A Brush with Love(18)
For a single moment, he squeezed her tightly against him, his fingers pressing fire into her hip.
Then his hand dropped.
And he shifted away.
“I see what you’re trying to do, Horowitz, but I’m sorry to say, I’m impenetrable to your tricks of seduction.”
Harper’s head jerked back, and she stepped away from him, banging into the countertop behind her. His dark and playful eyes skimmed over her.
“What?— No. Stop it. I’m changing the song.” She groped blindly for her phone, but he dropped his hand on top of hers.
“I’m sorry, Harper. I’m just not that kind of guy.” He traced a gentle circle across the back of her hand.
“Wait, what?”
His wicked eyes bore into hers for a second longer before he moved out of the kitchen and into the hall, tugging her behind him.
“It’s a personal rule, really,” he said over his shoulder.
“What is?”
Reaching her front door, he turned to face her. His lips were pressed into a crooked line, halfway between a laugh and a sad frown.
“I don’t put out on the first date. Need to know you’ll still respect me in the morning.” He tapped her on the nose with his index finger. “We’ll reevaluate on our third date, but I have a good feeling,” he said with a wink. Her mouth went slack.
“Are you high?” she managed to splutter out.
“Now I’ll get out of here before we both do something we’ll regret. I can’t imagine it’s easy to keep your hands off me,” he said, offering a sympathetic shrug. His wicked mouth twitched with a grin.
She gaped at him. “What the hell are you talking about?” she managed to ask.
His face softened. “I’m teasing you,” he said, using the pad of his thumb to smooth the furrows between her brows. “Thank you for the best night I’ve had since starting school.”
His voice was sincere and the words reverberated through Harper’s chest. He stepped back and Harper blinked at him.
“See you around, Harper,” he said in a husky voice.
He bent and brushed his lips over her cheek. The light touch released a fire hose of adrenaline and lust, drowning every nerve ending in her body. He opened the door and stepped out, giving her one more glimpse of his elated grin, before closing it behind him.
She stood there for several minutes, replaying the scene over and over in her head. She slumped forward and dropped her forehead to the door, a small smile breaking across her lips as a new thought played on loop.
He’d called it a date.
CHAPTER 9
DAN
“The average was eighty-four percent. That’s rather embarrassing for your class,” the professor said, shooting a glance around the room. “Callowhill holds you to a certain standard, and this type of performance does not meet it.”
Dan had trouble processing how anyone viewed an 84 as a bad grade, but Callowhill was on a different level of over-the-top.
“There are members of this class who seem far too comfortable with inadequacy,” the professor continued, his gaze flicking toward Dan. “And I feel the need to remind you, school policy defines anything below a seventy percent as failing. Such grades will result in mandatory remediation and a potential need to repeat the year.”
He swept another hostile glance across the auditorium. “I do not look forward to inevitably seeing some of you in remediation this summer.”
The professor stared straight at Dan, too long for it to be a coincidence, before giving the class a flippant wave of dismissal.
The hum of conversation filled the room as people packed up their belongings.
Dan stared numbly at his school-issued tablet. It was official. He was failing immunopathology. And close to failing neuroanatomy. Might as well tack osteology onto the list.
He wasn’t failing for lack of trying. Dan put in the hours, all-nighters, flash cards, online videos, trying anything and everything to make the information stick. His brain actively rioted against retaining any of it.
Disappointment. The sharp snap of his father’s voice bounced around in his skull. Dan pushed it away before it gained purchase in his thoughts.
“Woof. Rough time there, Danny-boy?”
Travis Giles, topping the charts as one of Dan’s least favorite people, leaned over the auditorium seats to wedge himself between Dan and Alex, his hot breath hitting Dan’s cheek.
He smelled like milk. He looked like milk too.
“Daddy’s legacy can get you into school but can’t get you the grades you need to graduate? How sad,” Travis said, clucking his tongue. “Good thing your mom is standing by with a practice ready so you don’t actually have to work for it.”
Travis was a prick.
But he also wasn’t wrong.
At the start of the year, Dan walked into orientation assuming most of his classmates would be there out of a similar sense of crippling guilt and familial obligation.
He’d quickly realized that while plenty of his peers were similar legacies with a practice waiting for them after graduation, he was alone on his island of misguided purpose, without anyone to commiserate over things they’d rather be doing with their lives than what was expected by their parents.
“Oh, fuck off, Travis, no one gives a shit,” Alex said, not even bothering to look at him. Dan felt a pang of gratitude toward his one friend.