by Geneva Lee
I cringe at Francie’s emphasis on the final word. It’s a typical move on her part. I’ve deemed them calls to action. She doesn’t believe either of these assholes are gentlemen, but that won’t stop her from forcing them to act like ones.
“What room?” The nice one asks, holding open the door.
“226,” I mutter, wishing they wouldn’t accompany us farther. I don’t need Francie trying to impose etiquette lessons on my peers, even if they need them.
He exchanges a look with his friend. “Mystery solved.”
“I tried to tell you,” the other says with bleak amusement as he passes the entrance.
Francie caves to curiosity before I do. “What mystery?”
“I’m in 226, too. We’re roommates. Cyrus,” he says. He sticks his hand out and I carefully shake it around the box.
“Sterling,” I introduce myself. “And this is Francie.”
“That’s Montgomery. We call him Money,” he continues.
I don’t want to know why.
Cyrus studies me with more interest now. I know what he sees: a threadbare t-shirt that was once black, old ripped jeans that are a bit too loose on the hips, and the poor kid wearing them. Francie bought me some new clothes before we left, but she hadn’t been able to afford much. Compared to him, we’re total opposites other than our height. My black hair is an untidy mess from hours in the car. He’s combed his blond hair into artful submission. I hadn’t bothered to shave the last two days and dark stubble itches along my jawline. He’s clean-shaven, highlighting aristocratic cheekbones. His near-onyx eyes are his only dark feature just like my blue eyes are unusually bright. Unlike the rest of us, he isn’t dressed casually. He’s wearing tailored pants and a button-down shirt. He doesn’t look like a college kid. He looks like a CEO.
“You’re staying in the dorms?” Surprise flashes across Francie’s face. I can’t blame her.
“His father is teaching him a lesson,” his friend says and I can hear the sneer in his voice as he leads us toward a stairwell.
“He wants me to have the typical college experience.” If he’s bothered by this teachable moment, he doesn’t show it.
I take the steps two at a time, ready to get this over with. It’s bad enough that my roommate is clearly rich and privileged. Now I’ve inherited his jackass buddy, too. As soon as Francie is gone I can look into a different room.
“He wants to torture you,” Montgomery corrects him.
“It’s no big deal,” Cyrus says. “I’ll probably crash at the house after rush week.”
Yet another reason to avoid Greek row. Cyrus is okay, but I’d bet money most of the frat members are more like his friend. With any luck, they won’t be around much. He might be nice, but if his dad’s idea of a life lesson was doing something average like living in a dorm room, I expected we didn’t have much in common. My own dad didn’t even know I was in another state starting school. He didn’t deserve to know. Yeah, I was nothing like either of these guys.
Our dorm room is the definition of average. Cinder block walls painted a sickly neutral beige and cold tiled floors, probably brimming with asbestos greet me, from under the edges of an expensive rug. One bed is already made up—a bit too neatly—and there are no boxes in sight. Either my new roommate is seriously OCD or his mom has been here.
“Magda chose the bed closer to the window. I hope you don’t mind. She said it was better for circulation.” He shrugs like he doesn’t buy it or care.
“Is Magda your girlfriend?” Francie asks.
He blinks, temporarily confused, but Montgomery laughs, dropping the box carelessly to the hard floor. “Magda is his maid. Daddy might be forcing him to slum it, but even he’s not that cruel.”
Withholding the help is punishment to my new acquaintances. Where has Francie sent me? Hell?
“I hope you don’t mind,” Cyrus looks genuinely concerned and I wonder if it’s because now I know he has a maid or if it’s because he’d rather jump out the open window than continue this awkward introduction. He looks between me and Francie and back to my boxes. “Do you have more? We can help.”
Montgomery flinches at being volunteered but he doesn’t speak.
“That’s it,” I say, trying to sound like I don’t care that all my worldly possessions fit into two boxes while my roommate’s maid has already unpacked his and made his bed for him. I’d known I would feel like I was in a different world when I’d accepted the Valmont scholarship.
“Let’s grab a bite,” Cyrus suggests to his friend. “We’ll let you get settled.”
“It won’t take long,” Montgomery mutters.
I can tell him and I are going to be close—close to killing each other. I keep this thought to myself. Francie doesn’t need to leave her worried that I’m going to be fighting the first opportunity I get. But I suspect I’ll be delivering a welcoming right hook to Montgomery’s face sooner rather than later. When they take off, I relax. I hope Cyrus is right and he winds up going Greek.
Francie seems to read my mind. “Maybe you should check out this house your roommate is pledging. He seems kind.”
He seems tolerant—at best. I want to tell her that guys like Cyrus and Montgomery and guys like me don’t have anything in common. From their bank accounts to their problems, we live in very different worlds. But when I turn to her and see the hope written across her face, I swallow it all down.
“I’ll consider it,” I lie.
The door to the dormitory opens and Cyrus strides in grinning apologetically. “Forgot my ID.”
“He’s not used to paying for things.” Montgomery leans against the doorway, a wolfish grin taking up residence on his face. He knows what he’s doing. He’s not going to establish dominance over me, but he’ll make sure I know how far beneath them both I am. “Just drop your last name, Cy. You don’t need money.”
“Shut up,” Cyrus orders him as he digs in his top drawer.
“Come on.” A pale hand appears on his arm, tugging at it. The owner of it comes into view slowly. Slender arms, dusted with freckles flow into a willowy body clad in a short, summer dress that showcases long legs. She’s dressed for the heat, but despite that her cheeks glisten pink with a slight sheen of sweat. Strawberry blonde curls tumble over her shoulders. She looks over to me, her emerald gaze sparkling intensely. One second is all it takes. She takes me apart with those green eyes, studies the pieces, and then turns to Cyrus. “I have things to do. Can we get going?”
Cyrus doesn’t introduce us. He grabs the ID card and heads toward the door. It swings closed between me and his world—his friends. Then it cracks back open and his head pops through. “Party tonight at the Beta Psi house. You in?”
My thoughts flash to the girl. I want to ask if she’ll be there. I have no idea what she saw inside me, but I want to know. “Sure.”
He leaves without giving me more details. Already I’m reconsidering. There’s no way to know if she’ll be there and if it comes down to spending more time with Montgomery, I think I’d rather drink Clorox.
Beside me Francie is practically vibrating with excitement. She doesn’t need to know going to the party is a gamble that the girl will be there. I don’t need her obsessing over that factoid. It’s bad enough that she heard me make the plans.
I start to tell her that I’ve changed my mind, but her face is lit up like I’ve just handed her a winning lottery ticket. “Promise me you’ll go to the party.”
There’s no goddamn way out of that, and she knows it. My past is a collection of broken promises. If she asks me to give her my word, I have to choices: refuse or keep my promise. I won’t make a promise and not keep it.
“Fine,” I agree. It’s one party.
“Don’t isolate yourself,” she says. “This is a chance to be anyone you want to be.”
“Like myself?” I ask dryly. But we both know the truth. About who I am. About who I was born to be. Violence is written in my DNA. Dragging me a thousand miles from home won
’t erase my past, and it won’t change my future. A girl who runs with rich boys isn’t going to be interested in me. Not for long, anyway. Some truths are inescapable. I was born a bastard. There’s no changing that.
5
Adair
Frat houses smell like someone is trying to mask dirty laundry and stale beer with bad body spray. It doesn’t help that the ground level of the Beta Psi house is packed with undergrads all suffering from various degrees of intoxication. My own cup remains untouched. Cheap beer tapped by a guy wearing his clothes inside out isn’t exactly my poison. But the red cup is like a security blanket, a sign that I belong here. Well, not here exactly. Not in a frat house. But at college—at Valmont. With the Solo cup in my hand, I’m just an average freshman. As long as no one asks my last name, that is.
“It’s so big,” a wobbling brunette squeals, clutching my arm as she passes and spilling some of my drink. “I’ve never been in a house so big.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” I yell over the crowd, swiping at the beer on my dress, but she’s already gone. My mind hadn’t exactly jumped to the size of the house when she spoke. To me, the Beta Psi house isn’t that big. Of course, it might feel a bit more cramped with hundreds of bodies crammed into it.
She did no favors for my outfit, a bodycon dress that wraps slinkily around my shoulders and hips. Thankfully the bright floral print masks the spill, but I doubt beer and silk are a good match. I groan as I realize my feet are wet. My red sandals boast a four-inch heel, delicate criss-crossing straps and absolutely no protection for my toes. My first official college party is off to a fantastic start. I don’t know why I expected it to be different from when I crashed them with my prep friends. I’d hoped it would feel like I’d crossed a bridge, moving from one point in my life to the next.
Except it’s all the same.
Maybe it always will be. I’d wanted to leave Tennessee for college. I had even defied my father and applied to several schools on the East Coast. When I’d gotten in, he’d played his own card: I attended his alma mater or he didn’t pay. There was no way I would qualify for financial aid. He had known the whole time. Mom had tried to reason with him, but Angus MacLaine gets what he wants, especially where family is concerned. Now I’m stuck here, doing exactly what I was doing last year. I don’t even get to live in the dorms.
I have to clean this up, because I can’t handle having wet feet. Bypassing the living room and its walnut paneled walls, complete with a half dozen couples procreating against them, I head toward the stairs. There’s a bathroom down here, but the line will be too long. There’s another one next to Montgomery’s room. On the few occasions when I’ve been dragged here before, his sister, Ava, and I have snuck up to use it. I have no idea where she is now. I’ve lost her to the crowd along with my best friend. I wonder if I made a mistake not rooming with Poppy when she asked. Not that I had a choice. But I can’t help feeling like Ava and Poppy are leaving me out.
The second and third floors of the Beta Psi house don’t pretend to be civilized like the main floor. There’s no tastefully upholstered furniture, no framed portrait of famous alumni, no polished wood. As soon as my hand slips from the walnut railing and I step into the hallway, I’m in a different world entirely. The faint scent of aftershave, sweat, and pot lingers in the air. Empty bottles clutter the floor, and there’s a hole where someone has clearly punched the wall. I can’t imagine what it would be like if they didn’t have a full time housekeeper. I feel sorry for the poor woman who has to put up with these boys. I step over a passed out guy slumped next to a door but instantly feel bad.
Bending I check to make sure he’s breathing.
“He’s alive,” a deep voice startles me with the announcement, and I press a hand to my chest. Then he steps from the shadows. It takes me a moment to place him because he doesn’t belong here—and knowing how snobby Montgomery is he won’t be invited to join. I don’t know Cyrus’s roommate. We haven’t even been introduced yet, and he already nearly scared me to death.
“What are you doing up here?” I snap defensively. I realize how it sounds too late.
His eyes narrow. Washed out by the dim hallway light, they look silver. Even blanched near colorless, they’re bright—and burning with hatred. It steals my breath and I scramble to collect myself. Overreact much? But it’s harder to appear poised in his presence. I’d glimpsed him earlier and liked what I saw. Now? Wow doesn’t quite cover it. His black hair sweeps over his forehead, artfully unkempt. He’s wearing the same old t-shirt and jeans from earlier today along with a scowl. He clearly doesn’t care to impress anyone.
“I have more of a right to be here than you do.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and leans against the wall.
“Is that so?” I challenge, my heartbeat ticking up. Who does he think is? “Why is that?”
“Necessary equipment.”
That catches me off-guard. I stare blankly at him. “Huh?”
He snorts before gesturing to his crotch.
Oh.
“That qualifies you to wander around a frat you don’t belong to?” I shake my head, hoping that it’s dark enough that he can’t spy the heat staining my cheeks. I feel them burning with a mixture of embarrassment and rage.
“I was invited,” he says stiffly.
I’ve struck a nerve. I should stop. Instead, I dig the needle in farther. “That doesn’t mean you belong.”
A low rumble vibrates from him. His body, now rigid, ripples with effort as he tries to suppress it, succeeding only in making his muscles strain against the thin fabric of his shirt. Plenty of guys I went to school with were athletes. In our circle, appearance is as important as the balance of your bank account. None of the guys I know look like this. There’s something feral about him, a savagery that peeks out of those angry eyes that’s only intensified by his large body.
“You think you’re better than me? That you can play the spitfire and look badass? Because I see right through you,” he bites out. “Daddy’s lucky little princess born sucking on a silver spoon.”
The words slice me open and now he’s not the one who’s struck a nerve—not like me—he’s split me open, gutted me. Somehow this total stranger has found my weakest point. I don’t want it to be true. I can’t deny that it is. Being at Valmont is proof of that. I didn’t go off to school. I didn’t have anywhere better to be tonight than alone at a frat house in expensive, beer-splattered shoes.
There’s no way in hell I’m going to let him know that.
“Jealous much?” I plant my hands on my hips like I’m daring him to continue. Why not? I’m already bleeding. He can’t do much more damage.
I hope.
He opens his mouth but before he can speak the drunk guy on the floor falls forward and pukes on my feet. I jump back, a scream escaping me as the hot sick coats my skin. The night has officially gone from crap to the ninth circle of hell. It can’t possibly get worse.
Then he laughs.
I was wrong. My blood boils and now the premature hatred he’d exhibited earlier floods through me. I don’t even know his name, but my mind is already imagining a dozen vicious karmic paybacks. Everything from drunk dude getting to his feet only to lose it again all over my companion’s perfect face to spreading a rumor that he’s packing a cocktail Weiner in his pants. I suspect that one’s not true, but he’d deserve it. I would be doing the entire female student body a favor.
I’m not going to do it and the drunk guy isn’t going to get up and this dickhead isn’t going to get what he deserves. Pushing past him, I head toward the bathroom still fuming.
“You can’t say that you didn’t have that coming,” he calls after me—and he sounds almost… friendly? If this is how he makes new friends, he needs a serious lesson in interpersonal skills.
I don’t respond. Beelining for the bathroom, I slam the door behind me and lock it. I slump against the wall and inspect the damage to my shoes. It’s almost as bad as the damage to the re
st of me. He doesn’t know me. That should be enough. I haven’t exactly put my best foot forward. I grimace thinking of my shoes—or even worse, my feet—again. But he had started it, hadn’t he?
I’ve already suffered a lifetime of people thinking they know me. People assume the MacLaine children haven’t worked a day in our lives. All we do is work. Our father’s love isn’t free. Everything we have cost us something. I’m not spoiled. Not in the way he thinks.
There’s something rotten inside me though, and I can’t deny it. It shows itself when I least expect it—when I least want it to—and tonight it found a playmate.
I force myself to confront the task at hand. My shoes are ruined. Unstrapping them, I toss them in the garbage before shimmying up my skirt so I can wash my feet under some running water. I consider looking for soap but a college boy’s shower will make you lose faith in humanity. How could living creatures be so gross? Sticking my leg carefully into the stall, I turn the knob so I can wash tonight off. The shower head hisses, pipes rumbling, and then cold water shoots directly into my face, my dress, my hair. I try to cover my face with one palm while I search for the knob, half-blinded by the assault. When I finally manage to shut it off, I’m dripping wet. Drenched silk clings to my skin and soaked strands of hair fall limply on my shoulders while water puddles at my feet. Air conditioning blasts from a floor vent making me wet and cold.
A fist pounds on the locked door and I freeze.
“You okay in there?”a muffled voice calls.
It’s him. That’s when I realize that I’d screamed when the water hit me.
“Fine,” I bite out through shivers.
“You screamed.”
“Go away!” I want to tell him exactly where to go and what he can do when he gets there, but I have bigger problems.
I grab a towel hanging nearby and dry myself, trying hard to ignore its tell-tale mustiness. Swiping at my face and hair, I drop the towel to the ground. Tonight could not get worse.
The mirror proves me wrong on that count. Smudged mascara rings my eyes, my lipstick is smeared at the corners of my mouth—I look like a drowned cat. It takes me a few minutes to wipe the ruined makeup off. Pulling a scrunchie off my wrist, I knot my hair into a messy bun, which is a minor improvement. It’s no use trying to save the dress. I need a savior. Someone who will brave the asshole in the hall to rescue me. A knight in shining armor.