Page 38 of Mayhem

I turned my head slowly. “Why the fuck do you know that?”

His eyebrows went up. “Know what?”

“Any of this.” I gestured at him with the page, because the man currently stealing office supplies and sitting so close his knee kept knocking mine was also the same lunatic who’d fucked me against a wall after interrupting my attempt to carve up an ex. Those two facts had not suggested academic nuance. “You look like you should be majoring in aggravated assault.”

Malakai laughed loudly enough that somebody two tables over looked at us. He looked back at them until they decided their book was fascinating, then finally handed me the pen. “Chemical engineering.”

I stared at him for a beat before I could stop myself. “That’s fucking disappointing.”

“It should probably be insulting, but I’m choosing to hear that you think I’m pretty enough to be stupid.” He reached over and stole my highlighter this time, uncapped it with his teeth, and dragged it across another sentence before I slapped his hand away. “I’m touched.”

“I think you’re irritating enough that intelligence feels excessive. Pick a struggle.”

“That’s better.” Malakai tossed the highlighter back onto my notebook, but instead of getting bored and leaving like a normal person, he settled deeper into the chair and started reading the case over my shoulder. He had opinions too, apparently, and they weren’t the kind designed to keep me talking for his entertainment. He questioned why the investigator had treated one interview as corroboration when the witness had clearly repeated information already circulating publicly, then pointed out that the offender’s behavior after the assault was more controlled than the report’s interpretation allowed. I disagreed with him on that part, and we spent the next several minutes going through it because Malakai actually listened when I explained why. He pushed back where the evidence supported it and dropped the argument where it didn’t, which was annoyingly refreshing in a building full of people who considered confidence a substitute for being right.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I stopped trying to figure out when he planned to leave. Malakai had apparently decided my table was his now, and arguing about it would have required more effort than letting him sit there while I worked. He did not become quieter because I was studying. He commented on my handwriting, stole one of the fries I’d brought from the student union and forgotten beside my laptop, asked whether I always chewed the inside of my cheek when I was annoyed, then laughed when I told him I was considering testing whether his tongue piercing could be ripped out with pliers. The difference was that his mouth did not stop his brain from working. He could be halfway through saying something designed specifically to piss me off and still catch a contradiction three paragraphs down before I did.

Priya found us like that almost an hour later. She came around the end of the stacks carrying a laptop and two books, slowed when she saw Malakai beside me, then looked around the library as if perhaps there were another explanation hiding somewhere nearby. “Do you have a class in this building?” she asked him after a moment, setting her books down across from us without waiting for an invitation.

Malakai glanced toward the ceiling like the answer might be posted there. “Probably not.”

“You don’t know?”

“I know where my classes are. I just don’t care where this building ends.” He stole another fry while he answered, which earned him a smack across the wrist from me that he ignored. “She has food.”

“I had food before you got here,” I corrected, dragging the carton closer to my side. “Now I have evidence of theft.”

Priya looked between us, openly fascinated. “So you’re just hanging out with her?”

Malakai’s face went blank with exaggerated thoughtfulness, then he leaned closer and stole the fry anyway. “I guess I am.”

That pleased him far more than it should have. I could tell because he spent the next few minutes bothering Priya too, asking why she always carried three pens but never seemed to have one when Echo needed one, whether Devon still owed her money from whatever had happened last weekend, and how many people on campus had already decided I was sleeping with Hunter. Priya answered two questions before realizing he was collecting information while acting like an asshole, which made her narrow her eyes at him in a way I respected. Malakai only grinned wider. By the time she left for her next class, she pointed at me on her way out and told me, “He’s your problem now,” as though I’d signed paperwork.

“I reject ownership,” I said once she disappeared between the shelves, though Malakai had already opened my laptop farther toward himself to read the professor’s prompt.

“Too late.”

I shoved his shoulder hard enough to move him an inch. “You don’t get to decide that.”

“I wasn’t talking about you owning me.” He looked at me with far too much amusement, then tapped the screen. “Your professor wants twelve hundred words on causation and you have seven hundred written, three hundred of which are you calling the author lazy in academic language. I want to see how you make that respectable.”

“You really don’t have anywhere else to be?”

“I do.”

“Then why are you still here?”

Malakai looked at me like the question itself was strange. “Because I want to be.”

There was no performance in it, which made it land harder than whatever obnoxious thing I’d expected him to say. He went right back to reading before I could decide whether I wanted to ask what the fuck that meant, and after a second I did the same. He kept stealing my fries. I kept slapping his hand. We argued over the case until I rewrote half a paragraph and he called the new version less stupid, which was apparently the closest thing to praise he intended to offer.

When I finally closed the laptop, Malakai stood at the same time and reached for my bag before I could. I caught the strap first and pulled it toward me, but he kept hold of the other side just long enough to make it annoying. “Don’t start,” I warned him, and he released it with a grin before falling into step beside me as I headed toward the stairs.

I didn’t ask where he was going. At this point, I was starting to suspect the answer was wherever the fuck I was.

By the time we came out of the library, the quad had thinned enough that I could see all the way to the business annex without having to pick anyone out of a crowd. Nichlas was halfway across it with two other students, walking fast enough that one of them had to keep adjusting his stride to stay beside him. He hadn’t seen me yet. I shifted toward the wider path instead of cutting toward the student union, and Malakai changed direction with me without asking why, still close enough that his shoulder brushed mine when the walkway narrowed. I didn’t bother looking at him. If he wanted to keep attaching himself to my day, he could at least be useful while he did it.

Nichlas looked up when we were close enough that pretending not to notice us would have been ridiculous. His eyes landed on me first, then moved to Malakai, and the change in his face was almost worth the entire morning. Yesterday, Malakai had been one of the men physically standing between us. Today, he was walking beside me with one hand in his pocket and absolutely no sign that he’d been ordered to keep me away from anything. Nichlas slowed, and the guy talking to him finally stopped too when he realized he no longer had Nichlas’s attention. I kept going at the same pace, letting Nichlas decide for himself what the hell had changed.