by Wood, Vivian
Laughing, I toast her and drink again. All the while I am hearing the reasons why I shouldn’t let Cassandra introduce me around Thistle House, played back to me over and over again.
Cass rattles on, changing the subject to how mad Lily will be. Apparently her parents couldn’t get her a spot in Thistle House. But since one of the girls didn’t show up to campus, there is a spot open…
I shrink back into myself, nodding when it’s appropriate. But I am no longer enjoying my blueberry wine.
17
Wolf
“Lots going on over at Thistle.” Max comes in on a burst of early fall air and drops his bag next to the kitchen island. His dark eyes gleam. I put another slice of ham onto the sandwich I’ve been making. It’s taking way too long to make this sandwich, and it’s because my attention kept drifting out the window to the back garden, where the memorial bench for Asher.
For a silent reminder, it’s really fucking loud.
“There’s always a lot going on over there. It’s a house full of women.” I grin at Max, but his grin is wider.
“Emily’s over there. I saw her heading in with Cassandra.”
That get my attention. He heads to the fridge and pulls out a pop, cracks the lid, drinks. I shouldn’t care at all that Emily is at Thistle House, but the fact is that it’s close. The two properties are divided only by a few trees and one low hedge. I’ve tripped over the damn thing coming home in the middle of the night more times than I care to remember.
“Is she?” I say lamely.
“Yes.” Max stands by the sink and looks out at the backyard. “What do you think of her?” He doesn’t look at me, but that doesn’t make any difference. I go to the fridge and pull out a pack of cheese slices, put one final slice on the sandwich, and shove the top layer of bread into place. I think I want you to stay away from her.
But I can’t say that, because Emily isn’t mine.
That party went so off the rails, at the end. It wasn’t a typical Wolf Astor move to get a girl half-naked in my bedroom and do nothing about it, but the way she said Asher’s name reminded me what’s at stake here. I thought, somehow, when she was standing there trembling, her eyes filled with tears from Ellis’s outburst, that I’d be doing her a favor if I did nothing.
If I gave her no reason to come around Rose House.
“I think she’s great.” Max fills in the silence and takes another swig of pop. “She’s smart, and funny.” I feel like a fish caught on a hook. “It would be cool as hell if she moved into Thistle.”
I scoff at that. “She’s not going to move into Thistle.”
He turns to face me. “Why not?”
“Emily Danes?”
For one thing, Thistle and Rose are...close. The women from Thistle are the ones who take part in our ceremonies, and the things that happen at those ceremonies... I don’t know if I could let her do it. She’s innocent. She’s fucking innocent. I could see it in her eyes at the party, and I can see it every time she shows up on campus in those faded t-shirts and the jeans that show the skinny lines of her hips. For another, there are the dues. I don’t have to ask to know that Emily doesn’t have the money to pay for membership at Thistle.
“You say that like they wouldn’t approve of her.” Max laughs. “They probably wouldn’t, would they.”
“She’s not like the rest of us.”
He cocks his head thoughtfully to the side. “You’d think more people would realize that that’s what makes her special.”
I take a bite of the sandwich. Chew. Swallow. My pulse ticks in my neck. She’s over there right now. I normally don’t mind the way Max gets serious about people. He gets in his head. The kind of introspective shit that’s rare at Rose House. And if he thought this way about anybody else, I’d be able to stand here and listen.
“You’d think,” I tell him. “I have to go.”
I feel his eyes on me as I leave the kitchen and saunter toward the door.
The sun is starting to set, bathing this part of campus in an orange glow. I want to turn right, toward Thistle House, but Max is probably back there with his nose pressed against the window, so I go straight instead. The way from Rose House to the main campus is paved with criss-crossing desire paths and I take the first one.
I haven’t gone thirty feet when there’s a flash of movement off to my right.
Emily.
She walks quickly, but there’s a little sway in her step. Maybe she’s had a drink or two.
“Hey. Emily.”
She whips her head toward me, her eyes going wide, and she raises her hand in a tentative wave. That’s as much invitation as I need to cross the grass between the desire paths and join her on the one she’s taking.
“Where are you—”
“I’m sorry,” she says at the same time, cheeks flaming. “What?”
I give her my classic smirk. “I wanted to know where you were headed. I can walk you.”
A smile turns up the edges of her lips. “It looks like you’re already walking me.”
“Well, I owe you.”
Emily shakes her head. “You don’t. I...I shouldn’t have brought up your friend.”
“Brave of you, to do it again now,” I say lightly. “But I should have told you that it’s fine. It sucked, but...” But I don’t want you to know how much it still keeps me awake at night. “It’s in the past, now. And we were having such a nice moment.”
“It was nice,” she admits, a sultry note in her voice that makes the hairs on the back of my arms rise. “I shouldn’t have run away from you.”
“Oh, you absolutely should have. You shouldn’t be hanging around guys like me.”
“Guys like you?” Emily lets out a wry laugh. “Guys like you were unavoidable at Rose House.”
“And we follow you everywhere,” I joke.
“Everywhere.” Emily raises a hand to her throat and lets it fall. “It’s almost like you don’t hate me.”
“Hate you? Why would I hate you?”
“God, Wolf, a million reasons.” A bitter laugh. “I’m over here because Cassandra felt sorry for me. She invited me to Thistle with her after...” Emily shakes her head. “We don’t have to get into it.”
“What happened?” That same surge of protective instinct comes out like a set of claws I never knew I had.
Emily looks straight ahead. “My roommate. She...” There’s a long pause. “She has a problem with me. Because of you.”
“Your roommate...”
“Lily Mizundo.”
Lily Mizundo was at the party. I talked to her like I would have talked to anyone who went to Waltham. You never know who you might need a connection with, though anyone with half a fucking brain will tell you those connections don’t have to be anything more than superficial.
“I’m not seeing it. What problem could a girl like Lily have?”
Emily shrugs, eyebrows raised. “I didn’t do anything to get in her way.”
“Get in her way?” This is not the conversation I thought I’d be having when I came outside.
“She likes you,” Emily says flatly. “She didn’t like that I brought up your name.”
“I’m more interested in what you had to say about me.”
She smiles, looking down at the ground. “Nothing.”
I let out an affected sigh. “We should do something about that, then.”
Emily’s laugh is more like a giggle, something that would not endear me to anybody except her. “I don’t know what you mean by that. We just sit at the same desk in one class, and—”
“And I brought you up to my bedroom. Not everybody gets to go to my bedroom, Emily.”
She shifts so that we’re walking a little closer.
“I was an asshole the other night,” I admit. “It wasn’t a big deal that you brought up Ash, and it doesn’t change the fact that I’d like to see more of you.”
Skepticism is written all over her face, and a thudding jealousy is written all over my hea
rt. I won’t be able to fucking stand it if Max comes back with one more story about how wonderful Emily Danes is.
“Maybe you will,” she hedges.
“Oh?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this...” She bites her lip.
“Don’t play coy with me. I’m walking you home, after all.”
“Ha.” Emily tucks her hair behind her ear. “Cassandra mentioned something about trying to get me into Thistle House, since Lily...” Emily presses her lips together. “Cass thought I could be a good fit there, which would make us neighbors.”
“It would.” I let the suggestion hang in the air. “Maybe more than neighbors.”
“Are you...are you asking me out?” Emily looks like she wouldn’t possibly believe this, even if I swore up and down that it was true. “Because if you are, you might want to reconsider. I don’t know if your friends would be cool with that.”
“Lily isn’t a friend. We went to school at the same time, years apart. Don’t you know by now that high school is meaningless?”
“Hey, not all of it’s meaningless,” Emily insists. “If I hadn’t been so good at high school, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“Lucky that you are.”
“I’m sure you say that to all the girls.”
I stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Emily notices a beat too late and turns around to face me, high color in her cheeks and her breath coming fast and shallow. “Emily Danes, I don’t say anything to all the girls.”
“That’s not true.” Her voice wavers, light and breathy, and I wish I’d kissed her at the party. What the fuck was I thinking? “I know about you. I know you’re a playboy.”
I shrug one shoulder. “I want what I want. But nobody saw me take Lily Mizundo upstairs at the party. They saw me take you. What does that tell you?”
“I thought you were going to kiss me, but you didn’t. What is that supposed to tell me?”
Her dark eyes flash and flare in the dying sunlight, and I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful as this girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She’s the kind of girl that my parents’ world would chew up and spit out. I can’t let that happen. I thought I could prevent it by keeping her at arms’ length, but now I see the truth—I need her close. Closer.
“Do you want me to kiss you?”
She reaches up and tucks her hair behind her ear again, even though none of it has fallen to her cheek. “I wanted you to kiss me in your bedroom.”
“While you were standing there, wearing nothing but my shirt?” I let the words fall like something off a questionnaire. Utterly normal. Utterly casual. It turns her cheeks a deeper crimson.
“It wasn’t nothing but your shirt,” she says. “But yes. Then.”
“Can I give you a piece of advice?”
Her lips are slightly parted and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to devour those lips right here and now, between Rose House and campus, between wanting her and taking her. And I will take her, even if it means taking a risk. Seeing her with anyone else might kill me.
Still. Now is the time to tread carefully.
“Sure,” she breathes.
“Don’t let any of the Thorns kiss you without taking you on a date first.”
A smile illuminates her face. “Any of the Thorns or you, Wolf?”
“Don’t let me kiss you without taking you on a date first.”
“What kind of date?”
I should stop this, right now. I shouldn’t let my own animal need for her get in the way of keeping her out of all the sinister secrets at Rose House. I shouldn’t be throwing myself between her and Max just because I want to stake my claim, and I’ve wanted it since the moment I saw her standing there at orientation. Emily, the girl who doesn’t fit in. Emily, the girl who could be mine. This is the moment I could turn away.
“Dinner. Tomorrow night.”
She lets out a breath, and whether it’s a sigh of relief or nervousness I can’t tell. “Okay,” she agrees. “What time?”
“Eight. I’ll meet you at your dorm. Speaking of...” I step forward. “Show me where you sleep at night.”
Emily laughs. “Creep.”
“You agreed to go on a date with me.”
“Yes,” she says, eyes bright as she leads the way across the desire path toward campus. “I did.”
18
Wolf
“Where are we going?”
It’s the first thing out of Emily’s mouth as she comes down the stairs of Rebekah Scott Hall, seemingly oblivious to all the faces looking out of the windows at the front of the building. The sun is set, an evening cool setting in, and there are plenty of people silhouetted by the dorm lights.
“Looks like the show has already started.” I point back up at Emily’s dorm and she turns, confusion on her face. It melts into surprise. “We’re an event.”
“You’re an event,” she says ruefully. “I’m...how do I look?”
A long-sleeved dress the color of rust, hitting just above her knees. Black leggings. Flats. A jacket over all of it.
“You look great.” Her shoulders slide down an inch. “Want to get out of here?”
“Yes.” I offer her my arm and she puts her hand into the crook of my elbow. I’ve spent my life attending fancy events and escorting girls from one side of a room to another, but it’s never felt like this. The moment she touches me, a tension in the center of my gut uncoils. “But I still want to know where we’re going.”
I head away from Rebekah Scott. “Close by.”
She hesitates. “Rose House?”
“You think I’d take you on a date to Rose House?”
“I don’t know. I don’t get asked on many dates.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Totally believable.”
“This campus is full of morons, then.” I didn’t tell Max where I was going tonight, and I don’t tell Emily that apparently not everyone is a fucking moron.
“There are some nice people.”
I laugh, my voice ringing in the breeze. “You sound very confident about that.”
“Cassandra’s amazing.” Emily’s grip on my elbow tightens. “She made me go shopping with her for this...special event.”
“There’s no dress code, you know.”
“I think I’m more likely to end up with my dress hanging above your radiator.” The thought of her in my shirt, standing in my bedroom, sends a jolt of desire straight between my legs. One glance at Emily tells me the joke was a risk for her to take, because even in the low lights by the campus sidewalks, it’s obvious she’s blushing furiously.
“You don’t have to worry about that tonight.” I wish we could worry about that tonight, but that would mean taking her straight back to Rose House. And while I’ve fucked my way through enough anonymous women to last a lifetime, that’s not what I’m looking for. Not with Emily.
I don’t even know what I am looking for with her. It’s like staring into the sun. Things with Asher are still unresolved, but we’re heading into the end of the fall and nobody’s cracked. Not Ellis. Not Max. It’s like they’ve forgotten that they ever had a part in it. Shit like that will make you question your own memory.
But I’m not here tonight to question my memory. I’m here to be with Emily, even if it’s fucked up. Even if I’m the dangerous one. And I am the dangerous one. There’s no question about that.
“Hm,” Emily says, and I can’t tell if it means she’s disappointed or relieved. Either way, I’m not hiding her in my bedroom for a quick fuck and then taking her back to Rebakah Scott.
We walk in silence for a minute, approaching one of the larger and more graceful of the buildings on campus. Emily cuts a glance across at me. “Are you taking me to the Peach Pit?”
The Peach Pit is one of the trendier student dining areas that Campbell had an erection for the last few years. It’s all bright colors and new furniture, and the food there is less atrocious than some of the things they served at Waltham.
But no, that’s not where we’re going.
“Same building. Better atmosphere.”
“What’s a better atmosphere than the Peach Pit?” She sounds completely earnest, and my heart twists to register yet again that for Emily, a place like the Peach Pit—which has dressed itself up as a cross between a buffet restaurant and a cafeteria—is a perfectly acceptable choice for a date. And it would be, if I wasn’t Wolf Astor. But I don’t take women on dates to the Peach Pit. The place we’re going is the absolute minimum I would ever consider for a date, and that’s by design. I don’t want Emily to think my life is all about money.
It is about money. That’s the ugly truth at the heart of it. But at least at Campbell, tonight, it doesn’t have to be. I wanted us to be on somewhat equal footing. I’m a real prince.
“Not the Peach Pit. Above the Peach Pit.”
“What?” She wrinkles her nose, a funny little grin on her face. God, it’s so heartbreaking, how she tries to play it cool. But it’s written all over her face, how new all of this still is.
“There’s a place above the Peach Pit. Membership only.”
“Like...for members of Rose House?”
“Different membership.” Campbell has a few small dining clubs, only accessible to students who pay an extra fee.
Emily nods slowly. “And you’re a member?”
“I am. And you’re my guest tonight.”
We climb the steps of the building and I hold open the door. She brushes by and I get a lungful of her scent—sweet and clean, her shampoo mixing with the fall air.
“He’s such a gentleman, isn’t it?” The voice comes from inside the building, wry and immediately recognizable.
“Hey, Max,” Emily says as I step in behind her, and then out of the way.
Max stands alone in the foyer of the building, a notebook pressed to his side. “Peach Pit’s not busy.” He might be wearing the same smile he gives Emily in their class together, but I know what the comment is—bait.
Unlike Ellis, Max has never presented much of a threat. We’re too different. The kinds of women who are interested in Max have never been the kind who want a tumble in bed that’s forgotten the next morning.