11. Jasmine
JASMINE
A month into college and the only class I look forward to is Professor Kilgore’s every Monday and Friday, with Wednesdays reserved for study hall—because, according to him, we’re going to need it.
Every week, I’ve found a new way to get lost on this campus. I walked away from Brooke twice when I saw her on the main lawn. Ignored five—no, probably seven—texts from her, despite me never giving her my number, she’s been texting once a day since last Wednesday.
I pull out my phone and stare at the newest one:
Brooke: You know all marital couples fight, right?
I roll my eyes—and look up. Just in time to lock eyes with her.
She’s leaning against the front doors of Thomas Hall, looking like she was carved straight out of a thirst trap and dropped into a college brochure.
I want to turn in the opposite direction, but Kilgore’s class starts in ten minutes, and I promised myself I wouldn’t be late and soaking wet again.
I guess I can only keep one of those promises to myself.
I narrow my eyes at her coke-bottle body because, frankly, it’s not fair. She steals from me, and I’m still having wet dreams about her. Such a fucking pill.
Her golden-red curls are twisted into a messy bun, and a plain white crop top hugs her tight.
The low-rise jeans? Insult to injury. And then there’s the butterfly navel piercing I hadn’t noticed before, but now can’t unsee.
An assortment of delicate gold chains rest against her collarbone, and those wedge sandals make her look like an early-2000s country supermodel.
I swallow hard. Three times. Maybe four. And still have to remind myself twice why I’m mad at her when she licks her lips and looks at me like that.
“Well, don’t you look as sweet as sin, sugar,” she drawls, pushing off the wall and sauntering toward me with the lazy confidence of knowing that I’m about two sweet words from forgiving her.
“Nope,” I shoot back, taking a step back. “You stay three feet away from me at all times, Miss du Pont.”
“ Miss du Pont? We being formal now?” she teases, cocking her head, hip jutting just slightly in challenge.
I grit my teeth. “We’re being civil.”
She grins. “Fine. Then let me be civil and ask—what do I have to do to get you to forgive me?” A pause, her voice softer now, more honest. “You already ‘thought’ through our first date. What about now?”
I blink. That’s a lot of bold for before 2 p.m.
“Are you always this forward?” I ask, narrowing my gaze even as my stomach twists.
“Only when it feels right.” Her eyes scan mine. She means it. She feels this intense electricity between us too.
I sigh. “I told you I’d think about it, and I thought no.”
Brooke leans closer anyway, not quite crossing the invisible line I’ve drawn, but brushing up against it. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear—slow, allowing each of her fingertips to graze along my cheek and jaw.
“And what about now? It’s been three weeks, Jas. Don’t tell me you hold grudges. ” She hums.
“No, but I believe you’re date shouldn’t steal from you.”
“Jasmine. I swear, it wasn’t like that, okay? Let me make it up to you. Saturday night,” She smiles in that way that makes my knees week, but before I can answer, a shadow falls over us.
“She’ll be there,” Landon says coolly, stepping up beside me with both hands pushed into his front pockets, and a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, he speaks,” I mock, crossing both hands over my chest. Landon had been enrolled as a biology student since yesterday with the help of Cast, and this is the first time he has said anything to me that wasn’t safety or school oriented.
“You know I do more than speak, Peach,” he drawls, voice dipped in gravel and smoke. He plucks the cigarette from his lips and exhales through his nose, twin curls of smoke drifting up like some devil just out of bed.
Then his gaze drops—and stays. His eyes sweep over me, darkening as his pupils bloom wide across the sharp blue, hunger barely leashed beneath the surface.
“What I didn’t know about you, Peach ,” he murmurs, voice low and rough, “is that you wear dresses.”
I fight the heat that threatens to crawl up my neck and do a slow spin, just to spite him.
The dress hugs my waist before falling into a dark blue ripple of cotton and movement, a V-neck that dips just low enough to tease, sleeveless to show the tattoos curling along my right arm.
The hem hits just below mid-thigh, brushing against the edge of a worn leather holster I use for my phone.
My curves aren’t dramatic, but the dress knows what to emphasize.
My chest—C cup, not that anyone’s counting—and the swell of my hips that sway as I shift weight between my worn black knockoff Doc Martens. Landon’s jaw ticks.
My half-unshaved hair is tousled from the wind, the dyed red streaks catching the late afternoon light like sparks in dry grass. My grey eyes don’t leave his.
“You like it?” I ask, tone neutral but my lips betraying the smallest smirk.
His eyes flicker—slow, dark, and dangerous.“I’d like it better off.”
Brooke clears her throat. Loudly.
“He is…” I look Landon over, my bottom lip sliding between my teeth as I take a moment to think.
Landon watches me through heavy-lidded eyes, the corner of his mouth twitching like he already knows what I’m thinking. His voice drops—low, indulgent—wrapping around me like velvet laced in smoke.
“Yeah, Peach , what am I?”
“A nuisance,” comes a voice sharp enough to slice clean through the tension.
I jolt upright. Spine straight. Eyes wide as I turn around and look at him.
Professor Conner freaking Kilgore is posted up five feet away like he’s been there the whole damn time, wearing a bored expression. His eyes, an unsettling almost-clear green, drift lazily across the three of us as if we’re a particularly uninteresting painting he’s forced to critique.
He’s dressed in a light grey suit that hugs him in all the right ways, crisp button-up undone at the collar with no tie, just a hint of throat and chest, accompanied with a thick silver chain around his neck.
“Miss Rivera,” he says, dragging my name out like the slow pull of freshly made Laffy Taffy. “I trust you plan to attend class today. On time.”
I blink. “Yes. Of course. Right now.”
“Excellent,” he murmurs, letting his gaze drift over to Landon with a brief, glacial pause. “Are you planning to attend as well, Landon ?”
I almost choke on my own tongue. My head whips toward Landon, whose smug-ass smile could power the entire west coast.
“Yeah, Con ,” he says casually.
What in the sweet Mary barbecue hell is this? I knew Landon knew of Professor Kilgore. Knew they had some kind of mutual history. But I didn’t know they were on nickname basis—like “grab a drink and commit felonies together” close. Why am I the devil’s favorite fucking toy to play with?
Professor Kilgore grunts, the faintest twitch of disapproval passing through his expression. “Class begins in three minutes. I will lock the door, Miss Rivera.”
“ Con , don’t threaten my girl,” Landon says, sliding his arm over my shoulder like it’s a casual afterthought and not a live grenade tossed onto my ribcage.
“ Your girl? ” Brooke snaps, her voice sharp and hot and very much not amused.
“Oh yeah,” Landon says easily, grin sharpening as he turns to her. “Before Buzzkill over there ruined the vibes, Peach was just about to tell us what I am to her.”
My cheeks go nuclear. My body hums like a live wire. One wrong move and I might combust right here on the quad, in fact that may be the better option out of the two.
“I was going to say?—”
Nothing. Everything.
That he’s a guy. The first guy I ever kissed willingly. The only guy I’ve let touch me and the only one who touches back like he knows how to make it mean something. My bodyguard, who I maybe definitely want to fuck.
But don’t worry, Brooke—before him, it was strictly pussy. And that’s still my preferred cuisine out of the two, well it is the only cuisine I have been comfortable with in my life.
“Do not stroke his ego any further, Miss Rivera ,” Professor Kilgore sighs as he turns, already making his way toward the building.
“Landon, give them a moment.”
“Well, only because you asked so nicely, Con ,” Landon sings, obnoxiously delighted, before pressing a kiss— a kiss —to my cheek and finally heading toward the door.
Just as Professor Kilgore calls over his shoulder: “Ninety seconds. Not a millisecond more.”
I turn to Brooke, who looks like she’s two seconds from combusting—bright pink in the face and glaring daggers. “I’m sorry, have I been chasing after you, and you’re not even gay?”
“No! I—” I rake a hand through my hair, trying not to panic. “I am gay. Been gay since I was thirteen.”
She squints at me. “Then what’s with the whole my girl thing?”
I hesitate. “I might be… experiencing a sexual awakening. Of sorts.”
Brooke snorts. “So you’re trying out being straight now?”
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because it’s usually the other way around.” She laughs harder, shaking her head. “I just—I really thought you were playing me. ”
“You?” I raise a brow. “You’re way too fine to be played with.”
“You’d be surprised,” she says, the smile faltering just enough to feel real.
“Well, that last girl? She was an idiot. I’m not.”
Brooke tilts her head, the teasing returning. “So… you’re giving us a shot?”
I meet her gaze, heart stammering. “Yeah. I think I am.”
She takes a step forward, rocking on the balls of her feet as a dazzlingly pearly white smile spreads across her face.
“I can’t do anything exclusive right now,” I blurt, before I can overthink it. “I have this thing with Landon and I can’t call it off…he’s basically my roommate.”
“Roommate slash bodyguard?” Brooke raises an eyebrow.
“It’s complicated.” I shrug.
She nods, her grin spreading even wider. “That’s perfect.”
My brow furrows. “Perfect? Why?”