We end up beating Macy, who is huffing and puffing her way up the final few steps with my last bag, to the top.
“You can let me down now,” I tell him as I start to squirm away. “Since you pretty much carried me anyway.”
“Just trying to help,” he says with a wiggle of his eyebrows that has me laughing despite my embarrassment.
He lets me down, and I expect him to pull away when my feet are finally back on the ground. Instead, he keeps his arm around my waist and moves me across the landing.
“You can let go,” I say again. “I’m fine now.” But my knees wobble as I say it, another wave of dizziness moving through me.
I try to hide it, but I must do a bad job because the look Flint is giving me goes from amused to concerned in the space of two seconds flat. Then he shakes his head. “Yeah, until you pass out and pitch over the railing. Nope, Headmaster Foster put me in charge of getting you to your room safely and that is what I’m going to do.”
I start to argue, but I’m feeling just unsteady enough that I decide accepting his help might actually be the better part of valor. So I just nod as he turns around and calls to my cousin, “You okay there, Mace?”
“Just great,” she gasps, all but dragging my suitcase across the landing.
“Told you I could have taken it,” Flint says to her.
“It’s not the weight of the suitcase,” she snipes back. “It’s how fast I had to carry it.”
“I’ve got longer legs.” He glances around. “So, which hallway am I taking her to?”
“We’re in the North wing,” Macy says, pointing to the hallway directly to our left. “Follow me.”
Despite all her huffing and puffing, she takes off at a near run, with Flint and me hot on her heels. As we race across the landing, I can’t help but be grateful for the supporting arm he’s still lending me. I’ve always thought I was in pretty good shape, but life in Alaska obviously takes fit to a whole new level.
There are four sets of double doors surrounding the landing—all heavy, carved wood—and Macy stops at the set marked North. But before she can reach for the handle, the door flies open so fast that she barely manages to jump back before it hits her.
“Hey, what was that ab—” She breaks off when four guys walk through the door like she’s not even there. All four are dark and brooding and sexy af, but I’ve only got eyes for one of them.
The one from downstairs.
He doesn’t have eyes for me, though. Instead, he walks right by—face blank and gaze glacier cold—like I’m not even here.
Like he doesn’t even see me, even though he has to skirt me to get by.
Like he didn’t just spend fifteen minutes talking to me earlier.
Except…except, as he passes, his shoulder brushes against the side of my arm. Even after everything we said to each other, heat sizzles through me at the contact. And though logic tells me the touch was accidental, I can’t shake the idea that he did it on purpose. Any more than I can stop myself from turning to watch him walk away.
Just because I’m angry, I assure myself. Just because I want the chance to tell him off for having disappeared like that.
Macy doesn’t say anything to him, or the other guys, and neither does Flint. Instead, they wait for them to be out of the way and then head down the hallway like nothing happened. Like we didn’t just get blatantly snubbed.
Flint tightens his warm arm around my waist, and I can’t help but wonder why the guy with ice in his veins makes my skin tingle and the one literally lending me his warmth leaves me cold. Looks like my messed-up life is totally messing with my brain as well…
I want to ask who they are—want to ask who he is so I finally have a name to go with his insane body and even more insane face—but now doesn’t feel like the time. So I keep my mouth shut and concentrate on looking around instead of obsessing over some guy I don’t even like.
The North hallway is lined with heavy wooden doors on both sides, most with some kind of decoration hanging on them. Dried roses in the shape of an X on one, what looks to be an elaborate set of wind chimes on another, and a ton of bat stickers all over a third. I can’t decide if the person living there has dreams of being a chiropterologist or if they are simply a fan of Batman.
Either way, I’m absurdly fascinated by all the decorations—especially the wind chimes, as I can’t imagine there’s much wind in an indoor hallway—and not at all surprised when Macy stops at the most elaborately adorned door of them all. A garland of fresh flowers winds its way around the doorframe, and lines of threaded, multicolored crystals fall from the top of the door to the bottom in a fancy kind of beaded curtain.