Dominate (University of Gatica #5) (4 page)

A girl stepped out of the group of dancers to his left, practically draping herself over Tyler. Aileen recognized her as one of the sprinters, and she felt a sharp little jab of possessive irritation as the other girl moved in him. Tyler was hers.

Tyler certainly didn't seem to mind the girl that much. He didn’t pull away from her. As he turned, his eyes found Aileen, and he lifted both shoulders in a tiny shrug, looking at Aileen over the girl’s shoulder with a 'what are you going to do?' kind of look. Aileen crossed her arms over her chest and met that with a look that told him just exactly what he was going to do.

Before he could move away, there was another girl on his other side, leaning in to giggle something in his ear. He slipped easily out from under her arm.

“Hey, look,” she heard him start to say, obviously having picked up on the fact that Aileen was less than happy.

Tyler was hers. He didn't belong to the entire track team. Aileen resisted the urge to do something immature like walk over there and pull the girls off by their hair. She wasn't that kind of person.

But she also wasn't the kind of person who was going to stand by and watch her boyfriend be fawned over by other girls. She turned on her heel and walked away.

It sounded like maybe Tyler tried to follow, but when she turned around to look he wasn't there and she shook her head. Maybe he'd decided that he liked the other girls better after all. Either way, she wasn't going to stick around for it. Jani could come meet her at home.

What was it with professors and all giving out papers and homework due on the same day, Aileen wondered, flipping through the little stack of syllabi she’d collected for her courses. It was like they got together and planned for it. Or maybe like they didn’t get together, and that was the problem. It might do them some good to talk to each other once in a while, and spare their students while they were at it.

The set of math problems due for stats didn’t really count toward that total. The stats professor required a new section of them every week. It was the paper for Biology 2 and the project for Physics that were the problem. Add that to the homework for her composition class and every-day practice for track, and it felt like she hardly had a spare moment.

Not that she was officially complaining. But she was a little thankful that she didn’t have to try to juggle a job on top of all that. Or maybe track was the job. It was definitely paying her bills.

Aileen sighed and pulled out the stats homework, setting it in the open space at the center of her desk and staring down at it.

She couldn’t concentrate.

Since the party, she’d only see Tyler at practice. He’d shown up on Monday morning acting like nothing was wrong, and she wondered if he even realized why she’d been upset.

She shook her head, and turned back to her work, absentmindedly chewing at the end of her pencil.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

“Speak of the devil,” she muttered to herself.

It had to be Tyler. He was the only one who tapped at her window like that. Aileen set the pencil down across the book open on her desk, marking her spot. Rolling her black computer chair away from the desk, she slipped off the chair and onto her feet. At her bedroom window, she pulled back the curtains and, as expected, spotted her favorite pair of dreamy eyes staring back at her. Tyler had snuck into her backyard and was tapping on the window, leaning up against it as he made the cutest puppy dog eyes at her when she came into view. Aileen tugged on the window and pulled it open, just enough to poke her head out.

“What’re you doing here?” She was happy to see him—she was always happy to see him. But the party still gnawed at her, sneaking its way into her thoughts at odd times, and she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to forgive him for it.

“Brr, it’s freezing out here. Can I come in?” Tyler faked a shiver as he flashed his infamous smile her way.

Despite herself, Aileen laughed at his attempt to get inside, his charm always finding a way of making her smile. Even when she was annoyed with him. “All right. Go to the back door and I’ll let you in. Can’t have a champion athlete freezing to death on my back porch.”

Tyler quickly disappeared from view. Aileen followed suit, pulling her head back inside the window and sliding it shut, making sure to lock and it and draw the curtains back over it before making her way through her bedroom door.

She hurried to the back door, pulling the small window curtain to the side to double-check Tyler was there before unlocking the door and pulling the handle to slide it open. Tyler wasted no time ducking in through the door, spinning himself around Aileen, and helping her slide the door closed. Aileen turned herself around to face him, her back almost up against the door as she tipped her chin up so that she could look at his face. His hand moved to lean against the door, and his body hovered over her as he moved his face in close, letting his hot breath tickle her face. He lifted his free hand to catch one of hers, cupping it gently and moving it to his lips. Tyler kissed each knuckle while keeping perfect eye contact with Aileen. He wanted her to see that he cared for her, even if he didn’t say it out loud.

“You
are
cold.” She’d thought it was just a trick to get inside, but his fingers were freezing against hers, and she turned their hands so that hers wrapped his instead, trying to warm him up.

“It’s January in New York State,” Tyler pointed out

“Come and get warm, then,” Aileen said, starting toward her room with their hands still linked.

In her room, she sat him down on the bed and gave him a blanket to wrap himself up in, but she didn’t join him there, despite the way that he looked at her.

“Tell me what happened at the party,” she said, because she’d wanted to ask him at the last two practices, but hadn’t quite dared to in front of everyone. She hadn’t wanted to cause a scene, and airing their personal business in public wasn’t really her style.

Tyler’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Nothing happened at the party except that you left early. I went looking for you and you were gone.”

“Nothing?”

He sighed. “Look, Aileen, I know you saw those girls trying to get all over me, but I wasn’t interested. I told them to go away, which you’d have seen if you’d stayed longer.”

“I stayed long enough to see that you definitely hadn’t told them to go away by the time I left. You even looked up and saw me.”

“I didn’t think you’d take it that personally,” he said, still frowning. “Not to brag or toot my own horn or whatever, but there are a lot of girls interested in me. Anyone on the football team could basically have their pick of the college. But I’m not interested in any of them.” He laid the blanket to the side and stood, crossing the floor to stand in front of her chair and taking her hand. “I’m only interested in you, Aileen.”

It was hard to resist that, those gorgeous eyes looking down at her, pleading for her to understand. But she didn’t know if she could let it go that easily. If he went anywhere with football, there would be women all over him all the time, and if he wasn’t telling them no in front of her, what would he tell them behind her back?

She didn’t want to think that about Tyler, but she couldn’t help the little curl of uncertainty that settled somewhere behind her ribs.

“I promise you,” he said. “I didn’t want anything to do with them.”

He sounded so sincere.

“You promise?” she asked.

“Cross my heart,” he said, meeting her eyes with his own again. “I’m not looking at anyone else.”

He held out his hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, Aileen took it, letting him draw her toward the bed. She still had stats homework—and all kinds of other homework—to do, and the weekend was another meet, but she could spare an hour or two, for Tyler.

***

Aileen took a sip from the glass of water in front of her, and eyed the sandwich that she'd unwrapped but hadn't eaten a bite of yet. Usually food didn’t last more than a few minutes in front of her, but even though she was starving, she couldn’t quite bring herself to eat it. When she looked up, Chrissy was watching her across the table, her expression a little concerned.

“You okay?” she asked gently.

“Yeah,” Aileen answered. “I'm fine. I was actually just... Well, I was thinking that I kind of miss having Tyler here.” She smiled a little ruefully. “I guess he’s my good luck charm.”

Chrissy laughed. “I think you did just fine without him. Second place isn’t exactly a bad thing.”

It was a bad thing if you’d been consistently taking first. And if you were a Worlds Junior winner who’d had the tenth fastest time in the world on the hundred meter hurdles in the same year. If you were the person who’d done both of those things, people were always looking to you to excel. To beat your last great accomplishment. In a case like that, second place was a pretty big step down.

“Anyway, Tyler hasn't been at a lot of the meets,” Chrissy reminded her, leaning back a little in her seat and giving Aileen a considering look. “What is it about this one that's different, do you think?”

“This one is after we really became a couple?” Aileen suggested, pretty sure that was the answer. “Well, that and he’s on his way to the NFL draft and I kind of wish that I could be there, too… I don’t know. Support him. Cheer for him the way I do at meets. The way he does for me at them.”

Chrissy nodded. “That's probably it, then. You know…” She paused, taking a drink from her own glass of water, and looked like she was trying to decide how to phrase something. “I think that you should maybe start preparing for the fact that Tyler isn't going to be at Gatica next year.”

Her tone was gentle, but the words still hit Aileen hard. She knew that Tyler would be gone after the end of the school year. He was graduating, and going off to be drafted by the NFL, and she would be left behind to finish college before they could really be together again. The thought of three years so far apart was painful.

“I know,” she said quietly, staring down at the water in the glass that she was turning between her hands, watching it slosh against its confines. “I've thought about it, a bit. Honestly, it kind of sucks to think about.”

“Yeah,” Chrissy said, chuckling a little. “It's not easy when the guy isn't at the same college that you are, but I think that you can make it work. You two have a really good thing going. You just have to put a little more effort into it.”

“Do you think he'll really have time for me?” Aileen asked before she could stop the words from leaving her mouth. “I mean… he's going to be in the NFL. That's not exactly a job with a lot of free hours. And we're going to be so far apart. Is he really going to want to be tied to some college girlfriend three years younger than he is, with all of those beautiful women throwing themselves at him?”

She thought back to the night of the party, walking in to find several of the other girls from the track team dancing way too close to Tyler, and she wondered if she would be able to go three years wondering whether or not some gorgeous pro cheerleader or football groupie had managed to worm her way into Tyler's arms.

“He loves you,” Chrissy said, breaking into her spiral of self-doubt. “It's pretty obvious, Aileen.” She smiled. “He's been smitten with you since the first time that you walked in the door at Wavertree Fieldhouse.”

“Actually,” Aileen said, “he knew who I was when I got there. He watched me race at Nationals.”

“So there,” Chrissy said. “You see? He's totally into you, and he has been from the start. And don't tell me that you weren't crushing on him hard before you ever got here.”

“No.” Aileen shook her head. “He's actually-” She looked at Chrissy across the table. “You promise not to tell anyone this? Not even Jani?”

Chrissy dragged a finger across her heart first one way and then another. “Cross my heart.”

“Tyler is actually the reason that I came to Gatica to visit,” she admitted, her voice hardly above a whisper. Up until now, Becky had been the only one who knew she'd visited Gatica for the guys, and even she didn't know that it had been just for Tyler Jensen.

“Really?” Chrissy asked. She chuckled. “Honestly, you're not the person I would have pegged for doing that kind of thing.”

“My best friend told me that I had to look at one school for something other than running. And we decided Gatica had the cutest guys. But I didn't care about any of the others. I just wanted to meet Tyler. Talk to him.”

“That's actually kind of sweet. If maybe a little bit stalker-ish.”

Aileen found herself laughing. “Yeah. Okay. It was maybe a little bit stalker-ish. I was so surprised when he talked to me I almost forgot how to talk. It was actually really embarrassing. And then Coach Anderson brought him to dinner with us, and I couldn't believe it. It was like the universe was actually conspiring in my favor.”

“Maybe it was,” Chrissy suggested. “Maybe it was fate that you two met. You were drawn to each other at first sight because you were always meant to be together.”

She paused to take a drink of water, and smiled at Aileen over the rim of the glass as she put it down.

“It's like me and Ryan. We never would have met if we hadn't both been injured. And I was mad at first that it happened, you know? I wanted to compete. But after I met Ryan and we started getting to know each other, and now that I've had some time to think about it, I think that maybe things happen for a reason. So it doesn't matter that Tyler won't be here next year. I mean, it will be rough. But I think you'll make it through. Your relationship is built to last.”

It was something that Aileen herself had contemplated. The idea that she and Tyler were meant to be together. Mostly late at night in an exhaustion haze prompted by staying up way too late to finish homework after being up early in the morning to go work out in the weight room. It seemed possible then when, in the light of day, the idea only sounded silly. But hearing someone else say it was like confirmation that maybe it wasn't so ridiculous after all. Lots of people believed in soul mates. Just because she was studying biology didn't mean that she couldn't agree with them.

“I hope that you're right,” she said. “About Tyler and me. And I do think that we can make it. We've made it through some kind of crazy times already. So, I guess that I'll just keep trying no matter what happens.”

“That's the spirit!” Chrissy lifted her glass and held it out to Aileen like she was preparing to toast. “To trying no matter what.”

Aileen laughed and clinked her cup against the other girl's. “To trying no matter what,” she agreed.