I sat down next to her and pulled her hair from the band that was holding it up and started to brush it with my fingers. I knew she loved it when I did this.

“Mmmmmm, can you do that for the next six hours?” she giggled a little.

“Well, I can do it for the next four at least, then I have to hit the road,” I just smiled down at her. “Tell me about this crappy day.”

She rolled over on her side and propped her head up. “Ugh, group project,” she rolled her eyes.

I laughed a little, knowing how Nolan felt about group projects—never mind that if it wasn’t for a group project, we might not have ever gotten together. Nolan was the perfect student, but she also expected perfection from others. And when a group couldn’t deliver that, it stressed her the hell out.

“Bad group?” I asked, already knowing.

“The worst,” she let out a heavy breath, her lips quivering a little with it. “We have to perform practice IQ tests on each other, and the two other jackasses in my group started building towers with the blocks today, rather than lining up the colors for a pattern like you’re supposed to do.”

I laughed a little at her, but the look she shot me shut me up pretty quickly. “Sorry, it just doesn’t sound sooooo bad,” I said, stroking her hair again to make up for my gaffe. “I bet they pull it together for you.”

She sat up then and looked me in the eyes with a serious expression. “You didn’t let me finish. Then, they pulled out their Angry Bird stuffed animals and started catapulting them into the towers. This went on for 30 minutes; I prepped an entire test before they knocked over six blocks!”

Stifling the laughter was too difficult, and finally it broke free from me. Nolan just shoved her pillow in my face and leaned onto me roughly as she stood up. I couldn’t help it though, the scene was just too much to handle.

“I’m sorry, Noles,” I pulled myself together. “But you have to admit, it sounds pretty funny. I don’t know what’s better, the fact that they have stuffed animals in college, or that they came up with this idea.”

The smirk on her face when she turned around let me know that she was starting to see the humor in it a little, too. “Well, thank goodness I have one more group member. He couldn’t make it to today’s meeting, but he’s actually pretty smart, plus he runs the fifth floor, so I can work on the project with him at our building when we fail to get anything done with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.”

I didn’t miss the he part of her statement. And I didn’t really like the idea that this guy lived only two stories up from her, or that she thought he was pretty smart. But I kept that deep inside and put it in line with the other things I talk about—and probably swear about a little—to myself when I’m driving through the desert between our two schools. Instead, I just smiled at her, pulled her to my lap and went to work on her mouth. I had four hours with her today, and I was going to spend most of those minutes kissing her.

Chapter 2

Nolan

I never got tired of seeing Reed waiting for me by my building. It made the day rush by, and I wanted to run to him every time I saw him sitting there waiting for me. It was only a hundred miles between our two schools, but it was still a hundred miles. I drove to his school a few times, mostly on game days. But he didn’t like me driving through the desert, still a little shell-shocked from our accident.

Some days he was tired, and I could tell. But he made the trip anyhow. I knew he couldn’t stay long today, and I knew he desperately wanted to have the conversation about me transferring schools if he went through with the draft, but I wasn’t ready to have that talk yet.

I knew he loved me. Damn, he’d gone far to prove it. But the thought of uprooting things, just for him to find out that there were options in the big world—women out there, that were better still plagued my mind. It didn’t help that his mother, Millie, never quite warmed to me. She got my name right when we were in each other’s company now, but there was always an air of disdain in how she spoke to me. Reed always denied it, but it was there. I sensed it—my girlfriends sensed it. Hell, Reed’s dad, Buck, even sensed it too, telling me more than once not to let her bitchy streak get to me.

But all of that didn’t matter when I lay in his arms. I enjoyed the now. It calmed the constant churn of stress in my gut from my studies and the fear of blowing my scholarship—the one thing in my mind that edged out the worry over Reed’s draft decision.

“You’re still stressed about this project, aren’t you?” Reed whispered in my ear, his breath sending chills through me. I just took a deep breath and turned on my side to face him, burying my face deep in his chest while he wrapped his massive arms around me.