Free #1.5 Finding Autumn by Heather Topham Wood Page B

“Sure.”
    “Seriously?” Autumn was pissed and it threw me off. Maybe she really did like Will. It was possible I’d been conceited enough to believe she had been missing me in the same way I had missed her. It was wishful thinking—imagining Autumn Dorey’s every waking moment consumed by thoughts of me. I was the one obsessing while she’d been moving on.
    After shooting Will an annoyed look, she swung to face me. “What do you want?”
    The way she glared at me actually made me optimistic. She wasn’t mildly irritated by me—she was enraged. She definitely had feelings there if she had such a visceral reaction to seeing me. Honestly, I probably deserved her resentment. But I didn’t want to be another enemy in her world.
    “Can I talk to you alone?” I hurried on before she could tell me no. “It will only take a sec.”
    I knew a lot of the brothers at Sig Chi and had been to the frat house dozens of times. Doug was an economics major, like me, and I was sure he wouldn’t mind if I took Autumn up to his room on the second floor to talk for a few minutes. I had seen him getting baked in the basement when I came in, and I assumed he wouldn’t be using the bedroom anytime soon. “I’m friends with one of the guys who lives here. He won’t mind if we talk in his room.”
    By the look on her face, I could tell I must have said something else to rub her the wrong way. It was a strange dynamic for me. Normally, women seemed overenthusiastic when I was around—laughing too loud at my lame attempts at humor. Autumn was genuine, and it was one of the things I found most appealing about her. When she laughed, it was real and not forced as a way to stroke my ego.
    But she wasn’t laughing now. With reluctance, she agreed to hear me out. She was quiet as we went upstairs and I led her into Doug’s room. She stayed by the door, her body stiff and uncomfortable as she regarded me.
    “How have you been?” I asked. I was torn by what I wanted to hear. I wanted her missing me, but I also didn’t want her unhappy. My intense need to know that she could feel joy again had been there since the moment I became positive Thomas had assaulted her. He felt no remorse, so I had put it upon myself to feel it on his behalf. I would do whatever it took to make Autumn whole and happy again.
    “Is that what you needed to talk to me in private about?” Her eyebrows pulled together, and she tapped her foot in anticipation of my answer. The tension between us made me consider the ups and downs we had since the start of the semester. I wanted it to be easy between us like the day we went to the museum together. I hadn’t gone with her looking to dig into her past. I had invited her because I simply liked being around her. She was easy to talk to, and I loved the way her smile lit up her entire face when I gave her the poster of the flower painting. Normally, I’d never give a girl a gift like that. It wouldn’t fit with the way I wanted people to perceive me. I was raised to be the strong, alpha football player who took what he wanted simply because he could. Knowing what kind of person Thomas was made me want to carve out the parts of my personality he had a hand in shaping.
    Finally, I answered her question. “No, but we haven’t talked in weeks and I wanted to see how you were. You told me to leave you alone, and I was trying to respect that.”
    “Then what are we doing up here?”
    Hell, if I knew the right way to answer that. I couldn’t meet her eyes when I answered and instead focused my vision on a hairline crack in the center of the ceiling. “I miss hanging out with you. I screwed up that morning, and I want to fix things between us.”
    “But why?” Autumn’s brown eyes filled with genuine confusion. “You’ve been telling me over and over again how you’re bad for me and I’ll end up hating you eventually. Why should I waste any more time on you if I’m only going to be hurt at the end?”
    I was