Page 28 of The Golden Receiver

My lips slowed against Evander’s.

He pulled away. “You okay?” he asked, looking down on me.

I nodded. I was okay. Wasn’t sure what had just come over me, but I was okay with it. “Need to shower.”

Evander laughed and rolled off me. I wiped my hand on a patch of grass, but that only made it worse. Grass and dirt stuck to my hand. Evander shook his head as he reached into his gym bag and pulled out one of the small white towels he used in the weight room. He passed it over to me.

“Thanks,” I muttered as I accepted it. I used the towel to wipe myself off before I tucked my dick away and passed it back to him. He did the same.

He stood and readjusted his pants before tucking the towel back in his gym bag. I noticed he didn’t tuck it in the main area. Guess he didn’t want to risk wiping his face with it in the gym the next time we worked out. Couldn’t really say I blamed him. Once everything was put back, he offered a hand down and pulled me up.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say next. What did you say after something like this? Thank you? See you around?

Not that it mattered. We were both going to the same place. I started walking back to the dorm. I wasn’t surprised when he fell into step beside me. I was more surprised by the fact that he didn’t start talking. I almost wished he would have, because then we wouldn’t be stuck with this awkward silence as we moved across campus. Luckily, it wasn’t a long walk back to Karloff Hall. I would be free of this awkward silence in just a few minutes.

We slid through the doors together. Normally, I would’ve taken the stairs, but honestly, I wanted to get up to my room as quickly as possible. I needed to shower the dirt from the trail off me, and I needed to have some time to myself to think about what had just happened. I had hoped Evander would take the stairs, but no, he waited at the elevator with me.

When we stepped in, he stood a bit closer to me than he had outside. I jammed the button for the fifth floor. “What floor?” I asked him, finally breaking the silence.

“Sixth.”

I nodded and hit the button. The awkward silence came back, thicker than it had been the whole walk from the trail. It seemed to grow with every passing second. I was relieved when the chime sounded to let me know we were on the fifth floor. The elevator stopped and two things happened at once.

First, the doors began to open.

Second, Evander leaned in like he was about to kiss me again.

I hadn’t even thought that might be a possibility.

Fight or flight kicked in, and I slipped out of the elevator and down the hall without looking back.

Chapter Ten

Evander

Kieran disappeared down the hall before the elevator doors even closed.

I had hoped that, after what happened in the woods, things would be different. Except they obviously weren’t. The walk back to Karloff Hall had been uncomfortably quiet. Like so uncomfortable that I couldn’t even find something to say. That had never happened before. You could ask pretty much anyone who knew me. I was not a quiet person. But that uncomfortable silence was so heavy that there was no way out of it.

And then, I tried to kiss him in the elevator.

What had I been thinking? I groaned as the elevator doors opened on my floor.

I didn’t say anything to Preston when I entered the dorm. He was, as always, perched in a chair with his textbooks and highlighters, working away. He gave me a small nod as a greeting, and I knew he would’ve been okay with sitting around and talking, but I needed to shower. I needed to think. I needed to change my clothes, because there was dried jizz in my underwear and that was just not comfortable. Besides, I thought better in the shower. It was almost as good as running for thinking.

As soon as I got into the shower, I turned the water onto scalding and started to let my thoughts run away with me.

I thought about what happened on the trail. One minute, we’d been fighting. The next minute, he’d tripped and I’d tried to help. Then we were on the ground, making out, and I’m not really sure how we’d gotten from fighting to fucking. Now that I thought about it, the same thing had happened the week before. We’d been fighting, and then I just wanted to kiss him. I’d wanted to kiss him today, too, when he was underneath me. But I hadn’t been the one to make the first move.

He’d kissed me.

And then he’d run away.

Just like last week.

The only difference was now I knew the way he sounded when he came. I knew what he felt like pressed underneath my body. I knew the way his breath felt against my lips when he was panting and desperate. Now that I knew all of that, I felt some kind of way about him running away. I felt some kind of way about him not wanting to kiss me in the elevator too. Why had it been okay when we were on the trail, but not when we were under the harsh fluorescent lights of the elevator?

I didn’t get it.