Free Forever Innocent by Deanna Roy Page B

much needed here.”
    “Well, poo.” She waited by the car as I opened the door, then she slid inside. “Let’s see what she’s got.”
    I handed her the keys and winced as she cranked the motor, stomping the gas so the engine revved loud enough to make people across the street turn to look. I leaned in the open door. “You might want to take it easy.”
    “This car is going be around longer than I am!” she shouted over the roar. “Life is short. Go after what you love and ride it as hard as you can!”
    I barely managed to close the door and jump out of the way before she shot backward across the parking lot, then slammed it into drive and careened past me again, heading for the exit.
    That woman was going to kill someone. Still, I had to laugh as I headed back inside. Bud was stuffing her papers in a file folder. “She’ll be back. Drivers like her mean good money for us.” He turned around. “Let me guess, she gave you some sort of advice about life being short, and she was about to die?”
    “Yeah.” Of course, that got me thinking about Corabelle. Hell, everything did.
    “She’s been saying that for a decade. She’s going to outlive us all.” He glanced at the clock. “You can go ahead and head out. I’m sure whatever kept you all morning is still nagging at you now.”
    I suppressed a smart-ass reply. “All right, Bud. See you tomorrow.” I wondered where Corabelle might be, at work still, or on campus. Maybe I could get that pink-haired girl to tell me where she lived.
    I should leave her alone. I knew it. But something in me just couldn’t let it go.

Chapter 13: Corabelle

    I crossed the quad, anxiety rising as the engineering building grew close. Gavin would be in there, just a few seats down. The two feelings for him warred inside me. Anger that he’d called me easy, when I hadn’t been with anyone but him. And an urgency to get him alone, to feel, if only for a little while, the way we had when we were young and innocent of all the ways life could fail us.
    The stairwell echoed with my footsteps, and I couldn’t help but run my hand over the part of the rail where Gavin caught me trying to black out. I had to get control of that now. Gavin showing up again was the sign that my little fits of crazy had to end. I needed some other way to cope.
    I thought I’d be able to sneak in close to the start of class and slip into my chair without having to talk to him. But Gavin was waiting outside the door, his lab assignment in his hand. He looked more amazing than ever. Every detail about him was seared into me, the blue T-shirt fitting across his chest and arms, the dark stubble on his jaw, the sideburn near his ear.
    He held out the paper. “You turned this in for me?”
    I nodded, grasping hard on the strap of my backpack.
    “Why?”
    “I felt bad that I upset you.” I drew in a deep breath. “By talking about Finn.”
    It was so hard to say his name. And not easier on Gavin to hear it. I could see it in how his eyebrows drew together.
    A couple other students cut between us to enter the door. “Thank you.” He hesitated. “Can I see you later?”
    Panic rose from my belly. “No. I can’t. Please, Gavin. It’s too hard.”
    He pressed his lips together. “This isn’t over.”
    “It is. It has to be.”
    He whipped around and went back in the room.
    I leaned against the wall, eyes on the ceiling, trying to pull myself together. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t be with him. There was too much past, and I was barely holding it together before he showed up.
    Unless maybe Austin really could help. He seemed so much easier to manage than Gavin, and my secrets had no power with him.
    I pushed away from the wall and hurried to my seat, trying not to look Gavin’s way. While the professor talked about supernovas, I tapped out an e-mail to Austin on my iPad. “Are you on campus today? I get out of Jacobs Hall at 10. Corabelle.”
    I could feel Gavin’s eyes on me as I took