Chapter 10
By graduation, Damian and I had become one of those campus couples people talked about in lowered voices. Partly because of the scandal. Partly because he was Damian Steele. Partly because I think no one ever fully recovered from the image of him calling me onto that stage.
At the senior welcome event for the incoming class, Damian came to help the athletic department for an hour.
I had barely gone to the restroom and come back when I saw a freshman girl standing beside him, clinging to a suitcase.
“Um, senior, I’m new here and I don’t know the way. My luggage is really heavy. Could you help me?”
She had a fresh face, a soft voice, and the exact wide-eyed innocence that had once made Bella so effective.
Damian looked down at the suitcase. Then at her.
Then, very calmly, he said, “Sorry. My girlfriend gets jealous.”
I stopped in my tracks and folded my arms.
The girl blinked.
“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”
“And,” Damian continued, raising his voice slightly as several male freshmen nearby turned to look, “gentlemen, take notes. This is an entry-level green tea maneuver.”
I laughed out loud.
The freshmen actually froze.
One of them, apparently too earnest for his own good, fumbled for a notebook.
Damian pointed—not rudely, just devastatingly.
“Classic signs. Pretends weakness. Selects the most visibly unavailable target. Speaks sweetly. Creates a scene that forces the man to either help or appear heartless.”
The poor freshman girl turned red from neck to forehead.
“Wait, I wasn’t—”
“Step one in dealing with this,” Damian said solemnly to the boys, “is to refuse cleanly and immediately. Step two is to create witnesses. Step three is to run.”
The boys looked at him like he was delivering sacred law.
I walked over at last, unable to hold back my grin.
“Professor Steele,” I said, “are you holding a workshop without me?”
He turned, saw me, and the severe expression vanished instantly.
“Babe.”
I gave the girl a sympathetic glance. “You picked the wrong teaching aid.”
Then I started to walk away, pretending to be offended.
“I’m not participating in this lesson.”
I only made it two steps.
A hand caught mine and tugged.
The next thing I knew, I was pulled back against a firm chest, warm laughter brushing my ear.
“Where are you running to?”
“I refuse to be your example.”
“Too late.”
Then, in front of a semicircle of stunned freshmen and loudly wheezing upperclassmen, Damian tilted my chin up and kissed me.
The cheers were immediate.
I could actually hear someone shout, “Write that down too!”
When he finally pulled back, I was blushing so hard my face felt hot.
“You’re shameless.”
Damian looked absurdly pleased with himself.
“And you like me anyway.”
I rolled my eyes.
But I didn’t deny it.
Because the breeze that afternoon smelled faintly of osmanthus, and the campus lawn was full of sunlight, and for the first time in a very long time, I no longer felt like I was standing in anyone else’s shadow.
Bella used to think we had the same taste.
She was wrong.
What she liked was taking.
What I liked was being chosen clearly, publicly, without hesitation.
And Damian?
Damian liked teaching lessons almost as much as I liked winning them.
So in the end, maybe we really were perfect for each other.