Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (68 page)

I give a sideways nod at the glass, then lift my eyebrows. “So you know him?”

She bites her lip, looks to the left, to the right, and then she double-taps the thumb of a fist to her pretty pink lips—
Secret.

I nod knowingly. I don’t even know what the hell’s between them and I already want to pummel Kellen until he’s bent in half. “Does
he
know it’s a secret?”

She nods, though uncertainly. Her eyes are all over the place, thoughts and worries racing across them.

“Why’d he put his hands on you?” I mumble.

What the fuck am I saying?
I can’t imagine anything more possessive-sounding to have said than that. Are we in fucking high school or some shit? I want to know what the fuck’s gone on between them. Maybe I’m provoking her to spill.

“Maybe ‘cause you look so beautiful today,” I suggest for her.

Gag me. Someone fucking gag me.

She smiles, her cheeks turning pink. Her eyes averted, she points at her classroom again without a word, then gives me a little wave and walks away. I fight another urge to call after her and say something else dumb. Apparently, I’m just full of dumb words. I’m a dumb word factory.

I want to know what’s gone down between them, but maybe that can wait. Dessie’s talking to me again. That’s fucking everything to me right now.

We’re talking.

I take a breath, half the tension inside me released with it, and I push through the glass doors, taking a seat on the bench outside and letting the morning sun bathe over me.

I get to have a bite with her after her class, and that’s the best news I’ve gotten in days.

And if I play my cards right, maybe I’ll get a bite of her, too.

DESSIE

We share a table in the UC food court. He’s got two giant fried fish fillet sandwiches and I have a grilled cheese.

And the noise here is deafening, even at barely 11 in the morning.

It’s amazing, but also maybe a bit sad, how quickly I forgave him. I
think
I forgave him. When I got that text Monday night at the
Throng
, my first reaction was utter, unapologetic thrill. I was so fucking happy to have heard from him, even after suffering nearly two days of radio silence. It was Eric who told me not to answer. “Give him a taste of his own,” he insisted, but I think he was channeling bitterness from his own boy troubles and projecting them onto me.

I held my phone that whole night, caressing it like a chocolate addict with the world’s last Snickers.

Now here we are, sharing lunch in the dense noise of a hundred people shouting, laughing, and yelling at each other from across booths and tables. As I suffer in the chaos, I peer over the table at Clayton eating his sandwich and realize with a start that this experience is drastically different for him. Where I’m assaulted by the relentless onslaught of noise, Clayton only knows peace.

He smirks at me across the table after taking his first generous bite, chewing with a strained expression on his face.

Well, okay. Maybe there’s a form of inner peace that he may presently be lacking.

After he swallows, he says something to me, his mouth half-blocked by his fish fillet sandwich, hands propped up at the elbows and his meal hanging loose between them.

I can’t hear him. Oh, the irony. “What?”

He lowers his sandwich, revealing his sexy, plush lips, then speaks louder. “So you know Kellen?”

I kinda knew that, of all topics to enjoy, Kellen Wright would be the first thing he brought up. “Yes,” I say, nodding for emphasis.

“Nice guy?” he prompts me with a lift of his brow, taking another humungous bite of his sandwich.

The way his mouth moves, his jaw tightening and relaxing in his massive, muscular efforts of chewing, is so fucking erotic that I can’t stand it. His lips alone are art. Add that to the whole visually-stimulating workout of his teeth and sharp jawline, and I’m about as distracted as a lunch mate can possibly be. I’m already having fond recollections of how his mouth worked mine when my
lips
were his meal.

“Nice,” I agree vaguely, nodding again, then help myself to a bite of my grilled cheese.

He asks me a question through his full mouth. I catch exactly zero words of it, lifting my eyebrows in confusion. He swallows hard, then lifts his chin and repeats, “Did you two date?”

I roll my eyes. “My dad …
mentored
him,” I explain, punching the word.

“Your dad? The one who pulled a string?” he goes on, his face wrinkling as he chews.

“Yes. That dad.”

His eyes pull away suddenly, and I see a flicker of darkness in them. I’ve become so adept at reading the little expressions that play war games across Clayton’s face. The jolt in his eye bothers me.

“What?” I prompt him, but he doesn’t seem to be paying attention, lost in a thought.

Kellen and I met during one of the shows my dad was designing in New York. For the first few days that I knew him, I thought he was a member of the chorus. Then I learned he was a lighting intern of sorts, but thought he was shy. When a Friday night rehearsal came to its end and the last stage light was shut off, Kellen kissed me unexpectedly in the dark behind the fold of a curtain where I was sorting props, proving to me how very
not
shy he was. Then he tried to talk me out of going to the cast party two weeks later where I would then discover how
not
single he was. It was one of my first lessons in how faithless and fickle city men can be, constantly shopping for the next best thing while gripping their girlfriends so tightly.

Maybe I have a soured secret or two of my own that I’m not sure I want to expose Clayton to just yet.

I set my sandwich down, type something into my phone, then give a little wave, drawing his attention back to see the contents of my screen:

I don’t know why Kellen’s here.

On Monday I found out that

Victoria knows who I am

and now

I’m afraid between the two of them,

everyone will find out

:( :(

He frowns at the message, then pulls out his own phone and, after cramming the last bite of his first fish fillet, types:

U’re cute when u’re pissed.

To that, I glare at him.

He chuckles, full-mouthed, then puts a reassuring hand on top of mine and gives it a rub. The very next second, he seems to think that the gesture was too much and quickly retracts his hand, swallowing hard before starting on his second sandwich.

The gesture wasn’t too much. It granted a much-needed warmth to the coldness I’ve felt since leaving the theater.

But it doesn’t quite ease my uncertainty about our hot-and-cold weekend. I type, then lift my screen:

Are you going to explain

Sunday’s silence

or what?

His sandwich lowers to the table, a surrender, and his face hardens. He swallows his bite, meets my eyes, then says a couple words too quietly.

“Louder,” I urge him.

He leans partway over the table, propped up by his elbows, his arms bulging as he does. “I was a coward,” he murmurs. His lips this much closer to me, I could just lean in as much as he is and kiss him right now. “Been a while since I’ve been with a girl.”

“Me too,” I mouth.

His face wrinkles. “You’ve been with a girl?”

I slap his arm, pushing him away with a laugh. He doesn’t budge, the stone statue that he is.

“That’s kinda hot,” he teases me.

“So we’ve both been alone for a while,” I mutter.

He nods resolutely.

“And we’re both … kinda scared … of each other?” I suggest, speaking slowly.

He shrugs, then nods at that, too.

His shoulders are so big and he looks so delicious in that tight-fitting shirt, the fabric pulling across his chest distractingly. His eyes are alight with interest and his lips … his lips are
right fucking there
.

Then he says, “You two dated, didn’t you.”

It isn’t quite a question, more of an accusation. I press my lips together, unsure if he’s actually asking, or just trying to playfully get a rise out of me again. I smack his arm again, harder than before, and earn a little Clayton-brand smirk of amusement.

Then I decide, of all things, to torture him. I type into my phone, then shove it right in his face. He has to back away a bit to read it:

No.

But he did kiss me.

I think he wanted to get

closer to my dad through me.

I felt used.

He also had a hot girlfriend

in the cast

that I didn’t know about.

I don’t think very highly of him.

Clayton’s chest puffs up after reading that, his jaw tightening. An odd look of validation crosses his face. “Thought something was off about him,” he says.

I smirk. “Yeah? Smelled all the lies and deceit he was drenched in?”

Clayton takes a sip of his drink, then says, “Truth is, I resent him being …” He swallows, rubs his ear, then finishes, “I resent the fucker being here.
I
wanted to design the lights for the main stage show. He took that job from me.”

A shiver of worry reenters my mind as I listen to him. It was first born the moment I recognized Kellen at the theater, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what bothered me so much until just now. My father mentored Kellen like a little lighting-god protégé. Did my father have anything to do with Kellen showing up out of nowhere to design lights for the show?

And is that connected with “the string” my father pulled in getting me into this Theatre program?

Am I the reason Clayton’s opportunity was stolen?

Just like I’m the reason Victoria’s chance at a lead was swiped out from under her ready, able hands?

Is there
anything
my arrival here hasn’t ruined?

“Dessie?”

I look up, realizing that I’d gone silent. I don’t know if he said anything else, so lost in my own dark hurricane of anxiety that I wasn’t paying attention.

“Sorry,” I mutter, shaking away my worries. Only time will answer my questions—time and an overdue phone call to my dad. “I resent him, too.”

A question seems to glimmer in Clayton’s eyes, but he doesn’t ask it, drawing his sandwich back up to his lips to take another mouthful as I watch, a mixture of longing and doubt swimming inside me as I wonder if Clayton’s pieced it together himself. Does
he
already suspect I have anything to do with Kellen’s arrival?

He finishes his sandwich and I finish my drink in silence. He smiles at me twice and I return them with a small one of my own, studying my phone and trying to think about the routine I need to have prepared for my voice class in an hour. Something to do with vowels and combining them with different poses and odd stretches.
Ugh, I’m going to fail.

When we leave the food court a moment later, he stops me at the door, the blinding sun silhouetting his face in an otherworldly, beautiful way.

Away from the noise of the building and entirely unable to see his face or lips, I only hear him as his voice brushes against my ears. “Do you want to hang out tonight?”