Page 82 of Make Me Mean It

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CONNOR

Marcus tosses the pack of Twizzlers across the room, and I snatch them out of the air without looking, already halfway through a sentence in my notes. The end of my pen taps against the page while I pull one free and slip it between my lips with a quiet hum, my eyes flicking briefly to the textbook in front of me before I keep writing.

“You’re gonna need glasses if you keep staring at that thing like that,” Marcus says absently, not even bothering to look up from his phone as he scrolls.

“That your professional opinion, Dr Reid?” I scoff around the Twizzler, tearing a piece off with my teeth before glancing up at him.

Marcus drops his phone onto the sofa and leans back, crossing his arms over his chest before kicking his legs up onto the coffee table.

My eye twitches.

“It is actually, yeah.”

I huff out a laugh, dropping my gaze back to the textbook and trying to focus on the words in front of me instead of the soles of his shoes pressed against the table.

There’s already a faint smear beneath one of them, and my knuckles turn white around my pen.

It’s fine.

It’s a table. Shoes go on floors, not tables, but it’s not my table, and I don’t need to look at it.

I shift my notebook a little further away from him instead, lining the corner back up with the edge of the textbook and forcing my attention onto the paragraph I’ve been trying to finish for the last five minutes.

Marcus’s leg starts bouncing beside me, his heel knocking against the wood over and over until the repetitive thud starts crawling beneath my skin and taking every word on the page with it.

“What is with you?” I bite out, turning an irritated look on him.

Marcus runs a hand through his hair before grabbing his phone again, only to look at the screen and toss it straight back down.

“Fucking Theo,” he mutters.

My shoulders climb higher, attention snapping away from the textbook.

“What?” I croak.

I clear my throat quickly, shifting in my seat as heat creeps up the back of my neck.

“I swear he takes longer than any girlfriend I’ve ever had,” Marcus grumbles, already reaching for his phone again, completely oblivious to the way my pulse has kicked up.

“Girlfriend?”

Theo’s voice cuts through my thoughts before I even register the footsteps coming down the stairs.

My head lifts automatically.

“I don’t think one night in bed counts as a girlfriend,” he adds, dropping down the last step with easy grace and shoving Marcus’s shoulder as he passes.

His shirt is unbuttoned all the way down to his navel, hanging loose enough that every step shifts the fabric over damp skin and the dark spread of ink across his chest and stomach. His sleeves are shoved carelessly to his elbows, exposing tattooed forearms. My eyes drag over every familiar line of ink before dropping to the veins standing beneath his skin and the long fingers curling around the back of Marcus’s chair.

My stomach drops.

I look away from his hand only to make the mistake of dropping lower, over the bare strip of stomach between the open sides of his shirt to where his jeans sit low and fitted around his hips.

Heat crawls up the back of my neck.

I tear my eyes away and stare down at my textbook, biting through the end of the Twizzler still caught between my lips.