Fight Like You've Never Lost (Summer Lake #14) - S.J. McCoy Page 0,34
she had. She should chatter away, make conversation about something, maybe ask about the class or about Dan. But she had nothing. She was too overwhelmed by the feeling of being this close to him again, by the way her fingers twitched to reach out and touch him, by the way her whole body wanted to lean in and kiss him.
“We’d better get in there. I think Dan’s here already.”
She nodded mutely and followed him inside. His eyes said nothing had changed, but the way he spoke suggested that he was sticking to the plan; to what they’d agreed—okay, it was what she’d insisted on. What kind of fool was she?
Dan raised a hand, and they went to join him over on the far side of the room. He glanced at Ryan, making Leanne wonder if the two of them had talked since the weekend. She’d guess that they had. And she’d have to restrain herself from beating the details out of Dan once she got him alone.
“Are you free to get to the assignment tonight?” he asked.
She forced herself not to look at Ryan before she answered. She was, and she needed Dan’s help whether Ryan was going to be there or not. “I am. What time?”
“I can be at the library by seven,” said Dan. “That’ll give us a few hours.”
Leanne risked at peek at Ryan, but he didn’t comment. Maybe he’d decided that he was going to back out rather than have to be around her? She wanted to ask, wanted to tell him that he didn’t need to. But she kept her mouth shut, and then Professor Tailor rapped on his desk to get everyone’s attention.
She found it difficult to keep her attention on what he was saying. Her eyes kept straying to her right where Ryan sat taking notes on his laptop. She forced herself to look at Dan instead. He glanced at her, his eyes twinkling as he smiled. She narrowed her eyes at him. She hadn’t caught up with him yesterday because she didn’t know what she wanted to tell him—or what she didn’t. But now she knew she was probably going to just tell him the truth and spend the next however long it took to get it out of her system bending his ear about Ryan.
When the class was over, she was sad but not entirely surprised that Ryan got up and left without a word. She turned to Dan.
“Does your silence since Thursday mean that I did right?”
She blew out a sigh. “Honestly?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I don’t know, Dan. To be fair, I need to thank you for the best weekend I ever had.”
Dan’s expression gave nothing away.
“Then again. I should be mad at you for setting us up like that.”
He shrugged. “Which is it?”
“I don’t know. Both. Neither.” She rested her elbows on the desk and rested her chin on her hands. “What I should probably do is warn you that you set yourself up for a whole load of earache.”
“It was supposed to stop all the earache. You two were obviously horny for each other. I just gave you a shortcut to getting it out of your system.”
“You did …”
“But?”
“I think instead of getting it out of my system, I got him into my system. I know it can’t happen. But … I like him.”
Dan looked shocked. “You like him? As in, you’d want to see him again?”
She laughed. “Yeah. I know it sounds crazy. That’s because it is crazy. And it’s not going to happen.”
“I know. He’s the same as you are. I would never have set you up like that if I thought … But you’re not interested in dating. You don’t want to. I know that. And Ryan? Neither is he.”
She blew out a big sigh. “I know. We were both very clear about it going in. But it was a bit less clear by the time it came to saying goodbye.”
Dan shook his head. “Sorry, Lee.”
She pushed his arm. “Don’t be. Like I said. It was a great weekend.”
“Good.” He got to his feet and slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Are you going to be okay to work with him—the three of us?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to come tonight?”
“Is he?”
“He said he was.”
“But that was before I said I’d come.”
“He knew I meant the three of us.”
“Okay, then. It’s not a problem, Danno. Don’t look like that. I guess I’m surprised at myself. That’s all. And I was hardly going to keep it a secret from