BENEATH HER WORLD

Chapter 2: The Long Way

POV: Liana

The next afternoon I found myself taking the long way across campus without fully admitting to myself why I was doing it. I told myself that the main path would be crowded with students hurrying to afternoon lectures, but the truth weighed far more than that flimsy excuse. I had spent the whole morning with a low voice and a pair of unimpressed green eyes replaying in my mind at the most inconvenient moments, which was ridiculous, because I had meetings to attend and a scheduled call with my father's assistant about the upcoming board dinner. Tristan Hale was also waiting for my confirmation about Friday's charity event, and none of it held my attention the way it should have.

I cut behind the science building, where the service path ran alongside the old maintenance sheds and the back of the sports complex. Fewer students came this way, and the silence was deeper, and I knew it was a route that security sometimes used between shifts. The afternoon sun lay warm against my shoulders, though I barely noticed it, because my thoughts kept circling back to the night before and to the way Noah Kane had looked at me without trying to impress me or soften himself for my sake.

I saw him before he saw me. He stood near a side entrance with his radio clipped to his shoulder, speaking quietly with another guard, and when the other man finally left he stayed where he was and studied something on a tablet. The afternoon light caught the line of his throat where the collar of his dark jacket fell open slightly, and I slowed without meaning to, my footsteps growing quieter on the pavement as I approached.

He looked up, and there was no surprise on his face, only the same calm and steady assessment he had given me the night before. "Miss Vale," he said.

"Do you ever clock out?" I asked as I stopped a few feet away from him.

"Not while there's coverage missing." He slid the tablet into his jacket pocket and regarded me with mild curiosity. "Are you lost again?"

"I never lose my way," I said.

"You're on the service path, and most students avoid it on purpose."

"Then it's fortunate that I'm not most students," I replied, and I used his own words without any hesitation.

Something flickered in his eyes as he recognized them, and the air between us tightened in a way I felt clearly in my pulse. The change was subtle, but it was undeniably there.

At that moment a group of freshmen rounded the corner, laughing too loudly about something unimportant, until one of them noticed me and fell abruptly quiet and elbowed the others into an awkward hush. Noah watched the sudden transformation with a faint, unreadable expression that made my jaw tighten.

"Does it ever become tiring?" he asked once they had passed and the path had fallen silent again.

"Does what become tiring?" I asked, and curiosity crept into my voice before I could stop it.

"Being the reason people change their voices the moment they see you."

The question was far too direct, because no one spoke to me that way, and warmth rose in my cheeks, sharp and defensive. I hated that he could draw such a reaction out of me so easily. "You know nothing about me," I said.

"I know that you walked this way on purpose."

The words struck me like a physical touch, and my pulse kicked hard against my throat. I should have shut him down at once, but I stepped closer instead, close enough to catch the faint scent of rain that still clung to his jacket and the cleaner smell of soap beneath it. It was a simple combination, and somehow it was more distracting than any expensive cologne I had ever encountered.

"Careful, Kane," I said, softening my voice deliberately. "That almost sounded as though you were paying attention."

His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth, and when it returned to my eyes the green had darkened noticeably. "I'm paid to pay attention," he said.

The space between us felt charged and much too narrow for a public path in the middle of the afternoon. My fingers curled slowly at my side, because I wanted to push him and wanted him to push back, and above all I wanted him to stop looking at me as if he could see straight through the polished version of myself that I showed everyone else.

His radio crackled loudly against his shoulder, and a dispatcher's voice cut through the moment with a request for coverage at the east lot. Noah answered without looking away from me. "I'm on my way," he said.

He adjusted the radio with one hand, and the small movement brought him half a step nearer, so that for one suspended second I thought he might say something that would match the heat I could see in his eyes. Instead he stepped back cleanly and put the proper distance between us again.

"Try the main path next time, Miss Vale," he said. "It's safer."

He walked past me without another word, and the sleeve of his jacket brushed my arm as he went. The contact lasted less than a second, yet it sent a current straight down my spine that lingered long after he had vanished around the corner.

I stood alone on the service path with my heart beating too fast and watched the place where he had disappeared. Gradually I understood that I had already begun to look forward to the next time I would see him, and that this was the real problem. I had always gotten what I wanted, and the trouble now was that I could not say with any certainty what I wanted anymore. That uncertainty felt dangerous in a way I had never been prepared for.

I walked back toward the main path slowly, and by the time the crowds of students closed around me, the calm expression I wore for the world had settled over my face again. Beneath it I was acutely aware of a faint warmth along my arm, exactly where his sleeve had touched me. A girl who had never been ignored was now quietly hoping to be noticed by one person who seemed determined not to notice her at all, and the thought amused and frightened me in equal measure.

By the time I reached my next lecture hall I had decided that I would not return to the service path the following day, and I had also decided, with equal certainty, that I would not keep that promise. I took my seat in the third row, opened my notebook, and began to write, though when I looked down at the page some minutes later I found only the date and a single line drawn very straight beneath it. Across the room a professor spoke about market structures, and I listened to none of it, because my mind had wandered back to a quiet path behind the sheds and a man with a radio on his shoulder who had told me, without raising his voice, that it would be safer to go the other way.