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Patrick and I met at Dartmouth but didn’t start dating until our junior year. After that we were inseparable. So inseparable that I didn’t realize the force he was having over my life until we ended two months ago. I never went to parties without him. I never hung out with my friends without him. It got to the point where he’d comment on my clothes, my style, and how he liked my hair done—and I’d listen and follow his suggestions. I planned on going to Columbia for medical school—it’s where Oliver went—but Patrick kept pressing for Harvard and when we both got in, I gave up on Columbia for him. We moved in with each other when we came to Boston last fall. Well, I moved into the apartment his parents got him.
Everything was great until about four months ago.
He’s doing the health sciences and technology route for people who want to become physician-scientists. It’s a joint program with MIT and with it, you take several classes at MIT. One of the girls in his class, Molly Lin, started getting close to him. Started texting him regularly. Some of the texts were bordering on flirty and then some were straight-up sexting.
We’d fight about it, and he’d assure me she was nothing more than a friend and that he only wanted me and not her and blah, blah, blah.
Then two months ago he told me he wanted us to take a break. That things were too serious between us and that he needed to focus on school more and less on me. A break but we could still date. Like, what the fuck is that?
We yelled. He left. And then he called me the next morning after not coming home to tell me he had slept with Molly the night before. The same night we barely called a break. I moved out that day. He claimed he was telling me so I wouldn’t hear about it from someone else.
So cool. So casual. So unaffected. So brutally fucking honest.
He broke my heart by wanting a break and then he dug the knife in deeper by fucking her that same goddamn night. After that, I swore I wouldn’t do that to myself again. I’d never lose my identity, and I’d never sacrifice the things I want for my life for a man.
“I already told you I’m not with Molly,” he persists. “It was just that one night.”
“Good for you. I don’t care. Bye now.”
I start to walk again, and he grabs me, pulling me to yet another halt.
“Let go. I have somewhere to be.” I jerk my arm free of him.
He growls under his breath. “I just want to know that you’re okay.”
“I’m okay. Clearly. It’s just stuff.” Not really but screw him.
“Where are you staying? Because if you need a place to stay, you can always move back—”
“Oh my God,” I sharply interject, my hand flying out toward him, making a stop signal right in his face. “Shut your mouth, Patrick. You have no freaking right to be here let alone to say that sort of bullshit to me.”
He shifts his weight, growing agitated. “It doesn’t have to be like this between us, Layla.”
My hands go to my hips. “Actually, it does. This is what happens when you break up. It ends. The relationship is over. Now legit, fuck off.”
He steps into me, not liking that at all. “That’s not what I asked for—”
“I believe she said to fuck off.”
Chills race up my spine at the sound of his smooth whiskey voice and it’s like Friday night redux. Only this won’t end with him eating me out in a random office or taking me back to his house for the night.
Patrick’s head snaps in the direction of Callan’s voice and reluctantly, mine does the same. Callan Barrows is sauntering our way. Tall. Broad. Confident. Sexy in a way that should be illegal. The sleeves of his pale blue button-down are now rolled up to his elbows revealing impressive forearms, and I might stare a second longer than socially appropriate.
“I don’t believe this concerns you—”
“Ah, but it does,” Callan cuts Patrick off once again as he reaches us, standing directly beside me, so close I can smell his intoxicating cologne. “Miss Fritz and I are overdue for a conversation.” His blue eyes meet mine. “Isn’t that right, Layla?”
Damn. The way he purrs my name is nothing short of diabolical in how my body reacts to it. “Yes. That’s correct.” I don’t even bother looking at Patrick when I say it and that’s what’s bothering me. Not Patrick. It’s the fact that I can’t seem to remove my eyes from Callan.
I haven’t stopped thinking about him all weekend.
Not Patrick when Patrick and what he did to me had been living rent-free in my head like a cockroach that won’t die for the last two months.
Callan is saving me again after I ran out on him. He’s saving me even though I’m now his student and he shouldn’t be looking at me or even speaking to me this deliberately. The heat in his eyes is telling me he doesn’t care about any of that. Though I know that’s not the case.
He cares. He cares a lot.
I don’t know him well, but I don’t have to, to know he’s that sort of guy. Honorable. It’s written all over him as it was Friday night. He doesn’t like what Patrick is trying to do with me, and damn him if it doesn’t make me like him a tiny bit more than I should.
