I grimaced at the sight as I turned from Reed to her.
“She won’t appreciate you watching,” Reed rasped, his voice husky with how hard I’d been working him over.
“Just making sure she’s okay.”
“She will be now that she’s puked.” He shrugged when I glowered at him. “Coach has set her up for too much. If she doesn’t level out within the week, I’d have her talk to Nicholas. He wants her to be at the same fitness level as someone in her year but she isn’t.”
No, she wasn’t, Reed was right.
And Coach was being hella shortsighted with his training plan for her. Something else Reed was right about.
“You’re taking a lot of notice in my—” I wanted so fucking badly to say Chosen, but instead tacked on, “friend.” Said friend had wiped her face on a paper towel, guzzled down some water, but was retreating to the treadmill to carry on with her workout.
What she didn’t have in stamina or endurance, she made up for in resilience, that was for damn sure.
Or was it obstinacy?
“Figure she needs as many friends as she can get with your Pack around her.”
Reed’s words had my eyes widening, and my focus shifting squarely to him.
Before he could do no less than blink, I was on him, pounding the shit out of him until Coach hauled me back and away.
Seeing his double black eyes an hour later, made it totally worth having to clean out the guys’ locker room as punishment for whacking Coach in my efforts to get back at Reed.
❖
Frazer
When I ducked into the kitchen, I wasn’t totally surprised to see the fridge open with someone inside.
With four hundred students, the kitchen was usually busy. Sure, there were set meal times, but our calorific input was heavy. Several thousand calories a day barely scratched the surface for some of the guys—myself included.
What did surprise me was who was raiding the fridge. When I saw the sweetheart ass outlined in pants that were at least three sizes too big, I felt my cock harden.
Eve was the sexiest woman at Caelum.
And she didn’t even know it.
All her clothes were too big, yet every single item somehow managed to reveal just how ample her curves were even though she was covered from head to toe.
It was a phenomenon, but one I was grateful for. She was like a collection of modern art. You couldn’t just look at her and see one thing. You saw many. She required study, and I knew I wasn’t alone in feeling that way.
I’d imagined she was like every other girl on campus. That she was the same old conquest just waiting to happen. A chance to one-up Stefan, get into her pants before the other guy did, but Eve? She wouldn’t be pigeon-holed, and that made her all the more fascinating to me.
“Hungry?” I drawled, not wanting to freak her out because she evidently hadn’t heard me come in—her reflexes were atrocious, and that was a huge concern.
She squeaked then yelped. The yelp came after a bump, and I knew she’d hit her head on the fridge door.
When she peered over at me with a scowl on her face, I watched in amazement as it instantly softened. “Oh. Frazer.”
My heart stuttered in my chest. I wasn’t sure if anyone had looked at me that way before, and I liked it.
Far too much.
My voice was way too husky when I rasped, “What’s your poison?”
She blinked at me then back into the fridge as she rubbed her head where she’d bumped it. “I was thinking peanut butter.” She smiled at me. “Nestor showed it to me yesterday. I like it.”
“You’d never had peanut butter before yesterday?” I gaped at her, and then wanted to gape at myself.
Knowing she’d been raised in some weird-ass cult and seeing it with my own eyes, were two separate entities. Just because I knew about her childhood didn’t lessen my surprise any when I learned about something that was new to her.
“Nope.”
She wasn’t offended by my surprise. “You should have it with jelly. That’s my country’s staple.” I winced. “Our country’s staple.” She was American also, just the most unusual American I’d come across…
And I’d been stuck in a mental health facility when I was eleven.
I’d known some weird ass motherfuckers in my time.
Then, a thought occurred to me. “Have you tried pizza yet?”
She shook her head. “No. I was going to today but Nestor said that I’d prefer the steak. And he wasn’t wrong.”
Her grin lit me up inside. I cleared my throat and mumbled, “Well, we need to rectify this.” Heading over to the fridge, I shuffled up beside her and reached into the regular-sized refrigerator that the staff stored the leftovers in for the kids to eat outside of mealtimes.
Seeing some pizza left behind, I almost purred.
“You like it a lot, don’t you?” she asked, her tone quizzical.
“How could you tell?” I grinned at her.
“That grin and the manic gleam in your eye,” she teased, elbowing me gently in the side.
Snorting out a laugh, I told her, “It’s my favorite food.”
“Then teach me why it is.”
Shooting her another grin, I grabbed the plate that had six slices on it. I picked up a bottle of ketchup too, and murmured, “So, I actually prefer pizza cold.”
“Is it supposed to be cold?”
“No. You’re supposed to eat it warm.”
She considered that a second then replied, “Okay. I’ll try it cold first, and then if I don’t like it, I’ll have a peanut butter sandwich.”
“Or we could just heat it up,” I remarked, confused.
She shook her head. “I can’t use the microwave.”
I had to hide my smile. “I can. I’ll teach you?” I offered.
“Eren tried.”
“And failed?” At her nod, I murmured, “I’ll show you. Don’t worry.”
Though she was biting her bottom lip, when she smiled at me, it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds—and holy fuck, I was turning into some kind of greeting card exec thinking shit like that, but it was true.
Since gym, I’d been in a fucked-up mood. Reed’s double black eyes had pissed me off to no end, especially when he’d told me that Eve had puked during training.
I’d been keeping an eye on her in the gym, and I had no idea why Coach was pushing her so hard. Just knew that he was and I didn’t like it.
My intention had been to binge eat pizza and see if there was any beer I could scrounge when I’d come down here. Now? I was glad I had because it meant I got to see her some more.
As I added some extra salt and pepper to the pizza, I told her, “Take a bite without anything else on it.” I gave her the slice, watching as she studied the bread as though the cure for cancer were written into the cold cheese.
Dubious, she frowned at it then took a bite. Her eyes widened as she chewed then she hummed after she swallowed—that was a sight I wasn’t going to forget easily. “Wow, that’s really good.”
I grinned at her. “Now try with ketchup.” I squeezed some on, watched her eat it, and waited for her opinion.
“I prefer that.” Her eyes sparkled. “This is better than peanut butter.”
Laughing, I raised my fist. When she eyed it, I murmured, “Fist bump time.”
“Fist bump?”
“Raise your hand like mine.” When she complied, I gently bumped mine into hers. “Fist bump.”
“Oh!” She beamed at me, and I beamed back.
“Now, we try it warm. We have to, otherwise it isn’t a fair taste test.” I headed over to the microwave and stacked the pizza inside. “You only have to press this button for however long you want it to cook.”
“I know,” she said worriedly. “But how do you know how long to cook something for?”
I blinked at her. “You don’t. You just guess.”
“That doesn’t seem very accurate.”
“Because it isn’t,” I said with another laugh—I swear, I didn’t laugh this much in an entire day, but something about her just made me smile. She said the most random shit. ‘Accurate’ and ‘microwaves’ weren’t where I’d seen this conversation going. “You just blast it and keep on trying to see if the temperature is where you want it.” I let it run for thirty seconds, took out the pizza, and said, “Feel it. Warm enough?”
Gingerly, she patted the top of the pizza with her fingers. “No. It’s still cold.”
“So we put it in again.” We went through this four more times until she was happy and the cheese was bubbling and starting to spit. “Didn’t Eren show you that?” I questioned.
She shook her head. “No. He shows me how to do stuff but says I have to learn on my own.”
I didn’t have to like the method to understand. She did have to gain some autonomy. “That makes sense. But, in the future, maybe tell him if you don’t understand something, yeah?”
She winced. “I do, but Dre…”
My mood darkened when she mentioned that prick. “What about him?” I intoned, aware my voice had deepened with annoyance.
A shake of her head was all the answer she gave me.
“Eve?”
“He just makes me feel stupid.” She blew out a breath. “Eren told me to put milk in the microwave if I couldn’t sleep. He said it works for him.”
Everyone knew that Eren didn’t sleep well. And if he did, it was never in his room. He was probably the only kid in school who could wake up on the sofa without having a dick drawn on his forehead.
Everyone knew about his past, his nightmares. Any Zs the dude caught were hard-earned.
“Okay, so what happened with the milk?”
“It went everywhere.”
“How long did you cook it for?”
“Ten minutes.”
My lips twitched. “Well, that was too long. Now you know to set it every thirty seconds and to test as you go.”
“Eren showed me a different way,” she explained, and showed me that method. It wasn’t wrong. Just meant she set her time beforehand.
“Well, that works if there are cooking instructions and they give you a guide. But when you don’t know, you can’t just guess.” A thought occurred to me. “You know not to put metal in there, don’t you?”
“Eren said it would explode if I did that.”
“He was right.” It was weird having to explain something to her that everyone just knew, but I kind of liked it. I liked her, though. She was sweet and I hadn’t experienced a lot of that in my life.
Her inexperience was probably why Dre didn’t like her. He was the kind of dick who saw idiocy as weakness, but Eve wasn’t an idiot. She just did things how she was taught, and if you taught her wrong, then how could that be her fault?
She was a baby in our world, I realized. But she certainly didn’t look like one.
“Time to try the pizza,” I told her, grabbing the plate and passing it to her.
She blew on it a little then took a cautious bite. As she chewed, her eyes lit up. “Hot is better.”
“Traitor,” I joked, and grinned at her when she giggled. “I’ll forgive you, though.”
We retreated to the kitchen island where we’d stacked our pizza, and as I began eating and she finished off her slice, a comfortable quiet settled between us.
I grabbed some milk from the fridge, and two glasses and some cookies from one of the cupboards after we’d eaten the pizza—she used the microwave twice more—and armed with snacks, I asked, “I take it you’re feeling better?”
She frowned. “Better?”
“You were sick in the gym.” My tone was grim. If I could beat the shit out of Coach, I would have.
“Oh.” Her nose wrinkled. “Yeah. I was okay after I puked. Then I was just hungry. I’ve been hungry all day.”
My lips twitched—her devouring three slices of pie had proven that.
“You’re new to all the exercises so you should take it easier.”
She shrugged. “Coach says that it won’t get easier until I build stamina. I don’t like him,” she admitted with a huff. “He’s mean.”
Not smiling was hard. “He is. But he’s cool. Or, he will be when you’re a little more…” I cringed.
“In shape?” she teased.
Her shape was perfect as is, but for Caelum’s purpose? Yeah, it wasn’t.
That thought hit me like a punch to the gut.
Eve wasn’t soldier material. I knew that like I knew my fucking name. But that was everyone’s future here.
Would she survive the reality of the world outside these gates?
Terror filled me at the idea of her not surviving. My body burned with it, and I felt myself break out into a sweat.
I couldn’t lose someone else.
I just…
I couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.
“Hey, what is it?” Her soft hand cupped mine, and I realized the glass in my grip was no more.
How had that happened?
Broken glass and milk covered me, and I stared down at it, unaware how it had happened.
Shaking my head, I whispered, “Sorry.”
“No need. Are you hurt?”
Luckily, I wasn’t. “Just wet.” My smile was tight while I collected the broken shards and shoved them in the trash then, as she mopped up the milk, I washed up.
When her hand touched my back, I flinched, then realizing she might take that as an interrogation when it was simply a reaction to pain, I whipped around and grabbed her fingers in mine. “Sorry. You made me jump.”
Her eyes were wide like saucers as she stared into mine. The kitchen light was harsh. It was industrial, so the place wasn’t exactly romantic, but what I saw in her gaze had me churning up inside.
The need to protect her was overwhelming, but how could I protect her from the future? From what was coming our way the second we graduated?
I couldn’t.
I’d already lost so many people and letting her in was like asking for more pain down the road. But looking into those amber eyes, how could I avoid her?
Evade her?
I knew I’d have to try, for both our sakes, but it didn’t stop me from reaching and cupping her cheek. When my callused palm rubbed against her skin, her eyes fluttered to half-mast, and she tilted into my touch like a cat demanding more attention.
Christ, I wanted her, but she didn’t understand. I saw that now. The microwave was just one lesson in a thousand that she’d have to learn to adapt to our society, and while her body was screaming at me, I knew her mind was on a whole other realm.
Denying myself her unspoken promise wasn’t as hard as I feared. She deserved me to be the best man I could be, and although I’d let way too many people down in the past, I wouldn’t let her down. If I did, I might as well hammer the nails into my coffin myself.
My lips tingled with the need to kiss her, but instead, I reached down and pressed a gentle peck to her forehead.
She smelled like honey and vanilla, and I wanted that taste, that scent, over me everywhere.
But not now.
“Time for bed, Eve,” I whispered roughly, the words mumbled against her skin. When she nodded, my lips rubbed against her forehead some more, and it was a sweet kind of agony that I’d endure for her alone.
“Night, Frazer,” she murmured, taking a step back. “Thank you for the pizza and the microwave lesson.”
Her reluctance to leave was evident when she looked back at me twice, but I just smiled at her.
It was in our best interest that I was a dick to her, that I keep us apart, that no one knew of the budding friendship between us. Whether I was capable of treating her so badly was another matter entirely.
As I watched her go, it felt like I was being torn in two. Knowing that feeling would only grow worse over time, I bottled it up like I bottled everything else up, and cleaned up after our midnight snack.
Those moments would
be ones I treasured, and as I trudged back to my room, I thought about her soft touch, her scent, and I let them filter through me as I managed, eventually, to fall back asleep.
8
Eren
“What is it?” Eve whispered.
As we stared into the closed off garden that Dre had long since claimed as his own, I leaned against the doorway that was tagged with the words, “¡Vete a la chingada!”
The spray paint had long since dried and I knew Dre frequently topped up the charming declaration of ‘fuck off’ in Mexican Spanish.
Dre wasn’t unlike the plants he tended to, and I wanted to show them to Eve in the interest of cultivating some good will for my brother.
Even though I accepted Dre was a dick, and I loathed how he was treating Eve, I knew him well enough to understand that his past was making him be like this. That didn’t justify him being so mean, but his childhood… it hadn’t been easy. I was just hoping he’d come around, pull his head out of his ass, and come to see how lucky we all were to have her with us.
In the interim, she didn’t have to put up with him, could lay into him as hard as she wanted but as mate to Stefan, she’d have to deal with Dre for a long time to come. I was waiting on her to start fighting back, to begin defending herself, but she was still too timid for that.
If he didn’t change… Well, breaking up the Pack wasn’t impossible but, when it boiled down to it, for our safety, she’d need to either understand Dre better or to fight fire with fire. We were a unit, after all. We’d trained for half a decade to be a strong team. Without him? It would be like fighting after losing a limb.
That I’d even think of breaking up the Pack surprised me, but Eve was special. She wasn’t even my mate like she was Stefan’s, and I knew that. Nestor did too. That Dre was being a bigger fucker than usual told me he saw it, sensed it, but was refusing to accept what she would mean to us as a unit.
When Eve shot me a questioning look, I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck and sheepishly apologized, “Sorry. Mind wandered. They’re blue agave plants.”
She frowned at me. “What are they?”
I liked how she always thought I’d know the answer to everything. It should have grown tiresome, but it hadn’t yet. Not even when, the other day, she’d asked me why it took Einstein so long to figure out that E equaled MC squared.
Seven Wishes: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part ONE Page 16
