Page 26 of Shattered

And hand.

And self.

Callum was probably merely tolerating her, and here she had to go and reach out and touch him. Okay, technically he’d touched her first during the race, and he’d fallen on top of her, and picked

her up, and carried her to the finish line. But that was all for a set activity they’d been pretty much forced to participate in. Well, kind of. He was the one who’d actually told her to live a little and basically forced them to do the race to begin with. But that didn’t mean anything other than the fact that he wanted his business to win and get bumped up in the standings.

Maybe he did want to touch her.

Maybe he didn’t.

Maybe he was just…

“That is actually my first professional one I had done,” Callum said, pulling her from the rampant tornado of questions her brain was currently spiraling within. “Drew and I messed around with tattoos on each other before this, but I had those covered with better ones over time. We weren’t the best when we first started.” He laughed a little and took a swig of his beer.

Oh, god…

Why was that laugh the most beautiful melody she had ever heard?

“What’s the story behind it?” Sam quickly inquired. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to laugh again or not. It would be so very torturous to hear it again, but then again, the torture of not hearing it again might be even worse.

He didn’t answer, but instead shook his head in a definite no while smirking.

“Oh, come on. You just showed me a massive tattoo and you won’t tell me what it means?”

“I’ll tell you one day when I’m too drunk to care. How about that?”

“Whatever.” Sam rolled her eyes.

“My turn,” he said as he cocked his head her way. “Why are you so goddamn stressed all the time?” She started to argue, but he cut in again, “Don’t take that the wrong way, okay? But you are so wound up all the time. Even before I walked over here, you looked like you had every muscle in your body tensed. What gives?”

She opened and closed her mouth multiple times, trying to find the right words to say. In the end, she settled on the truth.

“I have this scholarship, and there are a lot of stipulations in place that I have to live up to if I want to keep it. I basically can’t get anything below a B for a single assignment, and I have to keep a 4.0 GPA. It hasn’t been that hard to keep up with until this past year when classes started getting a lot tougher. I’m not sure how I will fare in medical school. So, anyway. I’m just stressed about the possibility of losing my scholarship and not being able to afford my last year of college. I would have to drop out until I could save up.”

“What about your parents? Or grandparents? They didn’t give you any money to help out with school?”

“Nope. It’s all on me.” Her heart tightened at the words.

“Well, that’s shitty, but not completely impossible. I’m sure you will do fine.”

“Let’s hope I do,” she responded with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

He sat quiet for a moment before asking, “Would you like to come with me to Social for a while? I’m going to hear my friend’s band tonight.”

For a moment, she was a little clueless as to how she should respond. She checked her phone to find it was somehow already after nine. Had they really been talking for over an hour already? She wouldn’t get much studying done tonight even if she did leave now.

So far, they had only interacted at work and then at Micah’s. And very few of those interactions were what one would call positive. This would be the first time they would purposefully plan to meet up somewhere.

Would that make them friends?

She knew she should decline and head home to get some rest. She opened her mouth to say just that, but for some reason the exact opposite came out.

“Um…yeah, sure. Where is it?

“Social? It’s right downtown. You can follow me and then head out for home whenever.”

“Okay, yeah. When do you want to go? Now?”

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