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Seven years ago
Mia
It’s not like I’vebeentryingto stay away from Declan Santori, asshole extraordinaire and hottest frat boy on campus. On the contrary. I’ve been slinking down the hall to the boys’ locker room after training for weeks, their banter and gross jokes turning louder the closer I got.
If anything, I’ve beentryingto catch glimpses of him naked. After all, the campus boxing champion is one of a kind. Someone to snap pictures of to masturbate to later.
Steam billows out of the boys’ showers, and I wait behind the locker room door, as I usually do. Frat boys that train for the boxing college court do it in a separate building that their fat earnings from betting pay for, making it easy for me to slip in on evenings like this. No one can catch me now that everybody is getting ready for the party at their fraternity house. The girls must be giggling at the dorms by now, clinking glasses of champagne while they pull on fishnets and leather, talking about whose dick might end up down their throats tonight. Eager to up their body count by adding the most eligible frat boys on campus.
Envy turns me livid.
They’re gonna get fucked by my crush, and I won’t.
Because I didn’t get invited, of course.
Back in high school, I dreamed about being one of the hot girls in college. I’d promised myself things would be different from junior high, that I wouldn’t be invisible anymore, and I was willing to put in the work for it. But then my dentist announced I’d have to wear braces for another year. The freaking first-impression year. So my dreams were shattered.
I peek in from around the door, phone camera ready, snapping picture after picture. Declan always uses the shower closest to the exit, so I know exactly how to angle the device, while keeping a hawk’s eye on the display for adjustments. All I get at first are blurry side-pics, as always, but before long I start getting exactly what I need. I snap pictures greedily, sinking my teeth into my lower lip, feeling like a creep.
But then I stop, my head tilting to the side.
Something’s wrong.
Something’s different about his hair, even though it’s wet, and there’s no telling the color. The man’s shoulders aren’t as broad nor as powerful as Declan’s, the V tapering down to his waist not as steep. I narrowly avoid hissing out a curse when I glimpse the sides of a tattoo reaching around the guy’s waist.
No, this isn’t him. Declan Santori doesn’t have any tattoos because his elite family doesn’t allow it. They are the closest thing to royalty in the state, so inking their bodies is out of the question. A piercing–a dumbbell going through his nipple–is the only thing marring his perfect body. So who is this man? I work my wrist, changing the camera’s angle quickly to look for Declan, but he doesn’t seem to be in there. Which is strange. I know for a fact he trained in the court this evening, I saw him walk out of there with his guys, all sweaty and loud and perfect.
I’ve grown used to the adrenaline pumping through my veins when I spy on him, but it skyrockets now. All my senses know that something is terribly wrong here, but the moment I spin around to leave, I knock into a rock-hard chest. I stumble backwards, and I’d probably land on my ass if it weren’t for the wall behind me.
The realization knocks me in the chest like a hammer.
I just got caught.
My brain spins and my ears buzz, my mind refusing to process the identity of the man in front of me. For moments, I fail to recognize the broad shoulders or the lean, athletic body with well-defined sinews snaking down into the towel wrapped around his hips. I’m choking on my own saliva as I look up at his face, at those intense slitted eyes that seem to burn holes through my skull. Slowly, my eyes run along the finely-cut edges of his cheekbones and jaw, moving up to the black, scruffy, spiked hair that makes him look like an anime character. A mouthwatering one, smelling of a fighter’s hormones, lemongrass and cinnamon. A scent I would recognize anywhere, and one that forces me to acknowledge what just happened.
As much as I wish this were an alternative reality that I’ll snap out of at any moment, it’s not. Declan Santori actually caught me spying on him.
