When Gracie is humiliated after following her best friend's brother to college and finds he's moved on without her, she grows closer to his rival--the captain of his basketball team--the infamous Kalen Rush, and suddenly Gracie wonders just what len...
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The ball, metaphorically speaking, dropped the next week after we'd fallen into a sweet and comfortable routine.
Kalen would walk me to class if he was nearby at the time, would text me incessantly in between breaks, and would call me every night before bed until Franny had to use her sound machine to block out the sound of my laughter at one in the morning.
He was never not touching me if we were near one another, and his close possessiveness was highlighted by the fact that I was always tugged tightly into his side the moment Colby was around.
It was the most I'd smiled in my entire life.
I should've known it was never meant to last.
We were lounging in the library, his fingers gently playing with the ends of my hair as I read and then re-read the same sentence three times, far too distracted with his soft touches as he accidentally brushed up against the bare skin of my neck.
His cologne had turned musky in that late-afternoon way that it tended to do on warmer days, and I'd found myself subconsciously leaning into his side all the same.
"Are you paying attention, Gracie?"
"Hmm?"
He knew damn well I'd abandoned the notion of finishing my essay three weeks early in favor of leaning into his touch, soaking up any and all attention that he'd give me as the afternoon sunlight filtered through the high windows of the library.
"Hm? Well. If I'm not that distracting yet, I guess I need to step it up."
And then his hands were in my hair up towards the scalp, tugging at the strands as a soft sigh fell off my lips, making it known that I was clearly paying more attention to his ministrations than the actual schoolwork in front of me.
"Kalen..."
"Hmm?"
His mockingly teasing tone brought a smile to my lips as I rested my head on his shoulder as he angled his chair ever closer to mine, so much so that I was basically in his lap at that point but there was absolutely no part of me that could find a single care to give in that moment.
Not as his lips trailed a delicate, searing path up my neck and behind my ear. Not as his wandering fingers of the hand that wasn't currently tugging on my hair reached around my waist and slid up underneath the fabric of my shirt at my side, lightly brushing the skin of my hip in maddening circles until it felt like my lower half was pulsing and throbbing with a need he hadn't tended to since the week before.
"Maybe I should stop...you do need to study, after all..."
"No—"
He chuckled against my ear and a shiver crawled down my spine at the sound, his hand splayed against my hip squeezing me tightly before he began kneading circles and patterns into my skin that had my brain scrambling for any coherent thought that wasn't tainted by this surging, burning need for him.
