Page 31 of Make Me Mean It

CHAPTER NINE

CONNOR

Icheck my watch for the third time in less than a minute, as though the numbers might have somehow changed in my favour since the last time I looked.

8:47.

Shit.

Thirteen minutes is plenty of time. I know exactly how long it takes to get across campus from here, and I left enough room for this. What I didn’t account for was half the campus apparently deciding to wander aimlessly through the middle of the corridor.

I quicken my pace, hitching my backpack higher when it starts slipping down my shoulder. The strap catches awkwardly against my t-shirt, but I don’t stop to fix it properly. I can still make it if I cut through the athletics building and don’t get stuck behind anyone on the stairs.

Knowing that doesn’t stop the tension creeping higher along the back of my neck.

I shift my coffee into my other hand, curling my fingers more firmly around the warm cup as I recalculate. Four minutes to clear this building, six across campus, two to get upstairs. That still leaves me a minute.

Twelve minutes.

Ten if I cut through the—

The impact knocks me backwards, my coffee crushing between us, the cup buckling beneath my grip as heat floods through my t-shirt and a solid body drives into mine, sending my feet scrambling for purchase.

My eyes snap up, landing on a pair of familiar green ones already staring back at me.

Theo.

He looks almost as startled as I feel, his hand shooting out when my footing slips, tattooed fingers closing firmly around my forearm and pulling me steady before I can go down.

Wet fabric clings to my chest, coffee cooling against my skin, and my attention drops straight to the dark stain bleeding through my t-shirt.

It spreads while I’m looking at it, soaking into clean fabric in uneven patches, the edges creeping wider while coffee sits cold and sticky between the material and my skin. I tug the shirt away from my chest, but it falls straight back, wet fabric sticking to me all over again.

No.

No, no, no.

Theo’s fingers are still around my arm.

I yank myself free.

“My bad.” He lifts his hands, wincing when he follows my stare down to my shirt. “Although I’m pretty sure you’re the one that ran into me.”

My head snaps up. “Seriously?”

Theo’s fingers catch the bottom of my shirt, knuckles brushing my stomach as he tugs the wet fabric away from my skin.

“It’ll dry.”

I rip the fabric out of his hand, only for the damp cotton to settle straight back against my skin, cold and sticky and wrong in a way that makes every muscle in my body pull tighter.

It’ll dry.

Right. Because that’s the problem.

I can feel every uneven patch of coffee soaked into the fabric, every cold inch clinging where it shouldn’t, and now there’s a crease where Theo had it bunched in his fist. My fingers smooth over it, pressing the fabric flat against my stomach before running over the same spot again when the crease refuses to disappear completely.

All I manage to do is press the cold coffee harder against my skin.