She hesitated for a second, glancing around campus before climbing into the car. She shouldn’t ride with strangers, but Volkan didn’t seem like a stranger to her. Even though they’d only met a couple of times, she was eager to be near him, to learn more about him.

He slid in next to her, his big body taking up more than his own seat, his thigh pressing against hers. He leaned towards the driver. “Take us to Ms. Mahdi’s home.” He looked at her expectantly, and she gave the driver her address. The driver didn’t put her address into a GPS but pulled the car onto the road. Maybe he was local?

She settled into her seat and looked at Volkan who was watching her steadily.

“We’ll drop you off and wait in the car while you get ready.”

She knew the polite thing to do was invite him up to the apartment where he could chill while she showered and got ready, but there was no chance she was going to extend that invitation. She had four roommates, all of whom were weird and wonderful in their own way.

Marshall was a fourth-year veterinarian medicine student who studied non-stop and rarely came out of his bedroom. When he did, his head was in the clouds, and he rarely spoke to the others. Judd was opposite. He smoked a lot of weed and sat on the couch playing video games when he wasn’t at work and half-assing his way through his classes. Vanessa was the most normal of the bunch, but even she could be a handful. She loved sex and loud music. She loved them together and she loved them separately, and she did a lot of both. Yasmin wasn’t judging, but she didn’t want to subject Volkan to that litany of sounds right before their first date.

Hailey was their unofficial fourth roommate. No one knew exactly who she was friends with, but she showed up one day with a backpack full of clothes and a sob story about how she’d left her boyfriend and had nowhere to else to go. She paid rent, ate her own food and slept on the couch, so no one had the heart to ask her where she’d come from and when she was leaving.

When they arrived at her apartment building, Yasmin turned to open her car door. Volkan took hold of her hand before she could leave. She looked back at him, and he said, “Don’t keep me waiting long.”

The pressure of his hand on hers, the way he looked at her like he was going to devour her made her heart pound harder. It made her want to lean over and touch her lips to his. To give into the blazing chemistry that started swirling between them in that alley, before they even got a good look at each other.