Page 14 of Depths of Desire (The Saints of Westmont U #4)

NINE

OLIVER

I had no reason to be there.

The Westmont student center gym wasn’t where I trained.

It wasn’t where I lifted, or ran, or swam.

It was smaller, busier, full of noise and people I didn’t know well.

My facility—my sanctuary—was across campus, outfitted with private lanes, high-performance equipment, and the kind of quiet I had come to depend on.

But somehow, this evening, my path curved in the wrong direction.

I told myself I just wanted a walk. That I needed fresh air, needed to stretch my legs, needed something that wasn’t a stopwatch or a regimen or a coach asking me what went wrong with my flip turns.

And then I was here.

The pavement was still damp from an earlier snowmelt, the sky bruised and low. Lights shone through the windows of various buildings around the student center, warm and golden, casting shapes that moved across the frosted glass.

And then one of them stepped through the doors.

Lennox.

He was laughing at something some guy he was with said, though I couldn’t hear it from where I stood across the path. His hair was damp, curling just slightly at the edges like he had showered not long ago. His hoodie clung to his frame, and his duffel hung loose from one shoulder.

They were just walking, talking, being all casual. And I stood there like I was frozen to the ground.

The guy noticed me first. I hated him for a moment when a stupid flare of jealousy possessed me.

Lennox looked up, spotted me, and something flickered in his eyes.

Not a surprise. Not really. He said something low to the other guys, who gave a nod and pivoted without protest, heading off in the opposite direction.

Lennox stayed.

He walked toward me like it cost him something. Like the weight of it pressed behind his knees and across his chest. Like he had decided to take it anyway.

He stopped a few feet away, his lips drawn in a pout he clearly hadn’t meant to wear. His eyes searched mine, not desperate, but tired. Tired in the way people get when they’ve waited too long to say something and know they shouldn’t say it now.

I felt like the ground had opened beneath me.

I had dreamed of him. Over and over. Woken up sweating, hard, aching from wanting someone I’d convinced myself I could live without.

And here he was. Real and close, cheeks flushed and eyes glimmering with the light of the streetlamps.

He didn’t speak at first. He just looked at me, hands in the pocket of his hoodie, like he didn’t trust them out in the open.

I was the first to break. “Boyfriend?”

He snorted. “Rhett? Hell no. Roommate.”

I nodded. I hoped I hid the relief that washed over me. “You working out here now?”

He gave a slow blink, like the question offended him with its smallness. “Sometimes,” he said. “I came with Rhett to spot him.” His voice was rough, guarded. Then he added, “It’s allowed. Right?”

I flinched. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

The air between us cracked, cold and crisp. My pulse was a hammer in my ears. My throat ached with unsaid things.

“You look tired,” he said.

I barked a short, joyless laugh. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You mean like ‘you look like you’re falling apart and pretending you’re fine’?”

Lennox didn’t smile. “Yeah. Something like that.”

I couldn’t hold his gaze. It burned too much. I looked at the sidewalk instead, where our shoes stood pointed toward each other like they hadn’t gotten the message that this was over.

“You didn’t have to avoid me,” he said after a beat.

“I wasn’t avoiding you.”

“You’ve practically vanished from half the campus.”

“That’s not about you.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay. Then what is it about?”

I didn’t answer.

He waited a second longer, then exhaled through his nose. “Right.”

There was that edge in his voice. Not anger. Not really. Just…something hollow. Like someone had opened a door inside him and let the warmth escape.

“You didn’t even say goodbye,” he added. “After the cabin. After all of that. You just…disappeared. But I get it. A text message, a flight back here, it’s kind of part of the deal, huh?”

“I couldn’t afford not to,” I said. It came out sharper than I intended.

He nodded again, slower this time. “Yeah. We’ve established that.”

The hurt was there. Underneath the steady tone, under the brave line of his mouth. He was trying to be proud and untouchable. He was trying to act like it hadn’t mattered. That it didn’t still matter.

But I could see it.

And worse, I could feel it.

Before all else, righteousness ripped through me. Wasn’t that part of the deal? Wasn’t that what we’d agreed on? No feeling, no strings, just a night of wild pleasure before the morning sobered us.

But then, the guilt hollowed me out from the inside. I had wanted distance. I hadn’t wanted to watch something fragile between us harden into disappointment. It never should have been there in the first place, yet we had both known that it was. It had been all along.

Now, I was just a stranger who had touched him like he mattered and walked away like he didn’t.

Lennox shifted his weight, ready to go.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

So he nodded once. Sharp. Final. And turned away.

I didn’t stop him.

I didn’t have the right.

Day in and day out, I walked through the maze. I didn’t pay attention to anything around me. Food lost all its flavors, lectures bored me to desperation, and swimming no longer felt like an escape.

The water was heavier today.

It gripped every inch of my skin, dragged at my limbs like it wanted to hold me under.

I launched from the wall and sliced through the lane, eyes trained on the black line, the ceiling blurring overhead.

My breath came too fast, too shallow, and poorly timed.

I turned early, kicked late, and broke rhythm.

Again.

I resurfaced halfway through the set and slammed a palm against the wall. The sound cracked through the empty natatorium like a gunshot. My lungs burned. My eyes stung. My body wasn’t failing me, but it wasn’t listening, either. No matter how hard I pushed, it all kept unraveling.

I climbed out of the pool. My limbs trembled as I stood there dripping, teeth clenched.

The failure wasn’t physical. Not really.

It was in my chest. In the noise in my skull. In the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about him, no matter how many laps I swam or how much sleep I skipped trying to stay ahead.

I wrapped a towel around my waist and stood at the edge of the water, staring down at the calm I couldn’t match.

One night. That was what we said. That was the deal. That was what we had needed.

So why did it keep circling back like a tide I couldn’t outswim?

I showered fast and dressed even faster, stuffing my wet gear into my bag with a vicious tug at the zipper. I didn’t speak to anyone on the way out. Didn’t even check the clock above the entrance.

I didn’t know where I was going until I was already moving.

The walk didn’t help. If anything, it made things worse. The cold air stung my cheeks, the wind lifting the damp edges of my hair, my pulse drumming hard under the collar of my sweatshirt.

I shouldn’t be doing this.

I knew that.

But I was unraveling, and it was either this or break something just to feel like I had control over something.

I hated that he had gotten under my skin. I hated that he had stayed there. I hated that even when he turned away from me in silence, I had wanted to chase after him and pull him close and say something I couldn’t afford to utter aloud.

I hated that the only thing that had ever made me feel like I was flying—free, unchained, and more than anything, human—was his mouth on mine.

I took the stairs two at a time. Second floor. I remembered.

I remembered because he had told me on the drive back in December. Some stupid comment about the windows being crooked, how the heat didn’t work on the left side of the building. I hadn’t meant to remember. But I did. I had filed it away, like everything else about him.

The hallway was quiet.

Door 212 stood straight ahead. The last one in a row.

I stared at it. My hand was already in the air, fingers curled, and I didn’t lower them.

The air in my lungs tightened.

Anger flared in my gut, not at him, but at myself. At the hunger he stirred in me. At the fact that after everything, after all the distance and silence, I was still here.

And worse—I wanted him to open the door.

Not for closure.

Definitely not to fight.

I wanted him to look at me the way he had under that cabin ceiling, like he couldn’t think of a thing he wanted more.

I knocked.

The seconds stretched.

Then the lock turned.

The door opened.

And there he was.

Lennox stood in the doorway in a faded T-shirt and shorts, his hair tousled, his expression startled, but not shocked. His lips parted like he had just taken a breath to speak, but no words came out.

I saw it in his face. The ache, the question, the flicker of hope.

I didn’t speak. Neither did he.

But in that single, crackling heartbeat, we both knew why I was there.

And we both knew it wasn’t to say goodbye.