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Chapter 6: Galen
Ipaced around the free weights station where Baron and I were doing our conditioning routine, too agitated to spot.
“She’s fucking ignoring us,” I said.
Baron grunted. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
“She’s up to something.” I ran a hand through my hair, which was sticking up from the seven previous times I’d done so. “It’s been...what? Two weeks now and we’ve seen her a handful of times? I don’t trust it. Doesn’t make sense.”
In the two weeks or so that Jude had been part of our quad, I’d seen her only a few times. She’d be dressed in that godawful sexy Sugar Babes get-up and on her way out. Or she would be returning from a run, dressed in some skimpy running shorts and a sports bra that showed off her tits. She’d flash a distracted smile and disappear, either out the door or into her room. She never tried to sit out in the living room and watch television with us, and I never saw her in the kitchen—although evidence that she’d been there was clear.
She made coffee for everyone in the morning, and sometimes left extra waffle batter or muffins that she’d baked with a note reading, “help yourself.”
It was downright villainous.
Baron groaned audibly. “What doesn’t make sense? That she’s just not that into you? Gale, you thought she was going to be one thing, and plain and simple, you got it wrong. She’s something else entirely.”
I shook my head. “No. I’m right about this. The chick’s a fucking tease.”
Baron scoffed. “What? You are losing it, Gale.”
But I wasn’t. I hadn’t wanted anyone making a pest of themselves and trying to insinuate themselves into this family we’d created for ourselves. Just because she wasn’t actively, obviously trying to do so didn’t mean that she didn’t have an agenda. She was already winning Ezra and Baron over by doingabsolutely nothingother than being hot.
I picked up a dumbbell and started curling it, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth.
She wouldn’t be winning me over, though. I saw through her little tricks. She thought she was smart, avoiding us as she was doing. My lip curled in tandem with my arm.
I was smarter.
Chapter 7: Baron
The guys were killing me. They were so stirred up over the fact that our roommate appeared to be ignoring them, they were missing an obvious truth.
They wanted her.
I liked to think of myself as insightful. I was finishing up my program in psychology and understood human nature. Take a toy away from a kid and even if he hadn’t been interested in playing with it, that toy would suddenly become the most important thing in the world. He would crave it, whine for it, beg to have it.
In this scenario, Jude was the shiny new toy and she had put herself firmly off limits by ignoring and avoiding everyone. It’d been nearly a month now, and it was comical to watch Ezra and Gale becoming increasingly frustrated as she continued to evade them. They stalked the dorm, hoping to run into her, although they’d never admit as much.
Not to me. Not to themselves.
Gale, in particular, was convinced this was part of her strategy to take over his world. It was kind of like the boy on the playground that pulled the girl’s pigtails. If he does mean things, that must mean he likes her, right? Therefore, if Jude was ignoring us, it followed that she really, secretly wanted to be with us.
As for me, she could stay or go. Sure, she was hot, she was convenient, and I had my physical needs. But I didn’t need a relationship to get satisfaction. Been there, done that, got the broken heart to prove it. I wouldn’t be rushing into another one any time soon. If Jude wanted to play in my sandbox sometime, though, she was more than welcome. And if she didn’t...well, I’d be fine.
In the meantime, though, I needed to keep these two idiots from doing anything they’d regret.
Gale, in particular, was losing his shit.
I watched him now from where I leaned against my bedroom door jamb, eating a banana. He and Ezra were bent over the open refrigerator door, trying to decide their next move for tormenting our absentee roommate. Gale swore it was to get her to move out. I thought it was more to get her attention.
He needed to realize that on his own, though.
“Look! She only has two sodas left.”
I rolled my eyes when they pulled Jude’s final two Dr. Peppy’s from their spot, popped the tabs, and guzzled them. I guess they, too, had noticed that she allowed herself a single soda each day. It was her vice, her guilty pleasure. And now the jackasses had taken it away from her.
Shaking my head, I tugged my phone from my back pocket and opened my texts, then created a message to myself and typed a few words.
