Chapter 1 – Josie #2
“What — you’re —” He dragged a hand through his hair and visibly reset his face. I watched him put away the version of himself who’d had his arm around another woman and switch to the one who was supposed to be happy to see me. “Babe. What are you doing here?”
“I go here now.”
He blinked. “You what?”
“I got in. Academic scholarship. I moved in three days ago.”
He stared for a long, long second, and I watched his jaw work once, twice, like he was chewing on something he couldn’t swallow.
Then his hand closed around my elbow, hard. It wasn’t the careful, guiding hand he used in public. His fingers dug in with enough pressure that I made a small involuntary sound I hoped he didn’t hear.
“Come here,” he said, smiling for the room. “Outside. Talk to me.”
He steered me into the hallway that ran toward the back of the house. My elbow throbbed under his hand. I kept my face neutral because people were watching and I was not about to let my first night on this campus be the girl who had a thing in the hallway with Marcus Kane.
The noise dimmed, and the crowd thinned to nobody.
He stopped at the base of the back stairs and turned to face me, and the easy smile was gone.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was low, tight.
“I wanted to surprise you.” I kept mine light, or tried to.
“Surprise me?” He laughed once, and it had no humor in it at all. “You moved. To my school. And you surprised me.”
“Marcus —”
“Do you know what it looks like, you showing up here, tonight, out of nowhere?” His other hand came up to rake through his hair, and when it came down, his jaw was set. “Do you know how that makes me look?”
Like the guy who had his arm around a blonde, I thought. I bit the inside of my cheek and did not say it.
“What does it look like?” I asked instead, as mildly as I could manage.
“Like I don’t know where my own girlfriend is.” His grip on my arm tightened. My heel pressed into the bottom step, and I had nowhere to go that wasn’t through him.
I had been here before. I knew that if I moved, he would tell me later that I had overreacted, that I was too sensitive, that he had barely touched me. I knew exactly how this went.
I didn’t step back, and I didn’t look at the floor.
“I have a right to be here.” My voice came out steady, which surprised us both. “Last I checked, I’m your girlfriend. You should be happy to see me. But even if you aren’t, I’m not here for you. I’m here for me.”
He went still.
He didn’t let go. He held on for a couple of seconds, long enough that I could feel my pulse in my arm under his fingers, and the hallway felt very small.
Then his grip loosened.
He didn’t let go entirely. His fingers stayed on my forearm, but the pressure was gone.
It was just contact now, and his thumb started a slow, absent circle over the skin where he’d been gripping, like he could smooth it out before I noticed the print.
His expression changed into something I had less practice reading.
It wasn’t irritation exactly. It was more careful, like he was calculating.
“Hey.” The voice had shifted back to easy, a channel change, smooth and instant. “Baby. I’m sorry. Okay? You caught me off guard. That’s all. You know I hate surprises.”
I did know that.
“Come here,” he murmured, and tugged me into his chest. His hand came up to cradle the back of my head.
He smelled like beer and the cologne I’d bought him for his birthday.
For a second, I let myself sink into it because I had missed this.
God help me, I had missed him, or at least the version of him I’d been rehearsing in my head for six weeks.
“I’m happy you’re here. I just wish you’d told me. Next time, tell me. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He kissed the top of my head. The relief in my chest was so sharp it hurt.
“Come on.” He pulled back, smiling now, the easy one, the public one. “Let me get you a drink. I want you to meet everyone.”
He turned toward the main room, and because his hand had slid down to my wrist, I moved with him.
My elbow still tingled where he’d grabbed it. I rolled my arm, carefully, testing it.
Marcus walked me into the main room with his hand on the small of my back.
“Hey,” he said, loud enough to carry. One arm pulled me tight against his hip. “Everybody. This is Josie. My girlfriend. She just moved to Loveland, so the power couple is officially back.”
A couple of the guys whooped. Someone raised a cup.
Marcus’s grin widened, and he swept the room with a look I recognized from three years of watching him work a crowd. “So y’all heathens be nice to her. That means you too, Miller. Don’t think I didn’t see you checking her out.”
Laughter. Miller, whoever Miller was, flipped him off from across the room.
The blonde’s mouth pulled into a flat little smirk. She looked me up and down, slow, starting at my twist out and ending at my feet, and the smirk ticked up on one side like she’d decided I wasn’t a threat.
Great. Now I have a target on my back.
Marcus squeezed my hip, proud, proprietary. He pressed a red cup into my hand and moved me toward a guy in a backward cap, already saying something bright. His thumb stroked the back of my hand now, like the hallway had never happened.
I didn’t pull my hand away, but I didn’t sip the drink when he handed it to me, either.
And somewhere in the back of my skull, unbidden, a voice said, low and certain,
Counteroffer. I will.
Girl. You have a boyfriend, I reminded myself.
It came out less convincing than it had a couple of hours ago.