Page 30 of Campus Crush
I wasn’t supposed to like him.
Not when I had feelings for Bear.
Not when Bear and I had shared real conversations and quiet confessions and a bond that felt like more than just shared pixels and game mechanics.
I’d put Foster Kane in a box after our night together freshman year, and he was supposed to stay there as a bad decision I’d made once upon a time, but now I was starting to question if that was fair.
He clearly wasn’t the party guy he’d been freshman year.
And spending three days a week with him made it impossible not to get to know him more with each tutoring session. That crush I’d had freshman year wasn’t buried as deep as I thought it had been.
My nerves were a jumbled mess when I showed up to our latest tutoring session. My heart felt like it dipped in my chest when I saw he wasn’t at our usual table.
I checked my phone to see if he’d texted me. He’d convinced me to exchange numbers so he could reach out if he was ever running late or needed to change our schedule. A part of me was still expecting him to use it for something else, but so far he hadn’t texted me at all.
When he walked in the door with two coffee cups in hand, those butterflies once again took off in my stomach.
Coffee wasn’t that big a deal. It didn’t warrant the swarm that took flight or the weird giddiness that filled my chest.
I couldn’t explain the emotions and feelings Foster brought out in me, and maybe that’s what scared me the most.
He placed one of the cups on the table beside my laptop like it was no big deal. Like he hadn’t just set off a full-on emotional crisis in my chest.
“What’s this?” I asked, my voice even and not conveying in the slightest the chaos going on inside of me.
“Vanilla latte,” he said casually, sliding into the seat beside me. His knee brushed against mine as he got settled, and it took everything to ignore the warmth that bloomed from that spot.
I blinked at the cup, then at him. “How’d you know?”
He shrugged like it was no big deal, but I didn’t miss the subtle pink on the tops of his cheeks. “It’s what you ordered at the café when I ran into you.”
I hadn’t even realized he’d been paying that close of attention.
His gaze caught mine and the air thickened between us. I wasn’t sure either of us took a breath as we held a silent conversation with our eyes. The way he looked at me now—it wasn’t how he looked at everyone else. There was a gentleness to it, almost reverent. Like he was trying to memorize my every reaction.
The words might’ve been unsaid, but I couldn’t deny the feeling—it was one I’d felt before.
Ilikedhim.
That nearly all-consuming crush I’d had before was back with a vengeance.
And I hated how much that scared me.
Because I wasn’t supposed to fall for him again. Not after everything. Not when he’d once made me feel so small, even if he hadn’t intended to. And definitely not when Bear existed—although hadn’t he also hurt me?
I didn’t know what scared me more—the possibility that Foster could hurt me again…or the possibility that he wouldn’t.
Was the way I’d felt hurt with him really all that different from how Bear had made me feel?
And I couldn’t deny that I knew I’d forgive Bear and move forward, so why was I holding on so tightly to the idea that I couldn’t forgive Foster?
I broke our gaze and focused on the reason we were meeting.
Math was logical. It made sense.
It didn’t make me feel like I was on a stormy sea on a flimsy raft.
It didn’t have me questioning if someday I was going to be forced to pick between two guys who couldn’t be more different, but both stirred up a confusing mix of emotions inside me.
