by Megyn Ward
Pushing Patrick © 2017 by Megyn Ward. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner, whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
FIRST EDITION 2017
Book design by Megyn Ward
Cover design by Megyn Ward
Cover photo by Bigstock
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and
Incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There have been so many people who have supported and encouraged me on this journey. A huge thank you and even huger I LOVE YOU, to my husband. You will never know how much it means to me to have you by my side. Thank you for all the chocolate and coffee and for making breakfast when Also, a ginormous thank you to you, Susana. Thank you for reading my awful first drafts, catching my typos (of which there were many) and keeping me sane while I undertake the endeavor of a lifetime. To Charlie—thank you for keeping my laugh tank filled and for convincing me it’s okay to eat pizza three times a day.
For my husband.
Thanks for being my breakfast guy.
One
Patrick
2014
Fuck me, I’m tired.
Like, forget-food-fuck-showering-on-the-verge-of-passing-out tired.
Unfortunately, sleeping isn’t on the short list of my fraternity brothers’ priorities. Ever seen Animal House?
That’s where I live.
How I—straight-laced, study-groups, bed-by-ten-on-a-school-night me—managed to pledge the fraternity that thinks the fact that it’s Wednesday is cause enough to tap a half-dozen kegs and invite the known universe over to party, I’ll never know.
Wait. Yes, I do. Conner.
I pledged Kapa Sigma Pi because my cousin convinced me that if I wanted the full college experience, I needed to join a fraternity.
Two years in and I want to kill Conner. Sometimes more than I want to sleep.
You need to loosen up on the reins a bit, Cap’n. Live a little. You’ve got your whole life to grow old.
Cap’n. Short for Captain America. He’s been calling me that since we were kids, reading comics in the storeroom of his father’s bar. Because, according to him, I’m a paragon of virtue and defender of justice. I used to like it—when I was nine.
So, yeah. It’s Wednesday night and the front lawn of our fraternity is littered with plastic cups and clothes. Yup—clothes. Because Sigma Pi parties aren’t clothing optional, they’re nudity required.
Not all the way naked. You can keep your underwear on. If you want to.
That part is optional, at least.
I’m sitting in my car. Considering sleeping in it. Maybe heading back to the library and bedding down in the stacks. Just as I decide that it might actually be preferable to listening to sorority girls vomit all night long, my phone rings. It’s Rob, my roommate. I pretty much hate everything about him but I tolerate him because he’s my fraternity brother and I take his shit because that’s what I do. I take shit. Keep the peace.
“You try sleepin’ in your car again,” he shouts into the phone, loud enough to have me pulling my cell away from my ear. “The brothers and I are gonna gift wrap it.”
Shit. That means they’re going to plastic wrap my car. With me inside. “Actually, Conner just called. I think I’m going to head—”
“Nice try, pussy,” Rob says over the loud music and shouts coming from inside the house. “Your cousin’s in the kitchen.”
Of course, he is. Because the real reason Con pushed me to join Sigma Pi was so he’d have open access to all their parties. And all the girls who attend them. “Okay,” I say, giving in. “One beer and I’m out—got it.”
“Yeah, whatever, bitch,” Rob says, laughing. “Just get your ass in here.”
I hang up and get out of my car, slamming the door a little too hard, before walking around the side of the house toward the back door. If I go through the front, someone will be there to confiscate my clothes for sure. At least this way, I have a chance of keeping my pants on.
No such luck. Rob greets me at the backdoor, paintball gun slung over his shoulder. He’s completely naked. “Strip, motherfucker,” he says, giving me that douchey grin of his that makes me want to break his nose.
We’re standing in the kitchen and we’re not alone. There’re a few dozen partiers standing around, talking and drinking. Con’s one of them. He’s leaned against the counter, wearing nothing but boxer briefs and a pair of half-naked Deltas hanging around his neck, laughing his ass off. I flip him the bird. Finally, he recovers enough to attempt a rescue.
“Come on, man,” he says, throwing his empty beer cup in Rob’s direction. “Give him a break.”
“House rules.” Rob slings the paintball gun off his shoulder and points it at me. “Strip or suffer the consequences.”
Pro tip: Getting shot with paintballs hurts like a motherfucker.
Smelling a confrontation, people are gathering and staring, waiting for me to either drop my cargos or get splattered with a couple dozen paintballs. “You’re a dick,’ I mutter, dragging my T-shirt over my head before tossing it up the stairs. “And awfully invested in seeing me naked.” I unbutton and unzip my cargos, letting them drop around my ankles.
Rob narrows his eyes at me for a second before giving me a smirk. “You said the magic word, bro,” he says, motioning at me with the business end of his paintball gun. “Boxers too.”
He thinks I’m going to refuse. That I’ll be too embarrassed to follow through and he’ll finally get a legit chance to humiliate me. Two years in this fucking fraternity and somehow I’ve managed to avoid getting naked and now here I am, dick swingin’ in the wind, because my roommate is an asshole who thought he was going to cock shame me.
“Let’s go, Gilroy,” Rob snipes at me, motioning with the barrel of his paintball gun. “Drop ‘em or I drop you.”
“Remember you said that.” I tell him, hooking my thumbs into the waistband of my boxers and jerking them down before I have a chance to think too hard about what I’m doing. According to Conner, that’s my problem. I think too much.
Sometimes I think he might be right.
“Holy. Shit.”
I look over Rob’s shoulder at the pair of girls hanging around my cousin’s neck, fighting the flush that’s forcing its way up the back of my neck. I’m not sure which one of them said it but they’re both staring at me. Everyone is.
“Jesus Christ, what do you feed that thing?” someone shouts from the doorway and everyone erupts into a flurry of shouts and laughter. I’m pretty sure people are taking pictures.
Rob’s dick just died of shame!
Is this real life?
They’re shooting porn in the kitchen!
Boogey Nights!
It’s high school all over again.
I look back at Rob and give him a one-thousand-yard stare. “Happy?”
He doesn’t look happy. He looks like he wants to tell me to put my pants back on. I smile at his obvious discomfort and give him a rough shoulder check, pushing past him toward the keg. No matter how much I want to, I’m not running now. Pulling a cup from the stack, I give the tap a couple of pumps before angling my cup under the nozzle, trying to pretend the way people are staring and talking doesn’t bother me.
“Hey.”
I look up to find Conner standing on
the other side of the keg, sorority girls still hanging around his neck. Still staring at me. I am not naked. I am not naked. I am not naked…
“What?” I say, righting my cup before tossing the nozzle. I’m not exactly in the mood for my cousin’s shit.
“Fuck that prick,” he says, tapping the rim of his cup against mine. The girls hanging on him let out a high-pitched titter, like he just said the funniest thing ever. “Want me to throw him out a window?”
“No,” I say, my shoulders relaxing a bit. Con is an unbearable jerk half the time but he’s loyal. All I’d have to do is say the word and Rob’d be in the hospital within the hour. “I think meeting my sidekick is humiliation enough, don’t you?”
Con throws back his head and laughs. “Holy shit, Cap’n—did you just make a joke about your dick?”
Because I did and I’m suddenly feeling awkward about it, I ignore the question. I set my beer down without taking a drink. “I’m going to bed,” I say. “Some of us have class in the morning.”
“You’re such a grandma,” Con says, giving me a disapproving look.
“This grandma has a test tomorrow,” I tell him.
“So?”
“So, not all of us graduated college at sixteen,” I remind him. “Some of us have to put real, actual effort into our educations.”
Con gives me one of his conspiratorial grins that almost always means he’s about to suggest something I won’t like. “You know, I’d be happy to—”
“No.” I shake my head. “You’re not taking my tests for me.”
“Whatever, Granny,” he says. “You’re gonna be sorry.”
“Yeah… I don’t think I am,” I say with a laugh. “I’d rather—”
“Hey,” Half-naked Delta #1, unhooks an arm from Con’s neck and drags a glitter-polished nail from my pecs to my package. “Are you guys twins, or something?”
I grab her by her wrist before her fingers make contact with my groin, giving Con a make it stop look because I can’t. I cannot stand here naked and have this conversation.
“We’re actually the same person,” Con tells her, drawing her hand from my grasp so he can lift it to his mouth. “It’s all very complicated and science-y—alternate dimensions. String theory.”
Delta #1 scrunched up her nose. “What’s that?”
Good Christ. Someone shoot me.
Con kisses the tip of her glittery fingers and smiles. “Why don’t we all go back to your place so I can explain it to you? I put on a hell of an interactive puppet show.”
That’s my cue.
“You should totally do that,” I say, heading for my pile of clothes. Con laughs while I snatch my cargos and boxers off the ground.
“Please tell me you’re packing one of those,” Half-naked Delta #2 stage-whispers behind my back.
“Who do you think stars in my puppet show?” Con says, evoking another volley of giggling. “You sure you don’t want in on this?” he shouts at me as I mount the stairs.
So. Fucking. Sure.
“Yup—have fun,” I call over my shoulder, halfway up the stairs. I just want to get to my room and put some fucking pants on.
“Boogey Nights!” he shouts, because being loyal doesn’t make him any less of a dick.
The answering shout that erupts throughout the house seals my fate. “Boogey Nights!”
Shit. That one’s gonna stick.
Someone’s knocking. And crying.
I lift my head from the pillow and listen. The music is no longer at an ear-splitting volume. My asshole fraternity brothers have finally stopped shouting my newest nickname and I can hear someone puking in the bathroom across the hall. The party is finally trying to die.
Thank Christ.
“Hello?” The muffled word is followed by a flurry of soft knocking, like whoever it is doesn’t want to wake me up but needs to for some reason.
I pick up my cell and peer at the display. It’s 3AM. I’ve been asleep for approximately two hours. I have class in four. Kill me now.
I peel myself off my bed and stumble over Rob’s mess, toward the door. Yanking the door open, I’m too goddamned tired to remember that I barely got my boxers back on before I fell, face-first, into bed. Bleary-eyed, all I make out is a tousled fall of caramel-colored hair and the skimpiest bra and panty set I’ve ever seen, all of it wrapped around a body that suddenly makes it hard to breathe.
“Bathroom’s over there,” I say, nodding my chin across the hall. “Sounds like someone else is making a deposit, but I’m sure—”
“I don’t need to throw-up,” the girl sniffles, pushing her hair out of her face before brushing shaky fingers across tear-stained cheeks. She’s obviously drunk. Tequila, if my nose is any judge. “I need my clothes.”
Her clothes? I look over my shoulder like I expect them to be carried out of the rubble by woodland creatures or some shit. “Yeah, I don’t think—”
“I thought you had tattoos,” she says, raking her gaze over my bare chest and arms like I’m trying to pull a fast one.
“Nope.” I sigh, grappling with my patience. She’s not the first person to mistake me for Conner. She won’t be the last. “What I have is class in a few hours, so…”
“Cari, you’re being stupid.” It’s Rob, I’d know his douchey voice anywhere. Craning my neck past the doorframe, I can see him barreling down the hall. Yup. Still naked. “Just let me explain.”
“Explain?” The girl rolls her eyes and pushes past me. “Seriously? I turn my back for ten seconds and you’re in the laundry room getting your dick sucked by some rando.” She starts digging through Rob’s side of the room, tossing his shit everywhere. “Pretty sure I can figure it out on my own.” She comes up with a pair of jeans. “Hold these,” she says, tossing them to me. I catch them just as Rob appears in the doorway.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Rob says, standing in the doorway like he’s going to try and stop her from leaving. I stand up a bit straighter. The palms of my hands start to itch.
“Uhh—home,” the girl says, pulling a shirt from the debris. She lifts it to her nose and gives it a sniff before focusing on me. “Can I wear this?”
Somehow, she knows the shirt is mine. “Yeah,” I say, but I’m not really looking. I’m too busy watching Rob. If he touches her, he’s gonna get a trip to the hospital after all.
“Thanks,” she says, pulling it on before holding out a hand. “Can I have my pants, now?”
I hand them to her and she bends over to tug them on over her legs. I look away, but not before I get a flash of what might be the most perfect ass I’ve ever seen.
“Home?” Rob laughs, folding his arms across his chest so he can look down his nose at her. “You live forty-five minutes away, Cari.”
“So?” she says defiantly.
“So, I’m not driving you,” he says, like she’s being petty and childish for even suggesting it. “So, have fun walking.”
Dressed, she turns to look at me. “Do you have a car?”
I stifle a sigh. “Yes.”
She gathers her mass of thick, wavy hair and pulls it back into a ponytail. “Will you drive me home?”
I have class in less than four hours. This girl lives forty-five minutes away. Ninety-minutes round trip, minimum. I should be sleeping. I have a test I can’t afford to miss. The last thing I should be doing is getting in the middle of this shit but then I make a mistake. I look at her. Really look at her. She’s beautiful, yeah—but she’s also desperate and drunk. If I say no, she’ll ask every guy in this house to take her home. As much as I’d like to believe that she’d get home safely, I wouldn’t bet on it.
“Please,” she says, “I can’t stay here.”
Fuck.
“Cari, if you leave with him, it’s over,” Rob fumes from the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. “I won’t take you back.”
She doesn’t answer him. She just stands there, her wide, blue gaze fixed on my face, waiting for my answer.
; If I do this, it won’t just be back-handed insults and passive-aggressive shit-talk anymore. It’ll be all-out war between us. Not because Rob’s an asshole and we don’t like each other. Because, after what he saw in the kitchen, he’s intimidated by me. Doesn’t want his girl anywhere near me or my sidekick, no matter how much of a pussy he thinks I am.
I’d be lying if I say I didn’t like the way that feels.
I pass a rough hand over my face while ignoring the daggers Rob is staring at me. “Alright—let me get dressed.
Two
Cari
“I’m Patrick, by the way.”
I look across the center console at the guy who agreed to drive me home. A stranger. I asked a total stranger to take me home. A ridiculously hot stranger who nearly made me swallow my tongue when he opened his bedroom door. But a stranger, nonetheless.
I caught my boyfriend with his dick in some girl’s mouth and that’s all it took for my drunk ass to lose every ounce of self-preservation I possess. For all I know, this guy is driving me to his kill shack in the woods. And I asked for it. Sure, he’s gorgeous but you know who else was good-looking?
Ted Bundy.
Tears start to well up again and I let out a long, slow breath, trying to keep them at bay. It didn’t work. “I’m Cari,” I say, knuckling tears off my cheekbone.
“Are you hungry?” he says, shooting me a quick look, like, See, I’m normal. I eat food and everything. Totally not a psychopath. “I’m starving.”
We’re stopped at a stoplight, not far off campus and I’m considering jumping out of the car. It’s pretty obvious he’s trying to put me at ease but it’s not working. But then I look at him. It’s still dark outside and the red glow of the stoplight washes over the features of his face and that’s when I see it. He’s not just hot. He’s perfect.
“I could go for some pancakes,” I say, tilting my head to give him a smile. “Might help soak up some of this tequila.”
“Excellent.” He thumps the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. “I know a place that has the best pancakes in Boston.”