Make It Count

by Megan Erickson

  Dedication

  To Neal, the sexy nerd I married.

  I wouldn’t want to power cycle my modem with anyone but you.

  Acknowledgments

  TO SAY I’M overwhelmed by the support I’ve received for this book is an understatement. The writing community online is amazingly supportive—from agents to editors to writers to bloggers to readers. This book would not be what it is today without them. I gained my footing and cut my teeth in online writing conferences and contests. I found beta readers and critique partners and most of all, friends. So this is a huge shout-out to all of you on Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and Pinterest, sharing the love of books and reading. You all are my rock stars.

  My agent, Marisa Corvisiero, is my cheerleader, fan and massive support system. Her enthusiasm for this book and my journey has been incredible.

  My editor, Amanda Bergeron at HarperCollins, is an amazing force. I feel so incredibly and utterly lucky to be one of her writers. Her edits were so on point with this book that I might have cried because she got me and she got this book. She inspired me to enhance Kat and Alec’s journey. Her love notes in the margins of my document were just icing on the cake of her awesomeness. Best of all, she made this book better and she made me a better writer. I owe so much to her.

  I began writing MAKE IT COUNT when I was thirty-four weeks pregnant with my second child. I couldn’t stop thinking about Kat. She lived in my brain for the better part of a year and frankly, I was okay with that. Hands down, I would not have made it through the querying journey without my amazing critique partners and friends Natalie Blitt, A. J. Pine and Jen Meils. I think we lived on Facebook chat for months, sharing the highs and lows of our journeys. Their support and writing prowess is really unparalleled. Sometimes I think I can’t write without them. And I’m okay with that.

  My husband, Neal, and two kids suffered through the writing and editing of this book. They survived burned meals and a dirty house. But I couldn’t ask for a better support system at home. Neal, a large part of you inspired Alec. He’s a great character and man because you are the best man I know. I love you with everything that I am.

  My family—my parents and my brother, aunts, uncles and cousins, grandparents, in-laws, etc.: I appreciated every single text message, e-mail, and word said to me in support of this crazy author journey. Especially my parents—my mom and dad have always been my biggest fans. I love you guys so much. And I think I can write great love stories because I grew up witnessing your amazing, everlasting love.

  Thank you to the people who read MAKE IT COUNT in its infancy—Sheena Baker, Jamie Farrell, Katie Bailey and Beth Vrabel—and encouraged me to keep working on it. And thank you to Danielle Lorello for letting me pick your brain about dyslexia so I could portray it as accurately as possible.

  Too many authors to name have been instrumental in this journey, but I’m going to shout out a few anyway. Thank you to Jen McLaughlin, Rachel Harris, Christina Lee and Stina Lindenblatt among others for reading MAKE IT COUNT and lending your names in support. I can’t express how much it means to me to even be mentioned in your company. Thank you to Juliana Haygert for answering my many messages about Brazilian culture and language. I want to make feijoada now!

  Thank you to my spirit animal Lucas Hargis for being the recipient of my flailing with nerves. You are a saint, sir. A shout-out to the Cool Kids Mafia, NAAU, and the Debut 2014 NA authors. I love you all. Thanks for the support and amazing discussions.

  Thank you to all of the bloggers/reviewers/readers who reached out to me in anticipation of this book. I appreciated every word, every tweet, just everything. Thank you a million times for the support.

  And I can’t forget all my friends, who have been with me since before I wrote my first book. First—my BUB girls—you mean the world to me. You’ve understood my radio silence and still supported me in this whole thing. And my Ship girls—you know who you are—all of you. I love you. Because of the insanely awesome time we had in college, I have so much fodder for writing New Adult romance. And Andi, I’m going to say it again, you still aren’t one of the “little people.”

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  An Excerpt from Make It Right

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  KAT CHEWED ON her pen and studied her tutor’s bent head. Ashley’s shiny black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, held in place by a . . . scrunchie.

  Seriously? Was that really a sparkly teal scrunchie? Kat bit down harder on her pen in concentration. Did they even sell those anymore? The last time she’d seen one, she’d been six and wrapped it around her side ponytail, pretending to be Kelly Kapowski while watching Saved by the Bell reruns.

  Ashley droned on about something, and Kat yawned. She looked down at her notes but some of the words blurred, increasing her headache, so she gazed around the library. Through the windows, the late-January wind rattled the bare trees.

  “Kat? Did you hear me?” Ashley’s voice needled into her ear.

  Kat snapped her head back. “Um . . . yeah?”

  Ashley slumped her shoulders with a sigh. “Look, I’m going to be honest here. I like you, okay? But I don’t think you’re getting anything out of these sessions. I think my time would be better spent with someone else.”

  Kat opened her mouth but then snapped her jaw shut. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard it before. Her inability to stay focused had annoyed plenty of tutors. Not to mention just about everyone else in her life. She jutted out her chin with as much confidence as she could muster. She’d find another tutor.

  “I think that’s a good idea, Ashley. I’d planned to say the same thing.” The lie came easily. “I’m doing better in statistics anyway, so I don’t need the help anymore.”

  Ashley raised an eyebrow while gathering her papers. “Okay, well, it was . . . nice to meet you.” She winced, as if it was painful to say, then waved meekly and left.

  Kat groaned softly. She was in the second semester of her sophomore year at Bowler University and already on academic probation. If she failed another course, she would be kicked out. This semester’s bane of her existence—statistics.

  She hated her brain. Absolutely hated the way it could never make sense of words and numbers on the page in front of her. How it wandered and couldn’t focus on one thing for very long. How it was to blame for the dumb blonde jokes that had followed her like an unfunny comedian her whole life.

  She wasn’t even blonde. Not really. She held up a wavy curl and picked at the ends. It was more like a light brown. Caramel. Or whiskey. With blonde highlights. Were those split ends? She needed a haircut, stat. And a root touch-up because her highlights were growing out. And maybe an
eyebrow wax. There was that place over on Lexington that took walk-ins . . .

  Her cell phone vibrated on the table, announcing an incoming text message from her boyfriend. She swiped her thumb across the screen, automatically launching the text-to-speech app she’d downloaded after repeatedly reading her text messages incorrectly. She’d thought downloading it was genius at the time, until a clearly audible Your ass looks hot today text read in a sexy male Australian accent scandalized an unfortunate seventy-year-old at the drugstore.

  Luckily, this message was tame.

  Come over tonight.

  She muttered to herself, “And that’s an order, Private.” Would it kill him to type please? It was only an extra six letters.

  Max Payton didn’t know she had a tutor. He didn’t know much about her at all, really. But he was hot—really hot—and fun and as a junior, lived in a house off campus with his own room. And he liked to bake. Seriously, the man baked her chocolate-chip cookies. They were really good, too. When she asked him about the secret ingredient, he’d laughed and said flour. She was pretty sure he was making fun of her. But she’d learned at an early age to pretend mocking was just teasing.

  She gathered her books and stuffed them into her plaid Burberry messenger bag, then headed toward the front doors, smoothie from the library snack shop in hand. Head bent, fiddling with the clasp of her bag, she stumbled into a wall of human on the pavement outside.

  “Oh, I’m sorry—” Her voice dropped out when she realized the solid flesh belonged to Alec, Max’s best friend.

  She’d only met him once or twice before he’d moved in with Max this semester and every time, he cocked his eyebrow with a half frown like he knew something she didn’t. Which he actually did, since he had brainy superpowers. Smarter than a speeding Einstein. Able to leap over C-minus students like her in a single bound.

  She didn’t trust people that smart. And she didn’t trust a guy who didn’t ogle her ass or leer at her boobs like every other member of the straight male species on the planet.

  She once asked Max if Alec was gay, and Max had laughed so hard, she feared he’d pop a blood vessel in his forehead. Then he assured her his friend was in fact, very straight.

  She’d believe it when she saw it.

  Right now, that raised-eyebrow frown pinned her where she stood. His pale green eyes behind thick black frames roamed over her shoulder to the library and then back to her. With his pin-stripe button-down, dark jeans with Converse shoes and hair styled in a short, messy pompadour, he looked like a nerdy Elvis.

  His frown morphed into a smile when he spotted the smoothie in her hand, and she definitely didn’t notice his full lips. “You know, you don’t have to venture into the forbidden zone just to get a smoothie.”

  Oooh. The jerk. She glanced around surreptitiously, then leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “Just play it cool. Don’t let it slip someone like me snuck in the library.” She gripped his forearm and whispered. “Password today is rosebud.”

  His face blanked and he looked at her like he’d never seen her before. Kat debated whether or not that was an improvement over his other look.

  But then those intelligent eyes narrowed and a smirk curled his lips. “I know. We nerds get an e-mail every morning.”

  See? He always needed the last word. She propped a hand on her hip and leaned in. “Well, sounds like you have a mole. Might want to look into that.”

  He opened his mouth but she cut him off. “Just looking out for you guys. Anyway, see ya around!”

  Before he could shoot back a snarky comeback, Kat skirted around him and bounded down the stairs. She chalked that up as Kat 1, Alec 0.

  She pulled out her phone and texted Max.

  Come get me. At campus entrance in 10.

  Kat stuffed her hands in the pockets of her fabulous—bought for a total steal—red peacoat, and took the long walk to the head of campus. The air was cold, that damp chill typical for Maryland. She glared sullenly at the bare trees on campus, wishing for spring, when they’d bloom again. She’d visited the campus in the spring of her junior year of high school with her parents, and everything about the university and nearby town of Bowler felt right. During her first year as a student, she’d built friendships and kept a decent reputation.

  This second year was proving to be a huge pain.

  Kat arrived at the large stones marking the entrance of the campus, BOWLER carved into them and painted red. She began to worry about the condition of her frozen toes until Max pulled up to the sidewalk in his old truck.

  “Babe, get in.”

  She didn’t need the invitation as she wrenched open the rusted door and hopped inside, smiling at him.

  The first time she saw Max, he was standing on a table in the middle of a raging house party in October, fist at his mouth as he belted the chorus to “Don’t Stop Believin’.” He was gorgeous in that confident, cocky way. And he looked like he belonged on the cover of a romance novel, wearing nothing but unlaced football pants and artistically placed eye black, the right amount of sweat running down the middle of his tanned pecs.

  Their gazes had met and when he winked those big brown eyes at her, flashing a wide easy smile, she was a goner.

  And one of the things she liked most about him was he didn’t ask her too many questions about herself. So she didn’t pry into his life.

  She wasn’t going to marry the guy. But she liked his kisses and his cookies.

  “Your roommates around?” She buckled her seat belt.

  “Uh, I think Cam went home for the weekend. Alec is around, I guess.” He squeezed her thigh. “You know, he’ll be busy studying like always. Should be quiet if you want to spend the night.”

  She sighed and wondered if Max was fed up with her evasion of sex. It wasn’t that she didn’t like sex. She loved it, actually. And while she was attracted to Max, something was holding her back.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Max sighed, and she absorbed the sting of his disappointment.

  Kat gingerly placed her feet on crumpled fast food bags. Something oozed out of a damp corner and she hoped it was ketchup. The color suggested otherwise.

  “I thought we agreed you were going to clean out your car.” She eyed the suspicious substance and wished she had one of those hazardous-waste trash cans from a doctor’s office.

  Max snickered and nodded toward the bags. “I’m saving that for later.”

  Kat wrinkled her nose and he laughed harder. Organization was key to her life. She could control that—her bedroom tidy and her calendar neatly filled out with color-coded highlighter. Of course, it was a stark contrast to the riot of chaos that was her mind. But fake it ’til you make it, right?

  Max parked along the sidewalk outside of his townhome off campus and as they crossed the street, Kat tried to grab his hand. He evaded it like always and wrapped a beefy arm around her neck. She huffed under her breath. For once, she wished he didn’t act too cool to hold her hand.

  Max’s place was on the end of a row of four townhomes. The high ceilings made the already large living room feel even bigger. The kitchen was a decent size but outdated, with old appliances, a crumbling tile floor and a ceiling-fan light you had to tug just so if you wanted to see your hand in front of your face.

  The staircase leading to the bedrooms upstairs was ornate, with a thick, solid railing Max often straddled and slid down with a whoop. There was one bathroom on the second floor, which for a guys’ place was relatively clean.

  When they walked inside the front door, Max headed right to the kitchen while Kat settled on the couch in the living room, running her hands over the ugly, fuchsia-flowered fabric. Max and his roommate Cam had found it by a Dumpster before they moved in. Kat was still unsure if sitting on it would give her a rash.

  Minutes later, Max plopped down beside her with a can of beer and promptly turned on the TV to a hockey game.

  Kat yawned. Hockey was boring to watch. The guys didn’t wear tight clothes an
d lot of them were missing teeth. Playoff hockey was even worse because the players didn’t shave and had scraggly neck beards. Gross.

  When she’d had enough of trying to find the tiny puck on the screen, she said, “I’m going to make a sandwich. You want one?”

  “Yeah, I think we have some peanut butter and jelly.”

  As she walked into the kitchen, he called to her back, “Hey, I made some cookies for my brothers earlier today, bring us in a couple, yeah?”

  Kat gave a thumbs-up over her shoulder. Max worked at his dad’s auto mechanics shop almost every weekend along with his older brothers. And they always demanded Max’s treats.

  In the kitchen, she searched through the thin plywood cabinets until she found the peanut butter, then pulled the jelly and the bread out of the puke green-colored refrigerator.

  The front door opened and closed and low voices carried in from the living room. She shifted to the edge of the counter to grab a towel and ran smack into someone.

  “Ouch!” She whirled around to face her opponent and met Alec’s eyes. She frowned at him, rubbing her shoulder. “Seriously? Twice in one day?”

  He rolled his eyes and held his hands up. “Yep, I’m following you around so I can get poked in the ribs by your bony elbows.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Bony?! You think my elbows are bony?” She bent her arm and eyed the joint. “I think my elbows are quite attractive, thank you very much.”

  He looked at her as if she were one of those bugs you tolerate only because it eats worse bugs. Then his lips twitched into a grin and he leaned down, his lips near her elbow like it was a microphone. “I’m sorry, Kat’s Elbow. You’re the sexiest elbow on campus,” he said in a deep, sexy voice. Wait, what? When did she start attributing Alec with anything sexy?

  With him stooped for his elbow apology, their eyes met. His green irises studied her, making her feel naked. Not clothes naked but brain naked. Like he pried off the top off her head to look inside.

  She didn’t want anyone to peek inside the top of her head. Her brain was probably all weird colored and deformed. It looked better covered by her skull, scalp and in-need-of-a-dye-job hair.