Page 2 of The Love Penalty
“Do you want to talk about it?”
There are only so many ways I can say “I’m fine.” She’s starting to see right through me, so I said yes to Denver as a way to appease her. She was so freaking happy, and I swear I did my best. I line-danced, I played poker, I smiled and laughed when everyone else did. I tried to distract myself at every turn, but then came the afternoon at the spa—a chance to finally stop and relax… and, well, the opposite happened. My brain had no place to go, and all those thoughts I’d been avoiding came back like a tornado.
I have to get to my dorm, to my desk, to my computer.
I need quiet, space, isolation.
But how do you explain that to someone without sounding like the world’s biggest nerd?
How do you tell your effervescent, life-of-the-party friend that you’re crumbling, and the only thing to make you feel grounded is diving into someone else’s past? That studying the life of a servant boy in Pompeii or a resistance fighter in war-torn France helps you sleep easier at night than having to face the world as it is today?
I went away to college thinking it would be the making of me.
And maybe, in some ways, it has been.
But it’s also destroyed a part of myself that I desperately want back. The carefree Lani who was ready to take the world by storm is dying a slow death, bogged down by uncertainty and pressure.
I don’t know how to get her back.
And so I sit here staring at raindrops and hoping the guy in the driver’s seat will be true to his word and drop me outside my dorm as fast as possible, so that I can run inside and re-edit my essay, poring over each sentence until I have perfection.
Shit, I really have lost it.
It makes me feel pathetic.
I don’t want to be some anxious scaredy-cat in the back seat. I want to be the balls-of-steel version of me who would have sat in the front with my chin held high. The one who would have slapped away wandering hands and told Mr. Hot and Handsome that if I wanted him to touch me, I’d let him know.
My throat hurts as I swallow and shrink in on myself a little more.
My gaze darts to his fingers wrapped around the steering wheel. He has nice hands, Asher Bensen. His fingers are long, his nails nicely cut and shaped, like he takes care of himself in the small ways too. They match his handsome, brooding face with his dark hair and chiseled jawline. He has a weekend’s worth of stubble on his chin, and it only adds to his sex appeal.
A trembling desire works through me, and I push my arms into my stomach, willing it away.
As if! I am so not attracted to that asshole.
I mean, I get why the puck bunnies love him. But they only see him for short amounts of time. I’ve had to talk to the guy on the phone, sit next to him during a quiz night… and I just spent the entire weekend around him.
It really is such a shame that someone so gorgeous can be so insanely irritating. Sometimes I want to slap that arrogant smirk right off his face. And those eyes of his—they study everything, like he’s constantly looking for an opening to be a pain in the ass.
His gaze darts to the rearview mirror, and our eyes connect for the briefest moment.
Shit, did he sense me checking him out?
Kill me now!
Whipping my head to the right, I stare at those raindrops like they’re somehow going to save me.
Stupid sexy hockey player with his grumpy-ass frown and piercing blue eyes.
He’s not getting the better of me.
No, sir.
Closing my eyes, I force my mind back to world history, mentally revising my notes on the impact of female spies during the Second World War and how their stories affected the feminist movement back then, and today.
CHAPTER 2
ASHER