Page 157 of Damaged Protector

Ignoring him, I slammed the door closed behind me and headed down the hall in the opposite direction. Let Starla get off her lazy ass and let him in.

“I’ll see what I can do, Mallori,” my dorm’s resident advisor, Rebecca, told me a few minutes after I’d told her the entire story.

“Thank you,” I said, sighing with relief. “I’ve tried to talk to her, but she and her boyfriend are both really hostile toward me. I’m not even supposed to be in this dorm. I was assigned to grad student housing, but when I got here,” I did ironic jazz hands, “surprise!”

Rebecca laughed. She was really sweet. “That sucks. Maybe another dorm will open up soon. You’re in a bad situation, but there’s just not much available.” She patted my hand. “I’ll speak with Starla, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll file a formal report.”

“I feel bad about reporting them,” I said, which was only about half true. “I just don’t know what else to do. I tried wearing noise-canceling headphones to bed one night, but then I didn’t hear my alarm and almost missed my first class the next day.”

When I left, I headed to the cadaver lab in the PT building to practice. We had a practical next week, and I needed to ace it.

“Hey, Mallori,” Scotty P. said as soon as I entered, and every cell in my body felt weary. I didn’t want to deal with his shit today.

I waved and headed to one of the cadavers laid out on the other side of the room, but he followed me. Today is not the day, Scotty P., and I am not the one.

Just as I was about to tell him off, he said, “I wanted to apologize for how I acted before, Mal. I was a real douche.”

Huffing out a laugh, I said, “Yeah, you kinda were.”

“I didn’t know you were dating anyone, but that’s still not an excuse. Do you think we could be friends?”

I lifted one eyebrow. “You mean real friends and not I’m going to trick you into going on a date with me friends?”

He laughed and held out a hand. “Real friends.”

With a reluctant smile, I shook his hand. “Okay, you got it. You want to practice with me for the practical next week?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “Hell yes. Let me grab my notebook.” Returning a minute later, he dabbed some menthol beneath his nose to help with the strong odor of formaldehyde in the room and handed the container over to me.

“Thanks,” I told him, sticking my finger in and smearing some beneath my nose before donning a mask.

“No prob. This lab really fucking stinks, bruh.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that as we got started.

Chapter 45

“Shit, I’m fucking tired,” I groaned, laying my head against the headrest in my car.

I’d been in school for a month, and things had escalated since I made a report against Starla for having an unauthorized person in our room. She lied to the housing officials and told them she had company sometimes, but that her boyfriend certainly wasn’t living there. So I’d started keeping a calendar of when Donner slept over—which was still every fucking night. I was at the housing office a few times a week, begging for a transfer.

But, it was her word against mine, and nothing was being done.

And now Donner and Starla had started to try and torture me to death, ramping up their sexual activities and the noise level. All night long. It was like freaking World War Three in our room.

Once, I was so frustrated, I trekked down the hall at two in the morning and woke Rebecca. By the time we got back to our room, Donner was miraculously gone, and I looked like a fucking idiot.

I’d started noticing weird things happening as well, nothing I could prove, of course, but it was starting to freak me out.

Prying my weary eyes open, I cranked my car and drove to Hawk’s house. He had insisted that I keep my key so I could continue teaching my private dance lessons. I always used the door to the studio and didn’t go into the main part of the house. That just seemed like an invasion of his privacy.

Plus, I really didn’t want to see any evidence that he was having other women over. I mean, surely he was. I’d been gone for four weeks now, and the man had needs. Insatiable needs of which I was all too aware.

I missed him. So fucking much.

Our schedules didn’t mesh up, so I’d only seen him in person once, and that was last week when I was leaving through the studio door while he was pulling up.

My heart had almost thumped right out of my chest at the sight of him. He looked damn good, so handsome and strong, and all I wanted to do was run and jump on him, wrap my arms and legs around him and let him hold me.

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