Page 38 of Legacy Wolf: Semester One (Legacy Wolf #1)

RAWLING

I had a crush on my professor. Fine, he wasn’t really my professor.

He was a teaching assistant and technically still a student himself, but he was still a level or five ahead of me in standing.

It wasn’t proper for me to be crushing on him like this.

But then again, it wasn’t proper for Holden to have asked me on a date, and that was exactly what he did.

If it was a date. That I wasn’t completely sure of. He didn’t say that he wanted to take me on a date in those words. It was more of an I’m going to run errands, wanna come? kind of thing.

Unlike us lowly underclassmen, Holden was not only able to leave campus at will with no worries about what his house mother or the dean would think or do. But he was also able to take his car, making the town not his only option. And that was what added to my confusion.

Holden could be just offering to take me in the car because he knew I tended to be the snack guy for board game night and wanted to help me out since he was running errands anyway.

Or… and this was a big or… he could’ve wanted an excuse to take me into his car, find a nice place in the woods to pull off, and then kiss me senseless under the moonlight.

Were we leaving at one in the afternoon making option B null and void? Yes, we were. That didn’t do a stitch of good stopping me from thinking about it as I showered to get ready. I had to stop picturing the guy when I was wet and soapy.

“Where are you off to?” Jack might as well have had her little notebook in one hand and huge magnifying lens in the other, as subtle as she was in her inquisition. I hadn’t fully left the bathroom when she pounced, wanting to know every detail of my plans.

“Can you stop already?” I asked, avoiding her questions like a boss. “I’m probably just stocking up on board game night snacks.” And I hated how accurate that sentence was.

“With Professor McHottie?” Jack had mastered the side-eye, that was for sure.

“He’s not a professor, and maybe stop. I just had all the shit go down with Phelan and hazing and… well, isn’t that enough?” I didn’t want to bring up how much the missing students of classes gone by still haunted me. My morbid fascination with the entire thing was far from healthy.

“I’ll stop on one condition… you tell me everything if it is a date, right down to how big his cock is. My guess is it’s smaller than Big A but bigger than Phelan.”

I closed my eyes, willing her to stop. I didn’t want to think about Atticus’s dick on a good day, and Phelan? It was far too soon for that.

“There will be no cock to talk about.” Probably. Maybe. I didn’t even know. But if there was, I would circumvent the topic like a boss. “I have to go. Need anything while I’m out?”

“Details, roomie. Mama’s gonna need details.”

I grabbed my wallet and jacket and rushed out the door. I was meeting Holden in the teacher’s lot behind the science building and didn’t want to be late. I wasn’t entirely sure I knew exactly which lot it was.

The lot was nearly empty, the teachers not here on the weekends for the most part, making it super easy to find him.

He was already in the car, his phone in his hand and his mouth moving.

I stepped around to the passenger side and waited for him to be done with whoever he was talking to, and when his eyes eventually hit me two minutes later, he waved me in.

“Sorry. I didn’t see you. I was dictating part of my thesis.” He put his phone in the cup holder.

“You write all your papers like that?” I understood that a thesis wasn’t just a paper, but it was one and the question stood.

“No. More like I do this when an idea comes to me at a less-than-ideal time. I was trying to work through something last night and all I could come up with was a blank screen, and then boom… I was waiting for you and it all came to me.” He started the car. “Get buckled in so we can go.”

There had been a time when a guy telling me what to do like that would have bugged me, but it was the law here, and by said law, he’d get a ticket, so it was what it was.

“Sorry.” I clicked it in place. “Where are your errands today?”

“Not errands, really.” He pulled the car out of the lot. “More like a date… at least I thought that was what this was.”

Crap.

“I wasn’t sure, but I’m glad it is.”

He turned the wrong direction or at least not the one I’d have chosen.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Just heading out the back gate, you know, to avoid too many eyes on us.”

My stomach dropped. This felt like Phelan all over again. And if I couldn’t deal with it with Phelan, there was no way I was going to jump to the next person and accept the same behavior.

“Last time I went to town, three guys waved me down to try and get them a whole list of things I didn’t want to buy for them. Best they don’t know I’m going until I’m already back.”

And suddenly I felt like an ass. I was a thousand percent projecting my hurt feelings over Phelan onto Holden and he’d done nothing wrong. I needed to cut that out. If I looked hard enough, I could find a million things wrong with everyone. What a shitty way to live that would be.

“That makes sense.” I leaned back in my chair. “So what are we going to do today?”

“That, Rawling, is a surprise.”

Holden drove past town and to the closest city, Fisbury. It wasn’t a city I was familiar with, but it was fairly easy for Holden to navigate, and we ended up pulling into a mall parking lot.

“I thought all the malls had faded away into oblivion.” But from the looks of the parking lot, this one was thriving.

“Most are, but this one is doing okay, they just changed what you find on the inside.” He found a parking spot a good walking distance from the mall, and to be honest, I was shocked he was able to even get that. This place was hopping.

Holden and I got out of the car, and as we met near the hood, he tentatively took my hand in his. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah. I like it.” I gave it a squeeze. It was nice to not be an only when we are someplace no one can see us situation. This was public. Fine, it wasn’t school public, but people could see us here, and that was enough to have me on top of the world as we walked into the building.

Holden was understating it when he said it was different on the inside.

The place had been turned into a huge play place for adults.

Sure, there were still some stores, but there was also a glow golf place, some VR experiences, tight rope walking you could try, a bungee experience, and more.

And the food court… it was filled with what smelled like the most amazing food.

No stale burgers here. The place was fabulous.

“Where would you like to start?” he asked.

“I have no idea. You pick and I’ll go next.”

We ended up opting for a meal. He had the traditional pizza fare that was food court famous, while I had a gyro.

Both were delicious, because of course we had to try a bite of each.

From there we went to the glow mini golf where I officially kicked his butt—for a grand total of three holes.

From there, he creamed me. It would’ve been embarrassing if I hadn’t laughed the entire time, especially as I was thinking of holes—or my hole specifically, with his cock in it.

“Bungee or tightrope?” he asked, and I looked up at the tightrope.

In theory, there was no way for people to fall.

You didn’t put kids on a bike on a tightrope if the odds were that they were going to tumble to the ground and die.

But it still didn’t sound like my idea of a good time, and if I was on my first date with Holden, I preferred it didn’t end with an ER bill.

“Bungee it is.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek, “And if you tumble to the ground, I’ll be sure and tell them your name and such.”

“Yeah, that was what I was worried about.”

The two of us laughed. I had to admit that was one of his more attractive traits—Holden could make me laugh and had me not feeling less-then. He might not be all that I need, but he was fine as Mr. Right Now.