Page 30 of The Bully's Dare

I’ve been zoning out during the Tomorrow’s Doctors class. Dr. Esmerelda is staring at me expectantly from across the conferences table. “Team up with Jason for the assignment, please.”

My chest gets tight. I look at Jason, but for once, he doesn’t have murder in his eyes.

Actually, he’s been in a bizarrely good mood today. And I feel like I’m walking on a minefield around him, waiting for the bomb to detonate, because it can’t be this easy.

The class dives into teams of two. Each team is given a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. Our task is to accurately take the pulse and pressure of our partner.

Simple enough, at least. Jason goes first. I have to roll up my sleeve so he can take my blood pressure. This is easy for him.

He jots down my statistics in his notebook. Then he rolls up his sleeves and extends his arm. He’s distracted, though. He keeps glancing off into nothing, getting lost in his thoughts.

“This is familiar,” I say, trying to draw him back to reality.

For the first time, his blue eyes meet mine. “What?”

“Come on. You don’t remember?” He looks at me blankly, so I continue: “Four summers ago. I was practicing to get my lifeguard certificate so I could pull a couple shifts at the pool. You volunteered to be my CPR dummy, and then complained that I nearly broke your ribs.”

Jason looks startled. “I forgot about that.”

“I didn’t,” I say. “You weren’t always an asshole.”

He grins. “But always a dummy.”

I bite back a smile of my own. “Won’t argue there.”

I count his blood pressure and then remove the sleeve. Then I attach the stethoscope. He’s wearing a white knitted sweater and it’s going to be hard to hear anything through that. “Can you take off your sweater?” I ask.

He answers by lifting his sweater an inch. Nothing but bare skin underneath.

“Do you mind if I go underneath?”

“Go wild.”

I cup the stethoscope and rub it between my hands. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“It’s cold.”

Jason snorts a laugh, but he doesn’t say anything else.

Once I’ve gotten the temperature of the stethoscope up a bit, I roll my chair directly in front of Jason. His limbs are too long and he has to splay his knees to make room for me. I slip the stethoscope underneath his sweater. His skin is warm and I hear him make a small intake of breath—the metal is still a little cold, despite my best intentions—but he otherwise doesn’t complain.

I slide the tool up his chest and over his heart. I’m focused, zeroed in on the whump-whump beat.

It’s strong. Loud. And thumping quickly against his chest.

“Are you nervous?” I ask him.

His mouth screws. “Why would I be nervous?”

“Your pulse is fast—”

I stop my tongue. It hits me then. We’re so close like this. His heart is pounding. His pupils are dilated. His chest rises and falls in short, quick breaths.

Jason is not nervous. He’s aroused.

I know. And he knows that I know. I can tell by the spike of fear in his eyes. But then they narrow. “You’re doing it wrong,” he mutters.

His heart is hammering in my ears.

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