Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
“And yet…they look so delicate. Maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere, Ms. Fragile Skeleton.”
I snort. “I don’t think so, unless the lesson is that weight training isn’t for me. I don’t mind hanging out while you do it, though.”
Or watching. I especially don’t mind the watching, I find. The way his muscles ripple and flex is truly fun to observe.
“That’s good. I’ll have to keep that in mind when I’m having a late-night sweat session.”
My brain short-circuits. Something about the way he’s paired late-night and sweat session makes me feel like the oxygen in the room has been sucked out. But it doesn’t make me scared of him—it makes me scared of myself.
Suddenly, I’m not entirely sure if I’m capable of keeping Blake Boden at the carefully crafted distance I’d planned on.
He takes a step closer, eliminating some of the space between us, and I swear the room tilts. His eyes search mine, soft but intent, and before I realize it, I’m mirroring the movement. My heart pounds as the distance between us vanishes, and my gaze flicks to his mouth without permission. It’s so close, it would take nothing—nothing—to lean in just a fraction more and—
No, Lexi. Absolutely not.
I jerk back, the air between us thick with tension I don’t understand. “I better get going.” It’s abrupt and blunt, and for once, I realize it. But my mind is spiraling in confusion of what is happening with this guy, and I’m at the end of my masking rope. I need right now, more than anything, to be alone so I can drop the act entirely.
Blake’s brows knit together. “Oh. Okay. When can I see you again, then?”
I shake my head, back toward the door. “I’m not sure.”
He frowns. “Is everything okay?”
Not at all. “Of course.”
“Okay,” he says, though his tone doesn’t match the word. “I’ll text or call you.”
“Sounds good.”
“Lex—”
“Bye, Blake,” I say, cutting him off before he can say anything else—anything that might make me stay. Because if I stay even a second longer, I fear I’ll do something stupid like let him kiss me.
Or worse, kiss him back.
I turn and bolt out of the weight room, power walking through Mavericks Stadium, out to my car, and all the way back to my apartment just outside Dickson’s campus. My heart pounds harder than it should over the simple exertion, my mind spinning like a hard drive at the end of its memory life.
I want to go back. Back to when everything was about the lab, my research, and the predictable comfort of knowing exactly who I was and where I fit.
I don’t want to be this girl—trying to earn a third PhD in Blake Boden. A girl who has developed an AI-assisted app to decode why he has this infuriating effect on me and why my reaction to him feels so uncharacteristically…uncontrollable.
Because for someone who thrives on control, losing it is terrifying, even if it’s to something that feels good.
And Blake? Well, he makes me feel good.
Too good.
And that’s a problem I have no idea how to solve—a genius’s uncharted territory.
I don’t like it one freaking bit.
Friday, May 30th
Blake
Fluorescent lights flicker above my head as I walk down the hall of Ferris Research Lab, a bag of Chinese takeout hanging from my right hand.
I’ve never been inside this building before, and with how deserted it is tonight, I’m starting to think no one ever has.
My footsteps echo on the tile floor as I walk the halls aimlessly, searching for the infamous computer lab in which I know I’ll find Lexi. After the shift between us at MKC earlier this week, I was naïvely hopeful that she would reach out to me if I didn’t reach out to her.
Instead, we’ve gone a full day and a half with no contact, and I’ve been properly humbled into being the pursuer again. I texted earlier to no response, but when my plans for dinner with Ace and Finn fell through, thanks to a prank-war emergency with Ace’s dad Thatch, I decided to take matters into my own hands. They asked me to come, but I excused myself, saying I had something with my football teammates I should do instead.
And while I was invited to party with the team, I figured trying my hand at making Lexi Winslow notice me was a much better plan.
Not to mention, an in-person meet-and-greet is much harder to ignore.
Turning the corner at the end of a long, dark hall, I see a light finally beckon in the distance. It’s the subtle glow of the lights of a room, shining through the glass window in the door.
An irrational pang of insecurity rears its head as I approach the door to find a keypad and a locked handle.
What if she doesn’t let me inside?
My inner psyche both laughs and cries. Because damn, that would be one hell of a sign that I need to give it the fuck up, wouldn’t it?