Chapter Seven

Chessly

" W hat happened to you last night? You left the kitchen with Finn, then a long time later, he showed back up there desperate to find you, but none of us knew where you were." Saylor eyed me over her latte.

We'd met up for brunch at our favorite coffee shop a couple of blocks off campus. My friend's demeanor and lack of her usual care with her makeup and hair told me she'd stayed at the party long after I left.

"I caught a ride with Axel and Drake." I popped a bite of cranberry scone into my mouth to preempt additional explanations.

Not that Saylor was in the mood to let me off the hook. "You could have told me you wanted to leave early."

"I didn't want to interrupt whatever you had going with Jeremiah."

A coy smirk tipped up the corner of her mouth as she set her latte on the table, wrapping her hands around it. "I don't usually go for guys his size, but that twinkle tells you something naughty is going on behind those deep brown eyes, and the way he lowers his voice..." She shivered, her smirk blooming into a full smile. "Fitz is probably one of the sexiest guys I've ever met." Tilting her head, she eyed me close. "No wonder Piper, Jamaica, and you have a thing for Wildcats football players."

"I haven't hooked up with anyone this year, let alone a football player. Do not lump me in with Piper and Jamaica." I sucked in a deep drink of my Americano and burned the roof of my mouth.

Saylor's laughter at my desperate grab for my ice water made me want to dump what was left of it over her head.

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much," she said with a chuckle.

"Whatever," I grumbled as I ran my tongue over the roof of my mouth.

"So what happened between you and Finn that had him in a dither to find you, and you leaving the party early, hmm?" She picked up her cheese Danish and nibbled around the edge. "The way you spark off him could light up the inside of a cave, so don't pretend something didn't happen."

Because I knew my friend well and I knew she wouldn't stop pushing until I gave her something, I went with a heavy sigh. She wrinkled her nose at me and rolled her hand in the universal gesture for "go on."

Pursing my lips, I shot her a narrow-eyed stare from which she didn't back down in the slightest, forcing me to give in.

"We went out onto the front porch where we didn't have to shout over the music and talked for a while."

"Talked, huh? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?" Over a bite of her Danish, she batted her lashes at me.

Throwing myself against the hard oaken back of my chair, I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her. "We talked . That's all."

A picture of Finn, his T-shirt barely up to the task of covering his massive chest and shoulders, his sculpted arms on full display in the cool November evening, flashed through my brain. Heat rolled over me as I remembered how his suggestion to settle me in his lap had made my lady bits weep. Against my will, of course, because I absolutely was not interested in Finn McCabe in the same way Saylor was apparently interested in Fitz.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

"What did he say that made you leave the party early?"

I glanced around at the funky art on the wall beside our favorite table. This month's student display seemed to be bas-relief sculpture painted in colors completely at odds with the subject matter. Pepto-Bismol-pink paint dots splattered over a water buffalo head as it attempted to emerge from a pool of black water. Random lime-green, electric turquoise, and mouse-gray brushstrokes decorated a llama lounging on a couch. From my seat against the wall, I couldn't be sure if chartreuse and purple flames were revealing or consuming a pea-green rose. The art sort of mirrored my current mood, my intellect at odds with my emotions. Why did Finn McCabe even have to know Tory Miller, let alone know her well enough to exchange numbers and texts?

"It's more what he didn't say." This time I sipped my hot black coffee rather than gulped it. "Someone kicked Tory Miller and her entourage of wannabes out of the party."

"Yeah, that was Fitz. He wouldn't serve them beer, Tory threw a fit, and one of the other players—Dallas Cousins I think—invited them to leave." With a thoughtful expression, she sipped her drink. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Dallas, 'cause the guy was as big as Fitz and could kind of shoo Tory and her girls along by being too massive for them to sneak past. So what didn't Finn say?"

"He didn't deny he'd invited Tory and her buddies to the party when she demanded the bouncer let them back in." I toyed with my scone then popped another bite into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. "We'd actually been talking about Tory because she ruined what he was trying to start between us on Homecoming."

"What was he trying to start?" An impish grin lit up her face. "Because you had zero interest in him at all that night." She cleared her throat. "Like staring at him the whole time you were at the bonfire."

"What are you talking about? You weren't there."

"No, but Jamaica was, and she said it was pretty entertaining watching the two of you pretend to not be eye-fucking each other every chance you had."

Waving off her comment to avoid lending it any credibility, I continued. "Anyway, he told me he was listening to his roommates and cutting Tory off, but when push came to shove, he tried to play the middle. He didn't want to piss off his roommates by overruling them about letting underage people into the party, and he didn't want to piss off Tory by admitting he'd rather be with me and he shouldn't have invited her in the first place."

With a deep inhale and a slow exhale, I said the thing that had been eating at me since the scene on the front porch of Finn's place the night before. "I can't help wondering if he would have sneaked her and her friends back inside if I wasn't there. If he would have, I don't know, hung out with them."

"That's why you left early. Because Tory's scene forced Finn to choose, and apparently, he didn't." Saylor finished off her Danish, flicking crumbs from her fingers onto her plate before wiping her hands on her napkin.

"You say that like it's a bad thing." I couldn't help the tiny note of hurt that colored my words. "But you know what happened with her last year. You know how toxic and terrible she is."

"Yeah, but I've also seen her turn on the charm at frat parties. The girl knows how to flirt. If that isn't working, she flaunts her daddy's money." Saylor sat back in her hard oak chair and sipped her latte. "Men can be dense when it comes to a pretty woman giving them attention or promising them access to the club. Just sayin."

"That's not much of a recommendation for Finn then, is it?" I asked glumly.

"No, but his desperation to find you kind of is."

I spent the rest of the day holed up in my room working on a project for my quantum mechanics class. Usually, the calculations necessary to work through the problem absorbed me, but every time I came close to a solution, Finn's half-grin would flit through my head, or the bashful way he'd kicked his heel against his toe when he talked of being clueless about women or the hope in his eyes when he suggested I sit on his lap to stay warm, and I lost my train of thought. The man was effortlessly sexy in a shy way that drew me to him like the gravitational pull of a black hole.

As thoughts of him continued to interrupt my work, I snapped off the tip of my pencil against my paper, tearing a hole in the page that forced me to rewrite it in the neat standard my professor expected.

I growled at myself for my lack of focus.

Of course, that lack of focus might have had something to do with the fact I was wearing Finn's hoodie. Only after Axel and Drake dropped me off in front of Hanover last night did I clue in that I was still wearing it. Turtling down inside it now, I reveled in the scent of his woodsy cologne and him . It was all I could do to stop myself from sucking in the smell of him on the fabric when he dropped it over my head before we headed out to the porch. Giving myself away like that would have been a colossal disaster, especially with the way my evening with him had ended.

Still, I loved how big his hoodie was, how it covered me from my shoulders almost down to my knees. The fleecy inside was soft and snuggly against my skin. I had no idea how it felt to be held in Finn's arms, but in the moment, the next best thing was being wrapped in his clothes.

What was wrong with me?

He had a history with my archnemesis, one that appeared to be friendly at least, more than friends at worst.

The thought soured the coffee in my stomach.

Yet I continued to wear his hoodie right up until it was time to meet Jamaica for dinner before our weekly RA meeting with the dorm supervisor. When I returned to my room late in the evening, I glared at the piece of clothing draped over my desk chair. Yet it seemed I had no willpower when I caught a faint whiff of Finn's woodsy cologne. Slipping the offending item of clothing over my head, I reveled in its softness and the way it made me feel protected somehow.

Gathering my books, I flopped onto my bed to study...

... And awoke curled up in a little ball inside Finn McCabe's clothes when my alarm went off the next morning.

"Seriously, Chess?" I growled as I stared down at myself. "Seriously?"

I tugged the hoodie over my head and tossed it over the back of my desk chair, slipped on my bathrobe, grabbed my toiletries bag and towel, and headed to the shower. As I let the hot water sluice over my body, I chastised myself for my lack of self-control, my lack of focus. What was it about that one man that had me behaving like a lovestruck adolescent? Never had I worn a guy's clothes even when I was dating someone. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make sense of my attachment to that hoodie. It went beyond explanation.

"You okay, Chessly?" Hazel, a freshman on my floor, asked when I stepped out of the shower.

"Of course," I said, but the growl in my response sort of echoed in the tiled space of the community bathroom. No wonder she backed up. Toning it down, I added, "I'm just talking to myself. Don't mind me."

All the way back to my room I was shaking my head at my own ridiculousness. Somehow Finn McCabe had slipped under my skin. The question was, what was I going to do about it?

By the time I'd finished classes for the day, I had a plan. I'd bag up Finn's hoodie and give it to Jamaica to return to him the next time she went over to study with Callahan. But when I ran the idea past her when I met Saylor and her for coffee in the Union before Jamaica's shift at the Sweet Shop, she laughed.

"I heard all about how panicked Finn was after he got rid of Tory and her posse and came looking for you, only to discover you'd left the party." She blew over her coffee and sipped, her eyes sparkling as she traded glances with Saylor. "Whatever happened between you two that night, you're not hiding from it behind me. Especially not after all the grief you've given me about Callahan."

"Jamaica." I injected sternness into my tone. "For a guy who's always laser-focused on executing his assignment during any given play on the field, Finn is woefully indecisive."

My friends traded smirks, and Jamaica said, "That's specific."

"The other night at the party he had the choice between Tory and me. He didn't decide, which is a kind of a decision anyway. I left because I happened to catch Axel and Drake on their way out, and they said they'd give me a ride. I forgot I was still wearing Finn's hoodie until Drake pointed it out as I stepped out of Axel's car at the dorm." I blew out a breath. "It was a silly oversight—one that you can help me fix." I shot her puppy-dog eyes over the rim of my cup. "It's not a huge ask when you're over at their house all the time."

Resting her elbow on the table and planting her chin in her upturned palm, Jamaica shot Saylor an incredulous look. "Can you imagine the disappointment on Finn's face if I hand him his hoodie?"

Mimicking Jamaica's stance, Saylor shot back, "Poor guy. The wild-eyed way he came steaming into the kitchen looking for Chess had everyone feeling sorry for him." She shifted her gaze to me. "Now we're all on Team Finn." Sitting back against her chair, she grinned. "You, and only you, can return the clothes you pilfered from the guy." She shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe he's made the right decision by now."