Page 71 of His Custody

Given permission, he unlaced the leather and stripped it off, rolling the material over her delicate wrist. They were a bit rough, the seam biting into her soft flesh, leaving a red line that sank his stomach. If she wanted to wear these, he’d get her new ones. Softer, finer ones that wouldn’t leave such marks. Or if they did, they’d at least be his marks.

Her hand lay still by her side and so he peeled the other one off, surprised when he ran up against metal. His heart burst open into a thousand shards of pleasure that streaked through his veins. She was wearing her bracelet. It had printed the star into her skin and he rubbed over the indentation with the pad of his thumb.

She’d made him believe... Who cared? She’d had it all this time and it knocked him flat. For such a tiny thing, she packed an awfully big punch, knew his soft spots. They’d joked about it when she was a child, the initials Bill and Marcy hadn’t quite thought through. TKO indeed.

He rubbed her wrists for a few minutes before he turned them over, almost absent-mindedly. She was right, skin against skin was soothing. But when he did... Fuck.Fuck. It wasn’t the bracelet. Or it wasn’t just the bracelet.

On the inside of each wrist, there was a small star, and circling each star, text. Tiny script he could barely read but as soon as he caught a word, he knew what they said. On the right, the letters spelled outsecond star to the rightand on the left,straight on till morning.

Forget knocked out, he’d never get up again. She’d killed him dead, ripped out his heart and licked it clean. An unfamiliar sensation rose up in his sinuses and if he didn’t know any better, he’d think it was tears. He didn’t cry. He never cried. He hadn’t cried when his parents and his brother and Marcy and Bill died, he hadn’t cried when Keyne left.

He kissed her wrists, once on each star and then pulled the blanket over her, petting her hair. Her breathing was deep and even, she wouldn’t miss him for a few minutes. He went to the bathroom, took a quick shower, brushed his teeth and came back to bed. She’d turned on her side while he was gone and he slid in behind her, pulling her sleep-warm body up against him before he closed his eyes.

Chapter Twenty-six

September

Boys. She hated them. Stupid, smelly, immatureboys. They didn’t even have the good sense to be sweet as pie like Gavin had been. They had all of Jasper’s swagger without any of the qualities that backed it up. Jasper was crazy smart, ridiculously hot, and, though she supposed this shouldn’t have turned her on yet, not when she wasn’t exactly soccer mom material,responsible.

The contrast was especially stark after having spent the weekend at Jasper’s. Or more accurately,asJasper’s. She was still sore in the most delicious way, and she wouldn’t be forgetting this weekend for quite some time. If he were aiming to make her want to date, he was going about it in a completely ass-backward fashion. Not that she was complaining. Well she was now, becauseboys. Ugh.

And now to add insult to the injury of these obnoxious creatures taking up oxygen on her campus, one of them had taken her favorite study spot. She’d found it the second week of classes: close enough to the dorm that a bathroom break didn’t take forever and a day, but far enough that even with windows open the music wafting out the windows was more soothing white noise than distraction, a tree whose roots cradled her when she sat down and whose leaves provided good shade with a view of most of the quad. Perfect. And now one of those dumbass boys was ruining it.

She paused to assess him. Cute, she guessed. If you liked that kind of thing. Light brown hair parted to the side and a preppy dresser. God, those Nantucket red pants. She couldn’t see what he was reading, but it didn’t matter. He was going to be reading it elsewhere shortly.

When she got closer, she realized it was a book of constellations. Her feet and her heart stuttered at the same time. She’d felt a vague twinge looking at him before and couldn’t quite figure out why, but now it had become a full wrench of her heart. Gavin. He reminded her of Gavin. And when he looked up and smiled at her, she had to clap a hand over her mouth. It was too much.

Her plan to give him a talking to and drive him away flew from her mind. She gripped the handles of the tote she’d slung over her shoulder so hard the canvas dug into her palms and she turned to go back to her room.

Most of the time Gavin was a dull ache, a phantom limb she could still feel but she’d adjusted to its absence in reality. Every so often, though, it was like he was being ripped away from her again and the appearance of tree boy had sparked one of those times. She had to get away. The urge to call Jasper gripped her, maybe he would—

“Hey.”

The voice was close behind her. She didn’t turn around. He probably wasn’t talking to her, but even if he was, maybe especially if he was, she didn’t want to—

“Hey.”

This time the voice was accompanied by a hand on her shoulder.

She whipped around, smacking the hand away, barely restraining herself from lashing out with a kick to her intruder’s knee or a punch to his face. “Don’t touch me.”

That’s the other thing she didn’t like. These college boys, they felt entitled totouchyou. No one had before, but she was learning it had been because all the boys and men she knew had thought of her as Gavin’s girlfriend, Bill O’Connell’s daughter, Jasper Andersson’s ward. It wasn’t being a person that entitled her to the integrity of her body, it had been belonging to another man. The more she thought about it, the more it pissed her off, so she snarled when she repeated, “Don’t touch me.”

Tree boy held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. I won’t, I... Are you okay?”

“Fine. Leave me alone.”

“You look like you saw a ghost.” He ducked his head and looked at her from his brows that had gathered together above the bridge of his nose. He was almost looking up at her even though he was a good six feet tall. It was his posture and the way he was lean. Not a lot of muscle or fat to spare on him, but not scrawny. Probably a lot like what Gavin would’ve looked like, given the chance.

“I did.”

His eyes widened. “Me?”

“Yeah, you.” Why was she still talking to this guy? She wanted to get back to her room, have a good cry, indulge in her tics of rubbing her star and her scar in peace, maybe talk to Jasper and—

“I remind you of someone?”

“Yeah.”

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