Page 17 of Mayhem

She nodded once, collected her friend, and left without trying to touch me again. I swiped a stray glass off the table, letting it shatter on the floor before turning the laptop toward Malakai and Ronan. “Find out who the fuck she is. Keep watching her, and don’t let her get close enough to Nichlas to turn this into something I have to explain to my father.”

Malakai glanced at Echo’s profile again, a devilish grin spreading across his face. “I’m already watching her, boss.”

That did not make me feel better.

echo

By the time Professor Garrison dismissed us, Priya had already made plans for lunch without asking whether the rest of us agreed. She was halfway through listing places when we spilled into the hall with everyone else, Devon walking backward in front of us while he argued that the student union had the only edible fries on campus and Maren reminded him he’d said the exact opposite two days ago.

I let them decide. I’d eaten breakfast; I had nowhere I needed to be for another hour, and Nichlas had disappeared into the business building twenty minutes earlier with one of the men who had started shadowing him since I arrived. I could afford lunch.

The hallway narrowed near the central stairs, forcing everyone coming out of Garrison’s seminar into the same bottleneck as students heading the opposite direction. Priya caught Maren by the elbow before she disappeared into the crowd as Devon kept talking over his shoulder. I moved around a pair of students who had stopped directly in front of the stairs and nearly walked into someone coming around the corner.

That’s when a hand closed around my waist before the collision happened. My palm hit a solid chest, his other hand coming up against my arm, steadying me as two students pushed past behind us, and for a second there wasn’t enough room to move anywhere without moving closer.

I looked up, trying to weather my reaction at how much bigger he was than me. The next thing I noticed was how handsome he was in his fitted black shirt stretched across shoulders that made my hand look smaller where it rested against him and the several pieces of metal stuck through his ears, nose, and well... everywhere. His gaze dropped briefly to my palm before returning to my face.

I removed my hand but his stayed at my waist.

“Echo Matthews.”

I froze, wondering where someone who looked like him had heard my name. I hadn’t seen him around and I wasn’t famous or infamous enough for my name to be traveling through any channels. “Malakai?” I asked, the name clicking into place a second too late. Priya had given me all three King names, but not faces. “How do you know mine?”

His thumb shifted once at my waist before he finally let me go. “You’re the transfer who’s been appearing everywhere Nichlas does. That makes you easier to remember than most.”

I folded my arms. “So you make a habit of memorizing strangers when they become inconvenient?”

His mouth moved slightly. “Only the interesting ones.”

I pushed lightly against his chest, testing whether he would finally take the hint. He let his hand fall from my waist but didn’t move out of the way. Up close, I could see the tattoos disappearing beneath the sleeves of his shirt and the faint amusement that never quite became a smile.

There was something about the way he talked that made me want to keep him there even as the sensible part of my brain told me this was exactly the kind of conversation I shouldn’t be having with anyone at Aldrich.

People knew I was new. They weren’t supposed to know enough to look at me like Malakai just had. I folded my arms across my chest. “So I have your first name but I do get your last name too? Since we’re using full government names.”

“You didn’t ask for one.”

Before I could decide whether I wanted to shove him again, a voice carried from farther down the hall.

“Kai.”

Malakai looked past me. I followed his attention and saw a dark-haired man standing near the stairwell with one hand in the pocket of his black cargos. Tattoos ran down his arms beneath the sleeves of a white shirt, and there was something familiar about him too. He wasn’t calling again. He simply waited, watching us with enough interest that I knew he’d seen more than the end of the conversation.

Malakai’s gaze came back to mine. “Try not to run into anybody else.”

“I didn’t even run into you,” I muttered before just waving my hand at him. He stepped aside at last, leaving enough room for me to pass, but his eyes stayed on me until I moved around him.

Priya caught my arm before I made it ten feet. “What the fuck was that?”

I looked back once. Malakai had reached someone else. That student said something I couldn’t hear, and Malakai shoved a hand against his chest as they started toward the stairs. The other man caught his wrist, pulled him closer for half a second, then released him without either of them breaking stride.

“I almost walked into somebody.”

Priya stared at me. Devon and Maren had stopped ahead of us, apparently deciding lunch could wait if there was something better to watch.

“You almost walked into somebody?” Priya repeated. “Echo, he had his hand around your waist.”

“He was stopping me from knocking him over.”