Page 59 of Leashed

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sage groaned and rolled over, tapping her desk until her fingers came into contact with her chiming cell. Turning off the alarm, she pushed herself up onto her elbows and blinked, looking down at the messages covering her screen.

Call me when you get up

Please

Got that book here

So yeah call k

Sorry

No word from him in days. A weekend of silence followed by two more nights of nothing. One exam had come and gone without a single message from him, her casual invite to join her at the coffee shop from days earlier left unread until the early hours of this morning.

The silence on his end amplified the silence on Nixon’s as well, his last message to her a simple, I’m assessing our compatibility and will call with my decision.

The bluntness should have cut her, the unexpectedness of his words should have knocked her breath from her body.

But all she felt was the familiar ache. A steady, pulsing tension easily ignored amid exams and essays.

Steeling her resolve to remain unaffected, she ran her thumb across the screen and tapped on Bo’s number, ignoring the flutter that went through her at the sound of his gravelly voice when he answered.

“Hey.”

She lay back in bed. “Hey.”

There was a long silence broken up only by the rustling of what she assumed was his bedding. “Damn,” he muttered. “I don’t know what to say here. Um, your last exam today?”

“It is,” she replied, her voice softening slightly at the awkwardness in his. “Starts in two hours, then I’m freed from studying for a month before I start my doctoral thesis.”

“Could you use a lift there? I have a few errands to run and could use the incentive to get my ass out of bed.”

“It’s a three-hour exam,” she warned. “You’d be stuck in the area for the whole morning.”

“Better than being stuck here,” he stated quietly as a booming voice sounded in the background. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

*

Bo pulled upto Sage’s complex and tossed his truck into park, jumping out to open the passenger door before she had a chance to make down the sidewalk. “Hey, stranger.” He grinned when she smiled up at him. “You’re looking very studious.”

She rolled her eyes and got in, tucking her laptop and purse beside her as he closed her door and jogged around the truck to his own. “If that’s your way of politely saying I look exhausted, burned out, and cranky, thank you.”

He tapped the full coffee cups he’d picked up on his way. “It’s my way of saying you look like you’re about to kick some exam ass. Drink up.” As she cuddled up to her cup, he pulled onto the freeway. “I owe you for this. My uncle’s in town and I needed to get outta there for a bit.”

“Is this the uncle with the amphorae collection?” she asked, turning toward him.

“Yup. Been hanging with him at his place since last week. We got in a few hours ago.” When her shoulders dropped a fraction and her expression relaxed, he side-eyed her. “What’ve you been up to?”

She set her drink down and leaned back in her seat. “Studying. Working. The usual.”

He dropped one hand to his phone and ran his thumb over it. “What were you doing the night you asked me to swing by the coffeehouse?”

Any hope he’d had of keeping it cool when he arrived topside had evaporated when his cell had powered on and he’d seen her text.

Meet me at Bean?

Four words. A simple command. One that had erased all chill he had as he fired off a series of stupid messages back.

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