I was late.
Glancing at my watch, I raced down the empty hallway toward my communications class.
Monday mornings were the worst. I worked vampire hours all weekend at the club and had only gotten about three hours of sleep before my alarm had gone off.
I’d struggled to get out of bed, and by the time I’d gotten to school, all the spaces in the student lot were filled. That meant I’d spent the last fifteen minutes circling the side streets around campus, trying to find a place I could park without getting towed.
Professor Meyers wasn’t an asshole, but he was strict. Until now, I’d managed to stay off his radar, but my good luck was about to end.
I shoved the classroom door open and stumbled inside.
“Mr.…?” Professor Meyers raised an eyebrow at me from where he stood at the podium in the front of the class.
“Alexander.” I kept my eyes on him and not on the students gawking at me.
“I was asking for your last name,” he said dryly.
“Alexander is my last name. Sir.” I added the last part hastily.
He looked at the papers in front of him. “Well, Mr. Alexander, since you can’t be bothered to come to my class on time—”
The door swung open, and a solid body smashed into my back.
“Oof,” I grunted as I stumbled forward.
I caught myself before I went sprawling. Pulling in a deep breath, I adjusted my bag and straightened, desperately trying to tamp down my anger. Laughter tittered through the room.
“Sorry. Sorry,” a flustered, nearly hysterical voice said behind me.
I turned around, and my eyes collided with a pair of dark brown ones. I vaguely recognized the guy from this class. He narrowed his eyes and glared at me. What the fuck? He’d smashed into me.
“Mr.…?” Professor Meyers asked the other guy.
“Ellis, Sir.” The guy swung his gaze to our teacher.
“Well, Mr. Alexander and Mr. Ellis, since you can’t be bothered to come to class on time, you’re our first pair for the new assignment.”
Our TA jumped up from his seat at the end of the first row and rushed over, a packet of papers in his hand. He shoved one at me, then handed another to the guy behind me.
I glanced down at the pages. The professor cleared his throat and motioned to the desks right in front of the podium. “Your new seats.”
The guy behind me brushed past me, hitting my shoulder hard enough it wasn’t an accident. Gritting my teeth, I followed him and slid into the chair the professor was pointing at.
My cheeks burned, but not from embarrassment. I hated being called out, especially in front of an audience, and I was pissed at not only Professor Meyers and the asshole who’d hit me but also myself for being late.
I’d known taking an eight a.m. class on Monday morning would be a hassle, but it was the only time this particular class fit into my schedule, so my hands had been tied.
Professor Meyers droned on in his usual monotone, explaining the assignment described in the handout. “Now, pair up. You have exactly twenty minutes to exchange information and tell Mr. Bates your pairs.”
The din of students speaking quietly and moving around echoed in the room, and I turned my attention to my new partner. He was glaring at me, his dark eyes narrowed and his jaw tight.
I tilted my head as I studied him. His glare was about as effective as a petulant kid throwing a tantrum after not getting their way. He was a big guy, nearly my size, but leaner. I’d put him about six feet and about one eighty, while I was six one and came in at just over two hundred pounds.
He was hot, even with the glare. His dark brown hair and clear skin accentuated his big eyes and full lips, not to mention a jawline that could cut glass. He had that pretty boy vibe going on, and I deliberately swept my gaze down his body to judge how he’d react.
His jaw ticked, his glare deepened.
“Someone’s grumpy this morning,” I drawled and lazily stretched out in my chair.
He tore his eyes from mine and looked down at the papers in his hand, his knuckles white from holding them so tight. What crawled up this guy’s butt and died?
I read the papers more carefully. We’d been assigned a combined project. Half of it was a presentation, which we’d be doing in front of the class in a month, and the other was a written component where we had to show our research and the steps we used to create the presentation.
Easy enough.
I skimmed the topics.
My new partner had yet to say a word.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Alex,” he ground out.
“I’m—”
“Kai.”
I blinked. He knew who I was? “Um. Yeah.” I shook off my surprise. “So, which one do you want to do?”
He glowered at me like I’d kicked his puppy. “You really don’t remember me?”
“Sorry.” I racked my brain to place him. “Where do I know you from?”
He rolled his eyes and slumped back in his seat. “Forget it.”
“Okaaaay.”
What was this guy’s problem? I wasn’t the nicest guy, but the vitriol he was exuding was extreme. What had I done to him?
“Let’s just pick one, then divvy up the work. You prepare the presentation, and I’ll do the written. We’ll send each other our work a week before, then put something together.”
“That’s a nice idea.” I pointed to the first paragraph of the assignment. “But it says we have to log our hours and keep a record of our meetings.”
He squinted at the paper. “Fuck,” he muttered.
“And I expect the records to be accurate,” a voice said from the front of the class.
Shit. Professor Meyers had overheard our conversation. Way to put yourself even more on his radar, Kai.
Alex nodded to the professor, then turned to me. “What’s the best way to get hold of you?”
“Text.” I rifled through my bag and grabbed a pen.
“Not Insta? Or Snapchat?” he asked.
“I don’t use those. Text is easiest.” I wrote my number on the bottom of his paper.
It wasn’t my real number. I used a cheap prepaid phone for talking with randoms and group project members. My real number was something I kept close to my chest.
“What’s yours?” I handed him the pen.
He took it, grumbling, and scribbled a number on my page.
“Ten minutes!” Professor Meyers called out, finally moving away from his podium.
The lineup to talk to the TA stretched all the way to the back of the room. I didn’t know anyone in the class, so I would have paired up with a random anyway. At least I could sit and chill while everyone else dealt with sign-ups.
Alex tossed my pen onto the table attached to my chair with enough force it bounced off the surface and fell to the floor. Rolling my eyes, I bent to retrieve it.
“So, which one do you want to do?” I asked as Alex stared straight ahead.
“Either number seven or eleven.”
Seven was about censorship, while eleven was about social media and its place in business. “Seven.”
Censorship was something I was interested in, and considering how much I despised social media, that topic would bore me to tears.
Alex gave me a look that clearly said he wanted to argue, but eventually, he gave me a clipped nod.
“What’s your schedule like?” I spun my pen over my fingers.
He followed the movement with his eyes. “I have classes.”
I smirked. This guy’s attitude was kind of adorable. I had no idea why he hated me, but he obviously didn’t know me. Otherwise, he’d know that stubbornness and being a dick about things didn’t piss me off. It amused me. “And what about after classes?”
“Homework, stuff.”
“Do you work?”
“Why?” He shot me a glare. “What does that matter?”
“Because a job will affect your schedule.” I kept my tone light and conversational, knowing it would piss him off even more.
“I don’t work right now.”
“I do—”
“Congratulations.”
“—so weekends are out.” I ignored his interruption.
“Five minutes!” Professor Meyers leaned against the desk tucked into the front corner of the room opposite the door.
“What’s easier for you, during the day or after class?”
“After class,” he mumbled.
“Now, was that so hard?”
He shot me a glare that intensified when I smirked. He crossed his arms and turned his attention to the front of the room.
“Glad we could work that out.” I stretched out farther, spreading my legs so my thigh nearly brushed his. He jerked it away from me and crossed his legs awkwardly.
Hmmm. He either hated me so much he thought touching me would give him asshole cooties, or he wasn’t comfortable touching strangers. Or men.
I pulled my leg away, not wanting to make him truly uncomfortable if he had some sort of trauma associated with being touched, and spun my pen absently.
Alex uncrossed his legs and instead stretched them out and crossed his ankles, ensuring he didn’t accidentally move into my space. He also shifted in his chair so he was as far from me as possible. Interesting.
“Everyone back in your seats!” our TA called.
Professor Meyers came to stand behind the podium again. “If you didn’t get a chance to tell Mr. Bates your pairs, you can do it after class.”
He waited as everyone returned to their seats and the class was quiet.
The only bonus to taking this class was that Professor Meyers was ridiculously hot. He looked to be in his early thirties, which was impressive for a tenured professor. His dark brown hair contrasted nicely against his silver blue eyes and lightly bronzed skin. Add in his broad shoulders, thick thighs and trim waist, and he was some serious eye candy.
“The first ten minutes of every class between now and your presentation date will be dedicated to this assignment. Be prepared to bring your notes and logs to class, as I and Mr. Bates will be randomly checking them. If you’ve read the syllabus, which I assume everyone has, you’ll know this presentation is worth thirty percent of your final grade. That includes all the preparations, research, and presentation.”
He paused and looked around the room. “Now, today’s class will be focused on…”
I tuned him out, pulled my laptop out of my bag, and opened it. To my right, Alex snickered and smirked at my computer.
The thing wasn’t pretty. The outside looked like shit, but a buddy of mine had refurbished it for me, and it worked just as well as any fancy-ass one on the market now. Alex’s laptop was newer, but I’d stopped caring about what people thought of me and my stuff years ago.
I winked at him. He blanched. Holding back a grin, I brought up my notes for the class. Professor Meyers was a weird mix of old and new school. His assignments were all distributed in paper form with no digital options. I assumed it was so he could track who was in class when he handed them out. He didn’t take attendance but wrote a code on the board at the end of class that we needed to access the online slides for each lesson.
He also gave quizzes and short essays at random times, all on paper and not online. It was annoying because it meant skipping class wasn’t an option. It would be easier for him to just take attendance, but I guessed this was his way of punishing students who missed class without a valid reason.
The clicking of keys brought me back to reality, and I focused on Professor Meyers and the slides projected on the SMART board.
