Page 10 of Tangled Up In You
“A haunted house.” She pointed to the mansion again. “The priest who used to teach here would sleep in his office to reassure his students that there were no ghosts.”
“And? Was he right?”
“No. He eventually had to perform an exorcism.”
Fitz laughed. “An exorcism, huh?”
“I know. I think they’re made up, too, but even so, I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to sleep in an empty house that everyone thinks is haunted.” She smiled, revealing those perfect teeth and the little dimple low on her cheek, and once again he was lost in the absolute beauty of her face.
She was, without question, the hottest woman Fitz had ever seen. She had these enormous, sparkling green eyes that seemed to take him in all at once, drinking in everything in front of her. Maybe that was what made him so uncomfortable in her presence—that feeling that she might be the first person on this campus who could see straight through him right to his rotten, unending bullshit. She was small, had zero flirtation game, and dressed like her only source of clothing was hand-me-downs from a much older aunt, but when she’d unzipped her coat earlier, he registered that she had a banging body under all those frumpy layers. And then there was the hair. It seemed alive, somehow, a kind of golden that appeared metallic in the rare glimpses of the sun they’d had so far. Even though it was wound up in a heavy braid, some of it had fallen loose, and it was unsettling how many times he’d thought about reaching out and touching it.
The problem was her. Fitz was the one doing the campus tour but felt like he was on a field trip led by a golden retriever with a PhD. She sang a song naming all the elements as they passed the science quad; she recited the entire preamble to the US Constitution when he’d pointed out her political science building. She could name every tree, flower, and leaf on the grounds—and, to his dismay, she would, unprompted. Fitz made the mistake of expressing doubt that she was truly fluent in seven languages, and she proceeded to speak only in German, French, Italian, Spanish, and then Dutch to him for the next five minutes. The only time she paused was to remind him in English that she wasn’t good yet at conversational Mandarin.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Nobody liked a know-it-all, but if she’d just been rattling off facts and information, he could’ve tuned it out. It was the unending questions he couldn’t ignore. Where did he grow up, what was his major, what was his favorite class, who was his favorite professor, did he have a roommate, where was his favorite place to eat on campus, where was his favorite place to eat off campus, what was it like being in the athletics program, did he have a car, did he go home on the weekends, did he go home for the holidays, would he have a summer job, how many of the states had he visited, had he ever been out of the country, what did he want to do when he graduated, and on and on.
She was completely irresistible as long as she wasn’t speaking, which, unfortunately, was never.
He blinked back into focus just as she was midsentence about, he thought, the exact method of the Blackburne Mansion exorcism.
“Okay, well, Gwen—”
“Ren.”
“Great, listen, you’ll have a chance to tell your classmates all of this when you take your vocal performance seminar here.” He made a show of looking at the time again. “I’m gonna grab a bite before my shift at work.”
Ren took a step forward, her palm outstretched. “Well, in that case, Just Fitz.” She giggled and shook his hand firmly. “It’s been very nice meeting you. I hope our paths cross again.”
“They likely will, given that we’re both in Bio 335.”
“That’s right.” And just as he turned to lead her back toward the quad, she asked, “May I sit by you tomorrow?”
He turned back, finding her gaze uncertain, brows furrowed. The question and the wobble in her voice pulled him up short. It was a woman being vulnerable, and if anything was his weakness, it was that. But it was also this pitiful woman in particular, and even a half hour with her had been too long. Fitz couldn’t imagine three class hours and three laboratory hours a week with her beside him, Rensplaining every tiny detail of the course material.
But a deeper truth floated to the surface: She also made him uneasy. Fitz had a perfect record at Corona so far, the top grade in every class he’d ever taken. He got them honestly—well, most of the time—and with charm and wile when the occasion called for it. But he didn’t do it to be valedictorian or for any other reason related to pride. He did it because his father, the biggest living donor to the school, made it clear that neither his money nor his reputation was Fitz’s to enjoy. And he did it because from the moment he was released from juvenile corrections nearly seven years ago, finishing at the very top was his only path to redemption and revenge. The way Ren came in with perfect scores, shooting to the most advanced courses before she’d even started, was the first real threat to his plan. The last thing he needed was a self-schooled farm girl ruining it in the final semester.
So he left her with the only reply he could muster: “Don’t worry, Sweden. Wherever you end up, you’ll be just fine.”
CHAPTER FIVE
REN
On her first official morning as a college freshman, Ren woke without an alarm. Which was good, she supposed, given that she no longer had one. Miriam was still asleep and almost eerily silent on her side of the room, nothing but a tuft of messy black hair peeking out from beneath her fluffy comforter. Briefly, Ren considered holding a hand mirror under her nose to make sure she was breathing, but she didn’t have one of those, either.
After her first meal alone in the overwhelmingly crowded dining hall the night before, she’d walked around campus, learning the paths by heart and planning out her schedule for her first day—when she would need to be up and showered, when she would need to be at the Student Services office to get her student ID, when she would need to be at the dining hall at breakfast to avoid the long and frankly intimidating line like the one at dinner. She felt the yawning chasm between herself and her peers—could sense in their body language how strange she seemed to everyone she tried to speak to—but while wandering, she met Joe, an older man who managed the athletic facilities, when he drove past in a golf cart and asked Ren if she needed any help. She hadn’t, but when she’d asked him about what he did at the school, he gave her a full tour in his cart, as well as a schedule for all the upcoming winter sporting events, a T-shirt for basketball games that said CORONA KENNEL CLUB, a stuffed terrier, and a tiny plush basketball.
Giddy with excitement, Ren had crawled into bed at nine, curling up on her side, but slept fitfully her first night ever away from home.
She was missing the settling-down sounds of her animals in the corral, the uneven cadence of Steve’s snoring down the hall, and the ever-present tick of her clock. Even so, she knew none of it really explained why she couldn’t sleep. Usually when she closed her eyes, she saw sparklers and fireworks exploding in a golden blast overhead. But last night, when she’d closed them, she saw a sprawling campus, and hordes of jeering, impatient students. She saw herself swallowed in a sea of bodies, penned in on every side. Walking too fast or too slow, trying to open the wrong door, asking the wrong questions.
Ren stared up at the textured plaster ceiling; in the bright light of morning, she let her eyes grow unfocused until it became a blank, smooth canvas. She could paint this room, she thought. Paint the sizzle-glow, the bursts of light and color in the deep ocean blue of a sky. Even imagining it soothed her. She reminded herself that friendships would come, that she would learn the routine of school, and that beyond the four walls of this room was the same sky she’d seen every day of her life, the same as back home. It felt different, but she was rooted in exactly the same world, ready for a new adventure.
With that thought, she sprang from bed.
Years ago, Ren had read somewhere that air travelers should plan to be at the airport at least an hour before their scheduled flight, but apparently the same was not true for students and classes. Even twenty minutes before her immunology seminar began, the hallways were empty.
Ren’s blood was humming, vibrating with excitement. At the locked classroom door, she cupped her hand around the small window and peered in.
“Let me open that.”