I turned and watched him walk away. "You're not going to say anything else?" Iasked.
He paused, one foot on the first step, a hand on the railing, and looked back, a stillness in his features—almost an expectancy, a hope. "What else did you expect me to say,Babydoll?"
I shrugged. "I don't know, but something more than 'hurry up' wouldn't have been bad. Did you work things out? You andMarv?"
Grayson chuckled. "It'll always be a little more complicated than just being able to work things out with one conversation, Harlow," he said. "But you'll be glad to know that he no longer wants to see my head on a pike for touchingyou."
"Does he want to see your head on a pike for any other reason?" I asked, prompting a little more than a chuckle thistime.
Grayson laughed, his free hand slapping his ribbed abdomen—all those football practices hadn't hurt him in the least and whatever he had been doing since we graduated certainly made me appreciate his body all the more. "We'll see," he called back. "We'llsee."
Grayson left me with those words, walking into the house and closing the door. I turned towards the campus, hoping that Lizzie would stay asleep long enough for me to sneak in and out. We should never have let me take a dorm room, I decided. Because right now, I craved that girl's advice on the complicated mess my life was. Maybe some good news would help me erase my concerns and doubts now lingering like heavy clouds in my mind. And almost like a switch flipped in the back of my mind—like last night’s change—I wasready.
As I jogged across campus in my borrowed flip flops from one of the guys, yawning at the early morning sun, I hoped like hell that Erika was going to be where we were heading today. I didn’t know what I’d do if I had to leave her rescue up to another team. I trusted my guys implicitly and I knew that they would do whatever they could to help my friend and keep her from selling her soul to thedevil.