I hated that my chest was tight.
Almost as much as I hated that I had tears in the backs of my eyes for no stupid reason. These guys weren’t mine.
But for two straight days, I’d fallen for it.
Fallen for the attention they gave everyone. The only difference? They’d given it to me for free.
“So. Stupid!” I roared the minute I got back to my room, seconds after slamming my door.
“Told you so,” Slater said from the bed, textbook open, beanie almost completely over his eyes, and coffee in his right hand. “They’re the devil, all of them.”
“How the hell can they get away with that?” I grabbed his unicorn and whacked it against the wall.
“Hey now, don’t take it out on Horny.”
I dropped the unicorn onto the floor. “You named your unicorn Horny?”
“It has a horn.” He shrugged. “Besides, aren’t all animals horny?”
“Are you asking?”
He yawned. “And to answer your question, they get away with this little business because Wingman, Inc. gives the school millions of dollars a year in order to have a presence on campus. Get this, in the last three years alone, they’ve tripled their enrollment for the dating app. Who cares if the success rate is high? They’re manipulating people into using it.”
“But the people who use it are happy?” I wondered aloud.
“Does it matter? Manipulation is manipulation.”
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
Slater must have noticed because he got off his bed, put his cup down on the nightstand then braced my shoulders with both hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say except I warned you.”
“And I still fell for it,” I grumbled. “How stupid do you think I am? On a scale of one to ten?”
“Solid middle ground.” His lips twitched. “To be fair, they’re pretty to look at, and sometimes raccoons just can’t help themselves when they see the shiny.”
“Hey—” I playfully shoved him away. “—are you calling me a raccoon?”
He grinned. “Little bit, yeah.”
“Fair.” I groaned and pulled him back in for a hug. He smelled like spicy soap and Starbucks coffee.
When he released me, it was with a small smile on his face. “Tell you what. Let’s order pizza tonight. You can wallow in the greasy goodness.”
“With extra cheese?” I countered.
“And pineapple.” He groaned like he was going to have an orgasm from the mere thought of pineapple on extra cheese pizza.
“Weirdo.” I punched him on the arm and thought back to the training session. Slater was good-looking. Not just handsome; some might even say hot. “Why didn’t you get asked to work with them?”
When he didn’t answer, I turned around.
Slater’s stance was completely frozen as he held the unicorn with one hand and his cell in the other.
“Slater?”
He gave his head a shake and offered me a forced smile. “Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t always hate them?”
“No.” I burst out laughing. “Is it true?”
He just shrugged and said quietly, “I don’t even know anymore…”
That was the last conversation we had about it before we ate pizza while talking about school, unicorns, and him helping me find a tutor.
But when we turned the lights out, I wondered.
I wondered why he looked so sad.
And why he always seemed so pissed in the guys’ presence; maybe they’d done something to personally offend him other than just exist in the same space.
I opened my mouth to pry more, when I heard his soft snores.
Tomorrow. I’d ask again tomorrow.
Chapter Eleven
Knox
“What the hell were you thinking?” Leo sent a pillow sailing toward my face later that night when I was trying to get ready for bed.
I dodged it just in time for it to hit Finn, who collapsed to the floor in a heap of middle fingers.
I jumped into bed with my phone. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“The hell you do,” Finn said from the floor. “You never kiss the girls, ever. It’s one of your rules, and you kissed Jessica! You hate Jessica, say it on a daily basis. She’s been after your ass for years, and you kissed her. Why?”
I knew why.
They probably did too.
It had been a dick move. Instinctual. Because I’d felt vulnerable. Because I’d wanted her to think the worst of me. Because I couldn’t stand being in the same small room with her without touching her, without wanting her, and I couldn’t go down that path again.
Especially after the last one had ended so horribly.
So, I’d defaulted to the asshole I was — and kissed a girl I’d had no intention of ever touching again, a girl who I knew would reciprocate and shock the hell out of Shawn.
I had purposefully hurt her.
I knew it.
What I hadn’t expected?
Was for it to hurt me as much as it had.
Shawn was a stranger to me, and yet I saw the pain in her eyes, felt it slam into me in waves as I stood there and waited for her to rage, to yell, to do something, maybe to save me from myself.
But she’d walked away.
Proving yet another point.
They either die.
Or walk away.
Nobody stayed.
Nobody.
“Forget about it.” I set my alarm and shrugged them off. “I was just trying to gauge where Jessica was at, and she’s not in this for a relationship. She wants all of us, and she’s past the year mark.” Hell, technically she was way past it. “I say we have the talk with her. She can keep using our services for a higher rate with no touching, only talk therapy, or she can sign up for Wingman, Inc. I’ll talk her through all the positives, and we’ll see what happens.”
“That’s a bunch of bullshit.” Leo yawned. “I’ll let you have it, though.”
“We both will,” Finn said in a tortured voice as if he knew the reasons why, which meant I needed to hide my emotions even more than I already had.
“Night, guys.”
“Night, Knox,” they said after one another.
When I closed my eyes, I could see the pain on Shawn’s face, and watched as that face transformed into the familiar nightmare of the last three years.
And once again, I slept like shit.
Because I spent the entire night trying to save someone who was already dead.
Always too late.
Always.
Chapter Twelve
Shawn
It was happening again.
The moaning.
I put a pillow over my face and screamed.
Not because it was too loud.
But because I kept wondering who was causing it. One? Two? All three? Leo and Finn had both tried to talk to me in class and at the coffee shop again. I’d brushed them off but been polite.
And Knox?
Well, let’s just say that Knox had suddenly turned over a leaf that said, “Go out of my way to make Shawn’s life miserable.”
He was suddenly everywhere.
And with a different female every single day.
It drove me insane.
Bat-shit crazy.
And he wasn’t even mine to go senseless over!
The moan happened again.
“That’s it!” I got up from my bed, stomped over to the door, and jerked it open. Then I stormed my way over to their room and almost took down the door with my pounding.
When Leo answered, he grinned down at me. “Come to play?”
I gave him the finger.
His eyes narrowed. “I’m confused. Is that yes or no?”
“Agh!” I threw my hands up in the air. “I have practice tomorrow at five in the morning It’s three. I’ve had one hour of sleep. Can you please keep the moaning to a minimum?”
“You seem stressed.” He tilted
his head just as Finn joined him in the doorway. “Doesn’t she?”
“Very.” Finn nodded then reached out and started massaging my right shoulder muscle while Leo grabbed my hand and worked my fingers. It felt so damn good that I forgot I was pissed for about two seconds before I pulled away.
“No.” I jabbed my finger at each of their chests. “Shame on you. Stop using your skills to make me less crazy. I need sleep.”
“I could not agree more.” Leo put his hand over his chest. “If you want, I can come over and—”
“No!” I made a fist with my hands. “I don’t need you to help me sleep. I need you to keep your clients quiet so that I can sleep. Big difference.”
Knox appeared then and held out a pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones. “You can borrow them every Friday as long as you don’t set them on fire when you’re done.”
“Do you think I really want whatever STDs are crawling around the surface?” I hissed.
His eyes turned lethal. “Then I guess you won’t sleep.”
“Dun, dun, dun,” Finn sang in a low voice, just as a small lady who could pass as my grandmother made an appearance and shoved a fifty-dollar bill in Knox’s pants then patted him on his rock-hard six-pack. She had a full-on red wig perched backward on her head and cherry red cheeks with black glasses that she kept shoving up her nose. And her purse looked like something I would have seen on I Love Lucy. It was this giant black clutch that probably held cough drops and prunes.
“Thanks, boys.”
“Love you, Edna!” Finn called while Leo brushed a kiss across her hand.
She finger-waved at Knox and straight-up waddled out of the suite.
I stared after her, my jaw dropping with each step she took until she was out of eyesight.
“What…” I shook my head. “…I mean, seriously, guys, what?”
Finn’s eyes got serious. “She’s lonely.”
“She’s at least eighty!” I yelled, so exhausted I was actually arguing with crazy.
Knox got all up in my business and said through clenched teeth, “Her husband died a year ago. She’s not comfortable with internet dating yet. We’re easing her in because she wants a partner for life, someone she can laugh with, so if we can give her that one laugh, that nice touch once a week, we’re going to fucking do it. Now jump off that pedestal, take the damn Bose, and go to sleep.”
He slammed the headphones in my hand and followed with the door, leaving me staring at a swinging white board with a black marker and a giant heart on it with their names scribbled in fan-girl cursive.
I glared at their names a good two minutes before I turned on my heel and went back to bed.
And I hated myself a little bit more when I lifted the headphones to my face and smelled Knox on them, made the mistake of inhaling again then stupidly sat them on my desk, which just so happened to be next to my pillow, and my head.
I slept soundly for the first time in days.
Chapter Thirteen
Knox
I felt like shit and wanted someone to blame other than the bastard staring back at me in the mirror. Jessica wouldn’t let it rest and threatened to sue. So, all in all? I wasn’t having the best Tuesday of my life.
It had been a little less than a week since the huge fight with Shawn.
She still had my headphones.
And a sick part of me liked that she had something of mine, even if it was to make sure she didn’t have to hear what I did for a living. I groaned and made my way into class.
I was the TA for Professor Duke, and yes, that was his real name. Grumpy old bastard got a nice thrill out of flunking people.
“Knox?” He crooked his finger at me.
“Yeah?”
He didn’t say anything else, just handed me a stack of papers and an answer key then looked back at his computer.
“Right.” I rolled my eyes and made my way over to one of the free desks and started the tedious work of grading papers.
I was about two hours in when I saw her name.
Shawn.
It was scribbled in pretty handwriting that matched her skin and lips. Handwriting I traced with my finger a dozen times before I got to work.
The first three answers were wrong.
I winced as I kept grading, and when I tallied up her score, I felt so bad for her I wanted to accidentally lose the test so she could do a retake.
Sixty-eight percent.
Not exactly the best grade on the planet, though she still did better than most people in the class who got lower than a fifty percent.
I finished up the grading then entered the percentages into the online Blackboard site and called it a day, just as Professor Duke was leaving.
“Hey, Duke.” I was one of the rare ones he let call him by name.
“Knox?” He turned and rubbed his tired eyes with his free hand then returned his glasses. “Finished already?”
“Yeah.” I crossed my arms over my bulky chest. “I actually was just wondering if you needed me to help tutor anyone? This test was rough for a lot of students.”
Total bullshit. What I really wanted to ask was if he could please force me to tutor a certain girl so she had no choice but to say yes.
He sighed. “That bad, huh?”
I snorted. “What did you expect? The test was seven pages long.”
He grinned. “I like testing their mental fortitude.”
“Achieved.” I laughed. “Trust me, there will be tears.”
“Bah!” He waved a hand at me. “The world is full of tears. This is where we mold students to fight past them, am I right?”
He gave me a knowing glance.
I looked away and mumbled, “Right.”
“There are a few who have asked. I’ll email you some names tonight, and you can see if your schedule meshes with any of them.”
“Great.” I tried not to look too eager.
I must have failed because his eyes narrowed. “And you’re just doing this out of the goodness of your heart?”
I winked. “You wound me.”
“Uh-huh.” He sputtered out a laugh. “Day’s over, Knox. Get out of my hair.”
The man was bald.
I left with a wave anyway.
And whistled all the way to my Mercedes coupe.
Chapter Fourteen
Shawn
I tapped my pencil against my thigh as I waited in the library for my tutor to show. His or her email was
[email protected], so I had no clue if I was getting a male or female, and honestly? I didn’t care. I’d bombed my last test and between practices, weightlifting sessions, and the crazies across the suite, I was slowly losing my mind.
When did college students even have time to do all the things? Especially college athletes?
I grunted, cracking my neck so that some of the tension would release from my shoulders and all the tight muscles. I flipped open my textbook then checked my phone again.
Two minutes to five.
I huffed out a breath when I checked my cell again and saw it had been another five minutes. Still a no-show. And then, as if I had conjured up the devil himself, I looked up into Knox’s hypnotic blue eyes and gaped. “Can I help you?”
He set down the same, exact textbook I had and slid an iced coffee toward me. “I think that’s my line.”
I grabbed the coffee, clenched it actually, almost afraid it was poison, or worse, some sort of drug that would make me hump his leg. Yeah, that would be just awesome. “Pardon?”
“Can I help you?” he said slowly, leaning in and licking his lips. “Now, if you open to Chapter Three—”
“Wait, wait!” I looked around the busy library as if it was some sick joke, and someone was going to pop out and say, “Gotcha!” “I told you I didn’t need you.”
“And you nearly failed your last test. Trust me, I graded it.” He shrugged, apparently trying to disregard the fact that it was extremely embarrassing that he’d gone over all of my crap answers and marked them with
an angry red pen. “Professor Duke paired me with students who need help. Thus, here I am.”
I deflated.
So, he was here doing his job as the TA? I mean, of course he was. Why did it matter? I was just another job. Fantastic. This would be a good thing. I shifted in my seat. A great thing, even. I cleared my throat and said, “You could have told me you were the TA.”
“A guy has to have his secrets.” He smirked then sipped his own iced coffee and grabbed a notebook from his messenger bag. His blond hair kept falling out of his messy man bun. It was a seriously strong temptation to use my fingers to brush that hair back. “Like I said, Chapter Three…”
“R-right.” I cleared my throat and turned to the correct page then waited as he started firing off definitions and study techniques for Duke’s test.
He was talking so fast that I had to put a hand up. “Wait, say that again.” I wrote down as much as I could and tried not to be intimidated by his obvious intelligence compared to my own stupidity when it came to the material.
Two hours later, he was yawning, and my neck felt like someone had sat on it then twisted for good measure. I dug my left hand into the muscles while my right kept taking the last of the notes he had for me.
When I looked up, he was gone.
And then massive warm hands were on my back.
And I was so sore I didn’t even jerk away; instead, I moaned out, “This in the TA job description?”
“It is now,” he said gruffly, moving his massive hands along my tight muscles as if he was studying how to be a massage therapist and not… Wait. What was his major? I frowned.
“What’s your major?”
“Business Marketing and Management with a double minor in Human Anatomy and Psychology.
I groaned. “Show off.”
His laugh was deep, rich. It felt real, a comforting blanket you wrap around yourself on a cold fall day. “Yeah well, I like to understand how both the mind and body work, and I know business is just a smart major to have.”
I nodded. “That’s… great.”
His hands moved slower this time. I looked around the library. The lights were lower than before, the sun gone, and only a handful of students scattered about. I had finally relaxed a little when the rain started pouring outside.