He smiles, shoves off the wall with one foot, and strolls toward me. “You’re hard to pin down.” He looks up briefly, as if considering. Eyes back on me. “And rude, too, leaving me on read all day.”

My eyes fall shut as I mutter, “You’re the babysitter.”

“Does that mean you’re a baby?” My eyes snap open to find Nick Davis standing right in front of me, eyes twinkling with barely contained mirth. He is at least four inches taller than me, which is saying something, even though as a second-year EC he’s probably only a year older than I am. Definitely not built like any seventeen-year-olds I know. With his broad shoulders and narrow waist, he looks like one of those Olympic gymnasts.

I turn on my heel to leave. This boy is not part of the plan. Not the beginning, middle, or anywhere in between.

“Briana, wait up!” Nick jogs to follow. “I’ll walk you to your dorm.”

“It’s Bree, and no thanks.”

When he catches up, his fresh-laundry-and-cedar scent comes with him. Of course he smells good. “Bree, short for Briana.” His dimple-edged smile is probably on a poster at a dentist’s office somewhere.

“I’d be happy to escort you. Peer mentor and all that,” he says without a stitch of sarcasm. “According to the dean, you have a tendency to get lost at night and accidentally end up in the back of police cruisers?”

I huff and pick up the pace, but he matches mine without missing a beat. “How did you find me?”

He shrugs. “I asked Dean McKinnon for your class schedule and campus ID photo.” He holds up a hand before I protest. “Not personal information typically shared with students, but the EC consent forms we all signed waive that right between mentors, orientation assistants, and other assigned guides. I found out when your last class ended. Made a guess as to when you’d hit dinner, then estimated how long it’d take for you to get through the buffet line in Lenoir, find a table, and eat at that hour of the day. All I had to do was show up and wait outside the exit closest to Old East.”

I stop, my jaw open. He grins, clearly amused and more than a little pleased with himself. “So, you’re a creep?”

He holds a hand to his chest like I’ve wounded him. “Not a creep, just clever! And operating under Dean McKinnon’s explicit orders to make first contact with you today.” Ocean eyes set in a tanned face take me in, and a knowing smile sends a wave of warmth to my ears. “Timed it perfectly too. You walked out five minutes after I arrived.”

“Being clever and being creepy are not mutually exclusive.”

“Oh, I agree.” He scratches at his chin. “There’s probably a Venn Diagram or a graph of direct proportionality in there somewhere—”