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He smirked. “What, like Julie does? Nah, that won’t work. Besides, Julie’s smarter than you are. She knows not to get on my bad side.”
I raised my eyebrows, blinking at him. “Why Drew, I didn’t know you had a good side. Of course, I’m not sure I’d like that side any better.”
Those cold shark eyes darkened. “You really haven’t learned anything at all since you’ve been here, have you? I really hate to pull the ‘do you know who I am’ card, but seriously. Do you?”
He moved in close again, and I worked hard to stand my ground as his voice dropped low and dangerous. “You could disappear from the face of the earth, and no one would question me. They could find my fingerprints outlined in bruises around your neck, and no one would even glance my way.”
My breath caught in my throat, but I tried not to show my fear. I’d never been the target of such a direct threat before, and it made my skin crawl. But he was right—no one would question him, though it was simply because no one would even notice if I did disappear.
I forced myself to keep eye contact. “Are you seriously threatening to kill me because I broke your finger?” I injected scorn into my voice to cover the tremble I knew was right below the surface.
He smiled but there was no humor in it, only stark menace. “Of course not. I’m simply suggesting that you should be a little more careful in the future. I certainly wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
He closed the last few inches of space, then pressed a kiss to my cheek. There was nothing in that kiss but pure menace, designed to throw me off balance, and it worked. I was so shocked he was on his feet and striding down the hallway before I was able to react.
I wiped my face on my sleeve, more than a little shaken at both his words and his actions. I’d tried so hard not to get caught up in the stupid student politics here. I didn’t give a damn what powerful families people belonged to, or what kind of money or resources they had at their disposal. None of it affected me. But for the first time, I wondered what exactly I didn’t know about Drew that perhaps I should.
* * *
By the time Professor Linsey showed up and unlocked the door, the rest of the students had arrived and I’d pulled myself together. I only had to make it through the rest of the week.
Micah didn’t even glance my way as we filed into the studio, and I ignored him right back. We took up our positions at the rear of the class and waited for instruction.
“We’ll be pairing up today,” the professor announced, “and working on live drawings. You’ll each pick a body part to do a study on.”
The class snickered, and the professor rolled his eyes. “Very mature, seniors.” He fixed us with a stern look. “You’ll be turning these in to me, so obviously, nothing risqué. Hands, feet, ears, I don’t care, but be professionals, and be respectful.”
I immediately started glancing around the room, searching for someone I could partner with who wasn’t Micah. I didn’t need that kind of awkwardness in my life. My heart sank when I realized not only had I not made any friends here—outside of my roommates—but instead, by keeping to myself, I’d actively worked against making friends.
Unfortunately, even the option of finding someone else was taken away from me a second later when Professor Linsey raised his voice over the low hum of conversation and said, “We’ve got an even number of students, so everyone go ahead and pair off with the person next to you. Any medium is fine, and I’ll accept a series of sketches or a finished fully-rendered image. You don’t have to stay here in the classroom, but I want these turned in at the beginning of class on Wednesday.”
Crap. We were the only two people in the back row. I turned to Micah, who was watching me with a blank expression.
“Do you want to stay in here?” he asked.
“Not particularly,” I answered.
“Do you need anything from the supply closet?”
I shook my head.
“Let’s go then.”
* * *
I don’t know why I was surprised when he led me down the path behind the dorms and along the rocky lakeshore to our boulder, but I was. As far as I knew he hadn’t been out here since the incident at the bar, and I assumed in his attempts to avoid me, any shared camaraderie we’d found on the rock had been erased as well.
His very presence here felt like an affront, and suddenly I didn’t want to ignore it any longer. I’d been telling myself for weeks that I didn’t care, that I hadn’t come here to make friends, but I didn’t want to leave campus without at least knowing why things had changed.
When he stepped out onto the smooth surface of the rock, I stayed on the shore, and folded my arms over my chest.
“Is it something I did?” I asked.
It took him a second to realize I’d stopped following, but when he did he turned to face me. “What?”
“I thought you and I…” I paused and ran a hand over my face. With his eyes on me, I began to feel foolish. What if I’d misread the situation all along? But I forced myself to keep going. “I don’t know. I thought we had something in common. I felt like we understood each other. I felt like, I don’t know, maybe we were starting to become…friends.” I gazed at him, willing him to understand. “And I don’t know what changed, but you don’t come here anymore, and now you won’t even look at me. Devan is the same way. Did I do something?”
He stood there, staring at me in silence, his face completely unreadable, and beneath the scar his mouth was pressed into a tight line. I half thought he was going to grab his sketchpad and leave me there, but finally he blew out a breath and sank down to sit cross-legged on the huge stone.
