Chapter 28
Anna
I’m pacing around the tiny living room of my apartment, shaking my hands at my sides.
I make myself take slow, deep breaths to calm my nerves.
It doesn’t work.
I step back over to the couch, where my phone is, and stare at the screen. This is so stupid that I’m freaking out like this. All I have to do is click on that link, and I’ll see my MCAT score.
Except part of me doesn’t want to find out what it is. Because if it’s lower than it needs to be, then my dream of going to Stanford will be long gone.
I cross my arms over my chest, annoyed at myself…but also freaking out at what’s at stake with this number.
There’s a knock at my door. A smidgen of the nerves blasting off inside of me fades away. Travis is here.
I rush over to the door and open it.
“Hey,” I say, feeling so silly that I shared my freakout with him over text.
But then, I see the warmth in his eyes. He steps inside and brushes my hair out of my face.
“Hey,” he says softly.
My skin tingles where he touches me. God. All it takes is one touch from him, and I melt.
“Sorry about all this.” I shut the door behind him.
“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I’m glad you texted me. I wanna be here for you.”
His words feel like a warm, cozy blanket wrapped around me.
He grabs me by the waist and presses his mouth against mine. His kiss is soft and slow and teasing. It makes me dizzy in the best way.
“So you got your MCAT score, huh?”
I nod, forgetting for a moment how nervous I was.
Together we walk to my couch, and I point at my phone.
“There.” I tug a hand through my hair and exhale sharply.
“I know how ridiculous this is, but I just can’t stop my nervous system from freaking out.
Every time I pull up the email with the link to my score, my heart feels like it’s going to explode.
And then my brain goes crazy thinking that I got a terrible score, which means I won’t get into Stanford, which means I’ve worked this hard for nothing, and I’ll probably have to go to some terrible, low-tier medical school, and I won’t get to do the type of work I’ve been dreaming about my whole life. ”
I stop to take a breath.
“But then, the rational part of my brain pipes up and I’m like, just look at the damn score!
What if I got a 518, which is the score I need to get into Stanford, but that’s such a hard score to get…
but if I did, that would be amazing. But I mean, only a tiny percent of students who take the MCAT get a score that high, and there’s no way that could be me.
Geniuses go to med school at Stanford. I’m smart, but I’m not a genius.
Like, I work hard and study hard and get top grades, and I volunteer, but this is Stanford we’re talking about.
One of the best medical schools in the world and…
” I trail off and groan. “I sound insane.”
Travis starts to smile.
“What?”
“You’re adorable when you freak out.”
I fight a smile and cross my arms. “Not funny.”
He swipes my hand in his. “I’m not trying to be funny. Just telling you the truth. You’re really damn cute right now.”
My heart does that fluttery thing it does every time Travis compliments me or kisses me or makes me feel desired and special.
He kisses the tip of my nose, and I’m so surprised that I let out a laugh.
“What’d you do that for?”
“To throw you off. You seemed like you could use a distraction.”
I can’t help but smile.
“I don’t think you got a 518 on the MCAT, Anna.”
My eyes widen in surprise.
“I think you scored higher.”
I burst out laughing. “What? How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I know you. I’ve known you since middle school. You always study and overprepare for every test you’ve ever taken. I know you did the same for the MCAT. It’s not possible that you got anything below an incredible score.”
Warm tingles scatter through my chest at the sincerity in his tone, at the way he’s holding my gaze as he looks at me.
At how he dropped whatever he was doing to calm me down during my freakout. At just how much he believes in me. More than I believe in myself.
“I don’t know what I’d do if I got a higher than a 518. I…I’ll go skinny dipping,” I joke.
He quirks his eyebrow like he’s actually into it.
“Check your score, Anna. You need to.”
I swallow and let out a breath. He’s right. I can’t put this off forever.
Together we walk to the couch and sit down. He hands me my phone. I look at the screen, and my heart starts to race.
“You can do this,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to my temple.
I melt at the softness of his voice, how he’s building me up.
I tap the screen, and the email pops up. I click on the link.
My other hand is still linked with his, and he gives me a soft squeeze. I log in on the test result site. Then I hold my breath as the results page pops up.
521
My jaw unhinges, and I gasp. “Oh my god! No way!” I shriek.
Travis cuts me off by grabbing my face and kissing me. He pulls me onto his lap, and I straddle him.
“You’re amazing. So damn amazing,” he murmurs against my mouth. Goosebumps race all over my skin. I’m smiling against his mouth, feeling like I’m floating and bursting all at once.
When we break our kiss, I’m breathless. “Oh my god,” I say again, shaking my head in disbelief.
He cups his hand over my cheek. “I told you.”
I bite my lip, still grinning like an idiot. He kisses me softly. Then he leans back and quirks his eyebrow. “Now let’s go skinny dipping.”
I start to laugh. “Travis, I was kidding.”
He shakes his head. “Nope. Don’t try to get out of this. You just achieved something insane, and you need to do something equally insane to celebrate it.”
I tilt my head at him. “That makes no sense.” He just shrugs. “Why do I get the feeling that this is just a ploy to see me naked?”
He grins. “Because that’s exactly what it is.”
My head falls back as I laugh. I look at Travis, feeling bold. “Okay. Let’s go skinny dipping.”
* * *
Travis pulls his car up to the dirt parking lot of a small lake an hour and a half outside of Denver.
He kills the engine, and we both step out of the car.
“Wow. There’s no one else here,” I say. I walk ahead and gaze out at the sparkling blue water and the evergreen trees surrounding it. Behind it are the Rocky Mountains, which still have snow on the peaks.
“It’s the start of the summer. I figured every lake would be crawling with people,” I say.
Travis walks up next to me. “I guess we got lucky.”
He kicks off his sneakers and pulls his T-shirt over his head, then takes off his shorts and boxer briefs. My eyes almost pop out of their sockets.
I’ve seen Travis shirtless plenty of times. I’ve seen his dick. I know how sexy and in shape he is. Every time he came over to watch Grey’s Anatomy with me this month, we always ended up fooling around, and he’s almost always taken off his shirt or his pants.
But to see him like this—totally naked and bathed in the late afternoon sunlight, this crystal blue lake, evergreen trees, and mountains behind him, he looks like a nature god. So raw and masculine.
I rake my gaze over the endless expanse of hard lines and cut muscles that make up his torso, the dark hair trailing down his abs to his impressive cock.
When he sees me staring at him with my mouth hanging open, he just smiles. “Like what you see?”
“Very, very much.”
I take a moment to admire his ripped quads. So much muscle.
He turns around to look at the lake, and I get a fantastic view of his ass, which looks like it was carved from marble.
“You should teach a butt exercise class,” I say. “You’d be a millionaire within a week.”
The low rumble of his chuckle hits my ears, and I feel giddy. It always feels amazing getting him to laugh. This guy, who for years never, ever laughed around me.
It’s addictive. I want to do it over and over.
He turns back around to me and crosses his arms over his broad chest. He looks down and nods. “Lose the clothes, sweet thing.”
I slip off my shorts and tank top. I’m usually a little nervous to undress when I’m with a guy.
A couple of the guys I’ve dated have told me that they like a girl with big boobs and a nice, plump ass.
I don’t have either, so that always made me feel self-conscious.
It always made me wonder if they were actually attracted to me.
But I never doubt how attracted Travis is to me. He looks at me like a starving man about to devour his favorite meal.
I stand there naked in front of him. He makes a come-hither motion with his finger. I walk over to him, then he grabs my hand and spins me around, slowly.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking at you. Fuck, you’re gorgeous.”
I glow at his praise. He grips my ass cheek with his other hand and gives it a rough squeeze.
“Your ass is so damn sexy,” he growls. He spins me back around to face him, then grips my chin in his hand and kisses me, hard.
When we break apart, I glance down and see that he’s fully hard. Confidence blooms in my chest.
“What?” he asks when he notices how long I’m staring at his cock.
“All that from ten seconds of seeing me naked and one kiss?” I say.
Heat swirls in his eyes. “Yeah.”
He says it so simply, like it’s a no-brainer. It makes me feel like the hottest woman on the planet.
“Ready to take a dip?” he asks.
“Ready.”
We hold hands and start running toward the shoreline of the lake, which is a dozen feet away.
The second we hit the water, we both shout.
“Oh my god, that’s so cold!”
“Holy shit!”
We were both running so fast that it takes an extra few seconds to stop. We’re already in thigh-deep water when we try to turn around, but we’re moving so quickly that we start to stumble.
“Crap!” I yell right as I lose my balance and fall into the water, pulling Travis down with me.
I land butt-first into the icy cold water and scream. Travis falls next to me on his chest. He manages to stand back up after a couple of seconds, then he pulls me up.
My teeth are chattering. “Oh my god. Why is this water so cold?”
Travis lets out a tired laugh. “Probably because this is snow that melted from the mountains.” He looks past my shoulder to the Rockies in the distance. “How did I not realize that would be a problem?”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense.” I start to laugh and shiver at the same time. “I’m surprised you aren’t enjoying this more. You do cold plunges and ice baths.”
“This is way colder than any ice bath I’ve ever done.”
He wraps his arms around me and kisses my forehead. The heat from his body feels so good.
“Looks like skinny dipping was a fail,” he says.
I laugh even harder.
He kisses me again, then leads me by the hand back to his car, picking up our clothes along the way.
“Come on. I have blankets in my car. Let’s warm up.”