“Now.”
Has his Adam’s apple always been so pronounced?
Good lord.
“Um, okay, let me just grab my laptop,” I start scrambling around looking for my computer and find it buried under a stack of research papers I printed off at the University about other auto sports projects.
Cole stands still as a statue just watching me, an ever-present smirk on his face. Every time I’ve bumped into him, he’s smirking or smiling at me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be hateful when he’s always polite. I was expecting him to be confrontational when I arrived if anything.
Nope, he’s playing the perfect gentleman, instead.
I was hoping to be confrontational, myself, if I’m honest. I have years of rage I would like to get out. But we’re both being professional, and it’s oddly unsatisfying. I feel robbed of wanting to punch Cole in the face or kick him in the balls like I’d always envisioned.
Walking out of the lab together, we need to go up a flight of stairs since the lab is in the basement. Reaching the stairwell, Cole extends a hand so I can go first. Again, the gentleman. Maybe he’s matured, grown up.
No sooner do I think that when I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. We’re halfway up the stairs when I stop and glare at him over my shoulder. He’s right behind me.
“What?” He asks.
“I feel like you’re looking at my ass.”
“You would not be wrong,” the corners of his eyes wrinkle, and he continues his grinning.
“Stop it,” I scold him. “You go first.” I step aside on the stairs so he can move past me.
“Now you’re going to look at my ass,” he says as he steps past and leaves a trace of his cologne to swirl past me.
It’s not the same cologne he used to wear. It’s better.
“I am not.”
I absolutely am.
“Mmm, I think you are,” he teases.
I ignore him because anything else I say is only going to encourage him. He holds the stairwell door open for me, again, as we exit into the lobby.
When we walk past the hallway where I first ran into him, he asks, “Why were you hiding the morning of your interview?”
“I was not hiding, I was here early and just wandering around,” I feel goosebumps climb over my skin.
Liar, liar, panties on fire.
“You were twenty minutes late for your interview. You were hiding.”
&n
bsp; “My watch was broken.”
“Okay,” he chuckles at my ridiculous excuse.
I sigh and will myself into being an adult. I can be more mature and grown up too, I suppose if I must. “I was trying to bomb the interview.”
“Because of me,” he states, not so much asking, but confirming.
I nod. There’s no point in denying it. Cole’s not stupid, and he knows me better than anyone.
Or, he did, once upon a time.