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She just presses her hand over my mouth. “Yes, I’m on my way. My, um, tire was flat. I had to change it.”
I lick her hand. She digs her knees into my sides. “Yes, I understand. It won’t happen again.”
I manage to pull her hand away—she’s stronger than she looks—long enough to say, “You’re such a dork.”
“I’ll kick you in the balls,” she threatens.
“An actual ringtone,” I say. “Do you use a cassette player too?”
“Sebastian.” Her voice is sing-song sweet. “I have a big brother and more boy cousins than I can count. Don’t test me.”
I roll her over, so I’m the one holding her down instead. Her eyes go wide. I take her wrists and pin them to the ground on either side of her head. She bucks, but my weight holds her in place. Now it’s my necklace—my father’s necklace—swinging between us.
She’s so gorgeous my breath catches. I’m always out of breath around her, and this is no different.
“Admit we’re friends,” I say.
She glares at me. “Let me go. I’m late for work.”
“I’m late too.” I just settle my weight on top of her more comfortably. She adores it like this, after all, even if she’d never say it aloud again. “But say we’re friends, and we’ll both be on our way.”
She glowers. “What does it matter?”
“It matters. We need to be friends, even if it’s just for Cooper and Penny.”
Somehow, this is the wrong thing to say. I see the change in her immediately; the way she stiffens, her expression taking on careful blankness. “Let me go.”
There’s enough poison in her voice that I do.
16
MIA
“Let’sget here on time tomorrow, Mia,” Alice says as she passes by my workstation. “We only have so much time to work on this.”
I pull my headphones away from my ears as I glance at her. When I work, I try to go into a focus zone, which usually means loud rock music, a phone set to silent, and my long hair in a bun.
She tucks her clipboard underneath her arm as she runs her hand through her perfectly neat, pink-streaked bob. “Earth to Mia.” She laughs at her own dumb joke. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes.” I grimace, rubbing my forehead. “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. My tire just—”
“I don’t care about the reason,” she interrupts. “I mean, no offense, but excuses aren’t going to cut it around here.”
I try my best not to let my irritation show. This morning was a complete mess from start to finish. I can still feel the echo of the way Sebastian held me down, hours later, and whenever I’ve lost my focus, that’s exactly where it goes. He was half-hard by the time I escaped, and I’d never, ever admit it, but I was so turned on, the drive to campus was a blur.
If he hadn’t brought up being friends again, I would have blown him right there in the grass.
“You’re right,” I say, even though I’m imagining how satisfying it would be to stab her with my pencil. At least she doesn’t know the real reason I was late. “Like I said, I’m sorry.”
“Just make sure you’re here and working when I say you need to be,” she says. “Beatrice might love you, but you’re still just an undergrad. You report to me, and I need you to make me look good.”
She laughs again. I just stare, because I have no idea if she’s serious or if she’s trying to joke around and doing it badly. I get it, she’s a graduate student working on her dissertation, so she has a lot riding on this, but I do too. It’s not like this is a joke to me; it’s my entire life.
You’d think that as the only two women in the lab besides Professor Santoro herself, she’d want to be supportive, but right now, she’s acting like the Space-X wannabe guys in the department. In other words, completely idiotic.
“Right,” I say into the awkward silence. “I’m going to get back to work. Let me know if you need anything.”
Once she leaves, I let out a breath, redoing my bun.
