Give You Up (Dumas University Book 1)

by Ashlyn Mathews

  “Syn, are you okay?”

  I nod.

  “Is the anxiety coming back?”

  Shaking my head, I scratch at the welts. The medication will take effect in thirty minutes. In the meantime, I slow my breathing.

  Cindy leans forward in her chair. “Syn?”

  “Why the change?” I straighten in my seat. “I’ve mentally psyched myself up for working at the library since last semester ended.”

  I jut out my jaw. Cindy is not buying my pity party.

  “Syn, you’re a strong person and have come a long way since freshman year. Chin up, girly. Now head on over to practice. It starts in thirty minutes.”

  She brings out the campus map and shows me where we are at and where I need to be. I push back my chair, rise, and grab my backpack off the floor.

  “When will I see Primie next?”

  Brows furrowed, she looks at my backpack. “Did you lose your laptop? Has something happen to your cell phone?”

  I pat my backpack. “Both are good. I’m checking to make sure we’re still on. This change is a”—I wear down my bottom lip—“is disruptive.”

  “Of course I’m not changing my mind. You might not be working for me, but we’ll still be friends.”

  I sigh in relief. First the coffee incident. Then Taron being nice to me. Now this football gig. I pick up my latte off Cindy’s desk and take a sip. Warm liquid and caramel sweetness fills my mouth. Calm settles over me again.

  My nerves steady, I ask my next question. “How will football work with our arrangement?”

  Cindy’s face softens. “Syn, the team doesn’t play every weekend, and every game won’t be away games. Why don’t you look at your calendar and text me if you’re open for lunch tomorrow?”

  She rises from her chair, walks around her desk, and fussing over her perfect topknot, says in a chipper voice, “It’s your last year of college. Live it up!”

  Uh-uh. Not going there. The last time I lived it up, my carelessness took something precious from me. Dare wasn’t around back then. No one was. My pregnancy and miscarriage when I was seventeen is something I’ve never told anyone, including Dare, and he is my best friend.

  Cindy corrals me out of her office. Avoiding looking me in the eye, my replacement rushes inside. I’ve seen her around campus. Petit. Thin. Blonde. Nice. A people pleaser. I start walking away as soon as the door closes behind them, but stop the moment I hear the word secret. I step back and press against the wall.

  My stomach knots. I shouldn’t be eavesdropping. Nothing good comes from sticking my nose in other people’s business, but my position, with its cushy schedule, was given away at the last minute to Natalie. How come?

  “Thank you for agreeing to the switch.”

  “I’m here for you, Natalie. We all are. If you change your mind—”

  “I won’t.”

  “Dear, what happened to you is serious.”

  “How can I press charges when I’m not sure who he is?”

  Natalie starts crying. Oh, God, she cannot mean . . . I shove my fist against my mouth.

  “You can go to the authorities with what you do remember.”

  “Tall with dark hair describes a lot of guys on the team.”

  “Was there anything that stuck out?”

  I hold my breath, afraid I’ll miss Natalie’s answer if I breathe too loudly. My heartbeat pounding in my ears is loud enough.

  “Snake and butterfly tattoo along his ribs.”

  Snake and butterfly tattoo along his ribs. Thank goodness the tat isn’t on some other place like a guy’s or guys’ arms, excluding Dare and Midnight. Not that my friends are capable of harming a girl. Except Dare might have hurt Gwen two years ago . . .

  “The head coach can have the players undress.”

  “No, please don’t. Word will spread around campus, and he’ll hear of it and know I spoke with someone. It’s my last year. I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Natalie—”

  “Please. I just want to forget and move on.”

  Natalie has my position because a guy hurt her and she doesn’t know who he is. I have to find out who this dirtbag is. He needs to answer for what he did.

  Formulating a plan in my head, I push off the wall and hurry down the steps and across the first floor of the library until I’m outside.

  The fresh air calms my nerves. The students milling around, laughing and chatting it up with their friends, get me more determined to find the jerk who hurt Natalie. I take another sip of my latte and reset my mind to thinking of something else.

  With my position with the football team, I’ll have to rearrange my schedule on my calendar. There are spots for my school schedule, the little hours I work at Shades, my now non-existent schedule working at the library, corgi-sitting Primie, and hanging out with Dare and my friends. Intentionally left out are guys and dating.

  The vibrator was invented for a reason. All the “O’s” and none of the complications of adding a guy to the mix of me and Dare. Another bonus? Physical release without the emotional emptiness.

  I do not handle casual hookups well. The reason they are few and far between. I’m not wired like my mom or Beau. I need more. More is Dare and without the sex.

  He is high maintenance, taking up my free time. That guy . . . Shaking my head, I hitch my backpack higher on my shoulder. He will be the death of me, with his high maintenance asks.

  Then there’s Riley with her habit of “borrowing” other people’s stuff, including Midnight’s. She should know better than to mess with her boss’s stuff. One of these days, he will fire her.

  Damn it, I wish she weren’t hung up on Midnight. I would ship her and Dare in a heartbeat. Except two bad habits does not make a right. Midnight and I would be bailing those two out of their troubles left and right, leaving little time for anything else.

  Oh, crap, me being away for the weekend or however long the team travels for will mess with my arrangement with Dare.

  I mentally talk through what I’ll tell him.

  In it, I will focus on words such as security blanket, tough love, and rolling with the punches. I groan. I can’t do that to him. He needs time to adjust. I didn’t get the same courtesy and look what is happening. My heart is jackhammering against my ribcage. I am breaking out in a cold sweat. My stomach is in knots again. I toss my coffee cup in the nearest trash can.

  Not good. So not good. I have time. I have time. I blow out a breath. I have time! Dare won’t be back from seeing his family in Cambridge, a small farm town east of here, for another two days.

  When I met Dare for the first time at a party my freshman year, I would have never guessed he was a farm boy. That boy is far from the image of coveralls and straw hats. No, he is all man and all danger with his killer good looks and those aqua-colored eyes of his.

  Everywhere we go, the women and the men hit on him left and right. I am jealous. No, I’m not into Dare.

  I’m jealous because he is a part of a big family. The Sterling family is close-knit and huge. His father has four brothers. I grew up an only child.

  Sighing at the familiar stone sign mounted on the lawn—I’ve circled back to the front of the library—I pull out a campus map from my back pocket, and squinting, I find the library and, with my eyes, trace a path to the stadium. I pocket the map.

  There is a buzz of conversation, and students part around me like the Red Sea. Class just let out. Great. Someone smacks into me from behind. I tip forward. Strong hands clamp on my waist and pull me back against a solid chest. Big hands slide inside the pockets of my jeans.

  “Hey, there, get your hands out of my pockets.”

  I tip my head forward, then back, ready to headbutt the touchy jerk who did not get the message there is such a thing as personal space and sexual harassment. And who can forget stranger danger?

  His voice near my ear stops me. “Or else what, Pixie Dust?”

  7

  Syn

  Taron’s breath is w
arm on the curve of my ear, and my mind fills with images of hot summer nights touching and kissing him in the bed of his pickup truck, our stargazing quickly turning into an intense making out.

  His hands inside my pockets, Taron guides me out of the crowd’s path, onto the lawn, and behind a tree, giving us privacy from the other students. He leans against the tree and anchors me to him.

  With our height difference, the top of my head tucks perfectly under his chin. Every nerve in my body is hyperaware of every hitch in his breath, every rise and fall of his chest against my back, and every soft caress from his fingers inside my pockets.

  The sun in the sky is hotter than I remember. The breeze that coasts over my face has a hint of a floral smell I haven’t smelled before, and I’ve sat under this flowering tree many times in between classes, usually caught up in the romance book I’m reading.

  I resist the urge to close my eyes and melt against him. It has always been like this with Taron. With him, I am so aware of the world. The smells. The textures. How the hair on his arms brushes my skin. Soft. A whisper of hair on skin. Smooth. Skin on skin. The temperature. No matter summer or cooler temperatures, Taron runs hot. His body temp matches his hotheadedness.

  “Taron, what are you doing?” I am out of breath. Dizzy from our proximity after years apart.

  “Showing you which direction you should be heading.”

  “Where would that be? You have us hiding behind a tree.”

  As soon as the words are out, I want to take them back.

  “Hiding?” He takes his hands out of my pockets, and setting them on my shoulders, he turns me to face him. “Is that what you would like to do, Syn? Play hide and seek?”

  Oh, God, the seduction and sex dripping from his words. It’s the game we played. At night. On the football field. Inside his house when his parents were out of town. At the back of the high school we went to. He always found me. Claimed a kiss for it, too. Other times, there was more at stake, like his hand down the front of my pants or my fingers stroking his thickness through his pants.

  “How about it, baby? Should we relive the past?”

  The past. My mom. My dad. Or who I thought was my biological dad until my mom dropped the news that Gary wasn’t my real dad. The lies. The embarrassment. The mortification should anyone find out the truth. The pleading in her eyes. She did it for me. That’s what she kept saying over and over. Did she, though? Or did my mom like sleeping with all those men?

  “It’s not a good idea.”

  “Because you have a boyfriend?”

  “Because I’m not into casual hookups and that’s all you’re interested in.”

  As soon as I heard the news that the star QB for Stanford had put in for a transfer to DU, I searched Taron online.

  “Jealous?”

  “Grossed out.”

  “You believe what other girls say? What they post online?”

  “What does it matter? You and I are not an item. What you do with your junk is none of my business.”

  The girls post pics of Taron’s dick. Or at least I think it’s his penis. His manhood has its own hashtag. #TD. Some say TD is short for Taron’s Dick. Others say it’s a play on touchdown for scoring time with the commitment-phobic star quarterback.

  “What you think matters. What’s his appeal, Syn?”

  The jealousy in his voice . . . I blink. “Wait, what?”

  He grasps my chin and tips my head up. “You heard me.”

  “Who exactly are you speaking of?” I turn my head, freeing me from his hold.

  “Dare Sterling. Ditch his ass and I am yours. All yours, Syn.”

  “You’re encouraging me to cheat?”

  “Nah, babe. I detest cheaters. What I’m asking is for you to break it off with him.”

  “You’re that confident I would choose you over him?”

  “There’s no debate who is the better choice. The right choice.”

  Cocky some? My breaths hitch in my chest, and my heartbeat speeds up. Taron’s take-charge, take-no-prisoners attitude is what drew me to him. What made being with him exciting and unpredictable.

  Except I am done with unpredictable. I need order. The way he is looking at me, with his jaw locked and his dark eyes a storm over the horizon, is not orderly. His expression conjures images of war and chaos.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  God, he is persistent. Another trait I admire in him. It’s how Taron became the best on the field.

  “He’s had three years of my life and understands me best. I’m not the same girl you left behind, Taron.”

  “I left you behind? Remind me again, who cheated on who? Who ghosted who? Who dumped who and who got no closure?”

  A knot forms in my throat. I look away from the agony on his face. “Let’s not talk about the past, Taron. It’s done. Over.”

  “Not for me it isn’t. I need closure, Syn.”

  “How will us being together give you that? You hate me.”

  “Yeah, I did. I hated you so much I let you destroy me for other girls.”

  He doesn’t say any more, and doesn’t need to. He destroyed me for other guys too. No guy comes close to what Taron had me feeling all those years ago.

  “Are you with him for his money? I hear he’s worth millions.”

  “Billions.” I set the record straight, then realize it’s the wrong thing to say.

  He clamps his jaw tight, and I am worried he’ll break his jaw.

  “It’s not his money. He’s my friend, my best friend.”

  Taron scoffs. “A girl and a guy can’t be friends.”

  “We were friends,” I remind him.

  “And look how that turned out.”

  Warm nights making out in the bed of his truck, experimenting with tasting and touching one another. His groans reverberating against my skin. His thick fingers in my hair. My hair fisted in his hands as his mouth devoured mine in a kiss that left me breathless and needing more. More kisses. More touching. More of my hair wrapped around his thick fingers.

  I’d go down on him. He’d go down on me. But we never went all the way, and that was what I promised him we would do before we graduated high school. Until I destroyed what we had and could have had with a kiss.

  God, it’s hot. The sun is too bright. The conversations around us too loud. My mouth is bone dry. I lick my lips and clutch my belly. Taron stares at my eyes. My eyes must be bright with regret.

  He steps forward and cocoons me to him with his hands on my hips. I glance up. Blink. Blink again. He’s staring forward with a look of frustration on his face, and I long to kiss him and get back what we lost, but I let him go for a reason. He is meant for more. I will never be enough. That’s just the way life works when someone is a star and the other, an insignificant mortal.

  “We can’t start anything, Taron. We’re not the same people. You don’t know me anymore.”

  “Then give me that chance. Help me get closure, Syn.”

  I place my palms on his chest, ready to give him a firm no, that we are beyond closure after years apart, but he grabs my wrist and brings my right hand to his face.

  “These rings are different. Where are the ones I gave you?”

  A smooth gold band. A silver braided band. A band with an opal. Three stackable rings. One chance. One wish. One listen.

  “You promised me all three. Where are they?”

  I tug my hand out of his hold. “I gave them away.”

  “Who? When?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I’m going to ask again, Syn, and you give me the answer, or else.”

  “Or else what?” I challenge.

  I am done being the shy girl. The girl who followed his greatness around like a lovesick puppy. The girl who gave up on living a life with him because she knew she’d only get hurt when Taron Vaughn’s star status rose, and he left his past behind for the chance at a shinier future.

  “Or else I will fuck up any guy
who comes near you. I’m done with staying away from you, Syn. Done with you hiding. I found you, Pixie Dust. Wherever you hide, I’ll find you every time. Make no mistake about that.”

  Alpha male some?

  And there go my panties because they are wet.

  8

  Syn

  After I left Taron standing under that tree without answering his questions, I made it to the stadium on my own with him trailing close behind me.

  Was he serious with his threat to hurt any guy who comes near me? Good luck going through with it. Guys do not line up for my attention, and if they do, once they hear of Dare and me, they leave me alone.

  On wobbly legs, I enter the stadium and duck into the women’s restroom. After splashing my face with cold water and wiping off the beads of sweat on the back of my neck with a damp paper towel, I make my way to the guy standing on the sideline.

  I’m assuming he is a part of the coaching staff, with his navy-blue polo shirt, khaki shorts, and a whistle hanging from around his neck. He’s pacing, holding on to a clipboard as he watches the guys on the field. I walk up and introduce myself, ready to get started.

  “Hi, my name is Syn. The head librarian, Cindy, sent me here.”

  “Nice to meet you. Name’s Hank. What has she told you so far?”

  “Nothing other than to show up at the team’s practice.”

  “Good. That’s good.” He cups the back of his head. Not in a way that shows he’s uncomfortable but more like he’s easing me into the idea of whatever it is I’ll be doing.

  “You have one job on this team. It’s simple but complicated. You will be Taron Vaughn’s personal assistant.”

  “What?”

  Without batting an eyelash, he rattles off the job description.

  I blink in rapid succession. “Wait, back up. Taron Vaughn’s personal assistant? Go where he goes? Pose as his girlfriend if push comes to shove? And there is more? A formal JD he’ll e-mail to me once he gets my personal e-mail address?”