Page 34 of Ice Cold, Red Hot
I tried to blow past her, but Griff elbowed me hard, blocking my path and nodding at her. “She deserves a few words,” he said.
“Fuck.”
“Different words,” Griff suggested.
The guys filed inside and I was left alone, facing Celeste.
She straightened up, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes narrowed, and while I still fought my attraction to her, there was something else—foreboding. Celeste looked pissed.
“What the hell were you thinking?” she asked.
Fantastic. One more person to explain myself to. I set my jaw, trying to contain the three million responses that flew through my mind. Being an asshole right now wouldn’t help.
“A bar fight?”
“It wasn’t a fight,” I said, my mouth beating my brain to the punch. “I just punched him.”
“That makes it so much better, Shepherd. Why wouldyou do that? Doesn’t that put your position in jeopardy with the team?”
“Why do you even care?” The words fired out of me, angry, full of hurt, full of wanting her so badly I could barely keep from lunging at her and wrapping her in my arms like she was the only thing in the world that could fix any of this.
For a second, something like pain flitted through her dark gaze, then her lips pressed into a hard angry line before she spoke. “This affects me too. Ethan is basically my boss now. You just made my life a hundred times harder.”
I shook my head. “Your boss? What?”That’s what he’d been bragging about last night.
She blew out a breath, as if she was annoyed she had to explain this to me. “He offered me a research assistant position.”
“And you took it?” The last thing I wanted was her working closer with him.
“Of course I took it. The pay is better, the hours are better, and the work is the kind of resume building I need. It’s an amazing opportunity—especially for a first year grad student.”
“And did you take it to be close to Ethan?” I couldn’t even meet her eye as I asked the question.
“You don’t get to ask me that.” Her voice was almost a whisper.
For another second, we just stood there staring at each other, the tension between us a physical force, an animal stalking warily back and forth with every muscle coiled.
“Look,” she said, shifting her weight and running a hand through her hair. “You made your choice the othermorning. You made everything perfectly clear. And this is me respecting your decision. I’m not TAing your section anymore, so let’s just agree to keep our distance from now on.”
“Is that why you’re here? You’re keeping your distance?”
Celeste’s beautiful eyes held mine. “I came to be sure you were okay.”
As she turned and walked away, I realized I was about as fucking far from okay as I’d ever been.
CHAPTER 16
CELESTE
I spent the day at the lab, getting acclimated to the work and my role in Ethan’s research. For the first couple hours, it was just me and Daria, a second-year grad student who’d been in this lab the year prior too.
“It’s all about studying cognitive response under pressure in athletes,” she explained, though I already knew the subject of the work. She pulled up a file on the screen in front of me, containing over a hundred individual files. “These are the potential subjects for the next arm of the study. Your first job is to scan for a fit.”
I clicked one profile open. “So what are the criteria?”
“Those are here.” Daria pulled up another file on a second screen. I liked her quiet focus, her understated friendliness. She didn’t ask what I was doing here—this was an unusual job for a first-year. She just accepted my qualifications and helped me get up to speed.
Soon, I was carefully evaluating each applicant, screening for any diagnosed psychological issues, substance misuse history, injury history, and more. There was verynarrow pool of collegiate athletes who would fit, and I was eliminating more than I was admitting.
