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At the front of the room, the professor called, “Paige Zukowski?”
Finally, Xander reacted. His eyes flared wide and his face drained of color as he glanced at the professor, then back to her. His mouth dropped open, forming a great big dreaded O.
Fear and rage and pain overwhelmed her.
A whimper sobbed from her throat. Humiliated for letting her distress echo into the room, she spun away, fumbling as she grabbed her things off her desk, snapping her laptop shut as she swung out her arm and swiped it into her bag.
People were staring, gasps of surprise coming from her left and right, everywhere behind her. She didn’t care. She had to escape.
Run!
A pen fell from her bag, but pausing to retrieve it seemed preposterous. It became collateral damage.
She tripped trying to stand too quickly, her legs tangling in the confining desk/chair combo. The professor lifted his head from his roll call and gaped at her over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses, his bushy brows and mustache twitching with confusion.
She didn’t bother to explain herself. Couldn’t speak if she’d wanted to.
Springing toward the door, she shoved it open and wheezed for air when she reached the hall. She didn’t pause or slow down until she was outside and two blocks from the building containing Logan Vance Xander. All the while, she kept glancing over her shoulder, worried he might’ve followed.
He hadn’t, thank God.
Of course he hadn’t. Why would he? But, seriously. What was he doing here? How could he step foot onto the grounds of Trace’s dream school?
How dare he?
It wasn’t right, shouldn’t be acceptable. He’d destroyed Paige three years ago, annihilated her entire family. He didn’t deserve a second chance—a college degree—when Trace had nothing but a headstone and sill
y epitaph.
Tears streamed down her cheeks with a hot vengeance. She sprinted all the way back to her dorm room, her book bag repeatedly clouting her in the spine, spurring her onward. Grateful to find her roommate gone when she got inside, she huddled in her bed and wept hard, her body shuddering with the shock of discovering a murderer attended the same university as she.
And not just any murderer.
Her brother’s murderer.
Chapter Two
LOGAN GAWKED AFTER THE GIRL as she disappeared from the doorway, the breeze from her passing still causing papers on the front row desks to flutter and dance.
“Lover’s quarrel?” Dr. Presni’s dry voice made him jump.
Logan jerked his attention to the professor who curiously eyed him of all people over the tops of his glasses. Shifting his gaze around him, Logan found an entire room full of curious eyes watching him.
Slumping lower in his seat, he shook his head adamantly. “N-no, sir. I don’t…I don’t even know her.”
Though his words were true, he squirmed inside, feeling as if everyone else saw otherwise, as if they’d suddenly learned every horrible thing about him.
But in all honesty, he didn’t know the girl with the large dark eyes who’d just stared at him as if he’d ripped out her very soul. If he had three guesses, however, he was fairly certain he wouldn’t need two of them to correctly guess her identity.
Logan knew Trace Zukowski had had a younger sister. He’d read about her in Zukowski’s obituary, though for the life of him, he couldn’t remember her name. He remembered the girl he’d assumed was the sister when he’d gone to the funeral, though. She’d approached him hesitantly only to spit in his face. Hate and damnation had seared him from a pair of tear-stained eyes that had seemed too large for such a small, pale girl. But she’d darted away before he could seal a concrete image of that face in his brain.
He doubted he’d forget what she looked like this time around.
“I’m guessing that was Paige Zukowski,” Presni pressed, still staring expectantly at Logan.
Logan shrugged, hoping he looked baffled enough for the teacher to leave off.
But…Paige. He wouldn’t forget her name so easily either.
