“I know.”
And I do. I know I have him, and I know I’ll be okay. No matter how much things hurt right now.
Chapter Fifteen
Jett
Just pulling up to Stanford has me shivering in disgust. I know most people would trade their left testicle to attend an Ivy League school like this, but not me. “Fuck,” I groan, stepping out of the back of the town car that drove me here. You know, since my dad—the man who’s making me attend this ridiculous school—was too busy to bring me himself.
Looking around at the sea of sweater vests, chinos, and leather saddle bags, it’s like my worst nightmare has come to life. I’m about to be eaten alive by a cult of crusty rich kids. Gross.
I’m already getting looks from the pretentious passersby. One look at my messed-up hair, lip ring and my regular attire of jeans and a ripped tee and I’m already judged as someone who doesn’t belong. They aren’t wrong. And no way in hell am I trading my Vans for Oxfords.
Nor will I be getting a saddle bag in place of my backpack—the same one I’ve used for the past two years after Harper sent it to me filled with sketch books, pencils and charcoals. She put patches all over it of various things that reminded her of us too: a surfboard, taco, sunrise, things like that.
I flick my lip ring back and forth, making my way to my room, praying that by some miracle my roommate isn’t a total tool. “Here goes nothing,” I say to myself, pushing open the solid oak door.
A smile slowly creeps across my face as I scan the room where I’ll be living. On my half of the room, all my boxes are piled high from being delivered already. The other half, now that’s the part that’s making me smile.
First, my eyes go to the skateboard that looks as worn as mine leaning against a corner. Then, I look at the pictures and posters around. Leaning down to get a better look at one on his desk, I wonder which one of the guys in the picture is the dude I’m shacking up with for the year.
“Like what you see, bro?” a voice asks behind me.
“Shit!” I jump. “Sorry, just looking, man.”
“Just busting your balls. I’m Randall, but so is my dad, so everyone calls me Duke.”
“Jett,” I reply, shaking his outstretched hand. “You skate?” I ask, tipping my chin toward his board.
“Fuck yeah, I do. Swear I’d have shriveled up and died already if not.”
“You a sophomore?” I ask.
“Yep,” he says, popping the ‘P’ as he jumps on his bed. “I begged not to get another preppy as a roommate this year.”
“Do I pass?” I ask, setting my bag on my bed.
“The first impression is good,” he says, making me chuckle.
“So, here’s the deal,” he starts on a sigh. “My old man is on the board of the school. Most people know it, think I get special treatment and shit, but I don’t. Other than the roommate request this year,” he adds with a smirk.
“Look, no offense to you, but I’m here because I made a deal with my dad and let him shit all over my future. I just want to push through these years of hell and graduate,” I tell him truthfully.
“I can respect that, man. Not my first choice either.”
“Yeah?” He nods. “What’s your major?”
“Finance,” he says with a wince.
“Because you want to or because you’re made to?” I ask, leaning against the wall, my arms crossed in front of me.
He gives me a look. “What do you think?”
I begin to relax the more I talk to Duke. Turns out we have a lot in common. More than I ever thought I’d have with anyone at this school. He gives me the ins and outs of most of the professors I’ll have this year, the best places to skate, and even invited me out with him tonight.
“You sure you don’t want to come out tonight?” he asks at the door. “There’s always plenty of pot and pussy to help forget this place.”
“Another time.”
“If you’re sure, man. Morgan Bailey will be there, and she puts out and sucks cock like a pro. Whatever you’re holding on to, she’s sure to help you forget,” he laughs.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m ready to forget quite yet,” I tell him, sounding like a pussy myself.
He knocks his fist on the door once. “All good, man.”
Pulling out my cell, I scroll through some pictures of the last days before I left. It’s so fucking depressing. I haven’t been able to allow myself to talk to her since I left her on the pier.
It took everything in me to walk away and not go back to her. I wanted to pick her up and leave to run away together. Screw everyone else and their fucking expectations. We could make a life for ourselves without any of them.
But I couldn’t do that to her.
I was fucked if I did and fucked if I didn’t.
She’s called and texted, but I haven’t answered or replied. The truth is I don’t even know why. Maybe because I know the second I hear her voice I’ll jump on a plane and fly back to her.
Powering off my cell, I toss it in my desk drawer. I’ll keep ignoring the rest of the world a little longer, or at least until I have the strength to not break when I talk to the one person who is my world.
Opening my boxes one by one, I start to unpack, forcing myself to not think about Harper and what she’s doing right now on her side of the country.
Harper
“You haven’t heard from him at all?” Gabby asks.
She’s lying on my bed in our joint suite while I unpack. I’ve put it off for long enough. We’ve been here almost three months, and I’ve been living out of boxes the entire time, only putting things away after I use them, because it seems stupid to put them back in a box after I pull them out to use.
“No, Gabs,” I sigh. She’s asked me this more times than I can count these past months.
“Not even a returned text?”
“Nope.”
“He hasn’t answered any of mine or Teddy’s either,” she says, popping a chocolate chip in her mouth. Only girl I know who would rather eat a bag of basic chocolate chips instead of good chocolate.
I pause, turning to look at her. “You’ve both tried?” She nods. “Huh.” This is news to me, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We were all friends. Best friends. I thought I was his friend at the very least.
“Oh shit, you’re getting that look on your face again,” she says, standing up. “Unpack tomorrow. We’re going out.”
“I should really unpack now,” I weakly say.
“Please. You haven’t done it yet. One more day isn’t going to make a difference, Harps. Besides, you deserve a night to get drunk and have fun.”
“Those nights never end well with us,” I mumble.
She smacks my butt. “Come on, change, and then we’re going out.”
My head falls back and I groan, but she doesn’t take no for an answer.
An hour later, we’re walking—well, Gabby is dragging me—into some college party. I don’t even know how she knows about it, but I’m done overthinking today.
School is kicking my ass. Not that I thought Harvard was going to be easy but, shit. Then there’s the whole issue of my boyfriend leaving, turning his back on me after telling me he loved me and now ignoring me altogether.
So, yeah, fuck this shit.
Once we’re inside, I head straight for the kitchen, where I’m assuming there will be some form of alcohol. I stop when I see a makeshift bar with a guy standing behind it, handing out drinks.
“Give me a bottle of whatever you can spare,” I tell him.
He doesn’t give me a second glance as he pulls out a bottle of beer with the top still on it. I like the smarts on this one. Even if that’s not exactly what I was asking for.
“No,” I shout over the loud music and people. He looks up at me, annoyed. “I want a bottle of liquor, not beer.”
“Boss’s orders. Girls only get beer with tops,” he tells me, turning back to pour out shots for a few guys standing a couple of feet away from me.
>
Snatching one shot glass, I throw it back. I reach for another and do the same, but when I reach for a third, a hand grips my wrist, stopping me. “That’s enough, sweetheart,” the guy holding my wrist tells me like he has the right to touch me, let alone tell me what to do.
“Didn’t ask your permission,” I sass back, ripping my arm from his grasp and reaching for one of the shot glasses.
The dude swipes his arm across the fake bar, making the glasses and liquid fly everywhere around us. “I said enough.”
“Who the fuck—”
“I’m the guy who runs this house. The guy who makes the rules. I’m the one who says who can be here, who can shit in my toilet, and who can or can’t drink at my house. And you. Are. Done.” He speaks low and slow, getting into my face more and more with each word he growls.
And then I do the stupidest thing a girl could possibly do in my current situation.
I instantly start to cry.
Not just a few cute tears. No, I full out ugly cry. Tears. Snot. Head back as I loudly sob in front of this guy I don’t know.
“I’m sorry,” I sniff after a minute of embarrassingly letting all my pent-up emotions explode out. “It’s been a rough few months,” I hiccup, trying to calm my tears that are still falling.
The big guy who was in my face stands there watching me. The others who had been with him disappeared. Probably because of the weird girl crying in the middle of a party. I’m such a moron.
“Come on,” he says after a few more seconds. His big hand takes mine, and he pulls me behind him through the crowd. It’s then that I realize how huge this guy is. I’m talking mammoth-sized. He’s got to be well over six feet tall and built like a tank full of ripples upon ripples of muscles.
I’m too busy gawking to realize that he’s leading me upstairs and pulling a key out of his pocket to unlock the door we’re in front of.
“I, uh… I’m not going to sleep with you,” I tell him quietly.
Looking back at me with a sexy little smirk, he opens the door. “Not tonight.”
Once inside the room, I look around and see nothing special about the space around us. Looks like a normal bedroom for the most part. He opens a mini-fridge, pulling out a bottle of water for me to take.
“Thanks,” I say reluctantly. I still could really use more alcohol, but I see that isn’t happening with the ogre in front of me.
“You here with someone?”
I nod, taking a sip of water. “My friend Gabby.”
Taking out his cell, he taps on it a few times and then holds it up in front of me. “This her?”
“That’s not creepy or anything,” I mumble.
“That her or not?” he snaps.
“Yes.”
He taps some more, and then a minute later, I hear my friend yelling at someone in the hall before there’s a knock on the door. Shrek opens the door, and when Gabby sees me, she runs in. “Harper! Holy shit, are you okay? What happened?”
“I stole his shot, and apparently I’m in the naughty corner now,” I tell her, glaring over my shoulder at the Shrek-like man behind me.
“The fuck?” she laughs.
“There was a little more to it than that,” the ogre deadpans. “Your friend was a little… unhinged,” he adds with a deep chuckle.
Rolling my eyes, I say, “I may have cried.”
Gabby stares at me a second before laughing again, this time much harder than before.
“Harper! Why do you have to embarrass me like that?” she teases, then looks up at the guy. “I’ll take weepy home. I’m sorry.”
“You can stay,” he replies to Gabby, but he’s looking at me.
“Thank you, King Shrek, but I think we’ll go,” I tell him, standing to leave. His eyes widen in surprise, and then he laughs.
Taking Gabby’s hand in mine, I pull her to leave with me. She curses at me the whole way out of the house, but we barely make it off the porch when we’re stopped again.
“My boy Darius will drive you,” Shrek tells us. Doesn’t ask us, but tells us.
Putting a hand on my hip, I give him a pointed look. “I don’t know your boy, so I’m not getting in a car with him.”
“Harper!” Gabby hisses next to me, but I shake her off.
Shrek stares at me like he has all night and rubs a finger over his bottom lip. “I’ll take you then.”
“You aren’t going to give up, are you?” I ask.
He slowly shakes his head. “Nope.”
He drives us home in total silence. The most awkward car ride of my life. Getting out of the car, I lift my hand to salute him. “Thanks for the ride.”
With a curt nod, he smirks and takes off as soon as the door is closed.
“That guy was such an asshole!” I tell Gabby, who is staring at me like I lost my mind. “What?”
“Do you really not know who that was?”
“No. Why?” I ask slowly.
She shakes her head and puts her arm around my shoulder as we walk to our room. “That was Tristan Pike.”
I halt my steps and stare at her wide-eyed. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”
“King Shrek,” she laughs.
Holy shit. I just called the grandson of the richest man in the country a green ogre. Not only that, but Tristan Pike is notorious for being the number one boxer, both underground and legally above. And it’s rumored he has MC ties.
Fuck my life.
Chapter Sixteen
Harper
“How the hell did you get us into his house or wherever we were?!” I yell at Gabby, who’s still laughing hysterically at me.
“His face though, Harps,” she keeps laughing at me. “I don’t think he’s ever had anyone—let alone a girl—stand up and talk to him like that before.”
“Yeah, yeah…laugh it up,” I deadpan, trying not to laugh but feeling my lips twitch as I fight a smile.
She rubs her face in an attempt to stop laughing. “Holy shit my cheeks hurt from laughing so much.”
“Are you done yet?” I ask with a raised brow. “Seriously, how did we end up at his party?”
“One of my friends from Miami is cousins with one of Tristan’s boys. He hooked me up with Jeff when we got here. He’s been inviting me to shit for months.” She lifts a shoulder like it’s no big deal. Like it was completely normal we were just inside Tristan Pike’s house. “Figured it was a good place to go to party and help you forget for the night. I didn’t think you’d get yourself in trouble with Pike though,” she chuckles, pulling her cell out when it beeps with a notification. “Creepy, that’s actually Jeff making sure we’re okay.”
She’s all smiles as she texts back and forth for a few minutes. When she looks up at me, she asks, “What?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “You sure you haven’t met up with this Jeff guy before tonight?”
Looking back down at her phone for a second, she then peeks up at me with a grin I know all too well coming from Gabby. “Okay, maybe I have.” Then she adds, “Oh, you have to tell Teddy about tonight. He will die.”
“I’m such a mess,” I laugh, looking for my phone. “Shit, I can’t find my cell. You see it anywhere?” She shakes her head, still lost in her text conversation with the mysterious Jeff. “Fuck, Gabs, I must have left it at the house, or it fell out of my pocket in the car.” Falling back on my bed, I cover my eyes with my arm. “This just keeps getting worse and worse.”
Gabby sends Teddy a text telling him to come over. I change into a pair of sweats while we wait for him. As soon as he’s inside, Gabby wastes no time recounting all the events that happened throughout the night, making my face flame.
I can’t believe how dumb I was tonight. All so that I could maybe forget Jett for a little bit. Well, the joke’s on me because I’m sitting here in one of his shirts and wishing it still smelled like him after embarrassing myself.
It’s almost one in the morning, but Gabby and I are too wired after our night. We convince Teddy to stay and pop
some popcorn, turn on some random movie on Netflix, and make a big pallet on the floor for the three of us. It’s not Teddy’s theater room at his parents’, but it’s become our new norm for movie nights.
I wake up some hours later to a knock on the door. Slowly opening an eye, I see that Teddy snuck out—like his highness usually does because the floor is for peasants—and Gabby’s door is closed, signaling that she got up and moved to her bed at some point too. Traitors. Both of them.
Another knock has me pushing to my feet and padding to the door. Thinking that maybe it’s Teddy coming back with coffee, I yell, “You could have at least carried me to my bed.” Then I stop. Because it is definitely not Teddy standing on the other side of my door.
It’s Tristan.
His lips twitch at the corner as his eyes take me in. My eyes widen, reaching up and patting my bedhead hair and then crossing my arms over my chest.
“I found your phone in my room,” he tells me, holding out my cell.
“Thanks,” I say slowly. With a nod, he turns to leave, but for some reason, I add, “You didn’t have to bring it.” I roll my eyes at myself. “I mean, it was nice of you to bring it instead of sending…” I trail off, feeling like I’m slowly digging myself into a hole.
“It’s no problem, Harper.” I tilt my head and study him a second because I don’t think I ever told him my name last night. But that doesn’t stop my body from reacting to how it sounds coming from his lips. Dropping his chin to his chest, he stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I asked around about how you and your friend Gabby found your way to my place. Looks like my boy and your girl have a little thing happening at the moment.” He smirks.
“Yep,” I say and smack my lips, not knowing what else to say.
“Do you know—”
“Yes,” I cut him off. “I know who you are—now—Tristan Pike.”
His teeth sink into his bottom lip before he lets his smile go, showing off dimples that I didn’t see last night. Hell, I didn’t see him smile at all last night. But standing here in all my messy morning glory, I can’t deny how sexy and slightly adorable this big guy is. He’s definitely no Shrek.
I Kissed Her First: A BOUND TOGETHER NOVEL Page 10
