Page 28 of Love JD

I had one other class for the day, and then I could go home and give myself the illusion of relaxation. Sans bodyguard. Because whoever Zev had hired had not been able to pick up my location all day. I’d spotted him first, actually. He had my school schedule, so he’d been waiting for me at the entrance to my chem class, but I had pulled up my hoodie and sneaked in with a group of students. I’d seen him at the top of the steep lecture hall, conspicuous because of his age and black baseball cap. He’d stalked the aisles, scanning the crowd looking for me, but I’d made a point to wedge myself between a couple of football players and stayed out of sight. He’d given up by the time my professor walked in, and I hid a satisfied smile.

I win.

Now I was in another lecture hall, this time for Statistics for Ecology, and I knew I had better pay attention to this test prep because math wasn’t my strong suit. My dad had always encouraged me to have a “growth mindset,” so I refused to accept that I was any one way without hope for improvement. This meant that I refused to say I was “bad” at math, and I told myself I simply had to study harder. That said… I was bad at math.

I sent my dad a text letting him know that my finals were Thursday and Friday, and made sure to send him a thumbs up to let him know I was doing alright. He probably wouldn’t see it for a while after I sent it. He worked for an international NGO, and the last time I had heard from him, he had been in Port-au-Prince. But who knew where he was at the moment. Dad had done his best with me, but in all reality, he hadn’t expected his affair with my mom to result in anything quite so tangible as me. He’d dragged me along with him to all the non-profit projects he’d been assigned to, and I’d tried not to complain too much when we both knew it was a struggle for him.

And I sure as shit wasn’t going to inconvenience his life any more than I had for the sixteen years he’d raised me.

My professor put up a slideshow going over the key principles we would need to understand for the test, and I snapped a picture with my phone and scratched out notes on my digital notepad while he talked. Despite my desire to do well on the test, I found my thoughts wandering to Zev. He hadn’t texted me since I’d successfully ditched his hired goon, and I assumed he was probably busy with important lawyer-y stuff. Too bad, because I missed sparring with him. Could that be a hobby? “Hi, my name is Isla, and my hobbies include examining lichen and poking sexy bears who live 500 miles away.” Maybe I needed a real hobby other than antagonizing Zev Brady.

I imagined him in a button-down shirt, his sleeves rolled up and his intense blue eyes concentrating on whatever legal jargon he dealt with, and it made my stomach warm. My hand drifted to the side of the paper, and I started a ridiculous sketch of a yeti. It had a grouchy face, and through its snarling mouth, I drew a speech bubble that said, “This is just my face.”

I snickered, adding little curly Qs above its head to make it look steaming mad.

“You left out my washboard abs,” a husky voice whispered over my shoulder.

I screamed, jumping in my seat and scooting forward so violently, I almost fell into the descending row of seats in front of me. Zev lashed out, grabbing hold of my shirt to keep me from tumbling over. He had a savagely satisfied grin on his handsome features, and he yanked me back into my seat. The entire class, including my professor, turned their attention to me. I stared at them all, my nerves tangling around my vocal cords and preventing me from uttering a single excuse.

“She saw a wasp,” Zev offered. The eyes in the room seemed to swivel up to him. He waved. “I’m her bodyguard.”

My professor, an older man with a bald crown and gray beard blinked at us from behind his rimless glasses. “I see. Everything okay?” I waved for him to continue, still choking on my fright.

While my professor resumed his discussion about pseudoreplication, Zev leaned forward until his breath warmed the back of my neck. “What was that thing you said? ‘Bet?’”

A shiver traveled from my neck to my arms. Holy fuck. He’d actually flown here just to prove a point? I clenched the stylus for my notepad with a white-knuckled grip. “What. The fuck?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“You know what my dad used to say?” he asked, his voice so low I could barely hear it.

“Don’t make that face or it’ll get stuck that way?”

“Play stupid games,” he murmured, swishing a stray lock of my hair away from my neck, “win stupid prizes.”

I’d definitely been playing stupid games with Zev. But what stupid prize had I won?

My attention on the rest of the lecture fled the building, and I sat twiddling my stylus nervously. I could feel Zev behind me like a warm shadow. When he shifted, I felt it like a stroke along my back. When he bounced his knee, I thought maybe my heartbeat changed to match the tempo.

The class dragged on, and all I could think about was what the hell Zev planned to say… and was he really going to “kidnap” me, or had he just been blustering? What would that even look like? Would there be handcuffs involved or…?

The professor dismissed us, and I shoved my stuff in my worn-out backpack, mindful of the cobalt eyes on the back of my neck as I did. I decided the best course of action would probably be to just ignore him. If he had something to say, then I hoped he would wait until we weren’t in a crowded lecture hall. He followed me up the steps and out into the hallway, which in this building looked almost corporate with its window walls and decorative potted trees. As I walked awkwardly on my boot, which dipped with each step, I looked over my shoulder.

Zev looked devastatingly handsome. His button-down, just a shade bluer than white, had been rolled up at the sleeves like I’d imagined, and he had a pair of sunglasses hanging off the collar of the white undershirt that peeked out from the unbuttoned top. His dress pants were black, but he had on a pair of spotless white sneakers that dressed it down. Zev Brady was, without a doubt, the yummiest lawyer I had ever seen.

And he was also stalking behind me with purpose, his gaze shimmering with darkly amused promises. I turned back around, my pulse jumping, but somehow it felt like the good kind of pulse spike. The exciting kind. It wasn’t the kind of nervousness I got around Robert where I suddenly became self-conscious, my palms grew sweaty, and I overthought every possible interaction we might have.

With Zev, I didn’t know what to expect, and that somehow made me a little giddy. Like Christmas. Christmas didn’t make me faint; it just made me excited. Although, in this case, there was a chance I was going to get yelled at in public for Christmas, and I wasn’t completely thrilled about that prospect.

We exited the building, and I refused to look at him again. I strode across the cement, blinded by the hot afternoon light that hit me with a pinprick of pain behind my eyes. The thing with my faulty autonomic nervous system was that if it decided to misfire—and it could misfire in a dizzying array of ways—I didn’t get to decide what set it off. I could be aware of triggers, like things that made me scared or nervous, but new ones popped up all the time. And sometimes they never happened again.

The sun beating down on my forehead triggered a sudden migraine, and I winced as nausea and a searing headache assaulted my body. Next would come the dizziness, and if I was really lucky, I wouldn’t keel over in front of the math building. Whatever Zev had planned, I hoped he would make it quick because the last thing I needed was to prove him right and faint into his arms so he could lord over me the clear necessity for a babysitter.

We reached the curb where a semicircle drive-through lane allowed cars to drop off students. A silver, fancy sedan pulled up to the curb, but just as I moved to step around it, Zev swooped in from behind me, steered me toward the back of the car, opened the door, and shoved me inside. He had done it so quickly, and with such little fuss, I found myself bundled into a posh-scented leather seat and crowded by Zev’s tall body in a matter of seconds.

He swept an arm under my legs, guiding them to the far side of the seat. Then he closed the door, sat back, and folded his arms. The windows were tinted, and the air conditioning blasted over my face in a cool wave. It calmed the harsh pain behind my eyes, and I immediately felt less dizzy.

I looked around, bewildered. “Uh, what?”

Zev lifted his hands, gesturing to the car’s interior. “Kidnapping.”

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