Page 68 of Bad Medicine
Mia
Thehallwaywasnoisy,the excited bustle of students returning from their Christmas vacations filling the narrow passage with the echoing buzz of joy and celebration.
We all felt it; the anticipation of completing this first leg of our journey, that almost constant thrum beneath our skin letting us know the end was in sight. Years of work and preparation had all come down to this.
The culmination of my undergrad was within my grasp, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled.
Making my way past the revelers, I checked the numbers above the doors, ducking into the small lecture room that would house the biochemistry lab for the semester. Skirting along the outside wall, I headed for the back corner, glad to see that I was the first one here, and therefore still had my pick of the seats. Dropping my bag onto the lab table, I hiked myself up onto the stupidly uncomfortable stool and settled in to await the start of the class, skimming through the textbook that looked about as dry as the desert outside. I rested my chin in my hand as I flipped the pages, not really paying attention as the room filled up around me.
I don’t know why I looked up—and I’d forever wonder how different my life would have been if I hadn’t—but it was almost as though I could feel the moment he entered the room. Like a shock wave rippling across the sky, the air in the room changed, moved, pulsed, and I found myself raising my head almost without conscious knowledge of doing so.
And then he was there, breezing through the door like some sort of prince, his cold gaze assessing the room and, if the expression on his face was any indication, finding it extremely lacking. Curling his lip, the man moved to the seat nearest the door and slouched onto the stool, one leg still on the floor like he couldn’t wait to leave.
I watched in fascination as he stared at his phone, the bored expression never leaving his face as he scrolled endlessly, never once stopping or changing expression, regardless of what crossed his screen.
From my shadowed corner in the back, I watched him, his frosty countenance only accentuated by his pale hair and chilly blue eyes, the angles of his bones, the way his cheeks arched and his jaw clenched, had me comparing him to a fantasy creature, his beauty almost inhuman.
It was that same comparison that told me I needed to stay away from him. His demeanor alone should have been enough of a deterrent, but I knew, I could practically sense, that getting too close to him would only lead me to disaster.
I had no room for distractions; I kept my entanglements and encounters as impersonal as possible, a simple transaction for mutual benefit and nothing more, with no long-lasting effects.
But something about him told me that wouldn’t be the case.
Something about this man would stay with me forever.
Resolved to keep my distance, I resumed my reading, telling myself firmly that there was no room in my life for anything complicated.
And everything about him screamed complications.
I would just avoid him for the rest of the semester. I would not let that cold blue gaze derail my plans.
Easy, right?
Wrong.
It was as though once I had noticed him, I couldn’t stop noticing him. Somehow, he was everywhere; the cafeteria, the quad, the library. Even the campus mail room. Suddenly, that beautiful man was everywhere I looked.
And while I couldn’t seem to bring myself to talk to him directly, somehow every whisper about him found its way to my ears, and I found I learned all kinds of things about him just from that alone.
Like how I learned his name was Greg Belmont, and he was a pharmaceutical student, which was how he’d landed in my biochem class. He was cool, and arrogant, and from the gossip at the coffee shop, an absolute beast in bed.
That little bit of information had me creating all sorts of scenarios in my head for the next week or two, that was for damn sure.
I had been at UNLV for three and a half years already, and in all that time I had kept my head down and worked hard. Sure, I partied; it was college, parties were simply a part of the culture.
But unlike some of my fellow students, I wasn’t a complete lush. I knew that being a doctor was all I had ever wanted, and there was no way I was going to let college party life get in my way.
My parties never seemed to be his parties, though. The smaller, more intimate gatherings I had attended were clearly not exciting enough for a man like Greg. I tried to imagine the kinds of places he frequented, places that probably had bottle service and waitresses that expected thousand-dollar tips at the end of the night. Places that were far too rich for my blood.
No, while my fellow students and I reveled in Thursday night dollar specials, I imagined Greg was ensconced in a private booth somewhere, surrounded by equally beautiful people with equally frosty personalities.
Unfortunately, I was fascinated with the man, which made getting through my biochem class particularly difficult.
Every day I found myself arriving to the class we shared early, taking the seat in the far back corner and surreptitiously watching for the moment he entered the room, my own little guilty pleasure.
I would watch him enter, his rolling walk looking unhurried as he made his way to that same table at the front of the room. Dragging out the stool, he would drop onto it with the air of a jaded rock star, as though he could think of a thousand things he would rather be doing than sitting in a poorly air-conditioned classroom, listening to the professor drone on about adenosine triphosphate and peptide bonds.
In my mind, I wondered what it would feel like to have his attention on me, to feel those icy blue eyes roaming over my skin as he looked my way.
