Casey snorted. “Well, fuck that. I’m not okay. Can we all stay at the house?”
Linde grinned. “Hell yeah. We’re not going to kick out two chicks, especially hot ones like you ladies.”
Kristina smiled her thanks but edged closer to me.
Casey turned to give him crap, and the two were soon engaged in whatever they were doing. Flirting. Sparring. Tic-tac-toe. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care at that moment.
“You sure you’re okay?”
Kristina wasn’t one to be fooled easily, but I lied through my fucking teeth. “I’ll be fine. I just need to get away for a bit. That’s all.”
“Okay.” She looked past my shoulders to Shay. Her smile faded a bit before she stepped back.
Shay called out, “Linde, you’re okay?”
“Yep!” His roommate looked over, saluting him. “See you guys in a few.” His gaze fell to me, and the joking surface faded a bit. He sobered and nodded. I knew what he was saying. He had stayed in the background, but he cared. Same with Casey. She might’ve been flirting with Linde at the moment, but she came to protect me.
She’d been in my shoes.
“Ready?”
I got in, closed the door, and leaned back.
One giant breath of air left me, and along with it, my last semblance of control.
“Hey.”
Shay’s hand came down on my back. He meant it in a comforting manner, but I knocked it away. I flared up. “You didn’t know? You had no idea?”
I couldn’t believe that.
She was there for him.
She came for him.
She was watching him!
“How can you have a stalker and have no clue? She’s been here a year and a half.” Then again, a bitter laugh left me. There was so much about Shay I didn’t know.
“I had no clue.”
“Yeah,” I bit out. “That’s apparent. No clue. You have all these friends and had no idea. This”—I motioned between us—“has been going on for a full semester, and I still don’t feel like I know you. You know me. You know I was attacked. You know my brothers. You know my mom is weird. You know my friends. You know almost everything there is to know about me, but I have no clue about you!”
“You know my friends,” he started.
I shook my head. “I don’t. I actually don’t. I had no clue about Cameron. He scared me when I met him, and I met him on your back porch! Are you not getting how screwed up this all is? I don’t know you. You said your mom is a lawyer. You live in a house with other football players. I know you’re friends with Linde. You’re sleeping with me. That’s all I know! And surprise, you’ve had a stalker you had no clue about for a full fucking year and a half. I am still racking my brain. How is that possible?”
His mouth dropped. Pain flitted over his features. “I’m a guy. Girls like me. Guys want to be my friend. I . . . I don’t know. I don’t have any big skeletons in my closet, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“You never talk about yourself. Why is that?”
“I—” He was shaking his head, perplexed. “I just don’t think about it. I’m focused on you when we’re together. We have sex, a lot of it. That takes up my attention.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No.” The second one was quieter. A pit was starting in my chest, and it was getting bigger and bigger. “That isn’t fair. You can’t say that. We have sex, but there are nights you just hold me. You know all about me.”
“But do I?”
I sucked in a breath. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not asking that to be a dick, but do I really know you? We went backward with this whole thing. You didn’t like me, then suddenly we’re making out, and that went to sex real quick. We’ve never stopped to look back. You were living with me, even. I mean, we are not normal. The whole getting to know each other, we skipped over that part.”
“You know about me. I told you about me.” I was remembering seeing strangers at his house. Cameron. Finding out about Sabrina. The last piece—Phoebe. “I feel blindsided, and I’m playing catch-up. These hurdles are coming at me, and I can’t see them until I’m already knocked out by them. That’s what it’s like dating you.”
He drew in his own breath now. “That isn’t fair. That was a low blow.”
Was it? Yeah, maybe. “I’m sorry.” I was hurting. I wanted to hurt him, too. “I can’t date you and not know you.”
His head whipped back to mine. “What are you saying?”
“I—” I had no clue, just that . . . “I have to know who you are.”
“I’m Shay Coleman. I’m thinking about going to law school, but I’m into the second semester of my junior year, and I’m still not sure. I’m taking all these different courses trying to figure out what I want to do.”
“Okay.” He was going this way. Fine. Forget the secret stalker. First date questions—I could do that. “What does your dad do?”
“A lawyer like my mom. They got divorced my freshman year of high school.” He didn’t let me ask another. He plowed through, “My mom has a new husband. I have two stepsisters, who are both in high school. They’re total brats, but I love them anyway. I have a little brother who lives with my dad. I went with my mom. Nathan went with my dad, and he hates being called by any nicknames. You have to call him Nathan or he won’t talk to you. He’s in eighth grade. They live in New Orleans, so I don’t get to see him or my dad that often. My dad is newly remarried. They got married last summer, and I’ve only met her that one time, but she seems like a nice lady. My stepfather is a partner where my mom works. I have no idea what my stepmom does, and I should, but I don’t care. My little brother plays soccer. My two stepsisters are cheerleaders, and I’m pretty sure they’re on a dance team. I don’t go home that often because every weekend is a sparkle and glitter party. My stepsisters have their friends over, a lot.” He stopped, still staring at me. A hard glint formed in his eyes. “Anything else?”
“Any past trials, tribulations, or trauma?”
His nostrils flared. “Is that a joke?”
No. Yes.
I hung my head. “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe?”
“I got my girlfriend pregnant when we were freshmen. It was during the time of my parents’ divorce, and she got an abortion. She told me afterward.”
I felt punched by that statement. I could only stare at him. “Shay—”
“I’m pretty sure one of my stepsisters has an eating disorder. I told my mom, but she doesn’t want to deal with it, or has no clue how to, so she ignores it. I think my little brother is gay, and I worry about him. If he is, he hasn’t told anyone and I want to support him and protect him when and if he comes out. Anything else?”
He would’ve had a kid . . .
He hadn’t known . . .
I asked, feeling so small now, “You found out she was pregnant after the abortion?”
“Yeah,” he clipped out. His jaw clenched. “I’ve never told anyone, so you’re the first.”
What had I done? He was hurting.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He looked away, straightening in his seat. A moment passed. A second one. Total silence. Then he hit the steering wheel. “Shit!” His head went down, and I looked over. His eyes were closed. Another moment later, his voice was so soft, “I’ve never talked about that.” He looked up, his eyes in agony. “It wasn’t meant to keep you out. I don’t talk about that with anyone. My closest friend is Linde, or was Linde. It’s you now. I’m not really close to people. It isn’t that I purposely keep secrets. I, just, don’t talk. To anyone.”
He was loved by so many.
He was wanted by so many.
He confided in no one.
He was alone.
I reached over and took his hand. “I’m sorry.”
He squeezed it. “You already said that.”
“I mean it. I was being a bitch. I was hurting, and—”
He shook his head. “You’re fine. I need to talk, and I don’t. I never have. That girlfriend, when she told me about the abortion, she shattered me. Then my parents got divorced and started building their new families. I don’t want to be all ‘woe is me, feel sorry for me.’ It was never like that. I’ve always had friends. I’ve dated, but no one got in.” His gaze fell to my lips, then back to my eyes. “Until you. You got in. And I still don’t quite know how it happened, but you’re in, and I thought I was dying when I heard you were in trouble tonight. I couldn’t drive here fast enough. I wanted to hurt whoever was hurting you, and then I saw it was Phoebe, and I still have no clue who she is.”
“Cameron’s sister.”
He laughed. “I know.” He began playing with my hand. “I heard that much, and to be honest, I wasn’t even fully aware of Cameron. I knew he wasn’t a good guy. I’d always been cautious around him, but I never really questioned it. I just had these instincts, and I followed them. Now, hearing about his sister, how they kept her away because of her problems makes me wonder how the hell I hadn’t known. But there really was nothing.” He shook his head again, sounding so dumbfounded. “Cameron never acted like he was jealous of me. I knew we competed for things, but I had no clue it bothered him. He never showed me. He never acted as if he didn’t like me. He never acted jealous, or whatever. There was no indication. Though, now that I’m thinking about it, he did date a lot of my girlfriends.”
I began to laugh.
“How could I have not paid attention?”
Because he didn’t care.
Because he had enough going on at home.
Because his attention was directed elsewhere.
Because . . . he was just being himself.
“A lot of people love you.” In not good ways, too. It must’ve been the same in high school. “I get it. Kind of.”
He nodded, frowning. “Yeah. I’m just being myself, but I don’t let any of the attention get to me. I can’t. If I do that, I’ll lose myself. Does that make sense?”
It made perfect sense. “You can let me in.”
“You’re in. You’re so far in that I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
“Then I’m in, and you’re in, too.”
The corner of his mouth started to lift, and I shook my head. “Don’t make that dirty. We’re having a serious moment here.”
“Right.” The corner flattened again, and his eyes grew somber. “I meant what I said last night.” His eyes held mine captive. Everything about me was captive right now. “I love you, Kennedy.”
All the pain was swept away.
“I love you, too, Shay.”
Professional movers came the next week to move Phoebe’s stuff out of her room.
Sarah came over, and she sat in the hallway with Casey. They decided to watch the movers taking everything out, and somehow it turned into a drinking game.
The RA told Kristina that Phoebe never came back to her room. She was whisked away to a hotel with her parents, so the movers had to literally pack everything. It took four hours, but half that time was spent lingering in the hallway and flirting with Sarah. Casey was a little more reserved, but I didn’t know what was going on with her and Linde.
I knew things had fizzled out between her and Gage. He was off being a manwhore again. I asked him once what happened and he said he hadn’t been ready for a serious relationship. Casey deserved a guy who was head over heels for her, and he couldn’t give her that.
I was rooting for her and Linde.
I’d been trying to study, but hearing another shout of laughter, I decided to admit defeat.
My new sociology class was not going to be understood that day.
I closed my book, and glanced over my shoulder. Kristina’s desk was behind me, facing the wall. “I’m giving up.”
It was already close to eight at night.
She sighed, pushing back from her computer. “Me, too.”
“Oh!” Casey shouted from the hallway. “Another box. Drink.”
Kristina gestured toward the opened door. “They’re already drunk out there.”
It was obvious. Sarah had been slurring her words for the last hour.
“I’m surprised the RA hasn’t said anything.”
Kristina rolled her eyes. “She won’t. She feels so bad about Phoebe and not telling you, that I think one of us could have an orgy in the hallway and she’d look the other way.”
“True.” I winced as I remembered the times she tried to apologize in the bathroom, when I left the bathroom, anytime I walked past her room to the bathroom. I started going up the stairs and using the second floor’s bathroom.
I hadn’t paid attention to her name when we moved in, and I refused to learn it now. It was out of spite. She would only be the RA to me. Kristina knew, but Kristina was the only one of us who let her talk whenever she approached us. I always walked away, but Casey went on the attack. The RA didn’t realize who was in the stall next to her one day and asked for some toilet paper. She got it, but not after Casey launched into a lecture about sisterhood and moral ethics, and how she sucked at them. I heard one of the girls taped it, and Casey had made the RA stay there for thirty minutes before she finally got toilet paper from someone else who took pity on her.
I walked into the bathroom at one point, heard Casey, and walked out.
The whole thing was raw with me still.
The plan had been to stay with Shay for the rest of the semester, but when I heard Phoebe was for sure gone, I wanted to try to resume regular dorm living. If I spent too much time with him, I thought I would miss out on some of those normal college living memories. Plus, Kristina and Casey moved an entire dorm for me. They left their other two friends. I felt like I owed them.
Suddenly, a bunch of whistles and cheers sounded.
Casey yelled, “Everyone clear a path. The football gods have descended upon us!”
“Yeah!” Sarah burped. “En the werr hodt do!”
“And they’re hot, too?” Casey translated. “Girl, you’ve had enough.”
“NOoo.”
Kristina and I looked at the doorway.
Sarah fell over, her head and shoulders showing. She raised her arm slightly over her head, holding her drink away from someone.
“Come on.” Casey groaned, and she appeared, too. She stood, bending to grab Sarah’s water bottle. “You’re cut off, or someone will tattle to the dorm advisor. We’ll for sure get written up. Amy will have to do something, then.”
Amy.
That was the RA’s name.
I made a face, grimacing.
Casey noticed my look, cocked her head to the side. Then she got it. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Traitor.” But I didn’t mean it. I flashed her a small grin to make sure. “I’m still only calling her RA in my head.”
I gestured to the hallway. “Who’s out there?”
“Not for you, Princess. It’s the two guys who are dating the twins at the end.”
Another cringe.
Shay called me that one night at his house in front of others. He hadn’t realized it until everyone started hooting and hollering, which sounded a lot like the commotion in our dorm right now.
Casey added, “The movers are leaving. They got everything, but if they didn’t, we’re hoping to scope it out before the RA has to lock it up.” Casey wiggled her eyebrows. “If we can get an extra key, that means an extra room for us. Studying, or,” she dropped her tone, “other stuff, if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t want to know what she meant.