Filmed_ An Alpha Bad Boy Romance(14)

Actually, especially when I shouldn’t.

Noah wrapped up his thoughts on classic lighting techniques, and there was a short pause in the conversation.

“So what’s the deal with this?” I blurted out suddenly. I turned bright red and looked away, annoyed that I had asked such a blunt and stupid question.

“What do you mean, dots?”

Dots? That was a new one.

“I mean, what’s with this wanting to get to know me thing?”

I had suddenly pulled us out of the comfortable flow of a normal conversation. He looked out across the sea of people, at the myriad faces and relationships and didn’t answer right away. I decided not to press, letting him think about what he wanted to say, and we lapsed into a short silence. Finally, just before I was going to give up and go into exile out of sheer embarrassment, maybe move to Australia where I would never have to see or hear from any Carterson ever again, he spoke up.

“Not sure. Just felt like having a conversation, I guess.”

“You didn’t seem like the conversation type,” I said, joking, and he gave me a look. I realized I had crossed a line.

“What would you rather do?” I heard the tone of his voice, and I definitely caught his meaning. It was true that part of me wanted to drag him into the library’s bathroom and tear the clothes off of his perfect body, but that wasn’t what I meant.

“That’s not where I was going with that,” I said, trying to explain myself.

He smirked at me. “Are you sure? I mean, that’s the type of guy I am, right?”

Shit. Was I suddenly the asshole?

“Really, I was just trying to say, you never wanted to chat before.”

“It’s cool, don’t worry about it, dots.” He sat up straight and stretched. “I have to get going to class soon, anyway.”

I looked at my watch and realized we had been sitting there for an hour. I couldn’t believe how easily the time had gotten away from me. Noah stood up, and reached his hand out. I grasped it, and he pulled me to my feet easily. I brushed off my butt then picked up my bag. We walked together off the beach and stopped in front of the bell tower.

“Okay, I’m going back to Anderson. I’ll see you at work, dots,” he said.

“Sounds good.”

He gave me a nod then walked off into the between-classes crowd. I watched him go for a second, and felt like a total idiot. I had obviously insulted him, but I still wasn’t exactly sure how. He was trying to be nice to me, for whatever reason, and I blew it. I wanted to chase him down and apologize, but I knew that would look desperate. As I walked, I decided I had to try and make things right at work that night.





Chapter Six


Since I didn’t have work until Monday, and my class with Noah was only on Mondays and Wednesdays, I had no real way of apologizing to him.

At first, I agonized over everything. I spent most of my time from Wednesday after I left Noah to Thursday night running over how stupid I was. That was my normal reaction to anything unpleasant. I couldn’t say why, but for some reason my brain decided it wanted to grab onto every little detail, every stupid gesture and possibly misunderstood comment, and replay them over and over and over. It was a pointless and useless thing to do, but I couldn’t help it. I had no control over my idiotic brain.

Chris usually talked me through it, but she had a big test coming up already, and had locked herself in her room to study. Instead, I had the Internet to keep me company. On Thursday evening, my first impulse, the healthiest impulse I could imagine, was to start to stalk his Facebook. I logged in and found his profile, which was easy enough. We weren’t friends yet, so there was limited information on his page. I stared at his profile picture for a minute, biting my lip, remembering how close his body was, and the very tip of the chest tattoo I saw through his V-neck shirt. Without thinking about it, I clicked “Add Friend.”

Horrified, I shut my laptop as fast as I could. I almost stood up and screamed. How could I have been so stupid? I hadn’t even meant to, I was just hovering over the button, considering whether or not I should, and of course I shouldn’t, but I did. It was an involuntary reaction; my body decided on its own to go ahead and click the track pad.

I had just added Noah Carterson as a friend, completely randomly.

If there was any doubt in the world that I was stalking him, that doubt was totally gone. He’d know immediately that I found him on Facebook. That was really the only way I could have found him on my own, if I had typed his name into the search bar, specifically looking for him. Now he was going to think I was a crazy stalker girl.

Great. I could be such an idiot.