Hearts On Campus: An Instalove Possessive Age Gap Romance by Flora Ferrari (top reads txt) 📕

I wait for what feels like all night but is only probably a minute.

I hear her sniffing and then finally the door lock snaps and she opens it a little, a thin wedge of yellow light streaming out into the hall.

“Hi,” I whisper.

“Hi,” she sniffs, wiping her palm up her nose and then blowing into a tissue.

She looks terrible like she’s been crying her eyes out.

Crying over me.

Looking terribly perfect no matter what she’s doing, she’ll always be perfect to me.

“I’m sorry, Katelyn. I was moving too fast, I lost my head… it’s just, what you do to me. I can’t explain it.”

I hear my voice getting louder, my words coming faster.

Almost babbling.

Okay, totally babbling. It’s what she’s done to me.

The door opens wider and I move inside, making the whole room feel smaller just by being in it.

It’s a single dorm room, but I’m a big guy.

She’s stopped crying and sits on the edge of her bed, teasing me with a little shy smile, inviting me to do the same.

I open my mouth to speak again, but she goes first.

“If this is funny to you, or to whoever else you’ve let in on it, I guess I understand,” she finally says.

I turn my head and look behind me, double-checking she’s not talking to anyone else.

I shake my head, trying to rattle what she just said out of my ears because it makes no sense.

“What?” I ask her, feeling a stab of hurt as she sighs knowingly.

“I’ve been called everything Mr. Heart. Every name you could imagine. I’ve had my stuff stolen, things poured on me, my pants pulled down. Even had some students lock me in a shower and turn the lights out after taking my towel and clothes, barring the door for two hours before they finally let me out.

Why is she saying this?

Wait. What!

I make a tortured sound, to even imagine anyone could think of those things, let alone do them to Katelyn. It’s monstrous.

“And that was all this term,” she adds, patting my knee like someone explaining something to a child.

“I can spot a wind up from a mile away, Mr. Heart. If that’s even your real name… Thing is, I actually like you and I really thought you liked me too. You almost had me actually believing it all myself. I thought I actually had a chance at-”

I’ve heard enough.

No more talking.

I silence her lips with mine, pressing hard and pulling her close. Kissing her the way she makes me feel, hoping she feels how much I need her. How much I want her.

I feel her hands on my chest, her lips yielding to mine.

She presses into me and her hands move up to hold my face. Her thick chest melting against me and I hear her soft moan.

I’m not joking and this is no windup.

A gentleman’s kiss becomes a passionate embrace. Her tongue finding mine and her whimper as she feels me and how I need her tells her this is real.

She has more than a chance with me, from now on she is mine.

Mine.

Her hands are flat on my chest again, and once I feel her fully kissing me back, they ball into fists and she pummels me with them.

She’s hitting me, kissing me hard, and starting to cry all over again.

Taking her wrists gently in my hands as I kiss them, I hold them while I tell her.

I hold her while I let her know.

“I’m not those people, Katelyn. I am Wes Heart, and I want you with all of mine. You’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever met and I just found out I can’t live two minutes without you, let alone the rest of my life, so, please. Let me kiss you again. Let’s start over?”

CHAPTER NINE

Katelyn

If they were handing out awards for crazy girls who needed kissing, I’ve scooped the lot.

I’ve cleaned out.

As soon as he kisses me, I know I was wrong. There’s no set-up. There’s no room full of perfect looking people pointing and laughing, nobody making fun of me.

Wes is real, his computer problem, our little meal together, and him racing over here in the dark to kiss me… All real.

Whatever I’ve done to deserve him, I must have done it. I’ve finally had something go right for a change, and even though I freaked out, crying and carrying on, he’s still right here.

Holding me so tenderly, calming me with his deep voice, telling me everything’s different now.

Telling me everything’s alright and nothing bad’s ever gonna happen to me ever again.

Funny thing is, I know he means it and I know it’s true somehow.

Somehow we’re both going to be okay from now on because we’ve finally found each other.

I must feel better eventually because I start to worry about how I must look.

Wes only smiles his magical smile, and reading my thoughts as he brushes some stray hair off my face he tells me I look perfect.

We both lay back on my bed, which Wes makes feel like a matchbox, his hand over mine as we look up at the ceiling, him asking me to tell him more about me instead of us talking about him all the time.

“The good parts, I mean,” he says and we both laugh softly.

“Tell me,” he probes, wanting more of what I never told him the first time he asked me to tell him about myself.

“Most people do nothing but tell you who, what they want or like and dislike,” hear myself tell him. “But nobody really wants to tell you about who they really are, do they?” I ask him.

“I think you’re doing a pretty fine job so far,” he says, squeezing my hand.

“I got a science scholarship, have a research grant waiting for postgraduate studies… Computer stuff,” I mumble, shrugging to myself.

“Tell me about the real Katelyn,” he says, propping himself up onto one elbow and pressing a hand lightly to the center of my chest.

“The Katelyn in here,” he adds with a smile.

“I dunno,” I