An expression of fierceness shadowed William’s face. Shivers tingled down my back.
“Very well,” he growled, sounding as fierce as his expression looked. He dropped the defensive positioning of his arms slightly. “I’ll be right behind you after I escort her to her room.” He edged forward, but would not grab my hand or pull me into his embrace.
“We’ll wait.”
“Suit yourselves.” William stopped in front of them, looking at each one with a certain kind of expectancy, until they stepped aside and cleared the sidewalk. William turned to the side, beckoned me forward with a sweep of his hand, and followed immediately behind me.
I took a quick glance at him, ignoring the monster men on either side of the walkway, and while he looked composed enough, I could sense his emotions swinging like a pendulum from anger to anxiety—so intense it was scalding. I unlocked the door and William threw it open, guiding me inside with the hand he’d rested conventionally over my shoulder.
“Too bad he didn’t introduce us to his new friend.” I heard one of them say.
“Too bad indeed,” the other replied, before the door slammed shut behind us.
As soon as we were around the corner and stepping up the stairs, William grabbed my hand and pulled me up the flight of stairs without a word. When his silence continued as he marched me down the hall towards my room, I stopped in my tracks and pulled against him.
“What is going on?” I asked incredulously; the bright light of the hall dousing me in a reality check. Outside in the dark silence, the two men fit, and didn’t seem as surreptitious as they did now in the well-lit hall of a college dorm hall wallpapered with posters and sign-up sheets.
“Everything is fine, please don’t worry.” His words were placating, not genuine.
“Are you leaving?” I cried, glad that the music in the room beside me was blaring so it would muffle the anxiety heightening my tone. “Are they going to hurt you?”
“Yes to your first question and no to the second,” he answered hurriedly, pulling me harder down the hall. It was like he couldn’t put enough space between me and them.
“I’m going too.”
He shook his head fiercely. “That is completely out of the question.”
“That so?” I taunted, turning back towards the stairs.
I got two steps before he stopped my retreat. He sighed. “I’ve got something very important to explain to you, something that will be difficult for you to understand.” He wrapped one arm around my shoulder and encouraged me forward. “I’m not your everyday college student . . . not even close.”
Yeah, that was obvious. I could have told him that after the first minute I met him.
He stopped me in front of my door, and turned to face me, grabbing my arms with his hands. “I will explain everything to you soon, but I’ve got to leave now.”
I didn’t want to wait to have the mysteries revealed, I wanted to know now. A fear from deep within rose like the tide, until I was convinced if I let this man out of my sight, I would never see him again. He would disappear into the mystical poof he’d appeared in.
“I’m not letting you go alone with those two brutes,” I said, crossing my arms.
“Be serious, Bryn.”
“I. Am.” I emphasized each word, hoping I’d relayed the level of finality I had in them.
“They mean me no harm. They just want to talk with me . . . to remind me of something.” His eyes darted to the side before the heat of the fire burning in them could be fully revealed.
“Well you can all talk with me present.” I wasn’t going to make this easy for him. I already felt him slipping away, despite his promises to explain everything soon, and that everything was just fine. The thing was . . . it didn’t feel fine.
“What are you so frightened of?” he asked, his burning eyes weakening my senses.
I had to look down before I could answer him. “That I’ll never see you again.”
He reached for my chin and tilted it back up to him. “That could never happen,” he reassured, lifting his left wrist. “After all, you gave me this bracelet—I’m now obligated to protect you for the remainder of your days.”
I smiled, immensely thankful for the strands of leather I’d tied to him this morning. “That’s right. That’s a life sentence I’ve got tied around your wrist. So you’re not going anywhere without me.” I raised both my brows, not allowing his distraction to detour me from my mission.
“You’re stubborn, aren’t you?” The fire gone from his eyes, his mouth pulled up into my favorite smile—that mischievous, I-don’t-have-a-clue-how-hot-I-am-when-I-smile-like-this-which-makes-it-that-much-hotter smile.
“Only when I have to be,” I fired back.
And then, he kissed me.
If he was looking for something with the highest likelihood of undoing my resolve and rendering me speechless, he hit the diamond mine. My heart barely had time to react before his lips left mine, but though my experience in the kissing field was amateur to put it generously, this was not your typical first kiss.
I imagined a first kiss to be sweet and shy, but this one had an urgent, desperate feel to it; which would have only heightened my growing anxieties that something was wrong, had it not been his lips that had done the telling. An injection of wistfulness swirled in me, dulling my worries.
“Miss Dawson, you are surely some kind of temptress in disguise.” He grabbed my hand and laid it over his chest, where I could feel his heart racing with the intensity I knew mine matched. “Do you feel what you’ve done to me?” he asked breathlessly. “You may very well be the death of me one day. But what a way to go.”
I was too enthralled by the bliss of a first kiss and the man who’d created it to respond.
“I’ll be back soon,” he whispered through his accelerated breathing, “to explain everything.”
I nodded my foggy head, my thoughts focused on not much else but his face resting an inch from mine.
His eyes gripped mine again with an emotion I couldn’t comprehend, and then he removed his hands from my arms and whisked down the hall, determination covering his face. The hall was swallowing him up, it was pulling him away from me . . . and my worries were brigading back with the pleasant fog diminishing.
“William?” I called out down the hall, my soul about to utter the words my mind warned it not to.
He turned, and his hardened expression fell.
“I promised I’d tell you when I found something big enough for me to make another change in my life . . .”
Acknowledgement painted his face, and he nodded once.
“I’ve found it,” I said, somehow managing to smile in the midst of my vulnerability.
He grinned, a hint of smugness in it, silently confessing he’d known it all along. “As have I.”
Those three words changed my world. A fissure took place in that moment when he told me I was what he was to me. The dead and decaying pieces of me fell away, and all that was good and still alive burst with purpose and meaning. I knew what I’d been born into this world for, and he was staring back at me.
“But you must know everything first before I let you make that choice.” His words were strong, and I knew there’d be no negotiating around them, so I attempted to exhale some courage and force my smile to grow, before he spun around and jogged down the stairs.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DEPARTURE
This entire day had been torture. I’d been such a wreck, I’d even skipped class. Every time I’d heard a set of feet coming down the hall, I’d thrown open the door, hoping they’d be his. None of them had, though.
I took an extra long shower at the end of the day, reminding myself through the shampooing and shaving that he promised he’d be back. Despite my best attempts at comforting myself, uncertainty was winning the battle.
I stood in front of the mirror above the row of sinks in the women’s bathroom and slipped into my makeshift pajamas (since I hadn’t done laundry in two weeks) which consisted of a knit skirt and linen top, attempting to empty my mind. I circled my hand over the mirror, removing the steam, and commenced ripping through the tangle of long hair that defined brown—not mahogany, or chestnut, or espresso. Just boring, blah brown.
A burst of laughter came through the door, distracting me from the thoughts I was trying to quiet.
“Oh, lookie who we have here,” the newcomer said as if to someone else, although I was the only other person in the room. The special way she could annunciate her annoyance helped me identify her before she sauntered up to the counter and her reflection sneered back at me.
She removed a chrome tube of lipstick from her bra. “You expecting a note from William?” she asked, sounding as innocent as a serpent. “Also known as my future husband.”
My breath caught at the same time my heart stopped. I felt my eyes widen as she traced her red lips with additional color.
“I’ll take that as a no,” she said, eyeing me over in such a way that I knew my surprise at her saying his name had not gone undetected.
“He doesn’t want to see you anymore.” She shrugged and continued outlining her lips. “He left OSU.”
You know how they say overwhelming information takes awhile to register? They’re wrong. The army of emotions that brigaded me was instant and overpowering. It took every ounce of strength to keep my legs working beneath me. I clutched at my stomach, not sure what was happening. He’d promised . . .
“Some guy handed me a note earlier and told me to give it to you,” she continued, grinning the entire time. “I only agreed to it because he was hot and said it had to do with William calling it off with you. Guess he finally came to his senses. I was wondering how long it would take him.”
“You read it.” I whispered, more as an affirmation than a question.
She looked delighted with herself, but why I didn’t understand. What was her motive for wanting to twist the knife in my heart now that it was inserted?
“I figured it wasn’t all that confidential if it wasn’t given to you directly. Sorry.” Her apology was void of any sincerity. She capped her lipstick, reinserted it in its hiding place, and pulled a piece of folded paper from the same area. “Have a nice night.” She placed the note on the counter beside me and shouldered past me.
I couldn’t look at it. Maybe if I didn’t look I could convince myself this wasn’t really happening.
The door burst open again and Melanie popped her head in. “Did you tell her?” she asked Amy.
“Message delivered,” Amy answered.
“But Paul said—”
“I don’t care what idiot boy said,” she snapped, shouldering past her friend out into the hall. “He might rule the school but he doesn’t rule this woman.”
“Great.”—Melanie shot me an apologetic smile—“Doesn’t exactly look like you put it gently.”
The door slammed shut behind them and I was left alone with the nightmare I should have known would be mine when he entered my life. Promises aside, he was exquisite—one of this world’s masterpieces—and I was the most normal, non-descript thing around. What had I expected?