Chapter 15
Briar
I hurried after him.
He wasn’t heading to the athletic building; in fact, as he walked toward the library, I had a moment of panic that he was heading to my building. But he walked into the library, and I almost ran to catch up with him in case I lost him in there.
I was stalking him.
I knew what it was and what it looked like, and right then, I didn’t care.
I found him on the second floor in a meeting room, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he put away his headphones. He didn’t move as I slipped inside and closed the door.
Noah looked up. “Hey, how are you—” And then frowned as he sat back. “Well, you’re not Savvy.”
“Savvy?” The dean’s daughter? “She’s cheating on the QB? With you?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Wow.” His fingers tapped the table in a quick drumbeat as he watched me. “You don’t like us much, do you?”
I felt foolish. “You’re meeting in a room with no one else. What else would you call it?” If I sounded defensive, it was because I was.
“It’s called tutoring.”
She was a student liaison. I forgot that. Well, that wasn’t at all embarrassing.
“Oh . . .” I reached behind me to grab the door handle. “I should go.”
“You followed me?” He looked amused at the thought.
“No.” Think Briar. “I was in here and saw you come in, and I wanted to talk to you about what happened earlier.”
His mouth lifted into a smirk, far too smug, and he leaned back, his eyes dancing with laughter. “You were in the library? Why?”
“Photos.” I patted my bag, which I didn’t have with me, and I hastily pretended I was patting my pocket where my phone was. “The top floor has a really good view of the stadium.”
I knew that he didn’t believe a word of what I was saying. “Mmhmm. You took that picture already, remember? The night you weren’t following Dust.”
Asshole.
“I never followed him! And anyway, it’s not a crime to take more than one picture of the same thing,” I snapped at him.
He leaned forward. “Can I see it?”
“See it?” I shoved my hands into my pockets, my fingers curling around the phone. “See what?”
He didn’t hide the satisfied gleam in his eye at my discomfort. “The great picture you just took of the stadium.”
“I haven’t done it yet.”
“Right.” He was laughing at me. “Convenient.”
You can salvage this; just pretend he isn’t getting under your skin.
“Anyway,” I said briskly, taking a few steps into the room, the table between us. “What the hell was that earlier this morning?”
Noah shrugged. “Practice.”
“Is it normal practice for you to punch your assistant coach?”
He didn’t look uncomfortable at my question. “You’d be surprised.”
I took a deep breath. I needed to reclaim control here because I was just a constant source of amusement to him right now.
“Yes, I would be surprised. You forget I have a brother who was just as immersed in this crap as you are. Every five a.m. start, every ‘just one more practice,’ every training session, every training film studied. I never saw Mason punch his coach during practice.”
Noah lifted one brow. “Maybe he should have, might have given them a real reason to get rid of him.”
I gaped at him. “What the hell did you just say?”
“I said that if your brother had any fight in him, he wouldn’t have rolled over and let the fuckers walk all over him and ruin his life.”
I was going to kill him.
“My brother—”
“Would have punched the asshole as quickly as I did,” Noah cut in smoothly. “You can be as pissy as you want. He was crowding you, you were clearly uncomfortable, and then he said what he said and . . .” Noah pushed himself to his feet. “Tell me, would your brother have done nothing?”
I watched him walk around the table and felt the need to back up, but not for the same reasons I had earlier when Kevin-the-Ass was towering over me.
“Why are you really following me, Briar?”
I looked up at him, knowing he had the advantage in every way that mattered. “I wasn’t following you.” It sounded as weak as I felt.
Noah raised an eyebrow, and my stomach did a weird flip, like that one and only time I was on a roller coaster. “We’ll agree to disagree,” he murmured, leaning against the table behind him like he had nowhere else to be, with the kind of effortless confidence that should’ve been illegal.
I wasn’t making up the ground I needed; I was losing ground, both literally and metaphorically.
“I wasn’t following you,” I insisted. Why? Why am I insisting? He just gave you the out when he said ‘agree to disagree.’ But it wasn’t an out; it was him pacifying me.
“You need to stop hovering over me,” I said before he could say anything else. “You’re drawing attention to us.”
Noah didn’t seem perturbed by that.
“You mean more than following me into a meeting room in the library and closing the door?”
Oh my fuck, this wasn’t helping.
“You’re right. I need to leave. So, bye.” I turned my back and reached for the handle.
His body pressed against mine, not hard, close enough that I knew he’d closed the distance, not so close that I felt like I couldn’t move away.
So . . . why was I not moving?
“Briar, don’t go,” he murmured from behind me, his voice carrying a slight hint of cajoling. “I think you need to talk to me about what’s bringing you in here. Was it the punch, or the fact I said I can’t fuck you?”
I gulped. “You never said that?” I glanced over my shoulder at him, my knees weakening when I saw the way he was looking at me, and I hastily turned to face the door again.
“When I punched the assistant coach, I told him that he insinuated a sexual relationship between us. Is that why you’re mad? You think I don’t want to fuck you?”
“Wh-what?” My head spun. I felt him move closer. “You can’t . . .” I took a deep breath. “You can’t say things like that, Matthews.”
“Why?”
His breath was warm and moved my hair slightly at my ear. All I could think was thank God my hair was down and hiding most of me. That hot breath on my ear? I’d be in danger of making a fool of myself.
“Noah . . .”
Fingers skimmed from my left shoulder to my wrist, and I felt my body’s response to his touch.
“I like the way you say my name,” he murmured behind me, fingertips lightly tracing the palm of my hand.
“This isn’t right.” I turned, God knows why, and now my back was against the door, with him so close.
So very close. He reached past me, his large hand flat against the door as he looked down at me, a whisper of breath between us.
“You were right earlier. I’m staff, and you’re not.
And I . . . I’m not interested in you like that. ”
Those dark eyes dipped to my chest, where my nipples were practically saluting him.
He dragged his gaze slowly upward, lingering on my lips before meeting my gaze one more time.
The slight curl of a smile tugged at his upper lip, and I had the deeply inconvenient urge to reach up and find out what it tasted like.
“You’re not interested?” he asked me, and I felt my knees tremble as the low timbre of his voice did something to my heart rate that I had no answer for.
“Nope.”
“Mmhmm.” His head dipped slightly, and I was sure he was going to close the distance and kiss me.
Cold air rushed between us as Noah stepped back. “Leave the door open when you leave, yeah?”
My head continued spinning. “Leave the door open?”
He sat back down again, his legs stretched out as if nothing had happened. “Yeah, so Savvy knows I’m here.”
I blinked rapidly to clear my thoughts. “Um . . . you’re really meeting her?”
He was on his phone, flicking through the screen. “Huh, would you look at that?” He stood up, grabbed his backpack, and grinned at me. “She had to cancel.”
I stood there like an idiot as he walked past me, reached out, opened the door, and left me wondering whether I’d just been played or whether he’d been given the gift of a turnover and had run with it right to the end zone.
Either way, that had not been my best moment. That hadn’t even been a passable defense.
“Why are you falling for this?” I grumbled as I marched down the library stairs. “So he’s big and handsome. There are plenty of guys who look like him.”
Were there?
“And he’s got all that attitude. It’s annoying.”
Was it?
“And he’s right,” I told myself firmly. “I work here, he is a student. He’s probably got zero experience in the real world. Or anywhere else,” I added with a smirk.
I needed another coffee before I returned to work. I opened my phone to check the time.
“No experience? Is that what you think?”
I yelped like an idiot. Turning, I glared at him. “Who’s the stalker now, Matthews?”
“I’m standing at the door to the library. You walked past me, talking to yourself. About me. I can show you my experience if you want?” he added with a wink.
“Do not do that.” I shook my finger at him, and I could only imagine how absurd I looked. “Do not wink at me.”
“You have a lot of rules.” His hands were in his pockets, but he didn’t look unsure. He looked relaxed, confident, and delicious. No. Deviant. That’s what he was. Not delicious.
“Go away.” I turned and walked away from him.
“What if I want coffee?” he asked as he came alongside me.
“You don’t.” I would not glare at him.
He chuckled.
I turned and glared at him.
He met my glare with a look of amusement.
I might punch him. I have a far worse temper than my brother ever had before everything that happened. Now, Mason was just a burning ball of anger.
Thinking of my brother reminded me why I was here and why walking alongside this man-child was a bad idea.
I stopped walking. “You were right earlier. This college is a cesspool of misinformation. Add social media to the mix, and well, I don’t need to draw you a picture, right?”
Noah frowned. “I think you lost me.”
“Nope, you’re still right here,” I quipped, but before I could see if he got my joke, I looked around. “We’re out in the open. It’s not a big deal if it’s an odd occurrence. I’m in marketing, after all, but let’s not draw too much attention to the fact that we’ve had a few conversations.”
“You think by walking beside you, people are going to assume we’re fu—”