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Back Trust in Me Save as PDF
Chapters (35)
  1. Dedication
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five
  7. Six
  8. Seven
  9. Eight
  10. Nine
  11. Ten
  12. Eleven
  13. Twelve
  14. Thirteen
  15. Fourteen
  16. Fifteen
  17. Sixteen
  18. Seventeen
  19. Eighteen
  20. Nineteen
  21. Twenty
  22. Twenty-One
  23. Twenty-Two
  24. Twenty-Three
  25. Twenty-Four
  26. Twenty-Five
  27. Twenty-Six
  28. Twenty-Seven
  29. Twenty-Eight
  30. Twenty-Nine
  31. An Excerpt from Be With Me
  32. One
  33. About the Author
  34. By J. Lynn
  35. About the Publisher

I shouldn’t stay. I’d done my good deed for the day, and if Avery woke up and saw me here, she’d probably accuse me of being a creeper. Biting the inside of my cheek as yet another soft whimper reached my ears, I turned to her. Under the rapidly warming cloth, her brow was pinched in discomfort. Her body was still curled toward me and that one arm was still wrapped around mine.

Adjusting the cloth, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. “I’ll stay.”

Nineteen

Nineteen

I only knew that Avery was feeling better because she had stopped by the apartment. I wasn’t sure why she had and I wasn’t willing to find out. I told Ollie to tell her I wasn’t there. In a moment of rare seriousness, he’d asked if I was being serious.

I was.

The afternoon I’d spent with her while she’d been sick hadn’t done a damn good thing for me. All it had done was stir up shit I didn’t want to deal with.

Once the semester started, I spotted her all over campus. I wanted to talk to her, to see how she was doing, but there would’ve been no point. At least none I could see, but it was on Friday when it happened—when I couldn’t avoid her.

I was crossing the street, heading toward Knutti, when I heard my name shouted in a hoarse, barely recognizable voice. That was why I stopped and turned around.

Avery hurried up the steep hill, coughing so hard her entire body trembled with the force. Concerned, I shoved my hands into my hoodie to keep myself from acting like some kind of white knight and sweeping her into my arms.

Out of breath, she stopped in front of me. Her face was pale still, but her cheeks were flushed. The shadows were still under her eyes and the sweater she wore enveloped her.

“Sorry.” Her voice was horrible sounding. “Need a second.”

“You sound terrible.”

“Yeah, it’s the Black Death and it never goes away.” She cleared her throat and then swallowed before she lifted her chin.

Our gazes met, and I thought . . . I thought I saw something in her eyes. A mirror of what I felt, but there was a good chance the case of beer I drank the night before was still lingering in my veins.

I looked away, grinding my jaw. “I’ve got to get to class, so . . . ?”

The look of flight crossed her face, but she remained in front of me. “I just wanted to say thank you for helping Brit out when I was sick.”

Shifting my gaze to the diner all the way down the hill and across the street, I drew in air. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It was to me. So, thank you.”