Easy (Contours of the Heart #1)

I guessed that the rose tattoo was a possible clue, given its placement over his heart. Most of the ink on his arms consisted of symbols and intricate motifs, and I wondered if any these were his own design. He shifted onto his back then, and I could finally read the words on his left side:

Love is not the absence of logic

but logic examined and recalculated

heated and curved to fit

inside the contours of the heart

I needed no more proof to know that somewhere in his possibly not-so-distant past, Lucas had loved someone, deeply. Someone he must have lost, because she didn’t appear to be around. And then I looked more closely at the tattoo banding the upturned wrist that lay near his face. Within the inky pattern, masquerading as normal pink skin within the design, was a thin but jagged scar. It ran from one side to the other—all the way across, contained by the black tattooed lines like hidden code.

His right wrist was circled with the same banded design, and watching his face for signs of wakefulness, I lifted it from his chest and gently turned it to check. It, too, was scarred from one side to the other—the scar hidden skillfully by the tattoo artist.

Stunned, I sat on the floor, watching him sleep. I had no idea if this was something I could ever bring up with him—if it was something he’d ever willingly tell me. Even having spent my fair share of days and nights miserable over the breakup with Kennedy, I was never depressed enough to consider suicide. I had no idea what it would take to get to that hopeless point. Not really.

It was late, and I needed to get back to my dorm. Our class—my class—began in only eight hours. On the kitchen counter, I found a discarded envelope and I scribbled a note letting him know I’d gone back to the dorm and would see him tomorrow.

“Wait.” Lucas’s voice stopped me with my hand on the doorknob. He sat up, slightly disoriented from sleep.

“I didn’t want to wake you, so I left a note.” I picked it up from the end table, folding it and shoving it into my pocket. I was so overfull of words to say and questions to ask that none would come out.

He rubbed his eyes and stood, stretching his neck to the side, extending his arms back, eyes closed. His biceps and pecs flexed from the movement, and I wanted to stop staring, but couldn’t until his eyes flashed open. “I’ll walk you out to your truck.”

He turned to grab his t-shirt and pull it back on, and I was able to ogle him shamelessly again. Across the top of his defined shoulders and back were more inked designs and scripted words, but the t-shirt covered them much too abruptly. He disappeared into his bedroom and came out wearing his hoodie and a very beat-up pair of Sperrys I’d never seen him wear. Boots were his standard footwear.

“Francis is on the bed? Unless he’s developed opposable thumbs, I guess you let him in.” Crossing the room to me, he smiled.

I nodded as he neared, and his smile ebbed. I knew he was thinking about what happened before we fell asleep wrapped up in each other, wondering what I thought about him pleading with me to say stop when I’d made it clear that I didn’t want to. If he only knew—my confusion over his strange rejection was nothing to the apprehension over what had caused the scars on his wrists.

Chapter 19

After a week of Lucas ignoring my existence while we were in class, I wasn’t sure what to expect Monday morning. The alteration was minor, but undeniable. When I entered the classroom, his eyes met mine, the barest suggestion of a smile playing on his mouth. Everything about him had grown familiar. The night I danced with him, his features had merged into an exceptionally crush-worthy guy. Now, he was all sharp angled jaw and strong chin, his nose with the slightest hint of a prior break. A crescent-shaped scar sat high on one cheekbone, and his colorless eyes were sometimes a little eerie. The fringes of his bedhead hair were just long enough to soften the whole; if he ever cut it short, he would look like a completely different guy.

He returned his attention to the ever-present sketchbook, and I pulled my gaze forward in an effort to keep from pitching down the steps. Just hours before, he’d held my face in his hands, pressed me against the door to my truck and kissed me as though we’d done what I’d wanted to do. I’d driven back to my dorm in a state of bewildered lust.

Sliding into my seat next to Benji, I withstood the temptation to look over my shoulder. If he wasn’t watching me, I’d be disappointed. If he was, I’d be caught.

The girl on my right was giving her usual Monday morning weekend recap to her neighbor… and the two or three dozen other people who could hear her. Benji pantomimed her perfectly, if a bit dramatically, and I pretended a coughing fit to hide my laughter. Unfortunately, the coughing drew her attention.

“Are you dying or something?” she asked, affecting a perfect sneer as I shook my head. “Well, hacking up a lung out in public isn’t all that attractive—just sayin’.”

My face flamed, but then Benji leaned up and spoke around me. “Um, giving half the class an exhaustive summary every Monday morning—in lurid detail—of how much of an alcoholic skank you are? Isn’t all that attractive, either. Just sayin’.”

She gasped as nearby people snickered, and I caught my lower lip between my teeth while trying to stare straight ahead. Thankfully, Dr. Heller entered then, and class started, and I went back to fifty long minutes of attempting to forget Lucas’s presence three rows back and five seats over.

“So… nine days ’til the final.” Benji stuffed his backpack and smirked at me while I packed mine.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Nine days until no more… restrictions.” I rolled my eyes directly at him as his brows danced up and down. “Eh? Eh?”

I couldn’t help checking to see if Lucas was still in the room. He was talking to the Zeta girl he’d spoken to before—but he was watching me over her head.

Benji sidled by on his way to the aisle, a grin splitting his face. “I’ll take Hot Tutors for $200, Alex,” he said in an unnaturally feminine voice before he began humming the Jeopardy theme song. He was still humming it when he smiled at Lucas just before exiting.

I hoped I wasn’t blushing as Lucas fell into step with me, but neither of us spoke until we were outside. Clearing his throat, he gestured toward Benji’s retreating back with one shoulder. “Does he, um, does he know? About..?”

He worried his bottom lip and the small silver ring, a slight frown on his face.

“He’s actually how I figured out… who you were.”

“Oh?” He walked with me toward my Spanish class, as he had once before.

“He’d noticed us… looking at each other,” I shrugged, “and he asked me if I went to your tutoring sessions.”

Closing his eyes for a beat, he took a breath. “God. I’m so sorry.” I waited, hoping he would tell me the reason for the Landon/Lucas charade, finally. We hiked across the hilly campus in silence for a minute or two, every step taking us nearer to my class. Without a single cloud in the sky, the sun warmed us in direct patches of light while we froze in the shade cast by trees and buildings.

“I noticed you the first week.” His voice was soft. “Not just because of how pretty you are, though of course, that played into it.” I smiled, watching our feet as we matched our steps. “It was the way you lean onto your elbows when you’re listening in class, when something catches your interest. And when you laugh, it’s never to get attention, it’s just—laughter. The way you obsessively tuck your hair behind your ear on the left side, but let the right side fall down like a screen. And when you’re bored, you tap your foot soundlessly and move your fingers on the desktop like you’re playing an instrument. I wanted to sketch you.”

We stopped and stood in a square of sun, well away from the shadowed entrance to the language arts building. “Almost every time I saw you, you were with him. But one day, you walked up to the building alone. I was holding the door for several girls in front of you, and I waited for you to catch up. When you reached me, you look pleased, and a little surprised. Unlike the others, you didn’t expect the door to be held for you by some random guy. You smiled up at me and said, ‘Thank you.’ That was the last straw. I prayed you’d never come to a session, and not with him. I didn’t want you to know I was the tutor.

“He took you for granted, even when you stood next to him, holding his hand. Like you were an accessory.” He frowned, and I remembered feeling exactly like that with Kennedy. Often. “I never wanted you to get hurt, but I wanted to take you from him. I had to constantly remind myself that it didn’t matter if you were his or not, because you were on the other side of a line I couldn’t cross. And then you didn’t show up the day of the midterm—or the next, or the next. I worried that something had happened to you. He was kind of reserved the first couple of days. By the end of the week, girls were flirting with him before class, and the way he responded told me what had happened.

“I was sure you’d dropped the class, which made me selfishly ecstatic. Without even knowing I was doing it, I started looking for you on campus.” He stared into my eyes and lowered his voice even further. “And then, the Halloween party.”

I couldn’t breathe. “You were there? At the party?”

He nodded.

“How? You aren’t Greek, are you?”

He shook his head. “I’d fixed the house’s A/C the night before. Maintenance doesn’t do non-emergency stuff on evenings or weekends, but I’m contract labor, so I agreed to do it. When I wouldn’t take a tip, a couple of the guys invited me to the party. I only said yes because I was hoping you might be there. It had been two weeks, and this campus is so huge I was starting to think I’d never run into you.” He chuckled softly and rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. “Wow, that sounds total stalker.”

Or totally hot. God. “Why didn’t you talk to me that night? Before…”

He shook his head. “You were so withdrawn and miserable. Almost every guy who approached you was rejected without a second glance. There was no way I was going to become one of them. You danced with a handful of guys you already knew—and he was one of those.”

“Buck.”

“Yes. When you left, he followed, and I thought maybe… maybe you two had decided to leave early together, without everyone knowing. Meet outside or something.”

I watched a trio of my classmates enter the building. “He’s my roommate’s boyfriend’s best friend. Well, her ex’s best friend, now. He was a known entity. A friend, I thought. Boy, was I wrong.”

He nodded, frowning. “I was about to leave—my bike was parked out front. Something didn’t feel right, but I was struggling with the same desire to take him out that I’d felt for half the semester with your boyfriend, so I questioned my own motives. I lost a minute arguing with myself, and I’m sorry about that. I finally decided if you two were hooking up, I’d just go around front, rev up the Harley, and be done with it. With you.”