“Bria—”

“Be careful out there in the night. You never know when you might run into someone dangerous.” I shove his hand away and stalk toward the stairs. When I look over my shoulder, Kaplan is still on his knees, holding his injured wrist to his chest.

“Better put some ice on that,” I call up the stairs as I descend out of view.

I turn from the front desk when I reach the main floor, bypassing the locked doors as I stride toward the nearest emergency exit. I pull the red handle of the alarm on the wall and then press the long, straight bar of the unused door. Sirens blare around me, muffling as the door closes in my wake, the silver mist of my breath rising around me in the cool rain as I hurry from the library, smiling into the dark.

OceanofPDF.com

14

OceanofPDF.com

ELI

“Jesus, Kap. What happened to you?”

I look up from the sink in the Psych building’s faculty break room with a sigh and a weary glare. The ice burns its cold sting into my skin. I wince as I press it harder to my wrist. “I went to the library.”

Fletcher scoffs. “And what, battled a velociraptor? You look like shit.” She leans against the counter and takes in the disheveled sight before her. The mussed-up hair. The shreds of the jacket’s lining hanging below its hem. My guilty-as-fuck expression. I fucked your grad student in the library, my thoughts blare on repeat. I scowl down at my wrist.

“Oh my god,” Fletch says. “You had sex.”

“What the fuck?”

“Who was it?”

“How did you—”

“It was Bria, wasn’t it?”

“What the—”

“Holy shit. It was Bria. And she ate you alive.” Fletcher cackles a delighted laugh. She slaps her thigh and I shoot her a glare. She only laughs harder. I groan and lean down to rest my forehead on my arm. “See? I told you she doesn’t hate you.”

“No, she definitely hates me,” I grumble without looking up.

“Not that much if she screwed you in the library.”

“But enough to pull the emergency alarm afterward and leave me to deal with campus security.”

Fletcher bellows another laugh. She laughs and laughs and laughs. I can almost hear the tears sliding down her skin. When it finally subsides, she lays a hand on my shoulder. “Want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

She chuckles and it fades to a long pause of silence before Fletcher squeezes my shoulder and passes behind me. I hear the fridge door open and I lift my head to watch as she opens a random carton of almond milk. She gives the contents a sniff and takes a long swig. My stomach churns. “I’m happy for you,” she says, the amusement in her voice coated with a thick smear of processed nut juice.

“Don’t be.”

“Why not, because you bent and broke a few rules in one night? Bria’s not your student. Maybe it’s not celebrated as the paradigm of morality, but come on, Kap. You’re both consenting adults and you’re not her supervisor. You’re not even going to be here next year. And fucking in the library? Yeah, that’s probably forbidden if you read between the lines of the rules that are posted on the wall. But who hasn’t had that fantasy? And more importantly, who were you hurting?”

“I don’t know, campus security’s budget? Those dickhead undergrads that never bothered to check if we’d left?”

Fletcher snorts. “Stop trying to live up to your Marvel namesake, Kap,” she says as she leans back and looks at my butt. “That is America’s Ass. Though maybe not anymore. It might belong to Bria the Velociraptor now.”

Fletcher cackles as I sigh dramatically and shift my gaze back down to my wrist. I still feel guilt twisting my guts like braided rope. This isn’t me, bending my rules so far that they fray and break. But it felt good. Really good. Like all this pressure to conform to rigid standards was released for a few precious moments. I took what I wanted, and in the absence of the voice of reason was music. The sound of Bria’s desperate moans. The rhythm of her back slamming into the books. The cadence of my breath and the heartbeat that deafened me.

I groan and lay my forehead back down against my arm, turning Fletcher’s question over in my mind. Who am I hurting? Me. Me and my sanity. Because there’s no way one stolen moment with Bria will ever be enough, but she might never let me close to have a second chance at capturing that feeling again. And that thought is like a blade carving out my soul.

Fletcher laughs as though she can see my pathetic thoughts. I turn my head and watch as she takes another long drink from the carton. “Whose is that?”

“No idea. I’m living on the edge, Kap.” I snort a laugh and Fletcher pats my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go get a real drink.”

We head to Fletch’s house on Oak where she and her wife, Blake, manage to wrestle free a few details about my eventful evening. Yes, it was scorching hot. Yes, it surpassed every library-sex fantasy I’ve ever had—and I’ve had many. Yes, Bria most definitely still hates me. I think.

Bria is there in my mind even when our conversation moves to other topics. She’s a scar across my thoughts. Her gentle scent is still in my nostrils. She wasn’t wearing perfume. It’s just her, a faint flowery note in her skin. But her taste…it exploded on my tongue. Sweet and hot with a hint of salt. I want to bury my face between her thighs, to devour her, to stroke the flesh inside her as she pulls my hair and rides my face and I—

“Kap. Have you heard a word I said?”

“Boy’s got it bad,” Blake agrees with a smirk around the lip of her wine glass.

“He barely survived one round. I don’t know if we should be trying to push them on that trip together,” Fletcher says. “He might wind up a bunch of bleached bones on the roadside.”

I glower at Fletcher and take a sip of my bourbon. “Trip? What trip? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your trip to Ogden, dumbass. Interviewing eyewitnesses. You know, part deux of the favor you owe me.”

I run my palm down my face. “Absofuckinglutely not. I am not taking Bria with me to Ogden. I couldn’t even get her to go to dinner as per your request. Are you on crack?”

Fletcher cackles like the evil villain in basically any movie ever. “Oh come on, Kap. I’m willing to bet your dinner invitation was half-assed at best, but look at you now! You’ve well surpassed that by fucking her in the library. You’ve exceeded my wildest expectations.”

A loud groan resonates from my chest.

“Besides,” she continues, “she’s a talented student. We’re lucky to have her. She could have gone anywhere. Literally anywhere, and she’s here at Berkshire. And you’re going to deny her the chance to go test her methods of interviewing in the field because, what…you’re worried you’re going to fuck her? Spoiler alert, Kap—you already did.”

“And you will again,” Blake pipes in as Fletch snickers beside her.

“I hate you both.”

Blake’s onyx eyes warm with empathy and she tosses her long black braids over her shoulder, leaning forward to rest her forearms on her knees. “In medicine, you might spend the first few years learning in the classroom, but you become a true doctor in the process of clinical rotations and residency. You know, by doing. Putting your training into practice.”

“There are dangerous people involved. Bria could get hurt.”

“There are dangerous people everywhere. You can’t shield her from the career she chose. She’s far from stupid. She knows there are risks,” Blake counters. “You know I try to stay neutral between you both, but I’m with Kat on this. Give Bria a chance to do this.”

I sigh, leaning back in my chair as I take a long sip of my drink. Fletcher smiles and the long glance we exchange makes me think that if I let it linger, the decision will be made for me.