Spitfire in Love (Chasing Red 3)

“And?” he prompted. He looked tired, as if, like me, he didn’t get any sleep last night. But damn he looked so good.

“And…and…”

My phone lit up. His eyes dropped to it, reading the text message.

“Who’s Thomas?” His voice sounded hard.

For a moment, I thought about lying and telling him Thomas was my boyfriend. I was so tempted to. But in the end, I decided against it. Lying wouldn’t bring me anything but more heartbreak.

“He’s the guy who doubted that JC had risen from the dead.”

“What?”

I grabbed my phone and sent Thomas a reply.

“You can’t wait to send him a message when you can’t even reply to mine?” he accused hotly.

I let out an incredulous puff of breath through my nose. “And you replied to mine?” I shot back. “You’re asking a lot of things from me when you haven’t given anything back.”

The muscle in his jaw ticked.

“It’s best if you leave me alone,” I said quietly.

He looked down, his hands curling into fists. When his eyes returned to my face, there was an emotion in them that tightened my throat.

“Tell me why you left,” I said.

He rubbed his mouth with his hand, his gaze taking in my features, as if he was memorizing every one of them. But when he stayed quiet, I grabbed my backpack and my phone and walked away.

“Fuck!” I heard him hiss in frustration.

But I ignored it, even when my heart was yelling at me to turn back around and talk it out with him.

The day dragged. I felt itchy all day, suffocated in the four walls of the lecture hall. I couldn’t concentrate on anything and desperately wanted to leave campus. But when my last class ended, it took ten minutes of dragging my feet, trying to decide whether to stay, before I decided to head to the parking lot to my car.

I knew Cameron had practice tonight. Should I stay and wait for him or just leave? I looked at my phone for the thousandth time today. Still no texts from him.

It was eight thirty, and I noted that he still had a half hour before his practice ended. It was dark outs

ide, but the lampposts illuminated the parking lot. There were only about fifteen cars left in the massive parking lot, probably most of them from the basketball team. Did Cameron bring his own vehicle tonight?

“I’m leaving. I’m not waiting,” I muttered under my breath as I stashed my phone in my purse. When I looked up, I gasped.

Cameron was leaning against the side of my car, waiting for me. He had his hoodie up, covering his face, but I knew it was him. There was no way I wouldn’t recognize that devil-may-care way of his stance, the confidence in his movements as he pushed away from my car.

He looked up, and the need I saw in his gaze spoke to me more than his words, but then he masked it quickly, hiding himself from me again.

This is not going to work.

“I didn’t expect you to,” he said, “but I hoped you would wait anyway.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. He’d heard me.

“I thought you had practice tonight,” I said.

“I did.”

“You didn’t go?”