The Scars That Remain by Lynette DeVries

Author:Lynette DeVries
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Diamond Lil Press

22

After Zoey left Adam’s dorm room, she waited for the first pangs of regret to twist her stomach into knots.

The pangs never came, and neither did the usual shouting match inside her head: impulsive child versus sensible adult. For once, her mind was suspiciously quiet.

She and Adam both had Friday morning classes―drafting for him and Experimental Psych for her. She wandered to class, dressed in yesterday’s jeans and one of Adam’s T-shirts featuring Woodsy the Owl and the caption Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute.

She’d gotten all the way to the crosswalk before she gave in to the urge to lift the collar of the T-shirt to her nose and inhale. It smelled faintly of Adam―or maybe her hair had absorbed the soap-and-aftershave scent from his bed.

She quickened her pace in an effort to outrun her thoughts. Oh, Zoey . . . what have you done? Why’d you have to go and ruin a perfectly good friendship―the only real friendship you have?

She adjusted her bag on her shoulder, huffing. “Maybe you didn’t ruin anything,” she breathed. “Stop overthinking it.”

Fifteen minutes later, Zoey took a seat at the back of the lecture hall.

She made a half-hearted attempt to focus on her professor’s lecture on the Milgram experiment of 1961. She’d always been fascinated by the experiment, by the participants’ willingness to administer electric shocks to the recipient, a hired actor.

It was no use; her thoughts kept drifting back to Adam. She couldn’t get his face out of her mind―the quiet desperation in his eyes when she sat up to lift her shirt over her head, the cautious way he’d responded to her unspoken cues. Each of his touches felt like questions, shy and curious; his sighs like prayers of gratitude.

While her professor rattled on about Milgram and obedience to authority, she closed her eyes and saw Adam beside her, in the flickering light of the television, the dark, jagged birthmark on his chest. He’d flinched when she ran her fingers over the birthmark, but then he’d relaxed, his heartbeat drumming beneath his warm skin.

He hadn’t turned over or dozed off the way some guys did after they got what they wanted. Instead, he’d smoothed her hair back from her face, trailed his fingers along her arms, his gaze on her face, until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.

Her professor was just starting to talk about the psychology of genocide when Zoey’s cell phone vibrated with a text notification. She slid it out of her bag to check it.

A text from Adam: You got it wrong, FYI.

Zoey responded with a lone question mark.

Two minutes passed before his response came. You thanked me for last night, but I should be thanking you.

Zoey looked up and locked eyes with her professor. She struggled to keep the smile from her lips while her heart did a gleeful dance.

She texted him back before she could change her mind. It creates a beneficial brain cocktail, FYI: dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, prolactin.

He responded with two words: What, gratitude?

Heat flooded Zoey’s face, but her thumbs had a mind of their own.

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