Page 7 of Tangled Up In You
Ren nodded, mentally fortifying herself at the prospect of meeting an attractive man with an ego that was nearly seven hundred thousand square miles.
“Good. So don’t let him seduce you.”
A flush crawled up Ren’s neck. “Oh my gosh, would you stop suggesting that?”
“I mean it. He’ll only break your heart.”
Flustered, Ren turned to open the door to flee. But when she was only a few steps away, Miriam leaned out of the doorway. “Ren!”
She turned. “Yeah?”
Her roommate’s voice reverberated up and down the packed hallway: “Do not let that man into your pants!”
Ren felt every pair of eyes land squarely on her back as she walked the straight path to the stairwell. She’d studied in every moment of her free time—studied hardest these last few months in preparation for college. But a new truth was very quickly becoming apparent: Some things in life were impossible to prepare for.
CHAPTER THREE
REN
Ren took one step outside of Bigelow Hall and rain seemingly poured from an immense overturned bucket in the sky. On this final day of January, the wind was nothing compared to what it could be out in the middle of the fields, but here it was rain that flew sideways, the buildings pressing it all together and then shoving it forward like a colossal mouth blowing a million icy darts. She wrapped her scarf up around her face, leaving only her eyes visible beneath her beanie, zipped up her coat, and covered the whole of her head and neck with her giant hood.
One step, and then two. In the hazy light of midday, the world seemed at once too big and too small; wet sidewalk stretched out in every direction, and yet even a block in the distance was obscured from her view. Ren felt like a blind mouse at the center of a maze. Her heartbeat was a deafening gallop in her ears.
“You can do this, Rennie,” she whispered, pulling out the folded campus map she’d printed at the Deary library last week when her new student orientation packet arrived, shielding it from the rain with her body. She’d circled all of the important places she had to be: Bigelow Hall, the Registrar’s Office, dining services, and each of the buildings where her six courses were held. The Registrar’s Office, where she was meeting this Alaskan-egoed Fitz, was located inside Carson Hall, which looked on the map to only be a couple buildings over. Even so, it was hard to get her bearings. There weren’t her usual landmarks here—the hills to the east or the tall stretch of aspen to the west. The sun wasn’t visible at all, and the river was obscured by buildings. Here, it was only structures and sidewalks and asphalt in a seemingly uniform stretch of wet concrete no matter which way she looked.
But her direction, the map indicated, was to the right. Past Willow Lawn, past the Stills Center, to the building just bordering the main quad. Ren hauled the door to Carson Hall open with all her weight and stepped inside, where she was immediately sealed up in the dark, quiet atrium.
Shaking the raindrops from her coat and stomping the water off her boots, she looked up into the shadows of the interior of the building. For the day before the start of spring term, it was surprisingly quiet, echoing in its emptiness. Just as the outer door sealed shut, another opened somewhere on the floor above her, and the sound was followed by the jogging squeak of sneakers on stone. From the second story of the building and down the wide set of central steps, a figure descended—a man—with soft dark hair and shoulders so broad Ren immediately had the impression he’d be able to carry a newborn calf with ease.
Diffuse light from the tall window behind her caught his face as he approached, and if this person walking toward her was Fitz, she should have listened more closely to Miriam, should have asked questions: what he studied, where he came from, what exactly his tricks might be. The key to surviving, Steve always told her, was to know everything she could about every possible threat she might encounter. And the way her heartbeat reacted to this man, with that face and those shoulders, screamed THREAT PROXIMITY ALERT.
He came to a jogging stop a couple feet away and pulled a white headphone from one ear. “Ryan?”
“Ren,” she corrected, trembling inside her bulky coat. It wasn’t so much that he was good-looking—though he was, with shaggy hair he’d tucked behind one ear and strong arms extending from his T-shirt that made Ren think she could put him to great use in the fields. It was the way his warm brown eyes regarded her so steadily from beneath thick, dark brows, like he sensed a secret about her that she didn’t even know yet.
She lifted her chin. “My name is Ren Gylden.”
“Gesundheit,” he quipped.
“It’s Swedish.”
He smiled an indulgent half smile. “Congratulations.”
She held out her gloved hand for him to shake, and, after regarding it in confusion for a bit, he smiled again and shook it gamely. “How do you do?” he said with joking formality. “I’m Fitz.”
“Fitz what?”
“Just Fitz.”
“Well, Just Fitz.” Ren released a laugh at her own joke. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Fitz blinked, looking past her to the door. “So, uh, Sweden. You transferring from somewhere?”
She straightened, having prepared for this. “I’m not a transfer, no.” Her voice came out muffled behind all her layers. “This will be my first experience at a school.”
Fitz’s gaze jerked back to her. “No shit?”
“Uh, yeah. Correct.” Ren’s face flushed at the profanity. She’d read every word in the English language—she’d probably read this specific one in multiple languages, but very rarely heard it said aloud. Even the curse words in her movies at home had been edited out. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to pull it off: “No…shhi—poop.”