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Ezra’s statement fell flat between us and I wanted to punch something. Why? Mission accomplished, right? I was going to make life with us so miserable that she would be dying to move out.
“I’m going to work out,” I told Ezra, running a hand through my hair and leaving it standing up.
Ezra looked at me with eyes that saw too much and repeated my words skeptically. “You’re going to work out. Somewhere other than here, where you always work out.” He paused. “After you already worked out today.”
“I’m going to the treadmills on the first floor. I need to run.” I started toward my room to get my shoes.
Baron crossed his arms over his chest. “You need to leave her alone.”
“I’m going to run, Baron. Chill.”
“And it just so happens that she’s running, too. Or, at least, it appeared that she might be going to run,” Ezra said.
“Shut up, Ez. I’m going for a fucking run. End of story.” I grabbed my shoes and carried them back out to the common area and seated myself to tug them on. “You guys need to remember—our entire goal here is to get rid of her. She hasn’t been here a month and she’s already weaseling herself under your skin with her poor, pitiful, hot little me act. Next thing you know, she’ll be all Betty Crocker up in the kitchen and burning scented candles and shit.” Baron sprawled in the chair across from me and drummed his fingers on the arms. Ezra licked his lower lip, his expression tight. “Asking us when we’re coming home at night.” Their faces were blank, unconvinced. “Come on, guys. Fucking throw pillows!”
Ezra broke first. “Everything just feels a little… I don’t know. Extra. It’s like you have something personal against her.”
“Don’t know her from Adam. I just don’t want a chick in here, messing things up.” I heaved a sigh through my nose and pointed at Baron. “Look. I can tell you like her. I can tell Ezra thinks she’s hot as fuck. I think she’s hot, too, and she was practically drooling over me when she saw me doing pull-ups. What if she were to start… I don’t know… screwing Ez and you got upset? We don’t need stuff like that coming between us.”
Ezra snorted from the doorway to his room. “You have a really low opinion of us, you know that? We can handle liking the same girl.” He turned to Baron. “She was wearing my cologne when she came out of the bathroom earlier.”
Baron’s brow arched. “Intriguing.”
They needed to get back on track. “I don’t have a low opinion of us. I have a low opinion of women.” I stood and walked to the door. “And the fact that she was wearing your cologne just means she’s a snoop. I’ll be back in a while. Why don’t you work on some ideas to piss her off and get her to leave while I’m gone?”
I left them grumbling to each other and made my way to the first floor athletic center. The room was mostly empty and I saw her as soon as I walked through the double glass doors. It had only been ten minutes since she left the dorm, but she was already moving at a good clip on a treadmill on the far side of the room, her skin glistening with a light sheen of sweat.
And there was a lot of skin bared to glisten. I stopped just inside the door, hovering behind a weight machine, and looked my fill. I hadn’t really gotten to do that—simply look at her—because I’d been desperately trying to maintain my façade of anger and resentment. And it was a façade. I knew that, though someone would have to stick needles beneath my nails to get me to admit as much. Everything I had told Ezra and Baron was the truth. This girl would come between us if she stayed in our dorm. She would wreck friendships, sink brotherhoods.
Despite that knowledge, I wanted her with every cell in my body.
God!Horror filled me at the random thought.She was doing it to me, too!Inserting herself under my skin in tiny, insidious little increments. Making me want her, just like I could tell Ezra and Baron did.
Her small, tight body was clothed in a pair of short spandex shorts and an equally small sports bra. In the mirrored wall, I could see her full tits bouncing in their confinement with each thud of her feet on the treadmill. The pink tips of her hair swung softly in a ponytail, brushing against the lines of her scapula with each pass.
I wanted that to be my hand, damnit. It had only been a month and I was already exhausted with wanting to touch her and not being able to. I’d been in an exaggerated state of longing and frustration since she walked through our door.
I gave myself another moment to look at her, and then walked over to the treadmill directly beside her. As I climbed on and began to set my speed, I saw her glance my way in the mirror. She stiffened, stumbled slightly, and then recovered. Jaw tight, her fingers moved over the keypad of her own machine and soon her feet were moving at a dizzying speed.
She wanted to race, apparently. That was fine with me. Baron and I had been all-state hockey players before coming to Chandler and were two of the best on the team now. If I couldn’t keep up with a little thing like her, I didn’t deserve my position as center.
Our season this year would run November to April, so we weren’t on an official practice schedule yet. We’d all been conditioning, though, with walk-in lifting and running. I was confident I could take her.
From the corner of my eye, I noted her speed and matched it. It was too fast to go right into without a warmup, but there was no way she could keep the pace up for too long. I’d be fine.
It wasn’t long before our feet were moving in tempo beside one another. She kept her face stubbornly averted, but she watched me in the mirror with stealthy peeks, her arms pumping furiously at her sides. I watched her outright. When she increased her speed increment, I bumped mine up, as well. Blood pumped in my veins and a stitch started in my side, warning me that I wouldn’t be able to maintain this level for too much longer.
Ten minutes later, we weren’t even pretending to ignore one another any longer. “For a short girl, you keep up pretty good.” It was time to pull out the trash talk. I would give her no space. Nowhere to run...not even the gym.
She huffed, which temporarily broke her rhythm, but recovered immediately. “Keep up? I set the pace, asshole. I can outrun your slow ass any day.” Reaching into the bottle compartments on the treadmill dash, she pulled out what looked like an inhaler and took a surreptitious puff. Well, whaddaya know. Pinky had a weakness. I filed the information away under ‘stuff that might be useful one day’ and pretended not to notice.
“Oh, yeah? What day might that be?” I tried not to watch the sway of her tits in the mirror in front of us, but it was hard. They were so…there. Full, perky, gleaming flesh. Looking up, I caught her eyes narrowed on me.
“The one that ends in Y.”
I grunted, kept running. Tried to ignore the stitch that was now a sharp pain in my side.
We had been running for over a half hour. If she’d been running for at least ten minutes before I even arrived, that put her at forty to forty-five minutes. At a six minute mile, that would give her…I rolled my eyes up toward the ceiling, calculating.
