by K. A. Linde
She jotted out a text to her friends to meet her at a coffee spot off Rodeo under the pretenses of finding a dress for the charity benefit, and then she dashed out of her house.
Fifteen minutes later, she was seated at her favorite outdoor table with a skinny mocha macchiato in front of her.
Avery and Tara showed up a few minutes later.
Avery smiled brightly and tossed her hair. “Hey, B. No Jemma?”
“I thought we could look for dresses without her.”
“Thank God,” Tara said, collapsing into a chair.
“Mmm,” Bryna murmured. She took a sip of her drink.
If what Pace had told her were true, Jemma would be the least of their concerns.
“So,” Avery said once they had gotten their drinks, “where do you want to go first?”
Bryna folded her hands in her lap and stared at her two friends. “Probably Barneys.” She took another sip of her drink and smiled. “It’s so nice to be here with you guys. We haven’t spent any time together outside of practice since we went to X. How was your break?”
Tara shifted and glanced at Avery. “Mine was good.”
“Mine, too,” Avery agreed.
“Good. The highlight for me was going to Chateau Marmont with Gates for New Year’s.” Of course, it had really been St. Barts with Jude, but the realities of her break had nothing to do with the true purpose of this conversation. “Where were you guys for New Year’s? I haven’t heard you talk about it.”
“Uh…” they both mumbled.
They exchanged another glance.
“I was at the Harmony party,” Tara said.
“Yeah…me, too.”
Bryna nodded thoughtfully. “Gates tried to kiss me at midnight, and we got into a huge fight. Please tell me your night ended up better than that!”
“Mine was totally lame,” Tara admitted.
“Mine, too,” Avery parroted.
“Didn’t kiss anyone at midnight?” Bryna asked.
Tara flushed and looked away. Avery tried to meet Bryna’s eyes but didn’t do a very good job of it. They both appeared anxious. Guilty.
Bryna held her silence. She watched them sit there and squirm. Soon enough, they would admit it. She couldn’t believe this. The dirty whores had slept with her stepbrother. The way they were acting was proof enough that something had gone down.
After a full five minutes of dead silence, Tara broke. “I’m sorry, B.”
“For?”
“Tara!” Avery snapped.
“She should know!”
“Know what?” Bryna prompted.
“I slept with Pace,” Tara said. “So did Avery. Um…together on New Year’s.”
Bryna slowly stood from her seat and towered over her friends. “I already knew that,” she said calmly.
They both looked like they might cry.
“Pace told me.”
“What?” they both shrieked.
“That bastard,” Avery cried.
“I can’t believe him!” Tara said in horror.
“What I can’t believe is that neither of you told me,” Bryna admonished. “I had to hear it from him. And you know what? I actually defended you. Said that my friends would never touch him, and he proceeded to regale me with your lack of a gag reflex.”
The girls paled further.
“Now, I’m wondering why I did that. You two know how disgusting Pace is, and how despicable it is to have to live with someone like that. The reason you didn’t tell me was because you knew I would be pissed. Imagine how I feel now that I know you were hiding it.”
She gave them a minute to consider what she had said.
“Bri, we didn’t mean for it to happen,” Avery insisted. “We were drunk, and he was there.”
“We’d never do it again!” Tara cried.
Bryna shook her head. Ridiculous and just plain insulting. “You know how important this charity benefit is to me, and I need to make sure that it goes off without a hitch. So, you’re both off the committee.”
“What?” Avery shrieked.
Tara’s jaw dropped to the floor. “You’re serious?”
“I guess I’ll go look for a dress by myself.” She picked up her purse and smiled.
“You’re really kicking us off the committee?” Avery demanded.
“Actions have consequences, girls. You just figured out what yours are,” Bryna said.
She walked away from the coffee shop as she slid shades over her eyes and sighed. She couldn’t let people think that they could get away with this kind of shit. She was still queen after all. She had to rule her queendom with an iron fist. What had happened was out of necessity.
She wished fixing the situation with Jude could be as easy as it had been with the girls.
TWELVE DAYS.
It took Jude twelve days to call Bryna back.
She saw his name on her phone, and she wasn’t sure which emotions she conjured first. Anger, joy, frustration, hope—they all hit her with an onslaught.
He’s calling!
He’s calling now after all this time? What took him so long?
She wouldn’t know the answer to any of her questions if she didn’t answer the phone. With a rush of courage, she swiped the touch screen to the side. “Hello?”
“Bri,” he said in relief.
“Hi, Jude.” Anger was winning out. How dare he make me wait this long!
“How are you?”
She remembered back to when she had first met him, and he had made her wait five weeks before he called. She had tried to be cool and collected, playing it off, but it had bothered her. And it bothered her more now.
“Frustrated and confused. I don’t like to skirt around issues. We need to talk.”
“You’re right. I should have called you right away, like I said I would. I was pissed and irrational, but,” he said softly, “Bri, I’ve missed you so much.”
Her resolve weakened slightly at those words. God, I’ve missed him. Even if she was angry and uncertain about the state of their relationship, she had still wanted to rush over to him and make it all right. How is he able to pull such emotions out of me? “I missed you, too. But how could you make me wait like this? It’s not like I was the only one in the wrong. You lied to me about where you were going to be. What were you even doing there?”
“I know. I had planned to be out of town for work, but I ended up staying in town instead.”
“Why?” she asked. She had been thinking about this since that night. She couldn’t figure out why he had skipped his work plans to go to the hotel for New Year’s. There had to be a reason.
“I was still working. A lot of my clients were there that night.”
“You keep saying that, but I don’t know what it means. The more I think about it, the more my imagination runs away with me. What do you do?”
Jude sighed. “It’s really not that crazy.”
“Then, why do you have to hide it from me?”
“You act as if you don’t have any secrets when I caught you kissing another man,” he accused.
“I didn’t kiss anyone. If you had let me explain instead of avoiding me, you would have known the truth.”
“I saw what happened, Bri. I was standing right there.”
“If you had been there the whole time, then you would have seen me slap him across the face and storm off. Because that’s what I did!” she said, her voice rising.
“Really?” he asked. He sounded like he didn’t believe her, but he wanted to. At least he was intrigued and listening to her side. She had wanted to say this for almost two weeks. Now the floodgates opened.
“Yes! I went with him as a friend, and then he got swept up in the moment at midnight. I chewed him out for trying anything because I’m dating you. I only want you.” She felt her anger dwindling. It was replaced with sadness at the fact that any of this had to be said at all.
“Who was he?”
“Does it matter?” she asked. “Either you
believe me when I say he is just a friend and I never intended for that to happen, or you don’t.”
The line was silent for a minute.
“I believe you. I simply wonder if you would have ever told me that he kissed you if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”
Would I have? Probably not. It hadn’t meant anything to her, and he wouldn’t have needed to know. She knew he would have been pissed. If she had been in his shoes and he had been with someone else on New Year’s, she would have been pissed, too.
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
“What do you want me to say, Jude? I never would have hidden that I was with my friend on New Year’s if we were able to be honest with each other. You could have told me that you were going to be at Chateau Marmont for work, and then we could have met up and had a proper New Year’s kiss. Instead, we’re stuck behind this veil of mystery. You won’t trust me with your secrets, so how can I trust you with mine?” she asked hopelessly.
“You’re right,” he said softly. “I think it’s time I tell you everything and let you decide what this is once you have all the facts.”
“I’d like that.”
In truth, it terrified her a bit. What is he hiding that could make me change my mind about him? Will he change his mind about me? Guess I’ll find out.
“I can get away tonight,” she told him.
He groaned. “Unfortunately, I’m not free until next weekend. This time, I actually am out of town. I’m in Chicago.”
“Oh.” Great. Just what she wanted to do, wait another week before they could get all of this out in the open. Not to mention—she missed him and wanted to be with him every second. His job was so inconvenient. Though it did have its advantages.
“How about next weekend?” he suggested.
She swallowed. “Sounds good.”
It could all be over by next weekend.
A WEEK LATER, Bryna walked into her last class. Her spot was open between Avery and Tara, but she hadn’t been sitting in it since she had kicked them off the committee. She had replaced them with two other cheerleaders who had been ecstatic to see their stars rising.
She sat down in her new seat near the front of the room as her phone started buzzing noisily in her purse.
Fuck! Who the hell is calling me while I’m in school?
She checked the screen and smiled brightly.
“Miss Turner, please put your phone away,” the teacher instructed. She looked annoyed that Bryna would even have it out, as if all the students didn’t text through her class.
“It’s my father calling from New Zealand. I have to take this,” she said. She confidently strode from the room. “Dad!”
“Hey, sweetie!”
“I’m in the middle of school. Time difference is kind of killer.”
“Sorry about that. I’ll send an apology over to Harmony, but I had to speak with you. Did you talk with anyone from LV State?” he asked, his tone turning serious.
“No. Pace said someone called, but they didn’t call back.”
“That’s funny because they called me, worried that my daughter wasn’t interested in doing a campus visit. What is this I hear? You don’t want to go to LV State? It’s my alma mater, Bryna. Your mother’s alma mater. It’s where you belong,” he insisted.
“I still want to go there. I didn’t speak to anyone. It must have been Pace. He’s been playing this silly game, but it’s getting out of hand. He’s trying to sabotage my college prospects,” she said, playing on the sweet and innocent vibe.
“I’ll deal with your stepbrother, Bryna. But you have to go to that college visit that they set up. They wanted me to be there this weekend, but just because I’m not in town doesn’t mean you’re exempt,” he told her.
“This weekend?” she groaned. “I have plans this weekend.”
“Break them. Your future is more important.”
Fuck! She was supposed to have her big talk with Jude this weekend, and now, she had to call the whole thing off. And she couldn’t even tell him where she was going to be, not without giving everything up before they met in person. The whole thing was frustrating.
As soon as she left school, she called Jude to break the news to him. They would have to plan another day to talk about their problems. Hopefully they would be able to chat on Monday as long as he didn’t leave again right away. He had a tendency to do that.
When she finally spoke to Jude, he seemed suspicious on the phone, but when she explained that it was an emergency, he backed down. After that call with her dad, there wasn’t any way for her to get out of it, and she promised Jude she would make it up to him as soon as they could meet again.
She was packing for Las Vegas when Celia called up the stairs. “Bryna! Your boyfriend is here.”
Bryna cringed. Boyfriend. She must be talking about Gates. It was all so fucking confusing. She couldn’t tell Celia that she and Gates weren’t dating without raising red flags about what had happened over Christmas, and she hated explaining anything to that dimwit. Hopefully, the air would be cleared up soon enough.
She stepped out into the hallway as Gates reached the top of the stairs. “Hey, B.”
“Gates,” she said with a nod. She gestured for him to follow her back into her room.
Once he was inside, he shut the door. His eyes surveyed the mess. “Well, I was going to see if you wanted to go out, but it looks like you’re leaving.”
“LV State invited me to a recruitment weekend.”
“Vegas?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Can I come, too?”
“Don’t you have shit to do with your movie?”
“Nah. I have some free time before I finish off the promotion. You still coming to the premiere with me?”
“Yeah. Yeah. That’s fine,” she said, distracted. “You can come to Vegas, too. Whatever.”
“You okay? You seem out of it.”
“Jude and I were supposed to have this big talk this weekend, but my dad found out about this weekend visit, so I have to go now. I’m so pissed, and I don’t know how this talk is going to go at all.”
She tossed an LV State T-shirt into her bag and then tried to force it closed. Gates pushed it down, zipping it for her.
“Try not to stress it, B. You clearly love the guy.”
Bryna dropped the suitcase she had just picked up and stared up at him with terrified eyes. “What did you just say?”
“You love him, don’t you?” Gates asked. The typical humor in his eyes was replaced with sadness.
“I…don’t want to talk about this,” she muttered.
Not with Gates.
Not with anyone.
Love. That was the biggest four-letter word out there.
Do I love Jude? Her throat closed up, and her palms started sweating. She felt sick.
No, she wasn’t going to think about that.
“All right. Are you staying on campus, or should I get us a place at the Bellagio?” Gates asked, changing the subject.
“I’m supposed to stay on campus, but get us a room in case the place is shit,” she suggested.
“Done.”
Gates immediately got on the phone with his manager and asked him to book them a room on the Strip for the weekend. They stopped at Gates’s place to pick up an overnight bag and then headed out.
They arrived on campus just off of the Vegas Strip late that night. After checking in at the visitor’s center, she was given directions to the campus hotel. The room was nice enough that she decided to stay there.
Gates drove back to the Bellagio alone with big plans to go to the casino and stay up half the night playing blackjack.
She had a meeting the next day, so she got some much-needed sleep before heading to the president’s building in the morning. His assistant directed her down the hall to a large conference room. She stepped inside a roomful of other students. She wondered what they were all being recruited for. How many parents did the president personally contact to get them here?
>
She saw President West speaking to a few students on the other side of the room. He smiled when he saw her, but she walked in the opposite direction. Is he seeing me or dollar signs?
She might have ended up here at her father’s insistence, but she wanted to like LV State. It had always been her top choice. She had been on campus since she was a baby. She wanted to rule like she did now at Harmony. But with nearly fifty thousand students, would that be possible? The thought set her on edge. She wanted to find her people…now. She didn’t want to wait for school to start to make friends and step into the limelight.
Bryna tried mingling with a few students and found out that many of them were there for a scholarship interview. They were finalists for a full-ride merit scholarship. She ended up sitting next to one of the girls during lunch with the president. The university had flown the girl in from some small town in Alabama, and she had a thick Southern drawl that made it difficult for Bryna to understand half of what she was saying. It was clear…these were not her people.
By the end of lunch, she was glad to skip the tour for her meeting with the head football coach, Coach Galloway. While he was a young coach, he had earned the spot at LV State two years ago after there was a scandal with the previous coach. Coach Galloway took the team to a national championship victory that year and wasn’t planning to leave anytime soon. Her father had made it a point to become friends with him, so she was relatively well acquainted with him.
She walked into the athletic complex and straight to his office. She knocked twice.
“Come in.”
She pushed open the door. “Coach Galloway, it’s so great to see you again.”
“Bryna, how are you?” He stood, shook her hand, and gave her a dimpled smile.
“Great. It’s so good to be back on campus.”
“Glad to hear that. Why don’t you sit down?”
She took him up on his offer and sat in the chair opposite his desk.
“How is your father doing?”
Bryna held back her sigh. “He’s filming on location in New Zealand, so he is incredibly busy.”