locker at the police station, ready and waiting for me to put it back on after this assignment, but I didn’t deserve it. The all-encompassing failure of my first undercover assignment was tough to deal with.
None of the steps I’d taken in advancing my career had been missteps until now, and it was impossible to reconcile the one thing I’d always cared about with the confusion that the very sight of Ryan had instilled in me. What could you even call this turmoil churning away inside of me?
The two of us walked past the dining hall where the menu advised that dinner that night would be Black Bean Beef. I sighed.
Mercifully, Millie changed the subject to the lecture we’d just been through for the duration of the elevator ride up to the fourth floor we both lived on. The mercy was short-lived; when we came around the corner, we were confronted by a face I’d last seen fast asleep in the bed where I’d lost my virginity.
Millie bounced in glee and I froze. Ryan looked so out of place in the dorm, on the campus in general, amongst all the singlets and flip flops with his suit sans tie and polished black shoes.
He was leaning against the wall next to my door, reading something on his phone, when Millie’s antics caught his attention. He looked up and Millie gestured at me like a beautiful assistant on a game show, displaying what our contestant could win today.
Ryan smiled and put his phone away, turning towards us. I could see he had a single rose in his other hand and he was getting closer. Correction, I was getting closer, with Millie’s help via a hand on the small of my back.
“Found you,” he said when I arrived at my door.
“How… oh, I told you I was in Cumberland?”
“That’s right.”
“Is that for me?” I pointed at the rose.
“No, I was going to eat it.” He smiled. “Of course it’s for you. Here, I hope you like it, there are two other Sarinas staying in Cumberland this year and I had to fight hard to keep one of them away from it after I showed up at her door.”
I accepted the flower and held it up to my nose without thinking. It smelled heavenly, and when I looked up into his eyes I could feel myself melting all over again.
Get yourself together, Sarina.
“Sarina Bell, now I know.” He pointed to the name written on a card on my door.
“Well… thank you.”
“So… uh… I was wondering, I had a really good time… uh… talking to you the other…”
Ryan seemed to be slowly coming to the realization that there was a girl almost attached to my elbow with a smile on her face so wide you could have seen it from the surface of the moon. He glanced in her direction.
“Sorry, if you don’t mind…?”
“I’m Millie,” she said.
“Well, hi. I’m Ryan. Hey, Millie, if you don’t mind, I’d like to just… you know.”
“I don’t mi-”
“Millie?” I urged her in the direction of her own room with my eyes as forcefully as I could.
“Oh! Well, nice to meet you. Be nice to Badass, OK? You saw what she can do.”
Ryan raised his eyebrow as Millie double-timed it to her door and slipped inside. “Badass?”
“Apparently that’s my nickname now, after that night in the club.”
“Makes sense. So, Sarina, I was wondering if I could take you out sometime? Sometime soon? Maybe dinner so we can talk a bit? I see you’ve got “Black Bean Beef” tonight. Just sayin’.”
Sarina was my real first name, and standing in front of such a powerfully sexy man, holding a rose and hearing him use my name and ask me out on a date literally made my heart flutter. A smile started to play at the corners of my mouth.
“Does that mean yes?”
“Yes… but…”
“But what?”
But I needed to report in to my CO. My meeting was tomorrow. I could salvage this operation. Colossal fuck up or not, I did at least have some relevant information already, didn’t I? Some cops were in character for months before anything happened, so I was kind of ahead. In a way.
“But not tonight. How about Monday?”
“Oh, a school night, eh?”
“I am a badass…”
“Alright. Monday. I’ll pick you up at seven. Until then, though…”
Ryan reached up and laid his hands along my jawline, fingers buried in my hair, and he tilted my head up to meet him. I crushed the rose against my chest as he kissed me,