Angus.
He got the message that I was deep into study mode, not participating in much small talk. Because I didn’t want to walk up the stairs to my studio room above the garage yet, I stayed in the kitchen to catch up on what I lost until Mom came home.
“Can you help me with tonight’s catering?” she asked, rushing in to change just to leave again. “Sorry, John. You two are on your own for dinner tonight. Babs offered me a spot with this gig tonight, with double pay, so I’m taking it.” She turned a hopeful smile to me at the table, then cringed at the sight of all my papers and books, some still damp.
“Not tonight, Mom. Sorry.” I hated that I couldn’t help her. I could get more tips for her, and since I would be paid under the table as a last-minute aid, it was more money to put toward the house.
“Bah. You’re always studying away,” she said, rushing to get ready to go.
I wanted to help. I worried that she was stressing herself out and stretched too thin with all the hours she put in. We were all working as much as we could with trying to fix the house. Not one, but two hurricanes, put us behind in renovations and fixing what was damaged. And that didn’t touch on the losses we suffered when someone looted in the neighborhood and stole our valuables, trashing the house all over again after the recent storm.
After she left, though, that was what Dad told me.
“Sabrina, you are working too much,” he said gently as he warmed up leftovers for us.
“No, it’s manageable.” Or it was manageable before those bullies decided to push me into the water. “I just need to buckle down and redo this paper.”
He frowned at me from the stove. “Redo?”
Crap.
“Um. Yeah, I didn’t do it correctly the first time. I’m glad I caught my mistakes before the due date tomorrow.”
He furrowed his brow. “Hmm. That doesn’t sound like you.”
I sighed, taking slight offense at that because it sounded so much like what Elise had told me at lunch. That going for the Lorsen & Spengler internship didn’t sound like me. That it didn’t represent who I was and what I stood for.
“Just a little snafu,” I assured him, hating Tiffany that much more. It was Rachel’s boyfriend who’d pushed me, but I knew it was Tiffany’s doing. She made them do her dirty work for her.
Redoing this paper would take me all night, but after I ate with Dad, I told him that I’d need to go to the library to finish it. “Tonight’s going to have to be an all-nighter,” I explained.
“At the library?” he asked.
I nodded. “I need to take notes from the books and archives there.” Not to mention the digital access to the tomes and articles I couldn’t get to on my personal laptop, which was still sluggish after that drop.
“I can drive you,” he offered.
“Thanks, but that’s okay.” I shook my head, aware that he was hoping not to fill up the gas tank before payday came. “There’s a bus that goes late. I don’t want to keep you from relaxing. You had a long day, too.” I stood, hiding the pain in my knee as I approached him and hugged him as he sat.
After a quick shower, I stowed my things in an older backpack since my messenger bag was still drying. Even though I prided myself in always dressing like a professional for all things related to school, I figured it wouldn’t be so bad to stick with cutoffs and an old band T-shirt instead of the blouse and skirt I usually wore to class. It was late. Not many students would see me. No professors would.
I got on the bus and rode to campus, but I had to walk the rest of the way to the library. Exercising my legs felt both good and bad. Working some motion into my knee helped, but my feet ached from being on them most of the day.
I hung my head, too tired to bother with lifting it and striding with purpose. The idea of redoing everything from scratch for my assignment was daunting.
If I had to be honest with myself, today had taken the wind out of me. First with Elise making me question whether I should go for that internship, then the bullying and fall into the fountain, which had me tense with my fear of drowning and not knowing how to swim.
“Still not looking where you’re going, huh?”
I jerked my head up, furrowing my brow as I peered ahead at the source of that gruff, snarky growl.
And then him, too. This scowling man had completed the trifecta of why I was in a bad mindset all day.
It was the same jerk from before, the tall guy who hadn’t helped me in the hallway. I never cared for charity, not accepting it. I never asked for help. But it would’ve been nice of him to step off my paper instead of forcing me to rip it free.
“Not you again,” I muttered.
I didn’t want to know why he was hanging around on the campus square this late. Paint splatters on his jeans suggested he was one of the art students. His long, messy, dark hair and the faint stubble on his lean jaw told me he was rough around the edges. And the tats up and down his muscled arms?
He was trouble . Hot, tempting, and sexy trouble.
But he was trouble.
That was all I needed to know about this stranger.
I had zero time or energy for trouble in any shape or form. All I intended to focus on was graduating as well as I could and landing whatever work experiences that I could. Anything that would get me in the best standing to make money to help my parents and to give back to the community.
It seemed that the universe had more lousy misfortune in store for me today, though. I’d never crossed paths with this bad boy before and it seemed like a cosmic joke that I would twice in one day.
“Excuse me,” I said, planning to walk past him and pretend he didn’t exist.
Simply continuing on my way was easier said than done with how he blocked the path.
A couple of other guys laughed and smoked off to the side, probably his deviant friends. Two girls who looked way younger than us giggled with them, tipping back bottles of beer.
If they wanted to choose this spot for a party, I’d leave them to it. I wanted no part in it.
I wanted no part of anything to do with him.
“And you’re still in a hurry?” He stepped closer, looming so tall over me as he glowered at me. Just like before. He was seething, so full of anger, and I had no clue what possessed him to take it out on me.
“Still rushing somewhere?” He didn’t stop, stalking up close until he was almost in my personal space. “You’re such an important, busy person. Places to go, people to see?”
“Not people to fuck,” one of the girls joked. “No one’s going to want that .”
I tore my gaze from this tall stranger to glance at her, finding her sneering at me like I was unwanted filth. Being some guy’s eye candy wasn’t my goal. I didn’t care how fuckable I looked. I only worried about my grades, my reputation as a law student. Still, did she have to go there? Were there any nice people left in the world today?
“I don’t know about that.”
I flinched, looking at the guy again after he said that .
He dragged his intense gaze up me slowly, as if now considering how different I had to look from earlier when I bumped into him. Gone were my wet clothes clinging to my skin, my “professional” attire second-hand and soggy. Now, in short cutoffs and a threadbare Pink Floyd shirt, my hair loose and untamed, left down after my shower, I felt so bare. Without my office-like clothes as a mask to hide behind, it was almost like he could see me . The real me, not the obedient scholarship student overly eager to please and fall in line.
“Where are you hurrying off to this time, Sabrina?”
I frowned, unnerved that he’d know my name. Never mind how it sounded, so gritty and sensual like a rough caress that tempted me to get closer to him. That smoky rasp wouldn’t work on me.
He was a bad boy, a jerk who’d stoop to teasing me like everyone else.
And he would have no place in my life.
“None of your business,” I replied, tipping my chin up before I moved to get around him.
I refused to be any of his business. Even if he rocked his shoulder into me, body-checking me as I stepped by. He could push and bug me, and I wouldn’t engage in anything with him.
Whoever he was—other than another bully out to torment me—I wouldn’t let him interfere with my plans.
As I dodged him, fearing another, harder push, I didn’t fall. He didn’t trip me either. No fountain waited nearby for me to tip into it.
Yet, as I hurried away to reach the library, I felt the wicked burn of his stare branding my back every step of the way.