Everything About You

I elbowed my way through a group of students standing around and talking, but more importantly, blocking me from my future husband. I got around them and headed out, hoping I didn’t lose Harris.

I didn’t.

Not because he was waiting, but because what I feared had happened. His backpack was now dumped on the ground and all the items inside had been strewn across the hallway like the contents of a smashed piñata at a birthday party.

What made me almost tear up a little was what looked like a new laptop on the floor.

An utter tragedy. What I would do for a new laptop like that…

Hopefully it wasn’t broken and if it was, that it was insured.

Not my problem. My concern was with the broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped man, with a perfectly juicy peach for an ass, now squatting on the floor, collecting his belongings while everyone else walked around him and didn’t bother to help.

This was my chance to introduce myself and be his knight in shining armor.

Squatting down while facing him, I began to gather pens, a rainbow of highlighters and various colored sticky notes.

My takeaway was the man carried way too much shit in his backpack. Who hauled around this much stuff? No wonder he couldn’t zip it shut.

After my hands were full, I grabbed his backpack and tossed everything into it. If he wanted it organized, he could do that himself and once he was out of hallway traffic.

I stood and moved closer to my future lover, gripping the bag tightly. My brain was trying to trick me into thinking that holding his backpack was the same as holding him.

It wasn’t. Unfortunately.

I waited as he stacked some textbooks, and what might be some fiction, into his arms and rose to his feet, his face flushed from either embarrassment or the exertion.

I held the backpack out to him. “Here.”

After glancing around to see if he missed anything, his face lifted. And when he reached for his bag, I couldn’t release my hold. Once he got a more solid grip on it, our fingers touched and a shock zipped up my arm and a tornado of heat swirled around my gut.

Our surprised gazes locked, and…

I forgot how to breathe.

His blue eyes…

Seeing them up close and personal caused lightning to zap me right in the middle of my chest.

His awkward, crooked smile caused a heaviness in my balls and I hoped like hell I didn’t pop a boner right there in the corridor.

“Thanks,” got caught in his throat. He cleared it and repeated it more clearly.

“No problem.”

“The zipper’s broken,” he explained.

“Probably because you’re hauling around half of your college career in that thing.”

“I don’t live on campus, so I…” He seemed to lose his train of thought but never once did he lose hold of my eyes. His were locked solid with mine. “I… uh…”

“Don’t want to forget anything,” I finished for him.

He nodded and that chunk of dark hair fell lower on his forehead. I curled the fingers of the hand not holding the backpack into my palm to avoid reaching out and pushing it off his eyebrow and back into place.

“You can’t leave stuff in your car?” It wasn’t like I really cared what he carried around like a pack mule, I only wanted to keep him there as long as possible.

“No car.” His voice was much deeper than one would think by looking at him since he was on the slender side.

“How do you get to campus, then?”

“My bike or I walk. I sometimes catch a ride with one of my roommates, depending on our schedules.”

A little tug had me finally releasing his backpack, even though I didn’t want to. I wanted to hold him there, like a hostage. Take him for myself and keep him until he fell desperately in love with me.

Of course, I knew that wasn’t realistic. But there was one thing I could get from him, if nothing else…

“Cool. By the way, I’m Ronan, but you can call me Roe.”

His dark eyebrows pinned together. “Ronan?”

“Yeah, it’s Irish. I look Irish, don’t I?” I cocked my head and kept my expression serious even though I purposely put him on the spot.

I watched him panic about answering my question and possibly offending me. “Uh…”

I kept my lips from twitching and giving myself away. “I’m actually only half Irish. The front half. The back half isn’t.” I waited to see if he would ask me about the rest of my ethnicity since I certainly didn’t even look half Irish. But he played it safe and didn’t, so I asked, “How about you?” I wasn’t ready for this conversation to end.

“I’m… I’m not quite sure…”

He scraped his fingers through his hair, messing it up even worse. To me, it made him appear even sexier. I’d love to see his hair like that when I rolled over in the morning and found his head on the pillow next to mine.