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“Morning,” a deep voice greeted, placing a bottle of water in front of me before uncapping his own and taking a deep swallow.
I glanced between the one thing I’d just been thinking of and the one man I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the night before.
“I know you’re thirsty, Mia,” he said before I could even think of anything to say. “Braxton texted me, saying he ran into you on your way out of physical therapy. Just drink the water and stop overanalyzing it, yeah?”
“What do I call you?” I asked as I uncapped the bottle and took a sip. “Beast or Barrick?”
“My mom calls me Charlie,” he said with a shrug. “Everyone else, including my stepdad, calls me Barrick outside the Underground. There it’s Beast. Take your pick. I’m not choosy.”
“Charlie Barrick is your full name?”
“Charles David Barrick Junior, actually. But if you call me Junior, we’re going to have problems.” He grinned, his damn dimple winking at me just beneath his beard, and I had to clench my fingers around the water bottle to keep from reaching out and stroking my fingers through it.
“Barrick it is, then,” I muttered, looking away from the temptation of that dimple.
“How’s the leg today?”
I stretched it out, trying to loosen it up a little. “It’s a pain in the ass, but I’ll live.”
“What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I took another sip, trying to determine what I should tell him and leave out. Lyla knew who I was because both my parents had been with me when I first moved in to the dorm, and I had to assume her cousins would as well. But they might not know about my dance career. “I was the lead in this spring ballet thing for charity, and as I was doing a leap during rehearsal, my partner didn’t catch me correctly. I landed wrong and tore everything. It was my second tear, so I knew as soon as I took a step what happened. Only it was so much worse than the first time, and…” I swallowed hard, remembering how I’d reacted, because even then, I’d known my career was over.
“And you freaked out?”
I nodded and took another sip of water, looking anywhere but at him.
“I would have freaked too,” he said in a low voice that soothed something inside of me in an odd way. I looked back at him, and suddenly, the room felt too small, too warm as my gaze became trapped in his dark eyes. “Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” he murmured and turned his head, glaring straight ahead.
Heat filled my face. I’ve been called beautiful all my life, but it had never affected me like that before. It had never meant anything until then either, though. In the past, that one word had felt like it was just something people said in passing; there was no real power behind it. But with Barrick, there was something more in that single word.
I liked it—a lot.
“Are you a business major too?” I asked, needing to change the subject before I combusted beside him or something equally embarrassing.
“Yeah. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t even be in college, but my stepdad wants me to have a business degree so I can take over the family business one day.” His jaw clenched for a moment, and I wondered what kind of relationship he had with his stepfather. “I’m taking classes just to get him off my back.”
I wanted to ask more, but the professor walked in and promptly started class. I tried to focus on what the man who seemed to have a chip on his shoulder was saying, but it was hard to concentrate with Barrick right beside me.
His leg brushed against mine every few minutes, and whenever I would glance his way, it was always to find his eyes on me. Every move he made, every deep breath he took, I was hyperaware of it all.
Feeling his fingers skimming down my forearm, I shivered, goose bumps popping up in his wake. “Stop,” I hissed between clenched teeth.
With a wink, he stopped his fingers, but he didn’t remove his hand.
And I didn’t try to remove it for him, because I liked him touching me.
Finally—thank gods, finally—class was called to a close, and I jumped up like my seat was on fire. Shoving everything into my bag, I wanted to run out of there, but Barrick was in my way.
Slowly, he stood, his body brushing against my own until he was at his full height. “Where to now?”
“I…I’m having lunch with Lyla,” I told him. “Then another class this afternoon.”
“I’ll walk you back to your dorm, then.” Taking my bag from me, he slipped it over his shoulder. “Knowing Lyla, she isn’t even out of bed yet.”
“She’s not a morning person,” I agreed.
“She’s not much of an afternoon one either,” he said with a grin as we walked out into the warm afternoon sunshine.
