𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲𝐧 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 is far from perfect. Before starting her senior year of college, she's already guaranteed her position as the black sheep of her once prestigious family. To make matters worse, she took up bedding the rival family's eldest...
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𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒚𝒏 𝒇𝒊𝒙𝒆𝒅 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 on the array of knobs, dials and buttons on the soundboard that Michael began leading her closer to because if she didn't, she'd focus on how lovely it felt holding his hand. She was far from an inexperienced girl; holding hands was probably the tamest of affections she had shown and been shown before. But for a reason that escaped her, her insides were quivering, and she was excessively aware of the sensation. Of him. Warm and gentle.
The fluttery feelings worsened as he guided her to seat herself in the studio chair beside his, and it continued to develop until she almost felt nervous, especially as she was pinned with that intense yet dreamy gaze he had been giving the soundboard just as she walked in. For a moment of pure delusion, she thought that he was doing so because maybe he felt the same way about his song as he felt about her. Then she quickly tossed out the stupid thought, chiding herself for even toying with the idea.
With music, Michael was more than infatuated and tempted by its kiss. It was his passion, his past, present and future, and it was the flame that burned inside him and turned him into a spectacle of energy and power that everyone had no choice but to admire. Who was she to think she would ever come close to being something like that to him? And why, when she couldn't so much as keep his own brother from mistreating her?
Michael suddenly lifted her hand from his lap and placed a light kiss over one of her knuckles, pulling her from the nauseating path of thoughts with the startling gesture. She swallowed her gasp.
"You okay?" he questioned as he brought her hand down from his lips. His thumb was already rubbing at the spot he'd kissed as if it had burned her.
Evelyn painted a small smile for him and gave his hand a squeeze back. "Yeah, I just wasn't expecting it. That's all," she shrugged then withdrew her hand to rest it where it would be safer in her lap. "One of the maids, Carmen—she said I should thank you for arranging breakfast and all for me. But she called you Flaco at first, so I ain't know if it really was you or not."
Michael let out a laugh of mild surprise. "Oh, yeah, it was me," he said, breaking into a grin. "Carmen's just been callin' me Flaco ever since she started working here. She told me it means 'skinny' in Spanish," he chuckled. "But you don't have to thank me, Eve. We weren't gonna let you stay here hungry."
He said it as though that were obvious. However, Evelyn felt as though it were anything but. When her father used to explode the way he had, and when she didn't have the means to stay elsewhere, he would happily lock her in her room and make her stay there until she sobbed from her hunger pains.
She did her best to obfuscate the memory, having had enough of her father's torment for the day. "Flaco... You could eat a little more of your steak and potatoes, put a little more meat on your bones," she joked with another shrug. It was objectively true, but as he was at his size, Evelyn still thought Michael was undeniably attractive. Everyone in the entire university did. By the way his face fell slightly and he shook his head as he glanced away, it seemed he was the exception.
