Heat Up the Fall: New Adult Boxed Set (6 Book Bundle)

by Gennifer Albin

  “Hello?” I called. No answer. I stepped back and peered in the small alcove behind the bar that led into the kitchen. The lights were on back there, but it was silent, too.

  I walked around the perimeter of the bar one more time, noticing the pictures on the walls. I wondered which were past patrons and which were family members or even famous people I didn’t recognize. I wondered which of the people in them Hawk knew.

  One thing was obvious from the polished wood trim and heavy furniture — a lot of love had gone into making this place great once. Even though it was covered with a layer of smoke and dust now.

  From behind me, a deep voice boomed, “Can I help you?”

  I screamed and must have jumped half a foot. Clutching my chest, I turned around to see Gary walking out of the kitchen, a white apron around his waist and a white towel slung over his shoulder. I stood there, my breaths heaving in and out with my hand pressed to my hammering heart.

  “Oh my God, Gary,” I said when I finally regained composure.

  He held out a hand and shook mine with a grip much surer, more solid, than the one he had used a couple nights ago. And his eyes were friendly and uncomplicated.

  “Have we met?” He smiled, and I could tell by the look on his face that, no, he really did not remember having met me.

  “Yeah, I’m…uh, I’m a friend of Hawk’s.” Just saying that made me shiver, and I wasn’t sure whether it was that his name still put me on edge or because Gary might somehow be able to sense the dishonesty of me calling Hawk my “friend.”

  “Will? Was he expecting you?”

  I bristled. “Probably not. Any idea when he’ll be in?”

  “Nah. That smartass just stopped by to tell me he was ditching us tonight. Said he’d be busy with Olivia till tomorrow at least.”

  “Olivia?”

  “Yeah, that girl,” he tsked, shaking his head. “It’s always something with her. He’s always running to keep up with her, and she’s always giving him shit.”

  “You don’t say.” The room seemed to go a little spinny. It was a girl. Of course it was.

  “But they always kiss and make up at the end. You know how kids are.”

  Kids? What did he think I was — thirty? Then I looked down at what I was wearing — flats and khakis and a worn boyfriend cardigan. So, yeah. Maybe he did think that. What was wrong with me?

  My stomach dropped and flipped. So there it was.

  Olivia. Hawk.

  Fighting, kissing.

  Were they fighting when we’d slept together? Did it matter if he had a girlfriend when we did?

  I tried to get words out, but my throat froze up again. I had to take a deep, gulping breath just to keep vomit from coming up from my still-flipping stomach.

  This is why I didn’t sleep with just any guy. Why Josephine, the doctor’s daughter, shouldn’t be running around with random-ass guys. Why the future Doctor Daly shouldn’t be literally screwing a guy whose only future was screwing up.

  Because the Joey who was so irresistibly drawn to Hawk couldn’t make a good decision to save her life.

  I barely noticed the trip back to the house, but this time it was because I felt numb instead of daydreaming. Had I seriously slept with a guy with a girlfriend? How many other signs had I missed? Was he dressed nicely that one day at the library because he’d just seen her?

  Stupid, Joey. Stupid.

  I moved through Sunday on autopilot, dreading everything the next week would bring — the first of them, Tuesday’s business class. I scoured the syllabus, trying to figure out a way I could skip class and still get an A, but the participation requirement took up too much of the grade and the score I’d end up with on the final project was too questionable, considering that I still hadn’t decided whether I could even bear to see Hawk again, let alone work on the project with him.

  I was wide awake on Monday morning at 5:30, which wouldn’t have sucked so much if I hadn’t also been half-awake for most of the night, tossing and turning. My brain told me that it was frickin’ useless to be so worked up about this loser jerkwad guy. But my body told me something different.

  I told Cat the same thing over coffee that morning.

  “Okay, I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as sex so good that you wish you could be with him despite cheating,” she answered.

  I shrugged, feeling the same old twisting pit in my stomach. I was the type of girl who couldn’t bear to eat when she was upset, so I’d been a combination of nauseous and starving, in alternating waves, for the past four days. Even when some of the girls had taken me to our favorite bar to watch the Eagles in the playoffs and I ordered the best cheese fries in Philly, I couldn’t bear to get more than one or two down.

  “Unless he went down on you. Did he go down on you? Because when Nate…”

  “Okay, enough!” I held up my hand and shook my head. “I’m not even going to dignify that question with an answer.”

  Cat threw back her head and laughed. “Okay, Miss Nosy-About-My-Sex-Life-But-Prudish-About-Hers. When did this phase start?”

  It was true. I’d told Cat every single thing about the other two guys I’d slept with since we’d met. But I’d hardly told her a thing about Hawk. I flipped over my cell phone again, checking for a new message from him even though it hadn’t buzzed since I’d set it down. Then, just as I picked it up, it buzzed in my hand, and I jumped and wobbled on the bar stool where I’ perched. My heart raced in my chest, and I swiped open the message panel.

  Oh my God. It was mom, wanting to know if I could come home for my brother’s birthday tonight. I’d never been close to my brother, even though I loved the hell out of him. He was seven years younger than me, and it could sometimes be really tough to spend quality time with him, let alone form a close relationship. I hadn’t even known we were doing anything for his birthday.

  “Goddammit!” I growled, practically slamming the phone back down on the counter.

  “What? Was it him? What’d he say?”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was my mom.”

  “Okay, she never pisses you off that much. Seriously, Jo, all you’ve done is brood since you met this guy. I think you should just cut him off. Cold turkey. No communication.”

  “I can’t cut him off. He’s my project partner.” I looked up at her with big, droopy eyes, and her expression softened.

  “Oh, shit. You really like him, don’t you?”

  My mouth dropped open. “I…I don’t know. I don’t want to. I really don’t.”

  But I did. Damn me, I had a frickin’ crush on a guy with a girlfriend. A loser guy, who couldn’t make it on time to class and ran a stupid bar and had no future anywhere I would ever be. Who’d slept with me, despite that fact.

  And that made me hate him that much more.

  “Hi, baby.” Mom gave me a half-squeeze when I walked into the kitchen. “It’s good to have you home. Been quite a while.” She cocked her head. “How are things? You look…different.”

  “Do I look exhausted?” I bit my tongue before I told her that Orgo was kicking my butt. I wanted to test the waters. “Because I kind of am.”

  “No, not exhausted. Just different.”

  “How?” Holy shit. Did mom have some radar that told her when I’d had the most amazing sex I could imagine and then been summarily ditched?

  “More relaxed maybe? Did you have a girl’s night?”

  “Uh, not exactly.”

  Just then my baby brother Sam, who adorably thought he was hot shit in his new varsity jacket, sauntered into the kitchen. “She had a date.”

  I stuck out my tongue at him. “Wow, loser, I’m so glad I came home for your birthday.”

  “Hilarious,” Sam said. As he walked by, I caught him around the waist and gave him a quick hug. He squeezed back, ruffled my hair, and sat down again.

  My expression must have given me away because Mom accepted that explanation immediately. “Was it one of those other boys from Sigma Nu?”

 
; I let out a short laugh. “No. I’m off-limits after Chris and I broke up.”

  “Well, Julianne will be happy to see you. She’s coming in for dinner, too.”

  The doorbell rang, and Mom handed me a couple of twenties. “It’s just the pizza, hon. Would you get it?”

  I traipsed to the front door, paid the kid delivering the pizza, and wandered with it into the dining room where we always had birthday dinners. I looked up, expecting to see the streamers, balloons, and name banners Mom hung every year at our birthdays and….nothing.

  “Mom, what happened to the streamers?” I called.

  “Oh, we just didn’t do them this year,” she said, coming in with a big bowl of salad. “Sam’s fourteen. He felt like he was too big for that stuff. And to be honest, he’s probably right.”

  My brother Ben barreled down the stairs first. He was a sophomore in high school and just getting into his requisite high school asshole phase.

  “Hey, jerk.” I jumped up to punch him on the shoulder. He towered over me, and it had been a joke between us for years.

  He grunted and sat down at the table, absorbed in texting.

  When my sister arrived, she and mom kept the conversation mostly up between them —small talk about the weather and the price of gas — while Sam chattered a mile a minute all about his birthday party, the new games he had gotten, and the stupid video games they stayed up all night playing. I kept my giggles well-stifled.

  But after about twenty minutes of munching on pizza, we brought out the cake, sang “Happy Birthday” to Sam, and sat there happily chewing our slices. Even though it was a pain in the ass that Mom hadn’t told me about this till the last minute, it was good to be with family.

  Even if the seat that sat empty at our table still made my heart hurt.

  And then Mom had to go and ruin it.

  “So, Josephine, Miss Pre-med! Tell me about midterms.” She actually looked excited to hear. That’s how sure she was, without actually even talking to me about them, that I must be doing really well in my classes, breezing through. And now I had to tell her that wasn’t the case, in front of everyone.

  My dread must have been apparent on my face because Ben took one look at me, said something about how he had to go finish some homework, pecked me on the top of my head, and headed up the stairs.

  “Well…I, ah… I managed a B on my last Orgo 2 quiz.”

  “That’s…disappointing. I can’t believe you were really working very hard if that’s the best grade you could come up with.” Mom stared me down like she was waiting for an apology or daring me to make an excuse.

  That just pissed me off even more.

  “Jesus, Mom. I just don’t think I’m cut out for Orgo, okay?”

  Mom’s mouth made an ‘O.’ She might as well have been clutching her pearls. “Language, Josephine.”

  I threw my hands up in the air. There she went with the “Josephine” shit again. Just further proof that she still saw me as a little girl she could control.

  “As for Organic Chemistry, you know what your father would say to that.”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t have a frickin’ clue. Because he’s dead.”

  Sam stared at me, eyes wide. Then his lower lip trembled, and his eyes grew watery. I opened my mouth to say something, but he shook his head quickly, squeezed his eyes shut, and left the room.

  Julianne glared at me. “I’ll go talk to him, Mom.” She rushed out of the room after him. I heard a door slam upstairs and winced.

  “Well, luckily,” said Mom, setting her jaw, “I remember enough about your father to know what he would say. He would tell you that you are cut out for this, that you’ve dreamed of it for a decade. And that you are a Daly woman, and you can do anything you set your mind to.”

  “What about Juli? She doesn’t get classed as a Daly woman who has to either do pre-med or disappoint her family.” Juli had graduated from Bryn Mawr and promptly moved back home and started working as a bank teller in the City so she could scope out future husbands.

  “Because she doesn’t have a trust fund set up specifically for her pre-med and medical school education. I know that college can be stressful, trying to juggle your social life and all your classes. But Juli wasn’t cut out for it. Your father knew that. He knew it would be effortless for you.”

  “Are you saying that the reason Orgo is destroying me is that I’m just not trying hard enough?” I tried to keep the growl out of my voice, but I just couldn’t.

  “I’m saying that there must be something — or someone — distracting you. Put your head down. Lean in, Josephine. That money isn’t sitting in that account for nothing. When you become the next Doctor Daly, you’ll be keeping your father’s memory alive. And I don’t want you to throw that away because you want to take the easy way out. Seriously, what else are you spending your time on between sorority things and classes? Do we need for you to deactivate from Kappa Delta?”

  “We don’t need to do anything. I can handle myself.”

  “Well, it certainly doesn’t sound like it. What are your responsibilities after classes?”

  I gave Mom a look, and she just gave me one right back.

  Finally, I relented. I didn’t know how to avoid it. Mom would have held that stare forever. “Chapter is on Monday nights. And that’s about it.”

  “What else? There has to be something else if you literally don’t have time to go to class and do your homework and sleep.”

  That was when it hit me. That was literally all mom expected me to do. Ever.

  “I have to work on bedside manner, too. I volunteer at Rowland House and sometimes at the hospital.”

  Mom lowered her chin, raised her eyebrows, and looked at me. I knew that look. She was waiting for more of an explanation.

  “Because Doctor O’Donnell recommended it!” I tried to keep my eyes steady on Mom’s. I wasn’t quite lying, but it was enough, and I knew that when I wasn’t telling the truth I tended to dart my eyes around.

  “Well, okay. For now. But if it gets in the way any more, you’re going to have to rethink that, Josephine. The most important thing right now is getting into med school. Bedside manner can wait.”

  I sighed and looked out the window. Another long silence. Then I tapped my phone, absentmindedly checking it for texts.

  “Are you sure there’s no boy you’re not telling me about?” I could tell Mom was trying to make her voice lighter, be friendly with me again. But she couldn’t rag on me so hard for my grades and then expect me to tell her about my personal life, especially since my grades had basically been my social life for so long.

  “No. No, there’s not.”

  That, at least, wasn’t a lie. Not at all.

  Chapter Ten

  Tuesday morning, I sat in the business classroom, still in my coat, tapping my nails in a frantic rhythm on the desk. I hadn’t been able to decide whether to take a seat at the front of the classroom, so I could completely suppress the urge to speak to Hawk at all, or in the back, so I could hiss at him throughout the class.

  As much as I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, my thoughts about him hadn’t become any more detailed or organized since I’d whined to Cat yesterday. I certainly didn’t want to stammer and stutter or, God forbid, cry in the middle of this stupid business class.

  So I sat in the front.

  But the seats behind me slowly filled up, and then Professor Simon walked into the classroom and started droning on about the global marketplace. I checked my phone. No texts. Hawk was five minutes late, then ten, then half an hour.

  Guess he was ditching this class, too. My stomach clenched. After spending the weekend anticipating our confrontation, his no-show made me feel like he was ditching me. All over again.

  When Professor Simon called a five-minute break, I felt like I was on autopilot. I shouldered my bag and headed for the bathroom, but passed it and kept right on walking. I went all the way out to the bus stop, said a silent prayer of thanks that the bu
s was pulling up right then, and rode it all the way to Sansom.

  Yes, it was a little stalker-y. Yes, I was worried I’d run into Hawk’s real girlfriend when I was there. But I didn’t know how else to get a hold of him.

  On the way there, I tore out a piece of notebook paper so angrily that the bottom corner ripped away, stuck in the notebook. I fumbled in my messenger bag for a pen, and damn me, the only one I found was a sparkly purple one. It was like the universe wanted me to be a Josephine-cliché.

  On the mangled paper, I scribbled a note.

  Hawk —

  If all you care about is your precious bar, that’s fine, but the least you could do is text me back or show up to class if you’re not going to do that. If you’re not going to respect a girl you had a one night stand with, at least respect her need to get good grades. That’s what I’m in college for, even if you’re not.

  — J

  The bus stopped a block from the bar, and I hopped off, folding the note more violently than I had ever creased a sheet of paper in my life. I rounded the corner of the building, finding respite from the howling wind in the alleyway that housed Hawk’s front door. I hadn’t remembered if there was a mailbox there, but I was both relieved and nervous to see a gray-painted metal box with a piece of packing paper taped to it, reading “Hawkins” in the same scrawl that Hawk had used to write me that note. I took a deep breath, shoved the note in there, and let my rage burn up through my chest as I turned on my heel to go.

  Which was exactly the moment the loud, jerky, tripping rumble of Hawk’s bike rounded the corner.

  I should have kept going. I shouldn’t have stopped and whipped around. But my heart soared and I knew, despite my better judgment, I wanted to see that beautiful face again. Even if it was for the last time.