Chapter 15 – Waylon
chapter
fifteen
Waylon
I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw her. Her eyes were red and swollen, and she looked exhausted.
She was already on the path when I got there, stretching against the low stone wall by the trailhead.
She didn’t roll her eyes when she saw me coming or mutter some insult about my punctuality or my face or whatever she’d decided to roast me about that morning.
She just looked up, nodded once, and started running.
There was no Flash, no Thor, no nothing.
We fell into pace, and I kept my mouth shut for the first quarter mile.
I know when a girl wants to talk and when she wants to be left the hell alone, and everything about her said to leave it alone.
Her jaw was set, and her shoulders were hiked up near her ears.
She was running angry, at the kind of pace that burns hot for a mile and then crashes, and I matched it without saying anything.
But I was watching her. Fuck, I’d been watching this girl since the first day she ran into me.
And by now, I knew what she was normally like.
She usually warmed up loose and easy, she trash-talked me on the hills, and her whole face changed when she was moving and forgot to be guarded. None of that was happening today.
When we hit the fork where the main loop curved back toward campus, I veered left.
She slowed. “That’s not the route.”
“Detour, Flash.”
“I don’t do detours.”
“You do today.” Sure, she was in a shitty mood, but maybe I could cheer her up a little.
She looked at me for a beat, and whatever she saw on my face made her stop arguing.
She followed me down the narrow trail that cut through the tree line along the eastern edge of campus, the one nobody used because it didn’t go anywhere useful.
It was just a path that dead-ended at a clearing above a lake that a lot of students didn’t know existed.
I’d found it freshman year, on a night when I couldn’t sleep, and walked until I ran out of campus.
The water sat still and dark between the trees, and the stars looked close enough to grab.
I’d stood there for twenty minutes not thinking about anything—not Bridgeport, not my dad, not the draft, and not whether my mom had remembered to eat between shifts. I was just standing there.
I’d never brought anyone here.
We came through the trees, and the lake opened up below us, silver in the early light, mist still clinging to the surface. She stopped at the edge of the clearing, and her breath caught.
Her eyes went glassy as she stared out at the view.
I didn’t say anything, and I certainly didn’t touch her. I just stood next to her and let it be quiet while we both caught our breath.
I didn’t know how long we stood there, but after a while, her shoulders dropped an inch, and then another. Her jaw unclenched, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, fast, as if doing it quickly enough didn’t count.
I still didn’t say anything because I know what it feels like when someone tries to talk you out of the thing you’re feeling before you’ve had a chance to feel it. I wasn’t going to be that guy.
When she turned and started back toward the main trail, I fell in beside her.
“For what it’s worth,” I said after a while, keeping my eyes on the trail, “whatever’s bothering you, maybe I could help.”
She was quiet for three strides, then four, before she spoke. “I don’t need flirting today, Waylon.”
She’d used my name, not Thor, and that was the giveaway. It sounded tired coming out of her mouth.
“No flirting.” I held up my hands, still running. “Maybe you could use a friend, though?”
She glanced at me sideways, like she was checking what I wanted out of it, because somebody had taught her that people always wanted something. I kept my mouth shut and waited.
She looked away first, and then she started talking.
It didn’t come all at once, but in pieces, starting with a fight with Marcus.
She said she was discouraged and exhausted, that she’d come to Loveland excited to see Marcus.
Instead, she’d been frustrated and pissed at him all the time, and she felt like dirt because of it.
The part she didn’t say out loud was that he made her feel like dirt.
“I keep thinking it’s me.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and I wanted to put my fist through something. “Like I’m the problem. Like if I were easier or less difficult or just, I don’t know, more... then it wouldn’t be like this.”
I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper. She needed an ear, not my thoughts on her jackass of a boyfriend.
Because what I wanted to say was that he didn’t deserve her.
He had never deserved her. The man left her standing outside in the cold and then showed up at her apartment, as if she owed him gratitude.
And I had thoughts about him pressuring her for sex, then having the absolute gall to make her feel like the problem.
Don’t even get me started on the night of the party.
But I didn’t say any of it. I just ran beside her with my jaw locked and my hands in fists at my sides and let her talk.
She told me she’d rearranged her whole day for him. I already knew he hadn’t shown. She said she was starting to wonder if the version of Marcus she’d fallen for had ever actually existed, or if she’d just made him up because she was hopeful and lonely and he was there.
“Sorry,” she said after a while, swiping at her eyes again. “You didn’t sign up for my relationship drama on a Tuesday morning.”
“I signed up the second I showed up on this trail, Flash. We are friends, you know.”
She glanced up at me. “Why are you so nice to me?”
Because I couldn’t help it. She was the first person who’d made me want something outside the draft and the rink and the plan I’d been white-knuckling since freshman year.
The way she ran made me think of my favorite superhero, and the way she laughed made me forget that I was supposed to be staying in my lane.
I knew better than to say that.
“Because you haven’t told me to stop yet,” I said.
She almost smiled. The corner of her mouth twitched, but she caught it and shook her head and picked up the pace. I let her pull ahead because watching her run was the best part of my morning, and today, she needed to be in front.
When we got back to the trailhead, she stopped, hands on her knees, breathing hard.
“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”
What the fuck? It came out of nowhere. She wasn’t looking at me, still bent over, catching her breath, like she’d timed it so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact.
“I don’t,” I said. “Absolutely not.”
She straightened slowly. Her nose wrinkling as she spoke. “There was that blond girl the other night. After the game. I just assumed...” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear in a way that made her look about nineteen and full of shit. “I felt bad. For monopolizing your time this morning.”
The blond girl. Right. Megan? Madison? She’d followed me out of the after-party, pulled me around the side of my cottage, and dropped to her knees before I’d even gotten my key in the door.
And the only reason my body had cooperated at all was because I’d closed my eyes and pictured a different woman between my knees, shorter, with darker skin and a mouth that spent most of its time calling me Marvel superhero names.
I wasn’t going to tell her that. There were lines, and that was way past one of them.
“Do you care?” I asked instead. “If I have a girlfriend?”
“No.” She said it too fast. “Of course not.”
Her foot caught a root.
I saw it before she did, the stumble, the way her weight pitched forward, and my hand shot out on instinct and caught her arm, but the momentum was already going, and I was off-balance from reaching, and then we both went down.
My back hit the dirt. She landed on top of me.
And because the universe had a sick sense of humor, she ended up straddling my lap with her hands braced on my chest, and her thighs clamped around my hips.
And joy of joys, she was pressed down on my dick.
And he gave not one shit whether she had a boyfriend.
I swear it wasn’t my fault. I was always half hard around her anyway.
And now she knew.
I know she felt it because her eyes went wide, and she made this half-squeal, half-gasp sound, and her whole face flushed pink under honey brown skin.
“Of course I don’t care if you have a girlfriend…or not,” she said again, like repeating it louder would make it true. She scrambled off me so fast she nearly tripped again.
I stayed on the ground for a second because I needed to.
“Good.” I sat up, brushed dirt off the back of my head, and kept my voice easy even though my heart was pounding. “I’m not the girlfriend type anyway.”
She smoothed her hair, not looking at me. “I figured.”
The way she said it, like she’d already decided I was a fuck boy and wasn’t worth thinking about any further, irritated me more than it should have.
“Same time tomorrow?” I asked.
She straightened, then looked at me with those eyes I was going to see every time I closed mine tonight.
“Yeah,” she said. “Same time tomorrow.”
She walked away, and I stood there with my heart pounding and my hands still in fists, still tasting blood from biting back everything I’d wanted to say.
What happened to staying in your lane?
I was starting to think staying in my lane wasn’t going to get me what I wanted.