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“Christian,” Whitney growled, grabbing at the book that he was now holding above his head and out of her reach.
I had to fight the urge to deck the smug asshole right in the jaw. But if I got fired, he won, and Whitney would be stuck here with him.
He lowered his arm, and Whitney snatched the book from him, carefully dabbing raindrops from its leather cover.
“I’ll see you on Monday, Ms. Dahl,” I said as calmly and professionally as possible, meeting her eyes. Her cheeks went a deep crimson, and her eyes left mine full of an emotion I couldn’t place.
The look on her face had my heart racing and my hands clenching into fists.
I turned from them, but it took every fiber of my being to do so. As I walked away, I heard Christian’s futile attempts to lure Whitney away with him, and her protests.
I didn’t like this situation at all, and the worst part was there was nothing I could do about it.
Chapter 9
Whitney
I DROPPED MY BOOKS and bag on my bed and walked to the vanity, sitting down with a sigh. Rolling out my shoulders, I examined my face in the mirror and reached for a hairbrush, working through the knots and tangles after another long day walking to and from lectures between breaks spent studying in the library, hunched over a table piled high with books and study materials.
My whole body ached from doing literally nothing. Nothing, just sitting. Just sitting and reading in dimly lit spaces until my eyes burned with fatigue. Studying like my life depended on it was actually the distraction I needed to keep my mind off Christian and his increasingly grating antics, and, most importantly, Professor Ellis.
Rhys. I thought it was a beautiful name. It suited him, and I found myself playing with the sound of it on my tongue when I least expected it. I was obviously infatuated, and him buying me a freaking book didn’t help the fact at all. Maybe I was reading too much into stolen, heated glances between us during his lectures this past week. Maybe I’d read too much in the book he’d given me last Saturday.
I’d just returned from one of his lectures, and I’d spent most of the class twirling my hair around my finger and watching him pace across the platform, thinking about how nice he looked and how well his pants fit.
I gritted my teeth and yanked my hairbrush through my thick hair. It snagged on a tangle, and I gave up, letting my arms drop to my sides as the hairbrush hung haphazardly on the side of my head.
“You might as well just write his name all over your notebooks,” I chided myself, heaving a deep breath. “With little hearts around it.” I resumed practically ripping my hair out as I tried to force it to behave, and surrendered a second and final time before pulling it back into a bun on the top of my head.
My phone buzzed and danced in a semicircle on the vanity as Jessica’s name flashed across the screen, a picture of the two of us at a musical festival in Jersey last summer lighting up the background.
“Hey, I’m almost ready,” I said, switching the call to speaker mode and setting the phone back on the vanity.
“Want to meet me in like fifteen minutes?”
I fumbled with my makeup compacts, cursing as a few fell out of my hands and onto the floor at my feet. “Give me twenty minutes. Nothing is going right today.”
She chuckled. “Fine, I’ll see you in twenty. Just meet be at the end of Greek Row, and we’ll walk into town together. Did you know you can fit an entire bottle of wine into that thermos my mom got me for my birthday last year?”
“Meredith Lowry is a saint,” I said quickly, thinking of Jessica’s mother, who I’d had the pleasure of meeting over the summer when I visited Jess and her family in Jersey. “She knew actually what you’d use that thermos for.” I swept fresh blush and bronzer over my cheeks and put on a fresh coat of mascara, leaning back to examine my reflection. “What are you wearing?”
“Me? What do you think? It’s like thirty degrees tonight, Whitney.”
“So a sweater and jeans?”
“Yes... What are you wearing?”
“Not the black dress I was planning on,” I said, shivering at the thought of my bare legs freezing during our walk into town.
“Don’t overthink it, Whitney. It’s just a gallery opening. It’s not like Professor Ellis is going to be there.”
I could practically see the expression she made as she said his name. Jessica had a propensity to wiggle her eyebrows at me anything our professor was brought in conversation. Internally, I wanted to crawl into a hole and die, and not because she was teasing me, no.
But because she was right.
I hung up the call and got dressed in jeans and a gray cashmere sweater. A black puffer jacket, hat, and gloves completed the outfit. I looked in the mirror once more, feeling more like a large burnt marshmallow than a trendy college student on my way to a fancy new art gallery, but I told myself I shouldn’t care.
I’d wanted to go to this thing since I saw the flyers about it posted around town. I could have asked some of my sorority sisters to go, but the idea of having to wrangle them all night after they took advantage of the complimentary champagne that would likely be served felt more like a babysitting gig than a night out on the town, so I’d asked Jessica to go with me.
