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When I said nothing, he tossed the phone into his lap and looked out his window. He was quiet for a few minutes, quieter than I ever thought he could be. Of course he ruined it, though, by cracking open his lips.
He spoke quietly, to himself really, and in English, which he thought I couldn’t understand. “First time I’ve ever been away from my brothers. Kinda weird.”
My lips rolled in on themselves.No. No, sir, Lars. Don’t you do it.Don’t you feel sorry for him.
A few minutes later, his stomach growled angrily again. His body literally did not know how to be quiet. He didn’t acknowledge it, though, and his face remained turned toward the window.
My stomach began to prickle and then tighten. Shifting in my seat, I did my best to ignore the horrible feeling, even going so far as to think about how angry I was he was here and I was supposedly responsible for him.
It was hard to stay mad and annoyed when he was being quiet and might be feeling homesick over there.
We were close to the campus when I made a last-minute decision. Pulling into a spot, I parked the car and shut off the engine.
Beside me, Winston sat forward, eyes going everywhere before settling on me. “Is this the institute? It doesn’t look like it.”
I pocketed the keys and opened the door to get out.
“Wait.” His hand was heavy but not aggressive when it lay on my forearm.
I stilled, glancing down at where he touched me, momentarily distracted by how much warmer his skin tone was than mine. And despite having been in the rain, his palm wasn’t cold but radiated heat.
Cautiously, I lifted my eyes from where he held me to stare at his face. He withdrew the touch and held up the phone again, hitting the button like he was going to make it say something else in robotic Swedish.
I placed my hand on the phone, pushing it down. “Stop with the stupid app.”
His mouth fell open. Then a huge grin broke out over his face. “I knew it!” Deep, robust laughter swirled around the interior, squeezing past me to escape out the partially open car door.
A very startling and odd sense of greediness overcame me with the urge to slam the door shut so the only person privy to that laugh was me.
“You were messing with me this whole time!” Winston exclaimed, not at all offended but rather amused. “You can speak English.”
Shock still rendered me immobile as I reeled from the brief surges of emotion he’d literally forced out in me in the last thirty minutes. “Whatever,” I muttered, this time escaping the car and pulling the hood over my head to protect it from the still-falling rain.
Even his footsteps were loud as they splashed over the ground when he hurried to my side. His T-shirt was getting wet again, but he paid it no attention as though it didn’t matter.
“Where are we? This isn’t campus, is it?” he questioned. “You aren’t going to leave me here and speed off with all my stuff, are you?”
I glared at him from around the hood, attention instantly transfixed on a drop of rain that was tracking down a nose that was thinner than mine. “Weren’t you whining about being hungry?”
He gasped. “You stopped so I could get food?”
“I need a coffee to deal with you,” I muttered.
“Oooh, you like coffee too?”
I snorted. I didn’tlikecoffee. I lived off it.
I stopped abruptly on the sidewalk of the narrow street, my shoes splashing water with the abrupt stall. “Swedes love coffee. Something you would know if you did any homework on this place before coming here.”
His eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second, enough to tighten my throat and give me a glimpse of something hard beneath his surface. A sliver of fear slinked down my spine, with it a feeling of helplessness I hated. A feeling of vulnerability. Something I was trying so hard to move past.
Damn this foreigner for coming here and making me feel it again.
But then, remarkably, he shrugged, the temper I’d peeked disappearing. Pursing his lips, he said, “I suppose that’s fair. Guess I didn’t want to learn about your country from a book but from my own experiences. I probably come off pretty rude, though.”
Did he just…apologize?
“I appreciate you picking me up at the airport and bringing me to the institute. I’m sure you’re busy and this is an inconvenience, so hey, let’s just head back to the car. A little hunger never hurt a guy. I can find something on campus when I get there.” He started back in the direction of where I parked, not an ounce of anger or even resentment around him. It made me suspicious.
