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“Just that.” I hit send and immediately put the device to sleep. “She said she was returning my deposit and gave the unit to someone else. Said she was advised to, due to my status.” Frowning, I glance over at him. “I gave her my flight information. My credentials for the college! Hell, the social media release that I was taking the position! And still, she thought I was scamming her?”
I shake my head and turn to watch the strange highway. The Denver airport feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but the road leading to and from it is anything but a desolate road one would expect in the middle of nowhere.
“Do you think your parents will let me stay at the house?” I ask, dejectedly. “At least for a couple of days? What’s the market like here, do you know?” Question after question falls from my lips. “Do you think I’d be able to find a new flat before I have to be to the school next week?” Lifting my hands, I press my fingers into my eyes. “Shoot, this is a mess. I’m too tired for this.”
“I have an extra room.”
My hands drop to my lap, the smack against my leggings nearly stinging my thighs. “I appreciate the offer, Justin, but even I know Fort Collins is quite the drive from Denver.”
Did I spend one wine-fueled night plugging in coordinates, to try and figure out the proximity to the man I was crushing on from afar?
Yes.
Yes, I did.
He doesn’t need to know that, though.
“Not at Colorado State this year,” he answers, cryptically.
My worries forgotten, I frown over in his direction. “I thought you were doing great things for the team? Olivia and your mom always brought it up when we spoke.”
“Well, I was doing well enough to get a position with the Pioneers.”
“My Pioneers?” Well. Not mine, exactly, but the same college I was coaching at.
“Yep.”
“Oh.” My shoulders drop as I think about the situation. “I wouldn’t… I don’t want to be in the way, or anything.” Olivia mentioned once that Justin had a girlfriend. Amy? Jenny?
If I was his girlfriend, I wouldn’t exactly be thrilled he was living with a female who wasn’t really family. “Again, I appreciate the offer but?—”
“Wouldn’t make the offer if I didn’t mean it. Take my extra room. At least, until you get something else figured out. I’m literally across I-25 from Magness—” the arena the hockey team plays at, but also where gymnastics holds their home meets. “Besides, the hockey team is away every weekend in October, so you’ll have the place to yourself if you can’t get your own apartment squared away before then.” He shrugs like it makes all the sense in the world. “It’ll be like I’m not even there.”
CHAPTER TWO
JUSTIN
Lennox Campbell had been a pretty teenager.
So pretty, I had to remind myself anytime I’d come home from college that she wasn’t even eighteen.
Hell.
When she first arrived, she was barely sixteen. She celebrated her seventeenth birthday at the end of her exchange year!
But she’s of age now.
And twenty-four year old Lennox is fucking gorgeous—even with a messy bun on the top of her head that skews to the right, and bags under her eyes that tell me she probably didn’t get much sleep during the eighteen or so hours she was stuck on a plane.
We’re ‘friends’ on social media, but I’ve never reached out to her. During Christmas, I’ve participated in Facetime messages with the family, wishing her a happy holiday. I’ve waved at the phone once or twice over the years, when she video messaged during our Thanksgiving holidays.
I’ve “seen” her over the years since she left Colorado and went back home to Melbourne, Australia.
…But still photos and a small viewfinder video didn’t prepare me for when she turned the corner and walked toward me. I knew she didn’t have a checked bag, but baggage claim was the easiest place to meet her before heading to where I’d parked.
I recognized her immediately and when her hazel eyes locked with mine, I knew introductions weren’t necessary. Hell, the piece of paper Mom sent me with probably wasn’t even necessary.
Lennox knew who I was, just as I did her.
