Cain laughs and walks back to his room, presumably to put on clothes. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment in the on-campus housing units and is usually shacked up with Harper when she isn’t off on a writing adventure. I know they’re both anxious about what’s to come. Cain just won the college football championship as a second-year starter, since he red-shirted our freshman year, and his popularity, which was already on the rise, has blown up. He’s going to enter the draft next year to go pro, and Harper has already told me how nervous this makes her. She already has to share him with Texas and the college scene, but when he’s making millions, she’ll have to share him with the world.
“I like sex as much as the next person, but it sounds like this girl might be a nymphomaniac. Literally. Three partners in one day, that’s a lot even for me.” Cain comes back out attired in Austin football sweats from head to toe.
“Says the guy who once made a sex bet.” I roll my eyes, yet again.
Rolling my eyes is one of my signature moves.
His eyes go sharp. “Hey, that is all behind me.”
Before I can tell that I know and that I also know that he loves my stepsister, said stepsister walks through the door.
Or should I say, stumbles through the door carrying a suitcase way too big for her pixie frame. “Uh, hello, is anyone going to help me?”
Harper’s annoyed voice is cut off. Not by her boyfriend helping her, but rather sweeping her off of her feet and planting a huge kiss on her lips.
“Cain!” She giggles and hits him as if she’s embarrassed.
I would be more grossed out if I wasn’t so green with envy. “All right, can you not? Third wheel in the room here.”
Cain sets her down, gives me a stink eye, and walks toward their bedroom. Before he enters it, he looks back over his shoulder. “I’ll be waiting in our bed. And just know, I have missed you a lot over the past two weeks.”
“Hi.” Harper puts her hand on my arm as she passes to get a drink of water.
Because of how we both grew up, separately of course, we aren’t the most touchy-feely people. But we have come to rely on each other like sisters, or I hope we have. At least, that’s how I feel. My relationship with Harper is the closest female bond I have in my life.
“Hey.” I bite my lip. I want to get into why I’ve been here waiting for her, but I’m also not the most open book you’ve ever met.
“So … you need to talk. Spill.” And Harper has zero subtlety.
Which is probably why our friendship works.
I take a deep breath. “Boone is coming to Texas.”
I can’t believe his name has left my lips. It’s not as if I still don’t think about him weekly, but I haven’t talked to anyone about him in such a long time. In fact, I don’t know that I ever spoke to anyone about our breakup. If it qualifies as a breakup.
I mean, my heart was broken, so it definitely qualifies as something.
An unreadable emotion flicks over Harper’s features. “Hm … why?”
“Apparently, he got drafted by the major league team in Texas. They want him to play for the farm team in Austin.”
She nods her head, and my heart skips a beat waiting for her to calm me down. “Well, Austin is a big town. So you probably won’t even run into him. You can avoid him … if you want to.”
Do I want to? I guess it’s what we both want to know. “I haven’t seen him since he graduated. He hates me, Harp.”
Her nose wrinkles. “You do know it’s totally awkward for me to talk to you about this? Because … you kind of cheated on him with my boyfriend. Who you slept with.”
I’m glad we’re so open, sometimes to a fault. I shrug. “I don’t care if you don’t. You’re secure with Cain, so please don’t make this weird. I need a therapist and you’re the closest thing I’ve got.”
Harper gives me a small smile. “Yeah, I guess I don’t really care. I was just pointing it out. And I bet you he doesn’t hate you. But, if you want to find out if he does, I think you have that opportunity now. You know where he’ll be, you can find him if you want. The question is, is that what you want?”
She echoes my thoughts back to me. I honestly don’t know. When I think about coming face-to-face with Boone Graham, it makes my knees shake and bile rise up the back of my throat. It makes my heart skip a beat and my stomach turn over like I’ve just begun the descent on the biggest roller coaster in the world.
I get up from their kitchen table and gather my bag. “All right, I’m getting out of here before Cain comes out here naked and drags you into that bedroom.”
Harper laughs, but I’m almost positive I hear a moan as I walk out the door.
A fifteen-minute walk across campus gets me to my dorm, where, thank God, my roommate and her man friend have vacated the premises. I immediately unzip my thigh-high suede boots, slip the off-the-shoulder sweater over my head, and use a makeup wipe to clean my face. As much as I might look as made up as a beauty queen during the day, I am really most comfortable in my sweatpants with zit cream on.
Not that I’d ever let anyone, besides a select few, see my varnish and shine at anything less than one hundred percent.
I boot up my computer as I slide under the fluffy blush pink comforter on my dorm-issued extra-long twin bed, with every intention of reading about Boone’s draft status and signing.
But … I can’t. I realize that I don’t know if I want to hear about him yet. I realize that, even though how we ended was mostly my fault, I’m not sure if what he did to my heart can be forgiven either.
So I fall into old habits. I can’t help it, it’s my dirty little secret. My kryptonite.
I type in the URL for LinkedIn, and once I’m on the website, I type her name.
She has two new posts and a video, all of them having to do with some conference she’s attending. Which of course she was asked to be the keynote speaker at.
My mother. Heather Nelson.
After she left my dad and me, she reverted back to her maiden name. As if she was never really a Mills at all. As if we never even really belonged to her. As if she never belonged to us.
The tightness in my chest aches, reverberating down my limbs and poisoning my blood, making me slam the computer shut. Per usual, I curse myself for visiting her page. At least I didn’t go to her website, where everyone sings her praises like she is the messiah of information technology and cyber risk.
But I have to do it. I have to remind myself why I should never let someone so close again. I learned that lesson a long time ago.
If my own mother didn’t want me, it was possible that no one did.
Four
Boone
This loud, student-filled bar is literally the last place on earth I want to be.
Country music is piercing my eardrums, I’ve been stepped on by no less than three stiletto heels, the Pepsi I’m sipping is flat, and one of the guys on my new team is trying to compare himself to me in every statistical category that exists in baseball.
“Yeah, but you must’ve hit more home runs than that? I mean, they wouldn’t have drafted you.” This meathead keeps trying to fuck with me and I can feel my fists curling.
“Hey, Boone, let’s hit the bar.” Hudson Shem raises an eyebrow, trying to let me know he’s rescuing me.
Hudson is the relief pitcher who has been around the Austin farm team for two years now waiting for a chance at The Show, better known as the major league of baseball. I’ve only been around a week, and most of that has been harassing the moving company for my stuff that is stuck on a truck somewhere … but he and I have connected at the three practices I’ve participated in.
“Yeah, I could use a drink.” I swing my big body out of the booth it’s been cramped in for an hour and breathe a sigh of relief.
As we walk to the bar, skirting around half-naked girls and drunk frat bros, I clap him on the shoulder. “Thanks, man. I needed that. Is he always that much of a dick?”
“Who, O’Donnell? Yeah, he
’s always that much of a dick. Just ignore him. He’s got a weed problem and falls into slumps like it’s his job. He’ll never make it to The Show, take joy in that.”
Hudson may be a relief pitcher, but he’s built like a point guard. He’s about six five, wiry but built, and has a mass of hair that hangs past his shoulders. I know what it’s like to have eyes on you everywhere you go, whether it’s because of my looks or my future profession, but the buzz of attraction around Hudson as he moves through the bar is next level.
He signals the bartender for a beer and turns to me. “You want a Heineken?”
I shake him off. “No, just a Pepsi.”
“Staying sober tonight?”
More like every night, but I don’t like to make that public. Actually, I don’t like to make anything but my on the field work public. Because once you put something out there for people to know, they ask questions. And questions bring trouble.
“Something like that.” I keep it simple.
We move to the side of the bar where it’s actually a decibel quieter and I can hear myself think.
Hudson takes a sip of beer and clears his throat. “So, you all settled in?”
I chuckle. “Fuck no. The moving company lost my shit. I think I’m living in an apartment that used to be owned by a hoarder because I keep finding newspapers from nineteen eighty in every closet. Also, the university doesn’t seem to understand that while I’m not a student-athlete, I’m still an athlete. Apparently, even though I play for a professional sports team, I’m not eligible for a schedule that works with my practices. But hey, I’m here.”
We both laugh at my misfortune. “So, why did you come out tonight?”
I shrug. “Figured it was probably a good idea to bond with the team a little bit. I always find that if you’re at least friendly outside of the locker room, you play better together on the field.”
Hudson nods. “I don’t disagree. Can’t believe you’re going to finish college though. With your bat, you’d probably be called up in a few months. Hasn’t anyone told you you’re holding your career up by insisting on a degree?”
“Only every single time I talk to my agent. But it’s something I have to do.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. Sadly, I’m used to this. No one will understand why I have to get a teaching degree before I’ll let a team sign me to a million-dollar contract.
“Whatever, man. Do you. Meanwhile, I think I’m gonna do one of these girls tonight.” Hudson checks out a blonde’s ass as she walks by.
Sex could be enticing tonight. But then I remember I don’t have an actual bed and have been sleeping on a blow-up mattress. I don’t need some airhead chick blabbing to the papers about how I live like a weird hermit with no furniture. Fucking just used to be fucking. But now, even trying to get off was more complicated than trigonometry. I had to consider whether or not she’d take pictures of my junk while I was sleeping. If she’d tell people my address. If said girl would become too attached and try to fake a pregnancy or some shit. And these all may sound insane, but if the media training my agent was putting me through taught me anything, it was that people trying to hang on to your fame were insane.
It’s in this exact moment that I spot her.
Standing not fifty feet from me, shaking her hips and spilling some pink-colored drink all over her mile-high heels, is Annabelle Mills.
Fucking hell.
She looks edible. I have to sink my teeth into my tongue to keep it from falling out of my head. A skin-tight silver dress that looks like it might slip right over her ass if she bends the wrong way. Legs for days, a waist that begs to be held close. All of that hair, dark and tumbling down her back. I knew from experience that it smelled like caramel and felt like silk running through your fingers.
I can’t see them, but those mesmerizing chocolate-hued eyes could hypnotize even the most incredible of magicians.
But that’s all it is with Annabelle. Smoke and mirrors. A pretty package. Because everything underneath is rotten, right down to the core.
Who the hell knows how she even got in here, seeing as she wasn’t twenty-one yet. Probably had one of those fake IDs from China that all those sorority girls sent away for now, with the real holograms and everything.
Wait … shit. She is twenty-one. She might be two years younger in terms of school years, but now I remember her birthday. September seventeenth, which makes her old for her grade. Was it weird that I still remember her birthday? Probably. But with my birthday falling late for my grade, making me younger, and hers falling at the top of the educational calendar, I forgot that there weren’t as many years between us as I thought.
I hated myself for remembering all of that.
A guy comes up behind her, grabbing her waist and grinding his entire pelvis into her ass. Annabelle backs up into him, shimmying and shaking as she gulps down the mixed drink sloshing out of a plastic cup. It’s sloppy and desperate, and I cringe at the sight. For a girl with her brains and looks, she sure has no idea of her worth. She was the same way in high school, always taking whatever attention guys gave her and capitalizing on it.
My hands have begun to shake, and I have to shove them in my pockets in the hopes that Hudson doesn’t notice the meltdown happening right next to him.
She’s always been able to do this to me. Get my heart racing as if it’s sprinting the Kentucky Derby. Just the sight of Annabelle unnerves me, she’s my kryptonite. One look at her and I’m cut off at the knees, sputtering, barely breathing.
No person, no woman, should be able to do that to me. That’s how I got in trouble last time; because this effect she has on me blinded me. But I won’t let it happen now. I will never be that weak, that vulnerable, with her again.
Which is why, the minute her drunken eyes flick over to me and then do a double take, I turn right around and walk out of that bar.
Five
Annabelle
“Can we please wrap this up? I have a textiles class in half an hour.”
I tap my mustard yellow flat on the tile floor of the kitchen we’re standing in.
“I just can’t decide if we should do an open concept with an island, or if we should keep it closed and do stools under the overhanging counter.” Ramona taps her chin.
Swiping my finger over the iPad given to me by the showrunners, I present her with the two designs I mocked up in our software. “I think the island makes the most sense in here. It’ll create more storage and a better flow, plus you can always put stools on one side.”
James gives me a thumbs-up as he passes, a measuring tape in his hand. He’s measuring for window treatments, and also trying to hurry Ramona along. She’s been more indecisive than usual this morning, and my hangover is barely being restrained on its leash.
I should not have done that final tequila shot last night. Or the three before it. But with my mom-meltdown and Boone back in town … something feels off. My skin is too itchy; like it shrunk, and I don’t fit into it or something. Classes this week have been hell, and the house we are working on for the show is a nightmare. James and the contractor found mold in the basement, so the floor is being ripped up as we speak. I had a ton of shipping disasters with furniture and decor pieces I’d ordered, and on top of that, the slab of granite we picked for the kitchen counters cracked when someone dropped it from the forklift at the warehouse.
So, I’d gone out on a Thursday night. My closest friend in the interior design program, Thea, had badgered me until I’d let her raid my closet and feed me way too many sugary bay breezes. And then one thing had led to another and I practically sprained my ankles dancing on top of a speaker at The Whiskey Room, which was basically just your average disgusting college town bar.
And here we are. Massive hangover that is making my brain vibrate with agony, a boss who won’t give it up and just let us go home, and the niggling feeling that I saw a ghost last night.
Because I must have had way too much to drink if I thought I saw Boone at
The Whiskey Room.
The guy I’d glimpsed had been more muscular and scruffy than I remembered my high school crush, so maybe it wasn’t him. Yet … the way my system had gone on edge at that moment, lighting up like it had been shocked with electricity …
I shake my head, trying to clear the icepick headache from my temple and all thoughts of that stupid guy. “Ramona, I have to go.”
My tone is probably a little bit more disrespectful than I mean it to be because my mentor frowns and sets down her tile samples. She leads me, one hand on my back, to a quiet corner of the kitchen away from crew or cameras.
“Honey, are you okay? You’ve seemed a little on edge this week.”
I will never admit it to their faces, but this is another reason why I like my bosses so much. James and Ramona have certainly not let the limelight of their fame taint who they are as people. They’re still one hundred percent sweethearts, great parents, and care about the work they do and the people they do it for.
I shrug her off. Feelings are a weakness I can’t afford. “I’m fine. Just had too much to drink last night.”
Ramona chuckles and tucks my hair behind my ear. “Gosh, do I miss those days sometimes. Be careful though. You’re a beautiful girl, but in this day and age, you need to be cautious when you’re out at night.”
I can’t help but crack a smile. Protecting myself against men is the least of my worries. My inner-bitch can scare even the creepiest of males off in three seconds flat.
“I’m always careful. But I do really need to get to class. Do you need me any longer?” I check my phone and see that I’ll need to speed to get to my three p.m. lecture.
“No, no, go. Sorry, we’re all a bit off today. See you next week. Have a good couple of days off, okay?”
I nod as I speed walk to my car. While I admire James and Ramona, they aren’t as shrewd as I am with their business. They give everyone a weekend break every other week. They tailor the show’s shooting schedule around the kid’s activities and holidays and insist on being home to sit down at dinner with their family every night.
You’re the One I Don’t Want Page 2
