The Hookup Pact

16| Atlas

"We shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't have come to you. This is wrong. I shouldn't have..."

She started panicking and tried to wiggle out of my hold to get off my lap but I held her tighter. With one hand on her waist, I grabbed her chin with my other and made her look at me. "Shh. Breathe, Rosy. Breathe."

I rubbed her back and she visibly relaxed. "Everything is okay," I mumbled.

"Everything is not okay," she snapped. "Don't you see it? What has become of me? I was supposed to hate you and here I am jumping on you like a bitch in heat. What the fuck is wrong with me? I don't know what I'm doing."

I winced at her words. The amount of shame and hatred in her words pierced my heart like an arrow. "I was just supposed to study well, graduate and get a good job," she mumbled, her voice getting smaller and smaller. "What am I doing?"

I didn't say anything and let her sit calmly for a while. The fact that she hadn't dashed out of here yet was enough of an achievement. Once she had calmed down and had stopped trying to run away, I spoke again. "Is it so bad that we are attracted to each other? You don't have to avoid me, you know."

"It is bad!" she insisted. "Don't you see what happened the moment we were together? I'm not a person who acts on impulses and look what I did. What I'm doing."

Sighing, I grabbed her hands in mine and rubbed circles on them. "You are overthinking it. It's not a big deal."

"It's a big deal to me!" she snapped, snatching her hands away from me.

Slight irritation clawed at me and I folded my arms across my chest, pinning her with my gaze. "So what? You are just going to ignore whatever it is between us?"

"Yes," she replied instantly. In the next moment, she was scrambling off my lap and getting rid of my jacket. She threw it towards me and I caught it with one hand.

"And what if today's events repeat? If you are not able to control your impulses?" I asked, rolling my eyes at the word she had used for the attraction we felt. Like it was some sin.

"They won't," she said. "This is never happening again."

***

"We are never doing this again!" Evelyn muttered as she struggled with her shorts.

"That's what you had said last time, Rosy," I said, chuckling as I leaned back against the headboard of my bed with my arms behind my head. She glared at me but didn't comment. How could she when I was stating facts?

After our little rendezvous in the attic of the library and Evelyn's confident declaration that she could ignore the attraction sizzling between us, we had lasted a whole four days. She had come over to our house to discuss last-minute details about the interviews with the team and to give us the order and interview questions we were supposed to be prepared for. To no one's surprise, she had kept me last on the list as if that was going to help somehow. I had rolled my eyes not so discreetly when she had told me my spot on the list and handed me the interview sheets.

Then while the rest of the guys had started to go out and about to enjoy their weekend, she had stayed back to help Kris. So of course I had to stay in and watch over them.

I blamed the tight, short shorts that displayed her gorgeous long legs for our current predicament. Because that tempted me to take my shirt off and roam in the kitchen pretending to cook my cereal while she sat with Kris in the living room. One thing led to another and we both ended up in my room and on my bed. Naked.

She was about to wear her shoes when I lifted the dark green silk fabric in my hand. "You are forgetting something," I remarked, twirling her bra in my hand.