Page 106 of Not Fooling Anyone

Is it my imagination or is her voice strained, like she’s gritting out the words?

“Well, I’m going to.”

She finally looks up at my hard tone, defiance flashing in her eyes. What’s going on with her?

She sweeps past me, being careful not to touch my body, confirming my suspicion that something’s wrong.

I follow her down the aisle and out the lecture hall doors, waiting till we’re away from the building to ask, “You going to tell me why you’re mad at me?”

She stuffs her hands in her hoodie pocket, jaw firming, but stays silent, continuing to walk along the sidewalk.

I move to take her arm, wanting her to stop and talk to me, and she flinches, angling away.

What the fuck?

She finally stops walking, moving onto the grass so people can pass by us, and stares down at her scuffed shoes. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” she mumbles.

My stomach drops, a hollowed-out pit with no bottom. “What?”

“We should keep things simpler,” she says. “Just finish out the study together and get our money. We don’t have to do anything else.”

I blink at her, unable to believe what I’m hearing, even after suspecting something was going on with her. “What the hell are you talking about?” I thought this was a minor blip, not a complete roadblock. “Did I go too fast? Freak you out? We can go slower.”

She shakes her head. “We’re not a good fit. We’re too… different.”

Different? Yeah, there are some minor things, but no couple is completely the same. There’s nothing we can’t work past. “What are the differences? Tell me so I can fix it. I want this to work.”

She’s silent again, pushing at a fallen leaf on the ground with the toe of her shoe.

“I can’t read your mind, Lexie. You have to give me something here.”

“We’re not compatible.” She looks up at me, her expression pleading, like she needs me to understand.

But I don’t. Not compatible in what? All this started when…

When we were making out in my bedroom.

Does she mean we’re not compatible there? In bed?

Well, fuck.

“You need help,” she whispers. “And I can’t give it to you. I can’t deal with it.”

Heat crawls up my neck, my face flushing with embarrassment. It takes a hell of a lot to embarrass me, and yet she managed to do it with a few words.

“I have to go,” she says, turning around and continuing down the path.

I rake my fingers through my beard, tugging at it, trying to make sense of all this. How could I have completely misread her? I swear she’d been enjoying herself. She’d come twice for me so far. I’dfelther come. On my fingers. On my tongue. She couldn’t have faked that.

She said before what we’ve done is amazing. That she’s happier than she’s ever been. Why would she say that if she didn’t mean it? She’s not the type to stroke a guy’s ego. If anything, she’d say nothing at all.

I need to talk to her again about this, to figure out what I did wrong. I’ve never had a complaint before.

And if she wasn’t referring to us in the bedroom… then what did she mean?

* * *

“There you go,” Austin says as he ducks my blow. “You’re getting it now.”

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