Put Me Back Together (3 page)

“He was wearing a coat. Well, until he took his shirt off.”

Now I had my sister’s full, undivided attention. She swiveled toward me, pulling her legs under her.

“Was he so gorgeous he made your knees go weak? Did he smile all the time, the hottest smile ever, with this little twinkle in his eye? Come on, tell the truth.”

Yup and yup. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Did he have dimples?”

I looked up at Em in surprise—how could she know that?—and her face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Oh my God,” she cried. “Lucas Matthews gave you his cat!”

“It wasn’t his cat! And who the hell is Lucas Matthews?”

She sighed and gave me an exasperated look, the same look I got every time she dropped the name of anyone who went to our school.

She said, “Lucas Matthews—former basketball star and reigning campus hottie. He’s literally the most good-looking guy I’ve ever seen in real life, and that’s saying something.”

I nodded. It really was. Em had seen her share of guys. Unlike me.

“He’s in his second year,” she continued. “He used to be known as a real Lothario. He had a different girl on his arm every week. And believe you me, girls were lining up for the privilege. But then he quit the team last semester, nobody knows why, and since then he’s been totally in hiding. He never comes to any parties anymore. There are literally gangs of girls roaming around campus looking for him. He’s a ghost. And you spotted him.”

Smiling at me gleefully, her hangover apparently forgotten, she clapped her hands. “Go back to the part where he took his shirt off!” she said.

“He didn’t take it all the way off,” I protested. “He just unbuttoned it. It was no big deal.”

I turned away from my sister and moved to the closet, grabbing my purple cardigan and winding a patterned scarf around my neck. All morning I’d been squeezing the events of last night into little boxes labelled “Not Important,” “To Be Forgotten,” and “Funny Things That Happened To Me On The Way To Get Ice Cream.” I hadn’t even planned on telling Emily about what had happened, but then she’d shown up at my door and I’d had to explain the bag of stuff from The Cat Emporium. I didn’t want this to become a big deal. I’d already been planning out how I would ignore Lucas if I happened to see him on the street. I had no intention of talking to him ever again, that was for sure. He knew where I
lived
. He’d come up to the door of my
apartment
. He already knew way too much about me. Just the thought of it made me feel nauseous. I wanted to pretend like last night had never happened.

And now my sister was looking at me with gossip eyes because apparently he was Mr. Most Wanted on campus. This was going to become a thing.

I closed my eyes and gripped the closet door.

I didn’t want to be known as the girl Lucas Matthews gave a cat to. I just wanted to be invisible.

“I have class,” I said breezily. I grabbed my bag off the floor and left the room to go find my jacket, Em close on my heels. “And so do you.”

She stood in my living room with her arms crossed over her white tank top—actually it was my white tank top. “You like him, don’t you?”

I made a sound that was a mix of a snort and a guffaw. “I barely know him. I talked to him for like five minutes. It was nothing.”

She perched herself on the couch as I pulled on my boots, not bothering to tie them. It was getaway time.

“Admit you like him. Admit you think he’s hot, at least. He’s Lucas Matthews. It’s not like you’d be the only one!”

I pulled on my mittens and zipped up my jacket. “What’s the point of this? I’m never going to see him again.”

“I just want you to admit, just once, that you’re attracted to someone,” she said. “Prove to me you have a pulse. Go on, prove it!”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say ‘Lucas Matthews is a hottie,’” she said, bouncing on the couch cushion. “Say it like you mean it.”

I glared at her, adjusting my bag on my shoulder. She was
never
going to let this go. I knew my sister. If I didn’t give in, she’d bring it up every time I saw her, in front of other people, even. Appeasing her now would avoid embarrassment later. Well, probably. You never knew with Em.

I sighed. “Lucas Matthews is a hottie,” I said, and pulled open the front door. “There, are you happy now?”

“I know I am,” said a familiar voice from out in the hall.

My stomach dropped as I heard Em let out high-pitched squeak and I turned slowly to face the doorway.

Hottie Lucas Matthews was standing at my front door.

“You didn’t tell me there were two of you,” Lucas said as we walked up the street toward campus. I was pushing the pace while he was, once again, casually sauntering. Because he was at least a head taller than my measly five-foot-five frame, he was keeping up with me pretty easily. The bastard.

“Twin sister,” I answered curtly. “Gotta get to class.”

I’d been flinging these throwaway answers at him ever since we’d left my building, yet somehow he was still walking beside me like we were buddies. For a few minutes I considered turning a corner unexpectedly just to lose him, as if this were a car chase, but then I dismissed it as ridiculous. Besides, a move like that might draw attention, and we were approaching campus. I needed to detach myself from Lucas to avoid attention, not attract more. But he wasn’t budging.

“So how’s our friend doing?” he asked as we walked up an incredibly long road that passed between the playing fields. “That’s why I stopped by. You seemed a little hesitant about taking him in last night.”

“Under the couch,” I panted as we stepped onto one of the campus paths. I was wheezing like a bloodhound on its last legs as I continued to try to get ahead of him. He’d hardly broken a sweat, of course.

He nodded. “That’s what they do when they’re in an unfamiliar place. They run for cover,” he said.

I know the feeling
, I thought to myself.

“I was thinking we should probably make up some flyers. He didn’t have a collar, but he might still belong to someone.”

“Already done,” I replied. “I have it on a flash drive. I’m going to print them out after class.”

He gave me an appreciative look, his eyes lingering on my face. His gaze made me feel hot inside my clothes even though it was ten below outside. I averted my eyes, irritated.

“Well done, Hero,” he said. “I’ll help you put them up around town.”

My eyes snapped back to his face. I said, “Don’t call me—”

“Hey, man! Where’ve you been?” I had been interrupted by a guy with longish blond hair sticking out from under a blue-striped tuque. He was riding a bicycle and had stopped beside us to chat with Lucas. I wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing riding a bike on the icy roads—did he have a death wish?—but realized a better idea would be to take my chance to escape while Lucas was distracted.

I edged away from them both and made it about ten feet up the path before I heard Lucas calling to me.

“Katie, hold up a sec,” he said. I stopped in my tracks as he finished up his conversation with Death Wish Guy. I don’t know why I did. I could have just ignored him and walked on. There was something about the way he said my name…

I took a few steps back toward them as I waited. Looking around, I became aware of the fact that people were looking at me, or more specifically at us, or even more specifically at Lucas. A couple of girls who were walking by grinned widely as they passed him, then began whispering furiously to each other. I saw a guy at the door to the building point in our direction. Another guy ran over and started talking to Lucas animatedly as Death Wish Guy rode off. Then I saw a gaggle of girls looking me over—with little interest, I was glad to see—before honing in on Lucas. It made me nervous, but more than that it was a little bewildering. It was as though Lucas were some kind of campus celebrity. Was that even a thing? How could this many people possibly know him, enough to stare and point and whisper, enough to gather around him waiting for their turn to bask in his glow? It was kind of creepy. Who the hell was this guy?

I didn’t want to hang around to find out.

I turned back toward the building, but this time I didn’t even make it one step. Lucas and his friend were suddenly right beside me, walking with me up the path.

“Our next game is tomorrow night. You should really come,” the guy said. He seemed to be waiting for an answer.

I glanced up at Lucas, and for the first time I saw him look uneasy. He didn’t seem angry, but there was something closed off about his face. I realized he wasn’t smiling.

“I’ll try,” Lucas said, but I recognized the tone. It was one I used all the time with Emily when she was trying to convince me to attend some social event. The lying tone.

“You said that last time, man,” the guy went on, but suddenly I wasn’t listening because another sound had met my ears. It was coming out of the ear buds hanging around the guy’s neck. He had been listening to the radio and must have had the volume up loud because I could clearly hear the news anchor’s voice.

“…six years ago, shocking a nation by the sheer brutality of the crime. But his time’s up and in just a month—that’s four weeks away—he’ll be out in the community, serving out the rest of his sentence under supervision. Not surprisingly, parents’ groups are up in arms and have been petitioning the court…”

I felt my whole body tense and heard the rushing of blood in my ears, which luckily blocked out the sound of the news report. My breath caught in my throat and I found myself backing away from Lucas and his friend quickly, my feet tripping over themselves. When I turned to run—because I really was planning to run away, at top speed, preferably—I smacked right into a girl carrying an enormous cello case and fell hard on my back, knocking that caught breath right out of my lungs.

I moaned, just as Em had this morning, though I was pretty sure I felt a lot worse right now.

Cello Girl and a few of her friends were leaning over me, asking if I was okay. One of them held out a hand to help me up and I was about to take it, my cheeks already reddening at the spectacle I’d made, when I felt a strong pair of arms pulling me up from behind. All of a sudden Cello Girl and her girlfriends were all smiles.

I felt warm breath by my ear, sending delicious shivers down my spine. “If you wanted to get away from me that bad, you could have just said so,” he whispered.

I spun around to find Lucas looking down at me with some concern. He had a hold of me by both arms, but my legs were still a little weak from my fall and I faltered, pressing both my hands into his chest for balance. Even through his coat I could feel the firmness of his muscles and my mind drifted suddenly to the view of his chest I’d gotten the night before. I was still short of breath, but all of a sudden it was for a completely different reason.

He leaned toward me and I found myself staring once again at his lips and his strong jaw and his warm eyes and his lips…

“You okay?” he said to me. I had the feeling he’d said it a few times already.

Shaking myself out of my reverie, I did a little pain check. Nothing major—no broken bones at least, though my back was still throbbing. I glanced around to find every eye within a twenty-foot radius staring in my direction as I stood in the middle of campus swooning in Lucas Matthews’s arms. They might not have been all that interested in me before, but they sure as hell were now.

Perfect.

“I’m fine,” I said, brushing the snow off of my bag and jacket, trying my damnedest not to meet anyone’s gaze, especially Lucas’s. “I’m going to be late for class.”

He let go of my arms but moved a hand to my shoulder. He was still standing incredibly close to me. I was going to have to talk to him about personal space, I really was. Except, for some reason, I didn’t really mind him invading my space the way I did with everybody else. I didn’t really mind it at all.

It made me want to punch him in the face.

Pulling away from him, I stalked up to the door and yanked it open, wincing as I felt a muscle in my back twinge. Not surprisingly, the door stayed open because Lucas was right behind me holding it open.

“You have snow in your hair,” he said and I felt him tugging at the bottom of my dark curls, his hand lingering on my back. All my senses suddenly zeroed in on that hand.

I swatted it away.

“Look, Lucas,” I said, “I don’t want to be mean or anything. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression—”

“Like when you called me a hottie?” he asked. “Like that impression?”

He was smirking at me. I narrowed my eyes.

“I just really need to focus on my work. I’m not looking to make any new friends right now. Especially not right now.”

“Why? What’s so special about right now?”

“Don’t change the subject,” I said. We’d reached the door to the art studio and I stopped there, crossing my arms. “I think it would be better if you just left me alone. I’ll take care of the thing with the cat. I really just want you to go away. Okay? Just go.”

“Sure, Katie,” he said. “If you want me to leave you alone, that’s what I’ll do.”