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“Yeah. Why?”
“Nothing. I’m just surprised you care one way or the other.”
He shrugs again. “Well, you made such a big deal about getting tuition for college, so I figured it’s important to you. Are you one of those people who just loves school or something like that?”
I chew on my lip, trying to think of how to answer that.
“It’s not that I love it,” I tell him. “It’s that it’s my chance to make a better life for myself.”
I realize a beat later that I really didn’t mean to say that much. I could have just told him that yeah, I love school, and moved on. But somehow, the truth just came spilling out of me.
Ransom nods thoughtfully. “I get that. I guess that’s what everyone wants, in one way or another. It’s what I want for my family—for my brothers.” He chuckles wryly. “We’re going about it a different way than you are, I suppose. But at the end of the day, I just want us all to be better off than we were before.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I swallow, a little unnerved by how well he seems to understand me.
We keep walking until we reach a spot where a motorcycle is parked by the side of the road on the west side of campus.
Ransom gets on it, swinging his leg over the side and settling in. He winks at me with a little smirk.
“Well, I’m out. Be good, angel.”
I frown. “Wait a minute. What did you come here for? You never told me. Did you need to tell me something?”
His blue-green eyes flash up and meet mine, and the smirk dims down into something else. Something not quite soft, but not as hard-edged either. “No. I just wanted to see you.”
“You see me all the time,” I reply, deciding to use this chance to test my little theory that they’re still stalking me.
He grins, and something in his expression confirms that I was right. Even though I haven’t seen them in weeks, that doesn’t mean they haven’t been around.
“Good point. I guess I just wantedyouto seeme,” he says softly.
He revs the motorcycle then, giving me one last look before he peels out.
For a second, all I can do is stare after him as he rides away, gunning the engine and rolling smoothly down the road. I feel stunned by his answer, because what does that even mean?
Was he trying to intimidate me the way Malice did the one time he showed up on my campus? It doesn’t really seem like it. It’s almost like he just stopped by to… talk to me.
But why? That makes no fucking sense.
A cab passes by on the street, probably scanning for students who just got out of classes, and before I can think better of it, I raise my hand to flag it down. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I give the driver directions, telling him to head in the direction Ransom took.
He got a head start, so we drive for almost a minute without seeing him, but then we turn down a new street, and I see his bike up ahead.
“Follow that motorcycle,” I tell the driver in a rush, feeling a bit insane.
He glances over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows climbing up into his hairline. “Are you fucking kidding me? What is this, a spy movie? Jesus, girlie, I’m not gonna—”
I cut him off by pulling a wad of cash out of my bag and shoving it at him. “I’ll pay you extra.”
He looks at the money, then at me. Then back up to where Ransom is riding his bike several blocks ahead of us. With a little curse under his breath, the driver grabs the cash and keeps going.
I sink down in the back seat just in case, my heart thudding. Every time Ransom turns, the driver follows his path, and the driver keeps enough distance between us that I don’t think Ransom will figure out he’s being followed.
There are a couple of times when we almost lose him because we don’t want to get too close, but eventually, I see him pull his motorcycle into a nondescript building several blocks ahead.
It looks like it might have been some kind of factory or warehouse once, but now there’s no telling what it is.
“So, are we stopping here?” the driver drawls, arching a brow at me in the rearview mirror.
