We surfed until the night extinguished our glorious sunshine. My annoyingly responsible friend fished me from the water to get home for classes the next day. As much as we wanted to slap on a few glow sticks and hang with the twilight crowd, Missy convinced Kara and me to pack it up.
“It’s like you’re totally trippin’, watching them out there.” I gazed at the water and my diehard friends glowing as they rode the night serpent.
“Like UFOs.” Kara laughed.
With our surfboards secured to the top of Missy’s SUV, we cruised home with the windows down and Maren Morris’s “To Hell & Back” blaring from the speakers. I wasn’t a country music girl until I met Kara. Our freshman year, she converted me in a matter of months. Missy took a little longer to convince, but we all eventually got there. Except Aubrey … she didn’t surf—and she despised country music.
Chapter Three
I arrived at class the next morning with two minutes to spare and my mint green tea with a generous amount of honey from my favorite tea and crepe cafe. No time for crepes, but I had a tiny food orgasm while I waited in line at the pickup counter. Oh the torture … as plates of decadent French goodness strode past me on trays for customers who didn’t have an eight o’clock class with a professor who had no issues shaming late arrivals.
Blackberries.
Whipped cream.
Chocolate drizzle.
It wasn’t fair.
Instead, I grabbed a prepackaged energy ball at the checkout counter. Almond butter, spirulina, coconut, and dates didn’t have the same effect as ooey-gooey crepes.
Slade Wylder and his mystery service dog snagged my attention from their spot in the middle section about halfway down the stairs of the theater-style lecture hall. Two seats behind him were available. Any woman with a sense of self-preservation would’ve picked the farthest possible seat from him. Too bad I wasn’t just any woman.
I claimed a seat behind him and one to the left so maybe he’d see me out of the corner of his eye. When he didn’t offer a single glance, I sipped my tea and cleared my throat.
Nothing.
He’s deaf, stupid.
After my invisible face-palm, I crossed my legs and not-so-accidentally kicked the back of his chair. He slowly glanced back at me. I shifted my tea to my left hand and made a fist at my chest with my right hand, circling it clockwise—sign language for “sorry.”
His deep-seated frown didn’t budge. It only intensified, indenting the space between his thick, serious eyebrows.
Pinching my drink between my knees, I used both hands to sign, “I said sorry. No need to break my leg off.” Unavoidable pride bent my mouth into a grin while I waited for him to acknowledge my ability to communicate with him. Tiffany, my best friend from kindergarten until eighth grade, was deaf. She taught me sign language. Well, she taught me some sign language. My dad taught me the most. He also taught me to speak some German and Russian. Before he decided to be a computer engineer, he had considered working with the government as an interpreter.
Slade answered my performance with one slow blink. How could he be so unimpressed? Seriously … how many students did he encounter who could sign?
I didn’t give up. My hands quickly worked my next thoughts. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Livy Knight.” I punctuated my signed words with a smile. My Aunt Jessica said after my mom died, I punctuated everything with a smile. She knew I was trying to show everyone that I was okay. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.
But god … I did. I felt so damn sorry for myself. And my father. He never recovered. I always sensed his love beneath the thick armor of overprotectiveness, but it was like a light went out when she died. Dark and heartbreaking. Every smile held a jolt of his pain. I couldn’t do anything but smile bigger, trying to lift him out of his dark hole. You can’t hold on to her. She’s gone.
Slade blinked a second time. Unimpressed.
“Good morning,” the professor silenced the room.
My gaze shifted to her for one second, and by the time I returned it to Slade, he’d faced forward again. He managed to go the entire lecture without so much as a stolen glance over his shoulder at me. I couldn’t say the same. My stolen glances were to the front of the room. By the end of class, I could have sketched every detail of Slade Wylder’s side profile. Every prickly whisker shadowing his face. The permanent downward turn of his mouth. The soft sweep of his eyelashes on his high cheekbones when he rested his eyes or maybe took a few seconds nap—I couldn’t tell. The rest of his body remained statuesque. No note taking. No body shifting like the rest of the uninterested prisoners of the professor.
Nothing.
He just … didn’t move until five minutes before the end of class. Then in one fluid motion, which startled me out of my heavy inspection, he and Jericho made a stealthy exit from the lecture hall.
“Shit,” I whispered, cringing at the spilled tea pooling by my feet as I scrambled to shove my laptop into my bag and bolt toward the door. After depositing the empty cup into the trash just outside the room, I pushed through the main doors and scurried down the wide stone stairs. “Wait!” I chuckled at myself. “He can’t hear you,” I mumbled.
I slowed my jog and stretched my strides to an impossibly fast walk when I caught up to him. He halted like a soldier snapping to attention, but he didn’t turn toward me.
Pivoting to face him, I presented my kindest smile. “What’s your next class?” I signed.
Nothing.
“I’m sorry about yesterday. He’s a service dog. I get it. I should have kept to myself.”
His gaze remained affixed to mine. I dropped my hands to my sides. Such a dark, unreadable soul. Maybe he’d recently lost his hearing and didn’t understand sign language. So many thoughts went through my mind as I waited to find a way to communicate with him, until …
“What the fuck are you doing?”
My eyebrows inched up my forehead. “You’re not deaf.”
“Brilliant observation. Are we done here?”
When I hesitated for more than one second, he brushed past me.
I pivoted one-eighty. “PTSD? Bipolar disorder? Panic attacks? Suicidal thoughts? Is he an emotional support dog?” My voice lowered to a whisper when his confident pace increased the distance between us. “Okay. That went well.”
“Did Livy Knight strike out?” Karina nudged the heel of my shoe with the toe of hers before sidling next to me.
On a laugh, I nodded. “Royally.”
“Maybe he’s gay.”
I lifted a shoulder. “Maybe. I wasn’t hitting on him. He just makes me … curious.”
A throng of students from the dismissed class swallowed us, forcing us forward.
“Well, he’s definitely mysterious.”
Tipping my chin up, I searched for him, but he’d already disappeared. “Yes. Mysterious. Sure wish I didn’t like mysteries so much.” I smirked. “But I can’t help it. I do.”
“Liv …”
“What? I’m just…” gathering my blond hair off my neck, I rested it over my right shoulder and absentmindedly braided it “…curious why he has that dog in class. He’s not deaf or blind. And I want to know why he’s renting the firehouse—seemingly by himself. And everyone … I mean everyone knows it’s haunted. I don’t see how he can afford it unless his family’s rich or he is, in fact, a drug dealer.”