Page 5 of Ice Cold, Red Hot
I sighed and slipped the elastic around my wrist. I knew I’d end up putting my hair up at some point.
“We’re off!” she announced, heading for the apartment door.
I’d been overly aware of the sounds in the hallway beyond our apartment, tracking the comings and goings of the hockey players that seemed to surround us at all times. I did not want to bump into Shepherd in the hallway. Or anywhere. And I’d become paranoid about just opening the door without looking first.
“Move,” Nat said as I squinted so I could look out the little peephole on the front of the door.
“One sec.”
“There are no rapists in the hallway,” she sighed.
Luckily, there was no one at all in the hallway, though Ithought I’d heard Shepherd’s door open and close a few times in the last hour.
God, I hated being so aware of him. Why did he have to be right there? A whole campus, and of course, we’re neighbors.
“You’re still acting weird,” Nat told me, reaching around me to pull the door open.
I sighed. “Sorry.” I didn’t want to tell her what was going on inside me—what was literally eating me.
Shepherd.
It was bad enough that I spent the last month of the summer wondering what the hell I’d done wrong, what I’d said to make him just disappear instead of coming to say goodbye before his family left the resort. I’d even considered bribing one of the reception staff to look up his family’s contact information, but I’d recovered my pride at the last second.
He didn’t want any lingering connections. I wouldn’t push it.
But this?
Literally pretending he had never seen me before? I couldn’t get my head around it. First I was pissed. Then, hurt. Now? I didn’t even know. I was a mess.
Somehow, a guy who wouldn’t even look at me had accomplished the single thing I’d been planning to avoid this year. He was a HUGE distraction. I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t focus. I’d need to figure something out before classes started Monday.
I followed Nat out the front door of the apartment building and across the street to campus. It was greathaving her with me, since she knew the place like the back of her hand, and the campus was surprisingly huge.
“This is the quickest way to get to central campus,” she said, heading up a trail that led through a stand of trees. “It gets muddy in winter and it’s pretty sketchy at night. Don’t come through here by yourself if it’s late.”
I could see why she offered that advice. Even though the sun was still end-of-summer high, here in the mini-forest, it was dark and there was a noticeable drop in temperature. A shiver went through me.
“Tennis center here, athletic training facility there.” Nat pointed things out as we hit the main walk through campus, and I tried to keep up. “That’s the hockey rink,” she said, gesturing at the huge building we were passing on our right. “We’ll have to go to the games for sure. They’re a blast.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said noncommittally. I had no intention of going to hockey games. Especially not if Shepherd was the captain of the team.
Nat rolled her eyes at me and grabbed my arm, tugging me along. “You can keep trying to be a sourpuss, but I’ll win you over. This place is so much fun, and we’re finally together!”
Nat’s enthusiasm was infectious, and as we made our way into the grassy quad between the alumni center and the parking garage for the sports facilities, I let go of some of the angst I’d been carrying around.
So what if Shepherd was here? So what if he was determined to pretend nothing had ever happened between us? There were plenty of fish in the sea if I felt like casting a line, and I had much more important things to think about.I squeezed Nat’s arm and silently vowed to enjoy myself at the welcome event she’d insisted we attend.
“The food at this thing is awesome,” she whispered as we made our way between groups of students and faculty standing around chatting and smiling. “Plus, you can say hello to the school bigwigs.”
I didn’t need to do that, but I figured meeting Dr. Gunning in person would be a good thing, since I was going to be working for her this year. I just hoped I’d recognize her and wouldn’t make a fool of myself. We’d talked on the phone a couple times, and her steely confidence made me a little bit nervous.
“Meatballs, two o’clock!” Nat announced, calling the attention of several people nearby as she waved for the waiter to bring his tray our way. She happily accepted a napkin and several meatballs with toothpicks sticking out of them, which she loaded into it.
I accepted one too. “Delicious,” I agreed.
“Aw, crap,” Nat breathed. “Can’t keep out the riff raff, I guess.”
I followed her gaze to the far side of the gathering, and my heart dropped like a kettlebell inside me when I locked eyes with someone looking this way.
