“Fine. But I’m hungry. Take me to breakfast—and not in the dining hall.” He exhaled and let go of me as he took a step back.
“Thank fuck. Come on, there’s a new Starbucks a few blocks away.”
I tried not to worry about who saw us on the way there, or what they thought about the school’s football hero walking and talking with me. The feeling didn’t go away when we got to Starbucks, either. Being just a few blocks from campus, it was teeming with just as many students as professionals on their way to work. But that didn’t seem to bother Nate. He saw a couple of fellow football players in line and gave a chin up to them. They barely looked at me and didn’t seem to care much what Nate was doing one way or the other.
I saw two people moving off from a tall bar where people were standing, so I rattled off my order to Nate and darted over to stake out space for us.
A few minutes later, he walked over with our breakfast, a chai tea and a sausage and egg sandwich for me, and a coffee and a bagel for himself. He set the food down on the bar in front of us and lowered his backpack to the floor by his feet. I took the lid off of my chai and blew on it as a stall tactic. I wasn’t sure I could eat anything, and I sure as hell didn’t know what to say. Nate fumbled around longer than it would take any normal person to unwrap a bagel and take a bite out of it, so I finally took charge of the situation.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” That startled him so badly that he almost dropped the bagel on the floor and knocked over his coffee in the process. “Just spit it out already. You came to find me this morning to tell me you want to fuck me.” God help me, I don’t know when I had started cussing like a sailor, or where I suddenly found my nerve, but I was either going to get to the bottom of this or ruin it for myself. Quite possibly both.
“Yes. No!” It took everything I had to meet his gaze. “Fuck.”
“Exactly. Just what I said. Wait, don’t tell me you want to actually date me.”
“No. Yes! Wait—“
“This is such bullshit—“ I put down my tea and reached for my books and my purse.
“Keira, just… let me do this one thing, and then if you want to leave, I won’t stop you.”
His plea went straight to my heart, and his gaze softened.
“Wh-what’s that? What do you want to do, Nate?”
He answered me by putting his sandwich down on the bar, and gently taking the books out of my hands to do the same. Then, keeping his white-hot blue gaze riveted on mine, he put his hands on either side of my face and stepped closer to me. I gasped as his body made contact with mine and he covered my quivering mouth with his. And oh my god, it was heaven, just as I knew it would be. For once I was glad for my height, because even though he still had a good six inches on me, our torsos melded in all the right fucking places. I opened for him, and he slid his tongue into my mouth to slowly, sensually play with mine, and I knew in my core that he’d never kissed Vanessa this way no matter how she’d tried to force herself on him. He answered my moan with one of his own and deepened the kiss even more for one brief, hot moment before he pulled away.
“That,” he said thickly as he looked down at me.
“Oh,” I whispered.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good,” he said as he reached between us and adjusted himself before taking a step back. “Now that we’ve relieved a little pressure, can I please tell you why I came to see you this morning?”
“Um, yeah,” I said as I cleared my throat.
“I’m in trouble,” he said. “I need your help.” I could feel my expressing twisting into what I knew looked like some mixture of curiosity and dread. “I need you to tutor me.”
Chapter 3
Nate
I must be the smartest guy that ever lived, or the biggest dumbass that ever walked the earth. After more painfully awkward encounters with Keira than I cared to count, I decided I had to take action for real. Truthfully, it was pretty stupid to keep hanging out with Vanessa just to get closer to Keira, especially when I knew I wouldn’t be able to avoid sleeping with her for much longer, and especially when I was just torturing myself with all those close encounters with Keira without being able to really act on getting to know her.
When I realized that she and Vanessa had two classes together, I made sure that I was on hand to walk Vanessa to class or to greet her when she came out. The problem with that plan was it only made Vanessa sink her claws deeper into me, and it also reinforced Keira’s certain impression of me as a total dick who just cared about football and hooking up. I was secretly glad when she wandered into the dining hall one day at the same time my buddies and I were eating lunch with Vanessa and the rest of the cheerleading squad. When I saw the stony look she threw us from across the dining room, I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t turn up for dinner.
Almost as big as my desire for Keira had grown, was my need for academic help. I’d muddled through my stats class as best I could, but I was barely hanging onto my C. We were only three short weeks from Christmas break, and if I didn’t get some help before the final, I might crash and burn. When the idea of asking Keira to tutor me first crossed my mind, I tried to shut it out. I knew there had to be a dozen tutors in the business school, some who even specialized more in stats than general math. I also knew that getting help from the same person I wanted fuck—correction, the same person I wanted to fuck and date—was a very bad idea. And yet it was one I planned on pursuing wholeheartedly.
In order to do that, I had to take the first drastic step—breaking up with Vanessa. It hadn’t gone well. I’d tried to get up the courage to do it at least three or four times that week without success. I’d fooled almost everyone into thinking I was serious about Vanessa, or at least serious about screwing her on a regular basis. The truth was, I had no intention of fucking Vanessa. It was Keira I wanted, and Tank, as usual, had my number.
“You better take care of business, man,” he warned me one night. “It’s only going to get worse. Of course, Van’ll be pissed at losing her prize catch so soon, but she’ll bounce back. Winter term is coming, so she’ll be able to move on to the basketball team. Besides, she’ll probably be able to blow most of those guys without having to kneel.” God love Tank. As sick as that joke was, it did make me smile. I knew he was right, though, and there wasn’t going to be a good time to do it. The pep rally that night was actually the worst time, but as soon as the campus fire department started to douse the bonfire, I made my move. It was almost like Vanessa knew something was up, because I hadn’t kissed her or held her hand during the rally.
“Everything okay, Buck? You look tense. Tina’s going out tonight. Let’s go back to my room, and I’ll help ease some of that tension—“
“Vanessa, we need to talk,” I told her, and it had gone downhill from there. It was cold outside, so I didn’t want to do it in the middle of the quad. My dorm was closer, but then she’d have to do the walk of shame back to hers, and it just wasn’t cool to break up with a girl in her own dorm and walk out. The library was still open, so I whisked her over there, so we could at least stand in the lobby out of the cold. It wasn’t ideal, but it was all I could think of, and it was probably the only thing that kept her from going off completely on me.