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I stood in the doorway for a moment, letting my eyes adjust. There were street lights dotted about the place but they provided more of a residual glow rather than real illumination.
It wasn’t the best place to try and walk at night. If nothing else, the ground was uneven and I didn’t want to trip and fall flat on my face.
After a minute, I set off. I wound my way across campus to the bus stop where it was well-lit and I stood huddled under the shelter, trying to get warm and knowing it was futile. My luck was in, though. I was barely there five minutes before my bus arrived, right on time. That almost never happened and I smiled at the bus driver as I climbed aboard. And, on top of that, it wasn’t quite late enough for the students to be heading into town to the clubs. Win.
The bus drove off and I found the stray thought entering my head: was Liam going out tonight?
I shook my head. It was none of my business what my students did out of the classroom.
That didn’t stop me wondering, though. I knew he was on the football team. I knew that because he’d asked me to go and watch him and I’d nearly bitten my own tongue off trying not to agree like it was a date. It wasn’t. He was just trying to drum up support for the team, that was all. I’d said I couldn’t go but I might have snuck into one of their games, getting myself lost in the crowd, just to watch him play.
I wasn’t proud of my actions, but I couldn’t stop myself being attracted to the man. He was so handsome, ofcourseI was attracted to him. It was just that I was also professional enough not to go there. Not that he’d want me to. Gorgeous, fit young men don’t want to date old, geeky omegas.
It was amazing how quickly my mood plummeted when I began thinking along those lines. I knew it was unhelpful, so I pushed the thoughts away and looked out of the window. The outside was inky black and the inside was lit, so my eyes caught my own reflection instead. I looked tired. My eyes had dark shadows under them and crow’s feet at the corners.
I turned my head away. I wasn’t going to think about how I looked. I wasn’t going to think about what Liam was doing that night. I was going to think about what work I was going to finish that evening, that’s what I was going to think about.
Sure, that kept me distracted for the rest of the journey. Work could always distract me when I thought too long about my social life, or the lack thereof. It had worked perfectly well for twenty years and I didn’t see why it shouldn’t work for another twenty.
Chapter 2: Liam
Iturned up to team practice early and it was only Josh and Nat there. When I barged into the changing rooms, they broke apart and I realised I’d interrupted something. Josh turned away from me with a scowl and began rifling through his bag, ignoring me completely. That wasn’t as surprising as maybe it should have been. Josh? Not the most chatty of people.
Nat, though, gave me a sheepish smile.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He coughed. His lips were red and swollen, so I guessed there’d been some serious making out going on. “You’re early.”
“So are you.”
“Yeah. We were just…” He trailed off and I smirked. I wasn’t a mean guy but I couldn’t let that one pass by, could I?Hewas the one who brought it up.
“What? You were just… what?”
“Getting changed?” suggested Nat.
I scanned my eyes down his body. He was wearing jeans and a hoody, so… not changed.
“How’s that going for you?” I asked.
Nat threw something at my head. Turned out it was socks. At least they were clean.
I laughed and dumped my bag on the bench. “Hey, if you wanted some sexy make-out time, you should have said. Now I think you’re just getting changed. Mind if I join you?”
I wiggled my eyebrows as I said it, and Nat laughed. Josh turned round enough to scowl at me some more but otherwise kept his back to me. From the angle, it was likely that he was hiding an erection. I knew all about that, especially since taking Waggoner’s class. Hiding erections had basically become my area of expertise. Unlike Physics, the actual subject he taught.
That made Nat laugh more.
“You know, I think I just found out that Josh is the jealous type. Hey, Liam, make some suggestive remarks, see what Josh does.”
I held up my hands. “Nah, but thanks for the offer of being pummelled to death. I don’t fancy it tonight.”
Nat pouted. “He probably wouldn’t kill you.”
“Not taking that chance.”
It wasn’t as though I was actually scared of Josh. He was intense, but not mean. A bit distant, perhaps, but he’d been coming out of his shell a lot more recently. In fact, when I got to know him a bit, it turned out he was actually quite fun to hang around with. It was just he had no sense of humour where his boyfriend was concerned – at least, not about who he belonged to.
