Page 51 of Bachelor

I knew how this looked. If Whitney hadn’t realized how drunk Cassandra was, this could be a lovers’ embrace. I had no choice but to clutch Cassandra’s waist tighter and haul her out of her view and into the elevator.

I got to her room, fishing in the pocket of her cardigan and pulling out her key card. She was out cold by the time I laid her in bed on her side and waited for someone else to show up.

Professor Gretta Klein, a mathematics professor, came through the door, her gray eyes narrowed behind her thick glasses. She was twenty years my senior, and strict.

Perfect.

“I don’t know what happened,” I said, throwing my hands in the air.

Gretta rolled her eyes and motioned for me to leave, saying under her breath, “Well, the dean will hear about this first thing Monday morning.”

I hurried down to the common room, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. But when I got there, Whitney was gone, and Jessica was standing at the entrance with her arms crossed and scowl painted over her face.

“What did you do, Rhys?” she asked.

“Where’s Whitney?”

Chapter Seventeen

Whitney

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ISHOULDN’T HAVE BEENfeeling jealous. Seeing Rhys with his arm around Cassandra’s waist shouldn’t have caused a rock to settle in my stomach and a sensation like claws to tear through my hair. I found it hard to breathe as I watched him leave with her. She was obviously drunk, and her fingers walking over his chest made me want to confront him right then and there.

But the look in his eyes when he met mine, just before he left...

I shook my head as I paced back and forth across the floor in my room on the third floor of the lodge, the red wallpaper and rustic furnishings closing in on me. I had no right to be feeling this way. He’d poured his heart out to me on the chairlift, and instead of telling him how I felt, I’d run. I’d hopped off and sped away.

All this time I thought I was the only one being tortured by feelings that hadn’t waned during our separation over Christmas break. An ocean’s worth of distance between us hadn’t changed anything. Everything we’d felt for each other had just festered into something devastating and lethal, putting us both on the edge.

He was willing to risk it all now. He’d said as much.

Why was I suddenly the one holding back?

I’d just sat down on the edge of my bed, wringing my hands, when a knock on the door sounded throughout the room and tore me from my downward spiral.

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