26
Max
I rode by Dani’s dorm room and frowned. All the parking spaces next to the damn place were taken up. So I throttled it around campus and found something much too far away. I had to get away from the house. After my talk with John, sitting around was doing nothing but making me feel fucking paranoid. I wanted something to distract me, lift my spirits. Because every time I crunched numbers to see if I could get the guys paid out of our own club fund, it pissed me off that I couldn't.
Not without some serious outside help.
As I parked my bike and walked across campus, that little voice in my mind nagged at me. It told me to stay away. To do what was good for me. To stay at the house and keep my head down, just like John told me to. It burned my blood that Dad called him. That Dad wanted my own damn brother to keep tabs on me like that. It took me damn near twenty minutes to just get out of the house without telling John where I was headed. And even then, we still fought over it.
In the end, though, I won.
I always fucking did.
Girls giggled and pointed. I felt them running their curious eyes up and down my body. I didn't care, though. For once, I didn’t give a shit. I had a final destination in mind. I had someone I needed to see. A girl I had become weak against. My own version of kryptonite.
The saving grace I didn’t deserve.
Something about this girl made me crazy in all the right ways. She captivated me in a way I’d never been before. I had to find out why. Uncovering the secret to her mesmerizing presence would help me wash her away forever. Maybe I had to sleep with her. Maybe I had to fuck her out of my mind. Maybe once I dove between those legs and visited that sweet place for myself, this would all go away.
She could go back to the light, and I could retreat back into the dark.
“You’re an idiot, Max,” I murmured to myself.
That had been my mantra all fucking morning. What an idiot I was being. How stupid this was becoming. She was just some girl. Some college girl who didn’t know shit about the world. To many people, I lived an exciting life. What did I want with some girl who didn't even know how to kiss?
That was the beauty of her, though. That was the meat of it all. She didn’t know about these things. She still saw the world through rose-colored lenses. If she was lucky, she would forever. She’d see this place as good. She’d see people as good.
She wouldn't become like me, if she was lucky.
As I crossed through a random grove of trees, I came to the back of Dani’s dorm building. Well, I still had a ways to walk. But it was there. I grinned as I started up the hill. Every step I took brought me closer to her. I felt myse
lf picking up the pace, moving faster and faster until the only thing I focused on was that damn back entrance.
Into the stairwell that took me all the way to the top.
“Hey! I just want to talk!”
“Leave me alone!”
My head whipped to the left as Benji’s voice sailed along the wind that had kicked up. But it wasn’t Benji’s voice that kept my eyes searching the grounds. It was the voice that came after. The high-pitched, panicked voice of the person that answered.
Dani.
I diverted my path and headed toward the voices. People knocked into me and fell to the grass, cursing my existence and shooting profanities my way. And while I usually stopped to pay them a bit of attention with my snarl, I didn’t dare stop.
Dani sounded scared.
And I wanted to know what the fuck Benji had to do with that.
“Wait up, Bambi! Can’t we just have a chat?”
“Keep your hands off me, you jerk!”
My eyes widened. My back bristled. Hands. He put his hands on her? I broke into a dead sprint as I crested the hill. I turned around, trying to figure out where the two of them were. I panted for air. My nostrils flared with anger. My blood bubbled in my veins as my vision dripped red.
No one touched Dani.
No one touched what was mine.