“You were shivering.”
I was so busy I hadn’t even noticed until he said so. The sweater I wore wasn’t very thick, and I’d been sedentary. How did he expect me to deal with him like this? The caring action was so confusing. I curled up under the warm blanket, and struggled with what to say. “Thank you.”
He said nothing.
When my coursework was done and the sunlight was fading, I closed my book and peered at him.
He hadn’t flipped on any lights, so the room was growing dark and he was lit by the glowing computer screen. Stubble shadowed his jaw. His black eyes focused on the screen, and then he picked up a pen, scribbling something down on a pad of paper. Yet he must have sensed my gaze because his attention swung abruptly my direction.
“What do you need?”
If I’d gone back to my dorm Friday night, I would have finished polishing my secondary applications this weekend. “I have some applications I was working on.”
“For Michigan and Johns Hopkins.” His face was emotionless.
“Yeah,” I snapped. “That’s right, you know because you went through my stuff when you were packing it up.”
He sat back from the desk and quirked his eyebrow. “Some of it I did then. I finished going through the rest of it last night.”
My eyes narrowed to slits, but he kept talking.
“That’s upsetting?” he mocked. “Did I cut you with a broken piece of glass?”
My gaze dropped down to his forearm. The scratch wasn’t as red or noticeable today, but it was still there. What he’d said was true, but . . . “You’ve done worse to me.”
“Yeah. So I don’t think me reading something you’re planning to send to strangers is that big of a deal.”
It wasn’t, and yet it was. I’d put personal information in there about my vision for my future. My advisor had urged me to speak candidly about my goals. “Let them feel your passion,” she’d said. I hadn’t written the essay for Luka, and it filled me with unease to know he’d read it, which I was sure he had. I’d printed out a draft for better proofreading.
“You look fucking hot when you pout.”
My hands tensed into fists beneath the blanket, stifling back the irritation and the rush his words gave me. He was pushing my buttons on purpose.
He stood and gave me a hard look. “Again, what do you need?”
“I need to polish them and put them in the mail.”
“All right. I’ll help you get them ready and drop them off on my way to the office in the morning.”
I pushed back the blanket and rose to my feet, not wanting him to look down on me. “What’s the point if I’m not going to graduate?” In fact, Duke could rescind my acceptance if my grades slipped. Their medical school would not tolerate a senior slump.
He stared at me as if I were throwing a tantrum. “What did I tell you this morning?” He shifted his weight, and set his hands on his hips, signaling visible annoyance with me. “Does getting into med school matter to you?”
Yes, of course it mattered. He knew just how much it did. “It matters more than anything.”
“Then, guess what? It fucking matters to me.”
Chapter
Sixteen
I swallowed a breath. “You have to go to class to graduate.”
Luka rolled his eyes. “I understand how it works, but we’re not there as far as trust goes. That should be your primary focus right now.” He collected the plates from lunch. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
He left, and I plunked down on the couch, fuming. Despite how he’d worked me up, I was still cold. I aggressively yanked the blanket over myself, feeling powerless and frustrated.
Luka returned with my applications and my laptop. He set it on the desk, plugged it in, and hit the power button. Then, he handed me the application essay. “Read it out loud to me.”
It seemed to be so he could multi-task. He went over to the fireplace and turned on the gas, then lit the ceramic pile of faux logs. The blue-orange flames licked over the realistic looking wood in a mesmerizing pattern.
Reading it out to him was weird, but helpful as well. I could hear the awkward phrasing I’d used in the opening paragraph. “Cut that last sentence,” he said. “It’s repetitive.”
He was right.
I made the changes to the document on my laptop while he watched, and then he set up the printer and printed out copies to attach. When I was done addressing the envelopes he’d given me, he stuffed them with the applications, sealed them, and dropped them into the briefcase resting beside the desk.
When he shut my laptop, my gaze casually wandered to his screen and—
“You’re looking at porn?” I asked, shocked. There was a black and white picture on screen of a topless woman, whose head was turned down and her hands tucked behind her back, or perhaps they were tied.