Page 50 of Resist Me

“Not me, buddy. I don’t thirst for guys who are already enamored with someone else.”

I leaned forward. “You annoy the hell out of me sometimes. You’re like that dude in Game of Thrones who had all the secrets and spies. He got burned to death by a dragon, you know.”

“I guess he wasn’t that good at what he did, huh?”

“Fine. Be cryptic. I’ll forget all about it when I leave anyway. My attention span is laughably short.”

“Just like your dick.”

He dodged a flyaway ravioli, which ended up splatting against the fridge. It stuck there for a minute before it fell to the floor. The glare he shot me was almost as good as Kai’s when I pissed him off.

*****

When I left my room, Sen was sitting on the couch in just a pair of sweats. He looked tired. With work and his new classes, it felt like I’d barely seen him.

“You eat?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Cooking sounds like an extreme sport right now.”

I chuckled and started opening cabinets. I wasn’t Gordon Ramsey, but I could whip something up. Oftentimes, my dad wouldn’t make dinner for us. If he did, I tried not to be around since he’d make me sit at the table to eat, which was too close for comfort.

After setting a cutting board on the island, I started to slice some chicken. My eyes raised to the TV, then dropped again.

“Think we can watch something else?”

“Sure. Marvel isn’t really my thing. It was just on.”

He flipped to Netflix and I refocused on the chicken. Turning around, I put it in a pan, then got some tortillas. How many quesadillas did I want? It was a hard decision. Probably ten. It was Friday, so I didn’t have class. If I went into a coma, I wouldn’t be miffed about it.

By the time I dropped a plate in front of Sen, I was starving. One day, I’d be able to afford ordering food every day. Or I’d have a chef. That would be cool, but it also felt pretentious. I was a pretty simple person. The only thing I’d really need was a pest-free apartment.

A door opened down the hall, then Willow showed up beside the couch. She stretched her arms above her with a big yawn. I saw her eyeing my quesadillas, so I put the plate in my lap and hovered over them protectively.

She dropped ungracefully into the spot between me and Sen. When she brought her feet up, they were entirely too close to me, so I shoved her legs away. The sneaky bitch used it as an opportunity to make me let down my guard. She snatched two whole quesadillas off of my plate and leaned as far away from me as she could while she took a massive bite of one.

I tried to grab them, but it made her slam into Sen. Instead of continuing the fight, she stood and raced back to her room with her spoils.

The little couch potato beside me snickered. “This is like a taste of your own medicine.”

“Oh, don’t you start. I made you food.”

“You’re a saint, West. If I was allowed to knight you, I would.”

With an unsatisfied grunt, I ate the rest of my quesadillas quickly so that she wouldn’t have a chance to come steal more of them. She was a wild, uncivilized animal.

Just as I was getting into the movie, my phone went off. The name that came up made me pause. Without reading it, I slipped it back into my pocket. I couldn’t pay attention to the TV now. A million thoughts were going through my head, so I caved and took out the phone again. It wouldn’t hurt to see what he had to say. Unless he wanted to compensate me for my fucked up ribs, I wasn’t going to respond.

Chapter 19

Lincoln

Clearly, I’d lost my damn mind. Some sort of sickness had infiltrated my hypothalamus or some other bullshit part of my brain. I texted West earlier, just like Willow wanted me to, and here I was feeling upset that he’d left me on read.

I needed a lobotomy. This was West Densmore. I couldnotdevelop feelings for him. Was I starting to already? Fucking hell. If I’d never let him sleep at my house, it probably would’ve been fine. He dropped that bomb about his sexuality, it opened up the possibility, and now, I’d become a pathetic mess.

If I tried to hang out with him, he’d laugh in my face. Letting him find out what was happening would be the greatest mistake of my life unless he somehow returned the feelings, which was extremely unlikely. Probably impossible. The way he’d acted in the library might’ve been enough to convince me that the guy really did hate me, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe that was the case. Especially after what Willow told me, I wondered if he even made a conscious decision to lash out and push people away. Maybe it was a learned behavior that became a habit or a self-defense mechanism.

Willow’s statement about toxicity came back to me with a vengeance. I was stuck on a guy with enough red flags to carpet a Met Gala. He was also weirdly endearing, though. He was bright- annoyingly so, but still.

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