False Assumptions (Players of Marycliff University Book 6)

by Jerica MacMillan

  She examined his face, noticing the firm set of his jaw, and nodded. It didn’t take a genius to recognize a stubborn man intent on getting his way. She didn’t have the energy to argue with him right now.

  Closing her eyes and leaning her head against her hand, she tried to focus on her breathing instead of the pain in her ankle or her dread of what might happen in the ER. They shouldn’t need to give her a shot, right? She’d twisted her ankle, so no need to take blood or anything involving needles. Breathing deep, she pushed away her panicky thoughts before they could take over. They’d probably just look at her ankle, take some X-rays, and maybe give her some kind of brace or something. The nurse came and called her name soon after that, wheeling her back through the automatic doors with Evan walking along behind her while the nurse introduced herself and chatted away about the weather.

  The nurse parked her in a room and helped her settle onto the bed, folding up some blankets to prop up her ankle and taking her vitals again. After she left, an awkward silence descended, with Evan sitting in a chair against the wall opposite her bed and looking all around. She flipped through the channels on the TV, but there was nothing on, so she turned it off.

  It was strange to see him so awkward. Usually he seemed at ease and confident no matter the situation. Maybe doctors and hospitals made him nervous too? If she weren’t so in need of something to distract her, she would relish his discomfort a little more. But since Alyssa still hadn’t gotten in touch, he was all she had to help her get through this. She should try to break the awkward tension that filled the room.

  She cleared her throat, hoping he would glance her way. He didn’t. His focus remained on his hands, where he turned his phone over and ran his fingers down the side again and again, one ankle propped on the opposite knee, his foot bouncing nonstop.

  So much for that. “Hospitals make you nervous?”

  His foot stopped, and his head snapped up. “What?”

  “You seem nervous. Is it the hospital? Doctors? Because they make me nervous as hell. Needles scare the shit out of me.”

  He grinned. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you curse.”

  “I got in trouble for using bad language growing up, so I mostly do it in my head. But my ankle hurts like hell, and I’m in a hospital, and I don’t know if they’re going to want to poke me with needles for some reason. In my experience, hospitals and needles go together a lot.”

  Shaking his head, Evan let out a low chuckle. “Unless they need to numb you up to set it if it’s broken, I doubt you’ll meet any needles today.”

  Swallowing her sudden nausea, she nodded. “Do you think it’s broken?”

  His eyes zeroed in on her. “You said you didn’t think it was.”

  She shrugged. “I was trying to get you to leave me alone. Not that it worked.” She skewered him with her gaze. He gave her an unapologetic grin. “But you seemed to think it might be broken.”

  “I was trying to convince you to get it checked out.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t really know. You can move it, so that’s a good sign, but hairline fractures don’t always impede movement. Let’s just wait and see what the doctor says. Sound good?”

  She nodded. “You never answered my question, though.”

  “What question?”

  “Do hospitals make you nervous?”

  He shook his head, adjusting in his seat to get more comfortable. “Nah. I’ve never had a problem with doctors.”

  “Why were you acting so weird then?”

  His brows crinkled, and he tilted his head to the side. “I was trying to figure out what to talk to you about. But was coming up with nothing.”

  She let out a spluttering laugh.

  “Why’s that funny?” His voice held a mixture of curiosity, irritation, and amusement.

  She shook her head. “I’ve never seen you at a loss for words. Especially not with a girl.”

  His grin turned rueful. “Yeah, well, you don’t respond to me like most girls. I was worried that anything I said would piss you off.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  He laughed out loud at that, full and booming, and Layla couldn’t help smiling as well at his hilarity. “Christ, Layla. You get mad at almost everything I say. I could walk up to you and say that the sky is blue, and you’d get mad and argue with me.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but before she could, the doctor walked in, shaking her hand as well as Evan’s and introducing himself as Dr. Zakin. Pulling up the rolling stool he settled in next to Layla’s bed. “So I hear you’ve hurt your ankle.”

  “Yeah. My right one. I was out for a walk on the High Drive Parkway Trail, and I tripped on a rock and slipped in the mud, rolling my ankle really bad. It felt like something popped. I tried walking on it, but kept having to stop and rest because it hurt so much. And then Evan here came across me and carried me the rest of the way back to the parking lot.”

  Dr. Zakin glanced at Evan, who gave a closed mouth smile and nod of confirmation. Turning back to Layla, Dr. Zakin rolled to the foot of the bed closer to her ankle. “Lucky you. I take it you guys already knew each other?” He paused and waited for her nod. “Good. That’s a little less awkward then, huh?” Not exactly, but Layla didn’t feel the need to correct him. It didn’t matter to the doctor, anyway. “Let’s take a look at your ankle, and then we’ll get some X-rays to see what’s going on inside, okay?”

  Layla nodded, rolling up her pant leg to give him more access. At least she’d shaved her legs this morning. How embarrassing would it be to have not only the doctor looking at her stubbly legs, but Evan there witnessing it too? Thank goodness for small mercies.

  She winced as Dr. Zakin poked and prodded at her ankle, following his directions to move it around. When he was done, he stood, offering his hand again. “Alright. I’ll get those X-rays ordered. You can move it well, despite the swelling, so I don’t think it’s broken. But since you said you felt a pop, we want to make sure everything’s okay. I’ll be back once we get the images and let you know.”

  With a nod at Evan, he moved past the privacy curtain and left the room. A tech came in and introduced himself and helped Layla into a wheelchair to go to X-ray.

  When she returned to the room, Evan looked up from his phone and stood to help her from the wheelchair back onto the bed. Resuming his seat, he tucked his phone in the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt. “How’d it go?”

  Layla grimaced. “Fine. I had to hold my ankle in weird positions that hurt while wearing a lead apron, but nothing too traumatic.”

  “Good, good.” He looked around, and it seemed like the awkward tension from earlier was going to take over again. But instead, his signature flirty grin came back. “So, Dr. Caldwell. Made any progress on our project?”

  She grinned back at him, glad for the neutral subject. “Not really. I’ve started, but figured we could plan our project out together. I was going to write down some ideas and talk to you about it on Tuesday after class.” She wrinkled her nose a little. “It’s still funny to me that Dr. Rankin calls us all doctors.”

  Maybe spending a few hours with Evan in the ER wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  Chapter Eight

  The little wrinkle that appeared on the bridge of Layla’s nose was too cute for words. He’d never seen her make that expression before. And the unforced smile she gave him. Man. Had they given her some pain meds while she’d gotten X-rayed?

  No. She’d said her ankle still hurt. She must be relaxing around him. That was new and different for her. He could enjoy spending time with this side of her.

  He nodded, agreeing with her last statement. “Yeah. Dr. Rankin’s pretty funny. I especially like when she goes off on rants about English being the trash heap of world languages.”

  Layla laughed, that nose wrinkle there again. “Oh, I know. She announced a few weeks ago that it was the most bastardized language on the planet.”

  “Yup. I remember that day.�
�� He basked for a moment in the warmth of her smile, staring at her.

  After a moment her smile dimmed a little. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

  He chuckled, shaking his head. “No. It’s just that it’s nice to see that you can actually smile. I’ve wondered. You know, you look really pretty when you smile. You should do it more often.”

  Her face soured, and the smile fell away. “Oh, thank you. That’s what my life has been missing until now. You’ve cleared it all up for me.”

  “Whoa. That was a compliment. What’s with the attitude?”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Telling someone how to arrange their face so it pleases you isn’t exactly complimentary. A compliment is, ‘I like your smile,’ or, ‘Your smile is pretty.’ Not, ‘You look pretty when you smile.’ That makes it sound like I’m ugly the rest of the time.”

  “What? No. That’s not what I meant.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, well, that’s how it comes across. Don’t tell a girl to smile. That’ll just piss her off. If you want to see her smile, give her something to smile about.” She pointed at him. "And backhanded compliments don’t do it for anyone I know."

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. You have a pretty smile. Better?”

  One corner of her mouth tugged up, even though she fought to keep a straight face. “Yeah. You have a nice smile too.”

  His lips pulled into a wide grin. “You think so?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t think so.”

  “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t think you liked me that much.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t let it go to your head. It’s not like you don’t know you’re attractive. You’ve said yourself that girls usually respond to your smile.”

  Crossing his arms over his chest, he adjusted in the chair, slouching down a little again and looking her over. “So you admit that my smile has an effect on you. That must mean you deliberately fight it.”

  She gave him that annoyed, sour look again. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  He let his grin grow wider. “Why would I need to do that when I have a beautiful, exotic girl here paying me compliments.”

  This time when she wrinkled her nose, it wasn’t with amusement. She looked down, picking at the blanket covering her lap, not meeting his eyes. Was she upset? Offended? He thought back over what he’d said and couldn’t figure out what was responsible for this reaction. “What? Why are you upset? Because I called you beautiful?”

  She shook her head, her lips compressed in her all-too-familiar look of irritation with him. “It’s not the beautiful part. It’s exotic.”

  “What’s wrong with exotic?”

  “It’s not a compliment.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She met his eyes, giving him a pointed look. “People pretend like exotic and beautiful are synonyms. They’re not. Exotic doesn’t mean beautiful. Exotic means other. You wouldn’t call a blonde girl exotic. You’d just say she’s beautiful.” Her gaze dropped to her lap again. “Always being different gets old after a while.”

  “Hey.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. She kept her eyes focused on her hands. “Layla, look at me.” When she finally did as he asked, he went on, keeping his voice low. “I’m sorry. I’ve never thought about it that way. I promise not to call you that again, okay?”

  She waved a hand, dismissing his apology. “Yeah. It’s fine. You probably think I’m overreacting.”

  “No, I—“

  “Look,” she interrupted. “Evan. You seem like maybe you’re not such a douche after all. Maybe you are a nice guy. And I’m sorry for being such a bitch to you before, but you have to understand something. I’ve always been the ‘exotic’ girl.” She made air quotes with her fingers. “In the school plays growing up, I got all the parts for non-white people. It didn’t matter if they were supposed to be Mexican or Native or even black. I got them all.” She let out a bitter, dry laugh. “Which is funny, if you think about it, because I’m more white than Native, but whatever. Which also means that the kids on the reservation where I spent summers with my grandmother didn’t accept me either. I wasn’t enough like them. And since my mom’s half Japanese, that just adds to the strange mix here. And guys like you—guys that look like you that are used to girls falling all over themselves for your attention? Those guys only wanted to be with me to try something exotic, something different. I’ve spent my life as this weird, fetishized challenge. So, yeah. Exotic isn’t a compliment. Not to me, anyway.”

  Evan sat back, running a hand over his mouth, not sure what to say. At first, when she’d said that maybe—seriously, maybe?—he wasn’t a douche, he’d gotten kind of pissed. But she’d apologized for being a bitch to him, which he appreciated. And the rest? Fuck. No wonder she’d been suspicious of him from the start. She didn’t want to be another conquest, and for good reason. But he was also surprised at how much she’d shared about herself.

  “I’m sorry, Layla. I didn’t realize all of that.”

  She nodded, not looking up.

  His curiosity getting the better of him, he had to ask. “Did that really happen?”

  “Did what really happen?” She gave him a quick glance, but kept her focus on her hands in her lap.

  “Did someone try to get in your pants just to say he’d been with someone …” he trailed off, looking for a word other than exotic and finally settled on, “different?”

  She mumbled something.

  “Sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”

  Lifting her face, she met his eyes, her face stoic. “He didn’t try. He succeeded. He made me believe he liked me, but he didn’t care about me at all. I was just a space on the sexual Bingo game he was playing with his friends.”

  “Oh my God.” His horror came out in his voice. Yeah, he liked to have sex, and he didn’t have a problem with no-strings hookups, but that kind of callous disregard for people? That was revolting.

  Layla let out a soft snort. “Not literally. I don’t think anyway. But it was clear … after, that he and his friends had some kind of thing going where they all needed to sleep with the greatest variety of girls possible.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  She hummed in agreement, looking back down at her hands.

  He let the silence stretch between them, not sure how to break it after that revelation. Pulling his phone back out, he texted Daniel Carter, his roommate. He’d need someone to go with him to get Layla’s car after he took her home once they were done here.

  When he looked up, she was looking at him again. She took a deep breath and let it out. “So what made you take World Literature?”

  He raised an eyebrow. Okay. Apparently they were going to just go on like that whole conversation hadn’t happened. “I’m an English major with a literature focus. What about you?”

  “English major, creative writing track. But we have to take a certain number of literature credits. I’d kind of hoped to get some Native literature or Asian literature in the World Lit class. So far, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  His other eyebrow joined the first. “Native literature? In a World Lit class? I get the Asian lit, but why would Native literature be in World Lit over American Lit?”

  She shrugged. “I know, right? But you had to have taken American Lit. It’s all dead white guys. Since, as you now know, Natives are other,”—she gave him a pointed look—“I thought they might be included with the other exotics in World Lit.” Her mouth twisted when she said exotic, her distaste obvious. “No such luck.”

  “Who would you want them to include if we did Native lit?”

  Her eyes met his with a flash of surprise at his interest. “Sherman Alexie, for one. He’s probably the most well known Native American writer. And he’s from around here.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of him.”

  An embarrassed smile crossed her face. �
�I have kind of a crush on him.”

  His head jerked back in surprise. “You’ve met him?”

  Her wide eyes met his. “No! Not that kind of a crush. Like an intellectual crush. You know, I want to have lunch with him sometime and ask him a million questions and see if he’ll read my poetry.”

  “You write poetry?” She was just full of surprises today.

  That same embarrassed smile came back, and she dropped her gaze. “Yeah. And Sherman Alexie is kind of my hero. I almost went to WSU to follow in his footsteps, but I got a better offer from Marycliff.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came to Marycliff.”

  Her eyes snapped to his, and he realized what he’d said. The surprise on her face morphed into something more serious, and she examined him before responding.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  The question caught him off guard. He switched which leg was crossed and folded his arms over his chest. “I’m a nice guy. Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”

  Again, she paused before answering. “Well, there’s the obvious reason that I haven’t been very nice to you.” He didn’t really have anything to say to that. “And I’ve built up an immunity to attractive, charming guys who are used to getting whatever girl they want.”

  His nostrils flared. “Can you give that a rest? Seriously. I’m not out whoring around, getting panties thrown at me wherever I go. Yeah, fine, I like to have a good time. And there are plenty of girls who like to have a good time with me. It doesn’t mean I expect every single girl I smile at to sleep with me.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Christ on a cracker, you’ve made it abundantly clear that you’re not into me. I guess I thought it’d be easier to work on our project if we could get along.” He stood, pacing in the small space unoccupied by the hospital bed and other equipment. “Would you rather I’d left you out there on that trail to hobble to your car in the dark, hurting yourself worse? Or dumped you in the ER to find your own way home? Shit, Layla. What kind of a douchebag do you think I am?”