Chapter 2
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my hand clutching a bit tighter.
Not so much to hang on to the towel, but as if I could cover how my body was reacting to seeing him here after I’d just been thinking about him.
And about touching myself. And about how much better it would be if he were the one doing the touching.
“I’m gathering up the towels,” he said. He pointed in the general vicinity of my boobs. “And I need that one.” The smirk was gone from his face now, but it was still in his eyes.
“Are you supposed to even be in here?” I thought about the situation, about my options. I was in a locker room—in a towel—by myself with a strange man. I should be thinking about exit strategies, where was the nearest door, could anybody hear me scream, that sort of stuff.
But I wasn’t. Somehow I knew on some gut level that I wasn’t in any danger from Lucas. At least not that kind of danger. Because—let’s be real—Lucas was dangerous, all right.
“What’s your last name?” I asked, because it seemed important to know that right now. Not that standing wrapped in a towel in front of someone I’d just met (and barely, at that!) wasn’t important stuff too. But…yeah… “What’s your last name?” I repeated. “Is it Bell?”
There was a flash in his eyes that I couldn’t read…something that made him pissed off. He grunted and broke eye contact. Broke the spell I’d been under, and I was able to move toward my locker, a row over from where we stood.
He didn’t follow me, and as I turned the corner around the aisle I looked back to see him, indeed gathering up the dirty towels that hadn’t quite made it in the large laundry cart.
“No. Not Bell,” he said. “Bad enough that that asshole’s name is something Andy has to live with.”
I opened my locker and gathered my clothes, setting them on the bench, not really knowing how this was going to work.
Should I just quickly throw them on and hope Lucas stayed in the next aisle over?
Keep the towel on until he left? What if he had a bunch of work to do in here and I’d be sitting in my towel for an hour?
What the hell, why was I the one working around him?
“Shouldn’t you have to wait until everyone’s out before you clean in here? Isn’t this…I don’t know…against the law, or the rules, or something?” I hitched my towel up higher around my chest, even though he was still on the other side of the lockers.
“I yelled in. There was no answer. When I saw the light on in the steam room, I was about to leave. That’s when you walked out.”
“Oh.”
“Are you near your clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Go ahead, I won’t bother you. I need to do some measurements in the steam room, but I wanted it to cool down a little bit first. Thought I’d help out with the towels while I waited.”
“Ummm…”
There was quiet, then he said, “I’ll step out. Just yell when it’s okay to come back in.”
This was stupid. The man was just doing his job.
Ah, now I got why he was wearing a Bribury polo. Not so much out of collegiate pride as, well, a uniform.
And suddenly I didn’t want him to think of me as a stuck-up Bribury Basic. (Which I knew was what the townies called us co-eds. I learned that, like, my second day here, though I wasn’t sure what it meant.)
“You can stay. Do your work. Just stay over there.”
“Will do,” he said. I started to change, quickly at first, then more slowly, as if daring—willing?—him to impatiently see what was taking me so long.
Yeah, pretty passive-aggressive, but I wasn’t above a little p/a behavior. Sometimes it felt like my whole life was passive, with minimal aggressive.
“You about done?” he said loudly. “I’ve got what I needed.”
I pulled my dry hoodie over my tee, shoving the wet-ish hoodie and yoga pants in my backpack.
I wished there was a full-length mirror on this side of the room, but I knew what I looked like—typical college girl in jeans, tee, and sweatshirt.
I put my long black hair up into a messy bun, fastening the wet mass with a band.
Typically I would have taken a long shower, but I wasn’t feeling like my typical self.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I said, and walked around the aisle.
He was writing something onto a small tablet, and he was holding a tape measure, which he slid into his back pocket.
The door to the steam room stood open. “Me too,” he said.
“I got what I need.” He looked me up and down.
I swear to God I almost felt as naked before him as when I’d been wearing nothing but a towel.
“Well…almost everything I need,” he added, and the words burned through me.
“Why did you need to measure the steam room?” I asked, ashamed at how rough my voice sounded.
“I’m retiling it. Starting next week, but I needed to get measurements for materials.”
“Will it be usable while you’re doing it?”
He shook his head, that silky black hair moving with him. I wondered if it would feel as soft as it looked. “No. I’ll work during the nights, so the locker room will still be in use, but the steam room will be closed.”
“For how long?”
He shrugged, looked at the figures he’d written down. “At least two weeks. Maybe longer. Depends how many hours I can put in on it each night.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed. I really loved that steam room.
“The sauna will still be available.”
I’d used the sauna, on the other side of the locker room, twice. But once I’d discovered the steam room, it just wasn’t the same.
“But it’s not the same,” Lucas said, echoing my thoughts.
“I’ll survive,” I said. I hoisted my backpack up higher. “Well…um…good to meet you. Andy’s a great kid.” He nodded at that. There was nothing left to say. And yet I couldn’t leave.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“In Creyts. It’s by—”
“I know where it is,” he said, a tiny bit defensively.
“So…okay…”
“You’re going to walk there by yourself? Across campus? At this time of night?”
“Yes.” I did it a few nights a week, when I’d swum late, and steamed even later. I even studied here at times, in one of the classrooms in the old women’s IM building. “It’s fine. I do it all the time.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said, and moved from where he stood to come and stand beside me. He effortlessly took my backpack from me and slid it across one of his broad shoulders.
“It’s perfectly safe,” I said, following him now as he started moving on without me. “What are you doing?”
He turned around and looked at me. “I’m walking you home,” he said, then turned and kept walking.
Luckily I caught up to him just in time to hear him say, “Kade. My last name is Kade. Lucas Kade.”
Something in me moved, and I knew that name—his name—would stay with me forever.
* * *
We walked to my dorm in silence. At first it felt like awkward silence to me, but then it just became…comfortable. Or more like comforting.
I walk this campus in the late evenings a few nights a week.
And I don’t feel unsafe, but then again, I’d never felt quite as secure as I did now, with Lucas’s tall, strong body beside me.
And that slight sense of danger, the feeling that as composed and controlled as he seemed to carry himself, he could unleash that big body with immense power at any time.
I admit it, I thought about all that strength and power unleashed on me. In a good way.
We passed people, most of whom I didn’t know. Bribury was a small school, and you eventually knew a good portion of the student body, but I was a freshman, and had only been here a month. If I didn’t have class with them, or they didn’t live on my floor, I probably didn’t know them.
The guys we passed looked at Lucas with curiosity. Lucas didn’t belong amongst the Bribury boys in their skinny jeans, knit beanies, and impossibly fashionable eyewear.
And Lucas made them all look like just that…boys.
The girls we passed looked at Lucas with something more than curiosity. Hunger. Who could blame them?
I certainly felt him next to me—felt that strong, big body so close—even though we never touched. Not even the brushing of arms, though I admit I did come close to faking a stumble so I could lean into him.
But we reached my dorm with no stumbles—faked or otherwise—and I turned to him. “Here we are,” I said, like an idiot.
He nodded, looking up at the four-story building. I didn’t want to leave him, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Have you worked for Bribury long?” I asked.
“Don’t,” he said, turning to face me full on. “You don’t need to do that with me.”
“Do what?”
“The small talk. The stuff you’re doing with all the guys you’re meeting. ‘What’s your major?’ and ‘Where’d you go to prep?’ Don’t do that with me. I’m not like them.”
There was an intensity in his stance, in his face, though it was too dark to see if it showed in his eyes. My guess is it did.
We were standing to the side, at the front of the dorm, out of the lights from the doorway. I liked being in the shadows with him, but I also liked looking at his face. Too much.
“What are you, then?” I asked. “If you’re ‘not one of them’?”
“I’m…” He leaned toward me, took a tiny step closer.
Not touching, but God, so close. I couldn’t smell him and I wanted to, wanted to know his scent.
Then something stopped him. He moved no further.
In fact, he took a step back. I almost cried out for him to come back even though it was mere inches.
He ran a hand through that black hair, that too long, not trendy-long, but shaggy-long, gorgeous hair.
“I’m…” he began again. But his voice had changed; there was almost resignation now. “I’m not what you need,” he finished.
He turned and walked away from me.