Shaw
My heart jumped to my throat.
Me: How did you get my number?
Shaw: Pepper
Traitor. Of course. Shaking my head, I typed back.
Me: I have plans
Shaw: Break them
My fingers locked, poised over the keys, heart hammering at his words—at this connection to him through this little box in my hands. I shouldn’t have been so surprised to hear from him. He’d said I would. But he hadn’t even waited a day, and that only made my heart trip even harder.
Me: I can’t
Okay. So the word won’t would be more accurate, but the end result was the same. Suddenly, my phone rang in my hand. I jumped a little, staring at the number I knew was his. He was calling me?
I answered the phone and brought it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Have you eaten yet?”
No greeting. Just straight to it. That was him. Direct. No games. Most girls would love that. Except me. I was a girl who played games. Who counted on them for protection.
“N-n-yes.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
I sucked in a breath, walking slowly, freezing my butt off. I was almost to my dorm, but I couldn’t walk any faster. It was like my brain couldn’t walk and talk at the same time. At least not when I was talking to him.
He continued. “You got to eat, right?”
Not with you. “I have plans.”
“I’m sure you do, but you can still eat with me before you head out for your wild night.” I rolled my eyes at his assumption. “Where are you?”
I frowned. He said that like he knew I wasn’t home at my dorm.
And then I understood why as I rounded the corner of my building. I stopped dead in my tracks. Shaw was leaning against the front of the building just near the front door. Talking on his phone. Talking to me. He hadn’t spotted me yet. He wore a small, sexy smile on his face as his voice rumbled in my ear.
“C’mon. I know this great burger place. Let me take you there.”
Was he asking me out? A shiver rolled through me. Excitement? Dread? Maybe a bit of both. I didn’t do dates.
He looked up then and caught sight of me. And then more shivers. He lowered his phone as I walked up to him. There was no choice. He was in front of my building.
“What are you doing here?”
Smiling, he reached across the space separating us and tapped my phone. Realizing I was still talking into it, I fumbled to put it away, feeling like an idiot.
“I came to take you to dinner.”
“Like a date?” I couldn’t help it. I said the words as if he’d just declared he was taking me on a safari or something equally outrageous.
“If going out for food with me is a date, then yeah.” He studied me closely, the building’s perimeter lights hitting the angles and hollows of his face and making him look only hotter. “But if you don’t like that word, then fuck it. Call it something else.”
A smile flirted on my mouth. “Look, Shaw, you’re a really nice—”
He threw his head back and laughed, and that only made him look sexier. And not nice at all. He looked delicious and dangerous in the best way. A bad boy who would know how to make a girl scream. Again, in the best way.
I stopped and glared. “What’s so funny?”
“You’re about to give me the same tired brush-off you give every guy who trails after you.”
A pair of girls I vaguely recognized from my floor approached the door. They looked us over—well, they looked Shaw over. Their eyes heated with appreciation and speculation as they gave him the once-over. A sudden possessive urge to touch him, mark him as mine, seized me.
I waited for them to enter the building before responding to Shaw’s accusation. “That’s not true.” Okay, maybe it was, but I wasn’t admitting that to him.
“Yeah. It is.” He stopped laughing and leveled his dark eyes on me. They glinted in the near darkness. “Because I’m not a nice boy, and you know it. That’s why you won’t go out with me. You’re too scared.”
He might as well have waved a red flag in my face. “I’m not scared.”
“No? Prove it.” He nodded toward the parking lot where I assumed his truck waited. “Let’s go eat.”
“This is ridiculous—”
“Chicken.”
I felt my eyes widen. “Oh my God. Does this really work? Do girls really go out with you if you dare them into doing it?”
He shrugged. “It’s not a dare. Just stating the facts. You’re scared. And I haven’t asked a girl out since I’ve been back, so I wouldn’t know. But they never said no in high school.”
I snorted. “I’m sure they didn’t.” I could just imagine him and Reece together in high school. The girls must have been throwing their panties at them both.
Well, not this girl. After last night I knew he was hard to resist, but the key was to never end up alone, on a bed, with him again. Should be easy enough to manage.
“Fine. No big deal. It’s just food.”
He nodded, looking supremely satisfied. “Sure.” And yet he looked like he had just won a skirmish.
“I’m paying for my own meal though.”
His smile slipped. Feeling as though I’d won this round, I turned and headed toward the parking lot, leaving him to follow.