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My pen scribbles over the numbers, morphing them from identifiable figures to squares of black. I can’t pay attention to the lecture, not when I can feel Dean’s eyes on me.

I can hardly breathe as I close my eyes. I’m so close to the edge, to losing it and falling down a bottomless pit with no return. I can feel it now, how liberating it would be to just let go. Years of holding it in, years of doing nothing.

My eyes slowly open to the droning white noise of the professor’s lecture. It’s only then that I see I’ve broken the tip of the pen, the ink seeping into the pages and staining them.

Not just a few, but nearly all of them, maybe thirty or forty pages in this used-up notepad. Have I been sitting here that long?

“You okay?” the girl to my right asks. I recognize her face. She has a certain look about her, like someone you could easily trust. Her voice is soft too. She glances straight ahead and then back at me when I don’t answer, instead just staring at her and trying to snap out of it.

“Fine,” I manage to push out the word.

“I’m Angie, by the way,” the girl whispers as she brushes her curly blonde hair away from her face. Then she asks, “Do you need another pen?” She’s basically mouthing the words so she doesn’t interrupt the lecture.

“Oh, no,” I wave her off, pushing all the thoughts away, “I’m fine, thanks.”

We share an easy smile, like nothing’s happened. I suppose outwardly, nothing has. Just a broken pen and spilled ink on a notebook.

Faintly, I hear a desk somewhere behind me and to the left scratch across the floor. Dean. My body begs me to look back, but I don’t.

God I want to. It’s different with him. A good different in some ways, but so bad in others.

He’s a distraction.

With clammy hands I reach into my bag and pull out another pen. I rip off a single piece of paper and wrap up the broken pen, setting it to the side of the desk to toss on the way out.

That scratching sound catches my attention again, but this time Angie’s too. She looks over her shoulder and then back to the front of the room.

My neck is stiff, refusing to budge but painfully so. And all because I can feel his gaze. I know he’s watching and he’s going to want an answer. Or an explanation. Or maybe neither. Maybe if I just ignore him, he’ll leave me alone.

That’s what I should want, but it hurts to think of that possibility. Inexplicably so.

It’s funny how time went so slowly before. Now that I’m so very aware I need to make a decision, the class is over before I can let out a breath.

I have to force my body to relax and move normally, so I’ll look just like everyone else. And the moment I do, I look behind me, arching my neck and succumbing to temptation.

Dean’s dark eyes stare back at me.

I don’t know how I thought for even a second he’d have looked away.

Maybe he has an obsession like I do.

All that anxiety, that fear, it all slips away as the clock ticks, and our gazes meet. And like I’m his reflection, his lips lift into a slow smile and mine follow.

Dean could be my personal heroin. And I want a hit. I want it hard and fast.

It terrifies me. But now, more than ever, I want that distraction. I want him to take me away from this. However he can. I know it’d be easy too. As easy as jotting down on a piece of paper that I want him and exactly where to find me. It would be all too easy.

Time resumes as I wrap my hand around the broken pen and toss it into the wastebasket at the front of the room. I don’t look up when everyone walks around me and past me heading for the exit, including Angie and her friendly smile. Adjusting my bra strap that slips down my shoulder, and trying to keep my composure, I head back to my seat, only to peek up and see Dean waiting for me.

I fucking love it. I love how he makes his intentions clear and that he’s willing to give chase, to put himself out there. I love that he wants me.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks me. My first instinct is to joke, to flirt, to play it off.

If only he knew the truth.

He’s already too close. Too invested.

I should have stopped this before it started. A voice whispers, dark and deadly, but coaxing in its cadence, It has to happen. It’s meant to be this way.

“Nothing,” I answer him immediately, ignoring the voice and leaning down to reach for my bag.

“I knew it,” he answers me with a cocky grin. “I knew there was literally nothing going on in there.”

“Fucking asshole,” I mutter as my smile broadens. I feel easy around him, natural … happy even. And that’s dangerous. His rough chuckle makes my entire body warm. Some places more than others.

“I can tell you what I was thinking,” he says as he leans closer, so close I get a whiff of his cologne. It’s clean and crisp, but with a hint of woodsy musk that makes me lean in too.

“I bet I already know exactly what you were thinking,” I immediately retort, which only makes him scratch the stubble on his jaw, his smile ever present.

“What do you think?” he asks me and I arch a brow to scold him.

“Thoughts like that don’t belong in the classroom.”

“Where else are we going to find a desk?” he asks me and I can’t help how my thighs clench and my chest and cheeks heat with a slow, burning blush.

I always have a comeback … but not this time.

“So you want to go out?”

“No,” I laugh off his suggestion. “Do you want to go out?”

“I could go out,” he answers effortlessly. Like it doesn’t bother him in the least.

“I don’t know,” I answer him, feeling that unease crawling back into my skin. I forget when I’m with him and I can’t let that happen.

“You want a boyfriend or something?” Dean asks me and I scoff at his response. “What?” he asks me. “I don’t know what the hell you want.”

“Neither do I,” I answer him and turn my back to him.

“The hell you don’t. You said you wanted me,” he persists. There’s a tone in his voice and a flicker of something in his eyes that I recognize. Something that makes my heart flicker. It’s a pain I know all too well. And I hate it. I want to take it away and with Dean it’d be so easy to do. He wants me, and I want him. But there’s so much more at stake.

A slow prickle of ice settles down my skin as I think about what’s going to happen. I shouldn’t lead him on like this. It’s wrong.

But I’ve been fucked up for a while now, and he’s just so tempting.

“You know I do,” I tell him, turning around to face him after zipping up my bookbag. I leave it behind me on the desk and my lower back grazes it as my ass hits the desk. “I’d love for you to fuck me raw. Right here on this desk.” I reach behind me to grip it and then nod my head to the side wall, “Or against the wall maybe.”

His expression darkens with lust. I watch as his eyes widen with amusement, but even more so, his pupils dilate with desire. Every second of silence is another degree of heat added between us.

I lean closer to him, feeling the tension rise as he adjusts his cock in his pants. His eyes don’t move from my lips as I whisper, “I imagine it all the time.” My fingertips play at the buttons on his shirt. Seeking consent, while luring him in.

“I bet you do too?” I ask him, staring into his dark eyes and wiling him to picture exactly what I’ve been dreaming about. “It would be bad for me though. You’ll fuck me and leave me.” At the last thought, my hands fall to my side. That’s not the reason why, but I’m not above using the logic to keep him away.

It takes him a moment to process my confession. Like he’s paralyzed from what I’ve done to him, and that gives me a thrill I can’t put into words.

“So you do want a boyfriend?” he manages to say and I have to cover my face with equal parts humor and exasperation. The lies make the hole I’m digging for myself that much deeper.

“Look, Dean,” I start to tell him it’s not going to happen. I swear I had every intention of cutting him off. But there’s a look in his eyes that makes my heart still just a beat too long, so I know it’s off. A look that heats the small space between us. A look that I’m addicted to.

“Yeah? I’m listening,” Dean says as he takes a half step closer, decreasing the distance between us. He towers over me, his broad shoulders blocking out everything else. I’m caught in his gaze, caught in the moment.

I’ll blame it all on that.

“If you want to fuck me, you should just show up to my house,” I tell him and slip the ripped corner of the paper in his hand.

The paper I’ve been scribbling on all class long.

The paper with my address on it.