Beg You to Trust Me (Lindon U #2)(25)

“What’s your last name?” I wonder, balling up the empty wrapper and stuffing it into the pocket of my jeans.

My new friend doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes are staring at her computer screen, but I don’t think she’s actually paying attention to whatever is on it. “Allen.”

Hmm. “Okay, Skylar Allen. I’ve just now decided that I want to shoot for best friend status. I know it’s soon, but I think we’ve got what it takes to make it work.”

She slowly turns to me, confusion on her face that makes my lips waver upward. “Didn’t you tell me the other day it would take time to become besties? Why now? Because you know my natural hair color and we know each other’s last names?”

I lean back, kicking my boots up on the empty chair top in front of me. “Nah, because I like you. You’re mysterious, cute, and awkward. Three things that intrigue me. There’s an air to you that’s refreshing. Do you know what that means?”

To nobody’s surprise, she’s silent.

“It means,” I answer for her, pointing my pen in her direction, “that you can’t get rid of me easily. I’m like a pest.”

“A really big pest,” she mumbles under her breath.

I chuckle. “Oh, baby. The biggest. I make all the other pests jealous.”

Like I figured, she gets the innuendo and openly glares at me before declaring, “I’m never sharing my food with you again.”

We both know she will, so I sit back comfortably and find myself watching her throughout the film instead of the subtitles moving across the screen.

Guess I’ll have to get notes from her, which is another excuse to spend time with her.

I smirk to myself.





CHAPTER TEN





SKYLAR





“Come on, it’ll be quieter up here.”

Big hands on my shoulder.

On my lower back.

On my hip.

Roaming hands.

Strong ones ghosting over my butt.

A sour breath cascading over my face.

“What do you say?”

I say nothing.

Kissing—I liked kissing him.

The touching started making me feel uncomfortable.

Long fingers wrapping around my arms to hold me still against the— Bolting upright in bed, I frantically look around the room with sweat dotting my forehead. My heart is racing at record speed as I take in my surroundings. I look at the purple curtains closed on the window, the small wooden desk covered with textbooks, my laptop, and two picture frames with photos of my family in them. I absorb my favorite romance and fantasy novels lining the shelf and let myself breathe.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Again.

Again.

I grip the black and purple comforter in my fists as a light flicks on across the room, temporarily blinding me. My roommate’s disgruntled voice sleepily says, “Really, dude? That’s the second night in a row you woke me up freaking out.”

I woke up the night before in a startled cry at three a.m., sweat coating my body and making my pajamas stick to my skin uncomfortably. I’d gotten up, heard Becca’s grumbles as I collected clothes from the wooden armoire the university provided each of us with, and took a shower. I never went back to sleep, which is why she came back to the room after class that afternoon and woken me up from a mid-day nap to say, “Seriously? Don’t you have something better to do with your time?”

The circles under my eyes have gotten darker, and Olive showed me how to cover them properly with makeup, so I don’t look like a walking zombie. That is, after she grilled me about why I look so dead on my feet all the time.

I’d said insomnia.

A white lie.

I feel bad for waking Becca for about ten seconds before her pager goes off. The pager that the fire station gave her when she signed on to volunteer there. It’s gone off in the middle of the night twice since she got it, along with the scanner she plugged in on top of her desk. Did I complain about that like she complains about my nightmares? Only internally when it’d woken me up from the first night of peaceful sleep I’d had in I don’t know how long. Other than that, I keep quiet. I have no right to be irritated when I disturb her sleep too.

Kill her with kindness.

She throws the blanket off her as she reaches for the pager. “I don’t know what issues you have, but it’s messing up my sleep schedule. If you’re homesick then go home.”

That’s what she thinks this is? It’s on the tip of my tongue to correct her, to tell her just how wrong she is, when I swallow those words instead. She wouldn’t care. She wouldn’t understand.

Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms, I shake my head and push away the thought of ghost hands on my body and whispered words against my ear.

It’ll be quieter up here.

What do you say?

Those words haunt me, replaying over and over no matter how hard I try to forget them.

I kissed him back.

Let him touch me.

I wanted it.

Some of it.

A thick ball of emotion jams itself in my throat that clearing it can’t even budge. “I’m not homesick,” I tell Becca, voice hoarse with exhaustion as I pull the covers over my body and lay back down. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself anyway, so why bother trying to make you think otherwise. Turn the light off before you leave.”