Before I can say a word—not that I know what I would say—Gray opens his mouth and laughs. It’s loud, almost intentionally so. Forced-sounding, like he’s using it to draw attention.
And it works.
Students who were drifting away from the building they all emerged from a moment ago slow their steps, turning to watch the four of us with interested, greedy gazes. Probably hoping for some cheap entertainment they can gossip about later.
Gray’s ocean eyes flick toward the gathering crowd quickly, and then he lifts his voice again.
“Right,” he drawls. “The second scholarship student. Bit of a waste if you ask me. Kinda like tossing money into a dumpster and lighting it on fucking fire.”
“Excuse me?” My voice is hard. The warmth that flooded my veins when he first looked at me has turned to ice, freezing my limbs.
The shift in his tone grates like sandpaper against my skin. He’s cruel. Vitriolic.
“You heard me.” He smirks, his gaze burning into me. “One charity case is already a stretch for the school. Two though? What’s the fucking point? You take some messed up druggie or coke slut off the street, polish her up, give her a piece of paper that says ‘you did good sweetie,’ and then what? She’s still a fucked up mess. Still a pathetic loser.” He chuckles. “There’s not a degree in the world that can change that.”
I grit my teeth, my hands curling into fists. Two minutes ago, I wanted to fuck this man’s brains out on whatever horizontal—or vertical—surface we could find. Now it’s taking every bit of self-control I have not to plant my fist in his face.
“What the fuck is your problem with me?” I spit out. “What the hell difference does it make to you if I’m here on a scholarship or not? You don’t even know me. You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.”
His smirk takes on an even darker twist, and he steps forward, closing the distance between us in two long strides. I back up, but it doesn’t stop him from getting fully up in my space.
“I know enough, Sparrow,” he murmurs, and this time his words aren’t a performance, a show for the crowd. They’re just for me. “You shouldn’t have come here. You don’t deserve to be here. And if you’re smart, you’ll turn around and fucking leave.”
My heart gives a weird half-thud in my chest, like it forgot how to beat for a second. The malice in his words is palpable, almost like a physical weight that presses against me.
But it’s only one word that stopped my heart.
Sparrow.
The tattoo I have on my shoulder. My favorite tattoo, the one that means more to me than any of the others. It’s of a bird in flight, wings outstretched as they catch the air.
Graceful.
Beautiful.
Free.
He saw it the night we had sex at The Silent Hour. I know he did. I can still feel his fingers tracing the outline of the ink.
He remembers that night just as well as I do, and he’s letting me know it. But whatever passed between us then, whatever seemed to pass between us when he first caught sight of me today, it doesn’t mean anything now.
Not anymore.
Whatever chemistry existed between us once, it’s been swallowed up by hatred.
I have no idea where all this is coming from, but the longer this goes on, the more attention we draw. Dozens of people have formed a wide circle around the four of us, watching the spectacle unfold. They whisper among themselves, eyeing me, eyeing the trio of guys.
Gray hesitates for a moment, still leaning so close to me that I can smell the masculine scent of his aftershave. It’s spicy and rich, and I hate that my body remembers that too, but it does.
When he finally steps back from me, I let out a breath, trying to clear my nostrils of his addictive scent. Like I could purge my body of his memory somehow. He shares a look with the two men behind me, and they step around me to join ranks with him, coming to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Fuck. They’re friends of his. Not casual acquaintances like I first assumed, but good friends. The kind of friends who will hate me just because he does. They probably don’t even need to know why.
“So…” Gray raises his voice again, resuming the public show. “Our new scholarship classmate.” He glances at the crowd. “You want a fun fact about our little freshman inductee? Sparrow and I know each other.” He smirks, looking me in the eyes. “Biblically. Intimately. Though I gotta say, I wouldn’t waste your time on her if you think she’s gonna be a decent charity case lay. She’s not very… entertaining.”
Anger flares through me like a bolt of lightning. I remember that night at The Silent Hour, and I’m positive he does too. And “entertaining” isn’t even on the list of things that could be used to describe what happened between us.
It was meant to be a quick and dirty fuck to take my mind off my grief, to banish the pain for a few minutes. It was meant to be a brief, meaningless entertainment.