“What authors do you like?”
I couldn’t tell if she was smitten or if she was trying to test his knowledge to see if he was telling the truth. He didn’t waste any time answering.
“David Baldacci, Robert Ludlum, Lee Child, and others.”
Then as if he’d been brought in as the prop for show-and-tell, another question was fired at him.
“Have you ever read any romance?”
Coolly, his broad shoulders moved up and down. “My ex-girlfriend convinced me to read a book about vampires. I must admit, I thought it would be more like Underworld than romance.”
Words spilled from my mouth because I knew what book he was referring to.
“And what did you think?” I asked.
“Honestly?”
I nodded.
“It was kind of weird if not creepy that a hundred-year-old sentient being fell in love with a high school girl.”
Rapid-fire questions were blurted from every corner of our group, but it was my question he chose to answer.
“So, your verdict on the book?” I asked.
“By the end, I have to admit, I was rooting for him to win the girl.”
After that, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So I just watched the confident guy who was hotter than any boy I’d come across thus far. I couldn’t believe he existed. He checked off all my boxes.
When we adjourned, he stepped over to me. “That was interesting.”
“It was. Uncomfortable with the spotlight?”
“You can say that. I didn’t think I would have to face the inquisition.”
I laughed, because it was true. The other group members had been just as mystified as I was that he could possibly be a book nerd.
“Standard procedure for inductees. We have to be careful who we let in our midst.”
He laughed and it was a good one as it brought out that dimple of his. “Are you headed to dinner?”
“I am.”
“Eat with me.”
His offer was tempting. Then I saw one of the girls I’d met whom I’d connected with. I didn’t see her a lot. Something was up, and I wanted to know.
“I would, but I’m eating on the run. Plus, I see a friend I need to catch up with.”
Then I dashed off. I think I ran because he rattled my nerves. And I was afraid if I walked with him to the dining hall, I’d make an excuse to eat with him when I had somewhere to be. Plus, there was true fear. Yes, I had a healthy fear that he could talk me right out of my clothes.
“Lenora,” I called, catching up with her.
We’d shared a class together, and we ended up sitting next to each other until a week later she switched classes to better fit her schedule. She was super nice, but very reserved. She didn’t seem to grasp how stunning she was, which made her easy to talk to. With dark hair and a beautiful face, she reminded me of this pop star who had several hits on the charts and a very public breakup with another famous singer.
“Am I ever going to convince you to call me Lenny?”
“No.” There was something about the nickname that just didn’t fit. “Anyway, where are you headed in a hurry? I never see you. You weren’t at the bonfire on Friday or the game on Saturday.”
“My boyfriend doesn’t like football.”
“Yeah, that’s right. He plays on the…”
“Rugby team,” she supplied.
“Exactly. I can’t figure that game out.”
“Believe me, I can’t either.”
The girl moved like she had fire ants in her shoes. I stepped in front of her, getting her to come to a stop.
That got her attention. She folded her arms over her chest. “What’s up?”
“I texted you about hanging out.” When she didn’t say anything, I added, “A few of us are getting together to pick apart movies for a class assignment, starting with The Notebook and ending with Magic Mike. Are you in?”
Her glance darted away. “I can’t.”
“Why not? It’s for psych class. I know you’re not in mine anymore.”
“What time?”
“This evening.”
“I can’t. I’m busy tonight.”
Before I could answer, she darted off down the path. My phone buzzed in my pocket at the same time. I took it out to find a text from Chance. He asked me to take some time off and hang at a party with him this weekend. And who could say no to the bucktooth, glasses-wearing nerd emoji?
Asking her to a party was probably the dumbest idea ever. Pressed to the only free space corner on the wall, I kept an eye on the door. She hadn’t shown up yet, and I wasn’t sure she would.
“Dude,” Sawyer said, making his way over to me. “There’s a girl over there named Candy. So I asked her how many licks it would take to get to the center of her tootsie pop.” Sawyer was smashed, and his words connected together like notes in a song. “She didn’t get it.”
I wasn’t sure I got the reference either, but didn’t attempt to ask.
“Why are you standing over here anyway? The action is over there.”
He pointed and I made the mistake of following his finger. Two girls smiled. One of them I recognized. Then Sawyer was waving them over. They wormed their way through the crowd, and when they arrived, Sawyer took one under each arm.
“You’ve met Amanda,” he said proudly. He’d never asked if I had taken her up on her offer. “Candy, this is my boy, Chance. Chance, this is Candy. She’s sweet and not up on pop culture, but she can do math, which is your major, right?”
“Math and engineering,” I corrected, not sure why.
“Well, Candy can do math. She already knows that two plus two equals a good time.”
He’d spread his fingers between the two of us and the two of them.
Candy reached out and stroked my cheek. “I like pretty boys.”
I was about to make an excuse when I saw her. She wasn’t yet looking in my direction.
“Sorry,” I said and waded through the human wall that kept me from reaching Brie.
She wasn’t alone. There were two other girls with her.
“Hi,” I said.
The two girls with her appraised me, then told Brie they’d catch her later.
“It’s crazy in here. Do you want to go talk outside?” I asked, just before someone turned the volume up on the music.
She nodded and I steered her out of the house. Gagging noises greeted us as some girl with a concerned friend nearby was tossing her guts into the bushes.
“Maybe we should walk that way.”
We made it a little ways down the street when she stopped and hopped up on the hood of a car.
“Yours?”
Her head bobbed.
“I probably shouldn’t have asked you to the party.”
Her eyes widened. “Is that because you’d rather been free to pick and choose between all the girls fawning over you?”
“No, shit, that came out wrong. It’s just it’s pretty rowdy in there, and we have a game in the morning.”
“Oh,” she said, looking disappointed.
“It’s just I really wanted to see you.”
She pushed her hair back from her shoulder. “You’re full of pretty words.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m just honest.”
“Are you?”
I nodded, unable to keep my gaze from drifting to her lips.
“I should let you go since you have a game to get ready for.”
“You could come tomorrow. To the game, I mean.”
I licked my lips after I found her staring at them. Her eyes popped up to meet mine.
“I’m not really into football,” she said.
“We could hang out after. There’s a…” I stopped myself.
She laughed. “A party after.”
I agreed.
“We don’t have to go. We could hang out.”
Her lips parted, and she flashed me that grin of hers. Damn. My brain short-circuited for a second. Then I realiz
ed she was talking.
“I’ll go, but only if you come on Sunday for our social experiment. We are testing a theory about how many people still play Pokémon GO. So we are posting on one of the gaming boards that a rare Pokémon is on the quad. We are going to wait and see who shows up to try to capture it.”
“I’m in,” I said.
“Really. That easy?” She appeared shocked.
I shrugged. “It sounds interesting.”
But the truth of it was, I just wanted to hang out with her.
“Okay.” She paused as if she was waiting for me to back out. “I’ll text you ahead of time.”
Then awkwardness settled in. I hadn’t exactly backed up to give her space to leave. Her cheeks grew bright red.
“Can I kiss you?”
The words leaped out of my mouth like they were tethered to a bungee cord. Her head bobbed, and I captured the sides of her face with my hands. I leaned in my lips on hers. They were as soft as I imagined and every bit as sweet.
Everything happened slowly as I stepped forward and made a space for myself in between her legs. The closer I got, the more my mind wandered into dangerous territory. What would it be like to be with this girl?
“Chance,” she breathed, pulling back.
“Yeah.” I had to let the fog clear for a second. I reined it in and stepped back. “Let me walk you back to the party to find your friends.”
Waking up, I’d never felt so warm. My eyes opened, but it wasn’t the same four walls I saw. And my pillow was no pillow at all.
Stupidly, I slid my hand down and encountered something hard, very hard. I snatched my hand away like it would bite me.
A large exhale of breath that wasn’t mine sent me tumbling to my back as I was covered by a massive male body.
My phone, I thought in a panic. But with a guy’s head nuzzled between my boobs and a leg tangled over mine, I was good and caught.
It took a minute to remember what happened last night. I’d gone to the game with Shelly because as usual Lenora had an excuse not to come, but I wasn’t giving up on that girl. She was hiding something, and I was determined to be there for her when she was ready to talk.
Then we’d gone to the party at the frat house. Shell had talked me into a drinking game. I’d said several things I would regret. One I told Chance he was hotter than the surface of the sun and what the hell? Two, I’d confessed he’d made me wet when he kissed me the other day. And he’d kissed me again.
Shit.
That was all I could remember. Slowly, I cataloged myself. My clothes were on… check. More important, my underwear… check. Nothing felt weird down there… check, still a virgin.
I bent my head a little to check out the head. The hair looked like Chance’s. I prayed it was him and not some random guy.
There was no way I could stay like that. I had to move, but when I did, strong arms wrapped around me. In a childlike voice, the guy whispered, “Don’t go. Please.”
The words came out in anguish, but I recognized the voice. Chance. Had he meant to say that? I didn’t think so. He hadn’t quite sounded like himself, but enough that I could recognize him.
His hold on me was rock solid, so I combed my fingers through his hair. “Chance.”
I had to say his name a couple more times before he woke.
“Hey,” he said, flashing me a dimpled smile.
He obviously didn’t remember what he said. I filed it away. There was something there, but it wasn’t my business, though the people-watching side of myself had a burning curiosity as to what happened in his life that made him cling to me like a life preserver.
“Where are we?” I asked.
The room was on the small side with a bed, nightstand, and dresser. There was a chair in the corner that sat empty, free of clothes.
“My room,” he said, rolling on his back as he pushed back his hair.
I tried to remember deciding to come here. There was a vague memory pushing its way to the surface.
“You got pretty blitzed. I would have taken you home, but the dorms are on lockdown after midnight.”
“My passkey was in my purse.”
He nodded. “But you wouldn’t tell me your room number.”
And I remembered. “I told you I wasn’t that easy.”
He grinned. Oh. My. God. Panty melting smile alert added to my mortifying frown.
“Don’t worry. It wasn’t easy getting you in my room either.”
Then a thought popped in my head. “Where’s Shelly?”
“She’s here. At least she was. She passed out after warning me not to be a dick to you.”
“And you just left her?”
“No, Sawyer promised to take care of her.”
“Who’s Sawyer?”
“My roommate. And don’t worry. He won’t do anything, despite his reputation.”
“Reputation?”
“I promise he won’t do anything to her. He said he was planning to let her sleep it off in the spare room.”
I got up. “I need to check on her.”
Chance got to his feet and walked me to the room across the hall. True to his word, Shelly was asleep on top of the covers, fully dressed.
“I should wake her and get us back to the dorm.” I pause. “My car?” I thought out loud.
“I drove you here,” he replied.
“You what?”
“I only had one drink, and you were in no condition to drive. Your keys are on my nightstand.”
He looked a little hurt by my reactions and scrubbed at his hair. Damn, if he weren’t so hot, it wouldn’t be so hard to reconcile with him acting so sweet. Could the two live in harmony in one guy?
“I’m sorry. I’m not a morning person. Thank you for everything.”
“Will I see you later?”
His question shocked me. “You mean the experiment thing today?” He nodded. “Yes, I’ll text you later.”
Before I could run, because I was mortified by how I probably looked, he reached out and kissed me, morning breath and all. My mouth hung open when he stepped back.
He pointed to my cheek. “You have a little drool there.”
I fled to grab my keys and purse. My embarrassment reached epic proportions as he chuckled, still standing in the hall as I ran back to get Shelly.
“It’s cute,” he said as I headed for the stairs with a mystified Shelly.
We made it back safely, though Shelly didn’t say much other than she was fine. When I pressed, she said Sawyer had been a gentleman. But as soon as we arrived back at the dorm, she bolted out of my car.
Three weeks later, I sat in Shelly’s room because unlike mine, her roommate was out of town.
“So, are you every going to tell me what happened that night?” I asked.
“No, because nothing happened. Anyway, enough about me. What’s with the smile?”
Things had been great. Chance and I hadn’t spent every waking moment together, but we had spent a lot of time together.
“Don’t tell me it’s a guy,” she pressed.
Shelly and I’d briefly gone to high school together in ninth grade. Then her parents moved back here to take care of her mom’s ailing mother. We’d kept in touch. She wasn’t my best friend, but she had been the only girl I knew when I came to the school.
“What’s the problem with a guy?”
“I hope it’s not that Chance guy.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s on the football team, and they’re a bunch of manwhores. He’ll just get in your pants and move on to the next girl.”
“How do you know?” Because she talked like someone with inside knowledge.
“Just trust me. Stay far away, especially from him and his friends.”
“He’s not like that.”
The staunch defensive felt foolhardy on my tongue. Chance had tons of girls around him all the time. But when he was with me, he made me feel like I was the only girl in the room.
“How can you know? You’ve known him for a couple of weeks. Are you guys even together, together.”
I understood her meaning. He hadn’t exactly said we were exclusive, but it had felt like that. Did he have other girls?
“And what do you think he’s going to do when he finds out your hymen is still intact and you aren’t looking to change your status?”
“Did you really have to say hymen?”
She shrugged.
“He’s not like that,” I said again, this time a little stronger. “He hasn’t tried anything.”
“Yet? Mark my words. All boys want to. His game is just a little different than the rest.”
I didn’t want to believe it. But what had my experience showed? Still, I would tell him. We’d spent a lot of time talking and laughing. We liked a lot of the same TV shows.
Instead of waiting for him to try something, I would just be honest. Plus, wasn’t it time for us to decide what we were to each other? He’d held my hand when we walked. It felt like a relationship to me. Better to clear the air and make sure he wouldn’t eventually break my heart. But was that too late? I didn’t think I loved him, but I was certainly falling there.
It was too early on a Sunday morning to be awake. However, my internal clock had me up as if I had practice that morning.
Sawyer came through the door with Ash on his heels. The house had seemed unnaturally quiet. I’d assumed they were sleeping one off.
“What are you doing up?” Sawyer asked. I shrugged. “Coffee,” he groaned, moving past me to the fancy coffee maker courtesy of one of my roommates.
I didn’t know which because both had grown up with more money than I could count. They were also the reason I lived in Sawyer’s townhouse and not the freshman dorm. There was a shortage of campus housing, and I’d won the roommate lottery.
Sawyer’s dad had worked out something with the university to give back in the form of two extra rooms for in-need students. My late acceptance, freshman status, and being a member of the football team had gotten me a spot. The other room was still empty.
“Did you guys stay over at the party last night?”
Their privileged upbringing had coasted them into an exclusive fraternity that had a frat house on campus. Sawyer and Ash could have chosen to live there, but they opted for their own place, and Sawyer’s parents had gotten them one.
Catching Fireflies Page 3