Page 17

“You’re the one who gave me a show,” Tanner said after a few minutes of silence. I smirked.

“And that gives you leeway to be a stalker?” Placing my hand on my hip, I turned to face him. His eyes flickered upward from where they had once rested on my ass. Instead of appearing sheepish, his smile broadened.

“If I remember correctly, you were watching me first.”

Kind of hard to miss.

Shrugging, I winked at him.

“I’ve seen better.”

I had been hoping to get a reaction from him, but his smile only widened.

“Don’t talk about other dicks you’ve seen, sweetheart. I kind of want to kill them all.”

“The dicks or the men carrying them?” I questioned, stepping into the closet. When he made a move to follow me, I slammed the door closed.

“Both,” he admitted unashamedly. “I don’t want to think about you with other guys.”

“What about your friends?” I asked, whipping my shirt off and stepping into the teal leotard. It was the designated colors of my gym, with a bright purple stripe running diagonally across my breasts.

“What about them?”

I shimmied into a pair of sweatpants, jamming my elbow into the closet door in the process. “Am I allowed to talk about their dicks?”

He chuckled softly.

“I suppose I’ll allow that. Aiden would kick my ass if I kept you all to myself.”

“You seem to be implying that I’m yours.” My words were muffled from the sweatshirt over the top of my head. It smelled of vanilla, my favorite perfume.

“Who’s that guy you’re always with?” Tanner asked, changing the subject. When I re-emerged from the closet, he was scrolling through my phone. I knew we didn’t have any service, so he must’ve been looking at my photos. I slapped his hand, and the phone bounced onto the bed.

“Beau?” I asked, reaching my hands up to twist my hair into a bun. Having hair like mine, cascading down my back, was a pain in the ass. Literally. It sometimes got stuck in said ass. I had learned long ago that mere ponytails couldn’t tame the mane.

“Is that his name?” Tanner shrugged. “He doesn’t speak much. And by much, I mean he doesn’t speak at all.”

“And you speak too much,” I retorted.

Tanner watched me. There was a sort of reverence in his eyes as I finished piling my golden hair at the top of my head. “You have a lot of pictures of him on your phone.” The whole statement was said nonchalantly, as if he didn’t completely invade my privacy.

“He’s my best friend.”

“Just a best friend?”

Ignoring him, I grabbed my phone from where it had dropped along with my headphones. I had memorized the map the night before and knew that there was a boxing gym a few buildings over. It wasn’t the ideal place, but it was better than the hard wooden floors of the main gym.

“You going to ignore me?” Tanner asked in amusement. Maintaining eye contact, I purposefully placed the headphones into my ears. He didn’t need to know that I had no music playing.

With a jump to my step, I walked the unfamiliar halls until I stepped outside. The campus was beautiful in the morning, the metallic violet sky painting everything in pink and the palest green. The trees were a magnificent canopy of dark green, and the grass was manicured immaculately. Even the creepy-ass fountain couldn’t tarnish the beauty of this Sunday morning. Nor the brooding asshole stalking me.

He didn’t say a word as he followed me down the gravel path and to the smallest building on campus. He stared at me oddly when I skipped inside but didn’t comment. Smart boy.

There were two sections. One consisted of a standard boxing square complete with a rope perimeter and two chairs in either corner. The second room had blue mats expanding the length of the floor. Both rooms were, fortunately, empty.

It was the second room I headed to, shedding clothes as I walked. I heard Tanner’s sharp intake of breath, and my smile widened. Ignoring him, I skimmed through my playlist until I found my competition song.

I then connected my phone to the school’s Bluetooth speaker.