Up For Debate (Love and Desire Book 1) Read online

  “Yeah, Lawson is always like that. Always has been like that. Larger than life, but that’s how he was raised, his dad being a senator and all, you get used to it after a while.”

  I give Finn a look that says, ‘I don’t know if I could ever get used to that.’

  “You’re not jealous, are you?” he inquires, lifting his eyebrows suggestively.

  “No. Lawson seems like entirely too much to handle. Plus I’m not really into the whole man-whore, putting-on-a-show types.”

  “Yeah, well Lawson doesn’t usually give anyone a choice about what they are into. He commands it from them, so just be cautious.”

  We’ve reached my building and Finn takes the bag from his back and hands it back over.

  “Nothing to be cautious of,” I say emphatically, attempting to convince Finn of my disinterest. “Plus, seems like he has his hands full,” I mock sarcastically still spotting him across the campus, picking up another girl and spinning her around.

  “Yeah, well, you don’t know Lawson, then. Let me know if you need anything, Newbie.” His offer and concern are kind but unwarranted. Finn is the kind one in the group. Anyone can see that by just looking at him. He’d be great at immigration law, setting people at ease, supporting them. It’s a shame that’s going to be wasted on taxes.

  Judicial processes is wildly interesting, and I don’t even mean that sarcastically. Learning the history of how laws are made and changed makes me feel slightly more hopeful that the country is open to fair change. My professor talks openly about the cases he has played a prominent role in and I’m fascinated by his career in law. By the time I walk out of the class to head back to my dorm, I feel refreshed and renewed in the move to Columbia being the right choice.

  So it’s a shame that Lawson has to immediately ruin the mood by standing outside my class as I exit.

  “Hey new girl,” he offers nonchalantly. It’s annoying.

  “At what point, do I stop being considered the new girl? You’ve been referring to me as that for three weeks. We know each other now. Or maybe it’s because you have a hard time separating me from all the other girls you hang out with, but I’ll remind you.” I pick up his hand with my own. “Hello, nice to meet you. I’m Farah. You’re Lawson. You kissed me two weeks ago and then proceeded to flirt with the entire female population on campus. Ring any bells?”

  He bites his lip and tries to hide the laughter begging to seep from his lips and so help me God if I hear even a giggle out of him.

  “I thought we were friends?” His sarcastic tone grates at every fiber of my being.

  “No. No, we are not friends. You don’t kiss friends. I’m just not really into your whole debonair, Rico Suave act. So, thank you for taking me out last week, thank you for your help with my homework that day, thanks for introducing me to your friends, but let’s cut the bullshit here. You are the school’s golden boy, priming for your future in congress. I just want to learn law and practice it until I can’t anymore. We aren’t really friends. We don’t even really know each other.”

  “Man, judicial processes makes you feisty. Would love to see that kind of fire in a courtroom. It’s totally hot.”

  I don’t even know what to do with him. Was I not crystal clear? I’m a pretty straightforward person. He puts both his hands on my shoulders and stares me straight in the eyes as if he’s about to say something important.

  “Go sleep it off, Taylor. You’re probably just running low on sleep.”

  Exasperated with him I shake my head and turn toward my dorm, leaving him in my dust. Never have I ever met someone so exhausting as Lawson Calhoun, and I’m reminded that is exactly why he will make a great leader. Lord have mercy on all our souls who have to deal with him in the process.

  ~

  Naps make me groggy. I immediately regret lying down after class. My eyes are filled with sleep and my brain feels foggy as it is still orienting itself as I stumble from my bed to the incessant knocking occurring at my door. Cher is zoned out listening to music with her headphones on across the room, while she studies. I envy her ability to multitask. I crack the door, still sluggish in response. A large and toned forearm presses itself against the door and pushes it open wider, throwing me slightly off balance. What the…

  “Excuse me, can Farah come out and play?” A very perky Lawson stands outside my door, sizing up my oversized T-shirt, Nike shorts, and matted hair appearance. I graze my hand over my hair hoping to at least tame the beast into something presentable.

  “What do you want, Lawson?”

  “I want to hang out.” He pushes my door open and barges in. It’s at this time that Cher realizes who it is and pulls her headphones off and slides her book to the side, her willingness to be a participant in whatever is about to happen only eggs Lawson on more.

  “You must be Cher.”

  She nods her head emphatically and a single strand of her blue highlights fall around her face.

  “Lawson, I presume.”

  “Ah, so she’s talked about me?” Lawson wags his eyebrows at me, and I’m annoyed already. While he’s busy shaking Cher’s hand and sizing her up probably as the next person he plans to hit on in this room, I check my appearance in the mirror and try desperately again to make do with the mess that is my hair.

  “So, Cher, tell me what you’ve learned about my good friend Farah so far.” Standing behind him I shake my head, trying to express how badly I want her to refuse.

  “She likes Grey’s Anatomy,” Cher blurts. Well so much for solidarity, sister. At least she didn’t start with anything more revealing. Every girl likes Grey’s Anatomy… except Cher, because she was pre-med and found every flaw in the storyline. I only liked watching when she wasn’t around because I could do so in peace.

  “Is that all?” he queries.

  “And snack packs. She has like a dozen chocolate snack packs under her bed and eats at least one a day.”

  He looks back at me, eyeing my bed, and then me to see if it’s true. I ignore his gaze. Billy Madison understood the value of a snack pack.

  “Anything else you can give me?”

  “Geez, I’m not her keeper. I’ve only known the girl for three weeks. She likes girly TV shows, chocolate pudding, listening to The Fray, and avoiding pretentious pretty boys like yourself after they’ve kissed her. What else do you want from me?”

  And now there is a large, suffocating elephant in the room. Now Lawson knows I told Cher and I’m sure he’s imagining some kind of girlish pillow fight gossip after I returned last week from our birthday celebrations. I mean he’d be partially right, just without the pillow fight.

  “Avoiding huh?” He turns back to me and I can only imagine the flush across my face and neck from embarrassment, and frustration. “You can’t avoid me, Newbie. If I want something, I’m going to go after it until it’s mine. And right now, I’ve decided I like hanging out with you. Friends, remember?”

  “Are you wanting a fist to the jugular? Because that’s the only thing I feel like handing out at the moment.” I try my best to look bored with his spiel.

  “Stop teasing me. You know I think it’s sexy when you fight with me.”

  “Then you’re going to have a real hard time controlling yourself around me,” I quip sarcastically.

  “You have no idea,” he says low and under his breath, but I catch every word and hang on it.

  My blood boils. He’s devishly handsome and equally dangerous. Why is he doing this to me? Why does he do this to me? Why does he cause such a reaction? I’m not a highly emotional person. I’m typically well rounded and even-tempered, that of a great lawyer. But Lawson Calhoun brings out the ugly in me. The worst in me.

  “I just came to apologize. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or cross a boundary or whatever it is you’re upset about. Let’s hang out sometime. Friday. After class.”

  Lawson was monopolizing my weekends. I was never going to start a girl gang here at this rate. I had Cher and three law students
as friends. That’s it.

  “I have studying to do. You should too. I never see you actually attend a class.”

  “I attend my classes,” he defends. “Most days. Just hang out with me tomorrow evening. We can even do something you want to do.”

  Thoughts of making him sit through a Grey’s marathon with me enters my mind and other cruel ways I could torture him into changing his mind. It could be an easy and quick fix. Lawson loves women, but he doesn’t love annoying women.

  “Fine. Deal, but don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”

  “See ya tomorrow, Newbie.” And finally at that, he leaves our dorm. I release a breath that I felt I was holding in the entire time.

  “That was so hot. Y’all bickering is better than porn,” Cher muses.

  I chuck my pillow at her across the room and hope it does some type of bodily damage.

  “What was that for?” she asks mockingly as if she doesn’t know.

  “You’re a traitor. Ovaries before brovaries, Cher. Ovaries before brovaries.”

  ~

  The remainder of the week rolls by slowly. The pit of anxiety that sits low in my stomach while I wait to hang out with Lawson this afternoon has me on edge. I start to worry that I might hurl on him. I braid my hair while I wait for him, and then apply a tinted lip balm, and finally when he still hasn’t showed and I’m starting to think he changed his mind, I begin to paint my nails.

  Next thing I know, he barges in.

  “What the fuck? How did you get in here?” I demand.

  “Now that’s not very lady-like. This is the south. And I offered to do your RA’s paper for legal proceedings class if he gave me the key.”

  “What if I had been naked? Or what if Cher had been naked?” I still can’t wrap my head around his audacity.

  “Oh, I was hoping for it,” he smirks. “Why are you painting your nails? We were supposed to leave like fifteen minutes ago.” He gestures out the door.

  “Friends don’t say that about friends. And you were fucking late, and I don’t care if we do live in the south, I’m entitled to freedom of speech. And I want to stay in. You said you wanted to hang out… then I’m making the rules. I have plans for us already.”

  “Yeah, no. I already made plans.” His eyebrows wrinkle to the middle of his forehead.

  “Well, so did I.”

  “Then we will do both… but we will do mine first,” he argues and takes my hand, pulling me out the door and smearing my wet nails.

  Once again, I’m crammed into Lawson’s tiny sports car. It’s miraculous that he fits. I feel cramped in this space and his tall and toned frame looks relaxed and unfazed. He drives and I don’t bother asking where we are going, because he and I don’t do much without bickering, so I just decide to leave it alone. I stare out the car on our ride and think that this would all be different if Lawson had a massive physical flaw like a humpback or a tail, or leprosy. He’s nearly perfect though. His hair is somewhere between dark blond and light brown and it’s model sexy all the time, and his facial hair is perfectly groomed, but it’s his eyes. Like a vortex, you can’t look away no matter how bad you want to. Women would do stupid things to keep that gaze locked on them. I don’t want to be one of them.

  Before I realize the car has come to a stop and I look around to see we are near the river. Large trees shade the area. I let myself out and stretch, feeling the breeze pick up some. Lawson rounds to the back of his car and pops the trunk. I curiously head back there as well. Lawson pulls a cooler from his trunk and I’m pretty sure he brought me here to pound back brewskies until he also grabs a blanket.

  Is this a picnic? How very… unlike Lawson. Not that I know him well enough, but it just seems out of his comfort zone, and he can see me eyeing him suspiciously.

  “Chicks love picnics, okay?”

  I snort-laugh at him. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do this.”

  I let him take the lead. He finds a grassy spot beneath a large tree and spreads the blanket out.

  I take a seat down next to him and peer over to where he opens the cooler. There’s like two dozen snack pack pudding containers in it. I don’t see anything that resembles real food and I’m okay with that. Moving states, starting a new college, hanging out with a hot guy that I should stay far from… all calls for stress eating.

  “So tonight’s dinner options are chocolate fudge, milk chocolate, chocolate caramel, butterscotch, banana, and vanilla.”

  I laugh at him and reach in for a milk chocolate. He grabs a banana and I’m convinced further that his food and drink selections are in fact a sign of psychopathy.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think we can be friends. Who chooses banana over chocolate?”

  “First of all, that pudding comes with conditions. For every bite you take, you have to tell me something about yourself. Secondly, don’t hate on the banana. Maybe that’s what makes us a phenomenal duo. I’ll never steal your chocolate if you keep your hands away from my banana.”

  My eyes go wide at the innuendo.

  “I mean you could totally put your hands on that banana,” he says while eyeing that specific area in his pants and I have to look away before my face warms over with a blush. “But I was mostly referring to my snack pack, dammit. Get your mind out of the gutter, Newbie.”

  I hold my laugh in, not wanting to let him get to me.

  “Now tell me something about yourself so you can dig in.”

  I think on this a while, not wanting to share anything too close to myself, not wanting to give him any more ammo toward or against me.

  “Each year since I was sixteen, I’ve done the Below The Line challenge, where you attempt to live off a dollar fifty per day for five days.”

  “Impressive,” he croons, and I delight in my ability to impress. He takes a bite of his own snack pack.

  “Hey, hey. This game goes both ways. Spill it.” He finishes his bite, swallowing it down.

  “Alright, I’ve never had a chocolate snack pack before. We were only allowed vanilla or banana in our house growing up.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous. My dad would always make sure we had some even when we still lived in Turkey.”

  “Hey, no judgment zone! You’re up.”

  “I can hula hoop like… really well.” I take my next bite, relishing in the rich chocolate flavor.

  “Okay, I took my first law class when I was twelve. Thanks to Dad’s eager training plan.”

  “Ouch. That sounds brutal. I didn’t care about anything at twelve other than fitting in with my friends.”

  “Eh, it wasn’t so bad. Imagine being the kid with the best debating abilities. I won like every argument and could manipulate all my friends into seeing my perspective.”

  Manipulation and desire to be right. Key factors in aggressive attorneys, however at the moment, I’m struggling to see the positive it plays in his life.

  “I have double-jointed fingers,” I reply, not missing a beat and not wanting him to sink into my thoughts.

  “Prove it.”

  I should have known he wouldn’t just believe me, so I push back on the four fingers of my right hand with my left until they are bent backward and grazing the backs of my hands. When I finish, I look up and his face looks horrified. That alone might have scared him off. I hadn’t shown anyone that before, but I was hoping it would come off more like a fun party trick.

  “Newbie, that’s not healthy. Doesn’t that hurt?” His concern is clear in his voice, but I shake my head and smile at him to wave off any apprehension he has for me.

  He stumbles a little after that one, still taking in what I just showed him. “Uh, my brother is one of my favorite people in the world.” A grin lights up his face and I like seeing him smile like this.

  “More than Finn and Grant?”

  “Eh, eh. No counter questions.”

  “That’s not fair you just asked me one!”

  “Rules don’t apply to me. You’ll learn that quickly, Newbie. I’ll give you a pass
for not knowing since you haven’t been around long.” He winks at me and it’s sexy but annoying. “What do you care about Finn anyway?” He doesn’t ask about Grant, and I wonder why.

  “I don’t. I just thought that they were your best friends. I’ve never met your brother.”

  “You sure about that? You and Finn seemed to enjoy a nice stroll to your class the other day. I thought maybe you might be interested in him. I can put in a good word if you want.” He winks at me and it only angers me more.

  I hadn’t been aware he was even paying attention that day. I can’t pick up a read on this guy. Kisses me, then flirts with the entire female population of the campus. Asks to hang out, then offers to set me up with Finn, and they say women are complicated.

  “He was just being nice. It’s not like that,” I assure and I’m not sure why I bother.

  His stare narrows, and he eyes me suspiciously. The quiet taking over the moment between us as we both try to pick up a read on the other.

  A wet drop on my shoulder interrupts my focus, and then I immediately feel another on my forearm and head. I didn’t realize rain was in the forecast. Lawson feels it too as I can see him taking in his surroundings.

  “Let’s get this cleaned up before it pours on us. We can have another treat in the car.”

  I nod my head at him and help him start cleaning up our area. Just as we load up the cooler and I grab the blanket the rain starts to come down in torrential waves. We look at each other and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all and both sprint off for his car. When we finally pile in with our items being crammed into the back seat, we are both laughing so hard that the car feels warm, despite the cool moisture soaking into our skin. He revs the engine and pulls out of the parking lot in the opposite direction of my dorm.

  My skin is drenched and cold, the goose bumps pebbling all over my body. My hair is matted to the side of my head and I pull it up into a messy bun to try and prevent it from frizzing into more of an uncontrolled mess. Lawson pulls out of the park and takes a right.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, looking over to him.