Page 44 of The Charlie Method

I roll my eyes. “Of course I do. There aren’t a lot of campus celebrities at Briar.”

Part of me is tempted to reveal I hooked up with him in his car last week, but I have a reputation to uphold. Charlotte Kingston is a respectable sorority girl whose mother is a former president. She is going to be a biomedical engineer. She has a 4.0 GPA.

She doesn’t indulge in dirty conversations before bed with two faceless hotties on an app. And she’s not going to admit to an almost one-night stand with a football player in a parking lot. Nope.

My phone chimes with a message from yet another person I’m not going to be telling Blake Logan about.

DANTE:

Are we still on for tonight?

“Sorry, I need to respond to this. Study group,” I lie as I unlock my phone.

ME:

Yeah. See you at midnight.

DANTE:

Can’t wait.

Blake’s watching me as I put the phone away.

“What?” I ask.

“Why do I get the feeling there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye?”

I lift a brow. “Doesn’t that apply to everybody?”

“I guess.” She twirls her straw around in her glass. “But I’m usually a good judge of character.”

You’re eighteen, I almost counter. But I realize how patronizing that sounds. Eighteen-year-olds can be good judges of character. Being three years older doesn’t make me wiser.

“I don’t know what to tell ya,” I say lightly. “I am exactly who I seem to be. Now let’s pick up where we left off before Isaac so rudely interrupted.”

“What were we talking about again?”

“Um… you lost your virginity to a hockey player. You have a crush on a tortured musician. Super Magnums. Oh, right, the reason we’re actually here—whether you want to declare a communications major.”

I steer us back to safety, because that’s what I’m supposed to be doing with this girl. Mentoring.

We stay at Malone’s for another hour, then grab the bill. Blake has to use the ladies’ room before we go, so I make my way to the door to wait for her outside. Halfway to the exit, I spot a familiar figure. Will, my new lab partner.

He’s the kind of guy who commands attention because of his height and build. The powerful shoulders tapering down to a lean waist. The muscles rippling beneath his blue long-sleeved shirt.

“Hey,” he says, looking pleased to see me.

“Hey.”

He leans closer so I can hear him over the music. “How did the samples look today?”

Will had hockey practice this morning, so I was tasked with going to the lab to check on our cells. We placed them in the bioreactor earlier in the week, a device that mimics the conditions that allow tissues to naturally develop, and now we’re required to periodically remove samples and examine them under the microscope to assess our cells’ overall viability on the scaffold.

“They looked really good!” I tell him. “A ton of them are attaching to the scaffold.”

“Awesome.” His expression strains. “Jesus, it’s hot in here.”

As he rolls up his sleeves, I can’t help but notice his strong hands and the veins that run along his forearms. I imagine him gripping a hockey stick and slapping a bullet at the net, his entire body rippling with sheer power, and I suddenly see the appeal of hockey.

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