While September had been balmy and beautiful, October in Blackwoods was turning chillier and chillier by the day, hinting that this November, only a week away now, would be a dismal one. Wrapped in a thick wool jacket and a cap, Eliza hurried from her lecture hall, face burning. She’d spent the last two weeks prepping her defense argument for her criminal law class, only to have it shredded by a group of individuals who took particular glee in seeing their classmates suffer. For the most part, she’d been met by a lukewarm response after she presented her case—and then they stepped up and tore her to pieces.

 

Those people, five friends who excelled in every class she had with them, were on their way to the tip-top of the law ladder. They’d be making six figures within a few years of graduating, while people like her were destined for public defense or low-level corporate law. No one had said it directly to her, but as she slunk back to her seat, defeated, Eliza could see it in their eyes. Even her professor had very little to say after her defense was annihilated, and she sat for the remainder of the two-hour class, barely listening as other students presented slightly different defenses for the same case.

 

All she wanted to do was run back to her dorm and hide, but she still had classes she couldn’t miss to attend—two of them with those awful jerks who’d cut her down to about two inches tall. Her eyes watered as she hurried along the sidewalk, dodging other students, the cold breeze nipping at any bits of exposed skin it could find. Dead but colorful leaves scattered the once green lawns, employees out in full-force with rakes to try to minimize the spread. If she couldn’t hide in her room, she’d happily hide in one of those five-foot piles. When she stopped in front of one, a landscape employee in a green jumpsuit casually stepped in front of her, as if waiting for her to leave.

 

How many of their mountains of leaves had been soiled today by happy-go-lucky students eager to jump in them?

 

She licked her lips and quickly moved on, head down and mind awash with all the hurtful things that had been said to her only an hour before. How could she have thought that she presented a suitable defense? Why hadn’t she seen all the holes they’d stabbed through her argument on her own?

 

Pathetic.

 

Mercifully enough, Eliza wasn’t left to wallow in her thoughts for too long. As she passed one of the main parking lots by the campus gates, the roar of a motorcycle rumbled through her. She could feel the sound in her bones, reverberating in her chest in a way she almost found thrilling. Looking up sharply, she turned to the source and found a figure in a leather jacket, jeans, and a black helmet racing for one of the few empty parking spots available. He swerved in close to her, and Eliza frowned, suddenly realizing why that giant of a man looked familiar.

 

“Nash!” she called, waving at him once he’d pulled his helmet off. He ran a gloved hand through his hair, mussing up the thick, but flattened, locks into their usual look. When his dark eyes met hers, his mouth twisted up into that sinful smile that always made her knees feel like jelly, and then he clambered off the bike as she hurried over.

 

“Don’t you look cute in your little hat,” he teased with a chuckle, nodding up to the pink hat she’d knitted herself in her first year of law school.

 

“I didn’t know you drove a motorcycle,” she said in an effort to draw the attention away from her hat. Whenever they were together, she already felt like he was a full decade older than her, what with his worldly ideas and mysterious gaze, and she didn’t need to acknowledge anything else that made her feel like a little girl in his presence. They’d been meeting up almost daily for over a month now, and while she still knew very little about him, Eliza thought she was comfortable with Nash—comfortable in the same way that schoolgirls are comfortable with the teacher they have a crush on. She wasn’t sure how the dynamic started, but somehow it was there, and she was eager to see it change.

 

No man had ever been able to make her fumble over her words as much as Nash had made her fumble, and while Eliza wasn’t exactly experienced with men (at all), she nearly wished she had the same effect on him.

 

“My car was having some issues today, so I had to take the bike in,” he told her with a little half-shrug, helmet tucked under his arm. “I don’t like taking it out unless I really need to, but it was supposed to rain and I didn’t want to walk.”

 

She grinned and poked at his arm playfully. “So practical.”

 

“It’s basically my middle name,” he fired back in an equally flirtatious tone, dodging her poke and catching her wrist instead. He held it for a moment, then let it go, and as she brought her arm back to her side, her skin still tingled from the contact.

 

“So what happened to your car?” Eliza asked as they fell in line beside one another, walking at their usual easy pace. The first few times they hung out, Nash’s huge stride forced her to practically jog after him. After he saw her breathless one too many times, he finally started to slow down.

 

“Someone let the air out of my tires,” he replied, and when he glanced at her scandalized expression, he quickly added, “with some nails.”

 

“Oh my god!”

 

He shrugged again, those muscular shoulders snagging her attention more than she would have liked. “Pretty common in my neighborhood. I shouldn’t have parked it on the street.”

 

“Oh. Yeah. Right.” What else was she supposed to say? Eliza didn’t have a car—why did she need one when she lived on campus, her dad worked on campus, and there was a cafeteria in her building? But if she did, she would have been horrified to discover that someone had stuck nails in her tires. Some people were so cruel.

 

“So where were you headed?” he asked, as they headed for the main campus area, surrounded by a herd of students.

 

“History of law,” she said dully. It might have been her most boring class, but at least there was no one to shred her ideas into itty-bitty pieces. “Want to walk me there?”

 

The question had come out of nowhere. She hadn’t even thought about it before she said it, and her cheeks flamed with a dark blush when Nash looked her way, brows up. Usually they just went their separate ways, meeting up in the library or food court to spend time together. If she’d been paying any sort of attention, she wouldn’t have asked him to walk her anywhere.

 

In her eyes, what she’d just said was one step below asking him on a date. Her stomach turned as she braced for an uncomfortable rejection. He probably had his own things to do. Why would he have time to walk her to class? So much for eschewing the little girl persona—

 

“Yeah, sure,” Nash said after a beat. “I was just going to go to the registrar’s office to change some stuff with my schedule, but I can walk you first.”

 

Eliza brightened, suddenly feeling the need to stand a little taller, hold her head a little higher. “Great!”

 

Then, without thinking again, she took a sharp turn to the left, nearly plowing into Nash, only to realize she was going the wrong way in seconds.

 

“I mean, it’s…it’s this way,” she muttered sheepishly, her newfound confidence taking a bit of a hit as Nash laughed. She mentally slammed her palm against her forehead, her blush returning.

 

Smooth, Eliza. Real smooth.