Page 79 of Secret Obsession
We slap hands next, our fingers wrapping around each other and squeezing hard. He drags me a step closer. “So, Willow’s off-limits, hmm?”
I squeeze until I feel the bones of his hand grind together, then jerk out of his grasp. He just smirks at me, his eyebrow raised. Waiting for a reply? He’s not going to get one.
Greyson hooks his arm around my shoulders and steers me in the opposite direction of them. We take a different staircase down, and he follows me back across campus.
“Do you have nothing better to do than babysit me?” I snap.
He shrugs. “You seem like a bomb about to detonate, so… nope, I’ve got nothing better to do at the moment.”
I grunt and take another sip of the coffee. It’s actually notsobad. Just a weird flavor. Coffee should taste like coffee, not sugar. But it isn’t hot anymore. At best, it’s lukewarm.
Fucking hell.
I drop it into the trash and go back to get another one. Greyson follows silently, and I’m glad he’s not making me talk. Because what would we even say? That I have an insane obsession? That I’m driving myself crazy over it?
Coffee paid for, I take the stairs up just as the classroom doors start opening. Greyson’s my shadow as I spot Willow and walk faster to reach her. I bump her shoulder, and she almost jumps a foot.
“Miles,” she exhales. “I don’t have time for whatever you want. I need caffeine—”
“In the form of coffee?” I hand her the cup.
She stops walking. Her fingers curl around the cup automatically, so at least she’s not going to drop it. Butfuck, she’s staring at it like she would never expect someone to do something halfway nice to her. Or for her.
For her. Yeah.
She takes a sip, and her eyes close. Her shoulders sag.
The satisfaction in my chest makes the extra trip, the fight, all of it worth it. I grab the breakfast sandwich from my bag and push that into her free hand. Fuck it, right? That’s why I bought it.
And then we’re moving again.
I glance back, but Greyson is gone.
“Why is your nose bleeding?”
I touch it, not surprised to find wet blood still there. I didn’t really even wipe it, but now I do. My whole body aches as the adrenaline ebbs from my system.
“Don’t worry about it.” I pull out her phone and hand it to her. “Missing this?”
She smiles slightly and plucks it from my grasp, checking the locked screen. “Aw, Violet charged it for me.”
“How sweet.” My tone is dry. “Keep it on you, would you?”
She makes a face and stops again. At this rate, she’ll be late for her next class. “I know I’m a computer science major, and my whole life is going to be about technology. I mean, I guess my whole world alreadyisabout technology. But it’s exhausting. I don’t want to be chained to a phone and a slave to notifications. I don’t want to be available whenever anyone comes calling.”
I digest that.
In a strange way, it makes sense.
There’s so much information coming at us from our phones all the damn time. I can see why she’d want to disconnect—and sometimes the only way to do that is by force.
“This is me,” she says, stopping outside another classroom.
“What class is it?”
“You don’t have my schedule memorized?”
I hide my smile. “Of course I do. I know when you need to be places… but forgive me if your class names get a little jumbled.”
