A New Start

by Third Cousins

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Discover More Books By Third Cousins

  A Synopsis & Table Of Contents...

  Inspiring Words

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Copyright

  Love's Not Popular

  A New Start

  Book 2

  Contemporary Romance

  By: Tina Lee & Third Cousins

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  A SYNOPSIS & TABLE OF CONTENTS...

  Cassie’s moved on from high school and into everything that comes with college. She’s lost interest in the parties and the popularity race that comes with the party scene. In fact she’d much prefer to spend some quiet time with her new friend Sam rather than party the night away, but when he pushes for some fun and her ex Eric seeks her out, she finds herself being pulled into a world that she thought she’d escaped forever.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Discover More Books By Third Cousins

  Inspiring Words

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  DISCOVER MORE BOOKS BY THIRD COUSINS

  Copyright

  INSPIRING WORDS

  “Temptation has been here ever since the Garden of Eden.”

  - Jerry Falwell

  CHAPTER 1

  My dorm room wasn’t even half the size of my old bedroom. I’d packed up most of my stuff to bring over to my dorm room, though. For the first time in my life, space was an issue and it wasn’t even as though I was sharing my room with anybody else.

  I’d heard horror stories about communal living and terror roommates. I’d made sure that my father had snapped up one of the private rooms for me as soon as I’d got the letter that they were accepting me into their institute of learning.

  The private room might save me from some roommate hassles, but it wasn’t going to save me from my space dilemma. I was going to have to ship some of my stuff back home. I wasn’t happy about it. In fact, I was pretty damn annoyed, because everything I’d packed had been what I’d thought at the time was essential. I had no idea how I was going to sort through the mess of boxes to make sure that I had everything that I needed.

  Just the thought of the task ahead was daunting. It was a good kind of daunting, though. It wasn’t like the kind of daunting I felt when whenever I thought about Eric and what he was going to say when he realized that we were both going to the same college. I was dreading that. I was dreading the day when we stumbled across each other on campus. He was going to be happy. I could feel that in my gut.

  I spent the first two days on campus going to little orientation meetings and organizing my stuff. By the time I’d finished hanging pictures on the walls and putting down a rug, it really looked all right and a far stretch from the bare, cold room that I’d first entered. I liked it. I liked the fact that I’d taken the essence of my bedroom at home and crammed it in to this little space. It made me feel safe.

  My dorm hallway was pretty quiet. It seemed that everybody who had a private room was quite happy keeping the rest of their lives private, too. I’d been worried about parties keeping me up at night or leading me into a life where grades meant less than red plastic cups, but there was nothing like that going on.

  The campus was pretty big. It was big enough by my calculations to provide enough distance between Eric and me to keep us apart for months. Of course, that isn’t how fate wanted to play it. Fate decided to send him literally crashing into me on my third day.

  I was walking across the quad, which ran out between the oldest part of the college buildings. The sun was starting to set across the horizon and a brilliant, soft, orange glow was filling the sky.

  Of course, there were other things in the sky, which I should have been paying more attention to, like the football that was flying towards my head.

  “Shit, sorry,” Eric said as he ran over to check whether or not I was all right. It took him a minute to realize that it was me, a painful minute. I watched him run over with concerned look that slowly blanked out and then reformed into a confused frown. “Cassie?”

  “Fancy seeing you here.” I rubbed the top of my head where the football had hit me. I could still feel the dull thud playing through my brain and through my spine.

  The football had landed a few feet away from me, and instead of checking me for damage, Eric took on the challenge of retrieving the ball.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked over his shoulder. He looked like he was accusing me of something, but I couldn’t be sure of what. “Why are you here?”

  I didn’t say anything and he took a step back toward me. “You don’t go here do you?” he looked mildly alarmed at the thought.

  “Well, it was supposed to be a surprise, but then you fucked my best friend.” I shrugged. “I didn’t put any other applications in, so I was pretty much stuck with going here.”

  He leaned into me, as though the people around as were eavesdropping. “You do realize how much of a stalker you’re making yourself look, right?” he whispered. His eyes focused down into mine in a pitying way that made me want to punch him.

  “Get over yourself. I had no other choice than to come here. It’s not my fault you fucked things up between us.”

  “You really need to get over that,” he said in a bored kind of way. “I mean, you’ve had an entire summer to move on.”

  He was right. I’d had an entire to summer to move on and in some ways I’d done that. The interview with Sam had turned into grabbing dinner with him. That dinner had turned into a preview of the yearbooks before they came out and, before we knew it, it was like we’d been friends for years. That was all it was, though. It was a friendship. A strangely put together and unforeseeable friendship, but one that was the main reason that I’d stayed sane over the summer months.

  “Trust me, I’m over it,” I said through gritted teeth. “Are we done here?”

  He laughed at me. “You know, for a stalker, you sure don’t appreciate the one on one time with your obsession.”

  He wanted me to punch him. That was the only reason that I could think of as to why he would be saying any of what he was saying. My hand had already wrapped itself into a fist. All I would have to do was bring it up quickly and I’d make contact before he’d even realized what was happening.

  “I’ll see you around,” I pushed my way past him. My shoulder struck off of his, but I gave no sign to show that it had hurt me. I wasn’t going to ever let him see that he’d hurt me again. He wasn’t worth it. I could feel my chest rising and falling at an alarming rate. He’d managed to shake me down to my core in a matter of minutes, but it was okay, it was over and I wouldn’t have to worry about him finding out about me any longer.

  CHAPTER 2

  The ringing sound that played through the speaker sounded tinny. It was strange how crossing state lines could mess with a phone’s signal so badly, but I was sitting listening to the evidence that couldn’t be denied.

  The crackling, fuzzy backdrop was starting to irritate me. My thoughts were starting to get cranky. Why do people even have phones if they’re not going to answer them? The phone was obviously switched on, so why weren’t they answering. Was I getting ignored? Were they busy?

  The phone clicked at last. “Cassie?” Sam aske
d.

  “Geez, how long does it take a person to answer their phone?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, your majesty,” he said. “I wasn’t aware that I had to put you before my education.”

  “Well, now you do,” I told him quickly.

  “You’re pouting, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I lied quickly, even though I’d felt my lips purse together the very moment he’d suggested that something was more important than me.

  “You know I can tell when you’re lying.” He was bluffing. I knew that he was bluffing, because I was the perfect liar. I had to be. My years of getting away with just about everything and anything that I’d tried were proof that I could lie flawlessly.

  “No you can’t,” I told him firmly. A throaty, half chuckle played through the speaker. “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know I hate it when you do that.”

  “You really have got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, haven’t you?” he said cheerfully.

  That was infuriating. He hadn’t sounded that cheerful when he’d answered the phone. He’d sounded mediocre at best, but now, because he knew that I was in a foul mood, he’d found a reason to be bright ray of sunshine.

  “You know, you could try sounding less happy about it.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So that I don’t end up hating you?”

  He laughed. I could hear his smile playing through in his voice and I almost smiled myself. “You could never hate me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, I think we both know that it is,” he told me with a confidence that I wished really hard I could say was out of place. “Why have you called me anyway?” he suddenly changed the subject. “You realize that I’m a busy man.”

  “You know, I’m going start getting upset if you keep saying that you have things that come before me,” I told him in a jokey way, but we both knew that there was truth woven into my words.

  “Sometimes I wonder what I let myself in for, when I decided to ask you to dance at the prom,” he told me for what felt like the hundredth time.

  “The night of your life, that’s what you let yourself in for.”

  “Something like that.” We enjoyed a shared moment of quiet, riding together on the crackly connection. Then he said, “Seriously though, I’m standing outside of my next class, so I really do need to know what’s up.”

  “Oh,” I paused. I hadn’t really called for a specific reason. “I guess I just wanted to hear your voice,” I said weakly.

  “You’re such a loser,” he said cheerfully. “You’re sitting in your dorm room missing me, aren’t you?”

  “Go to class,” I said firmly and then I hung up before he could say anything else that was both true and embarrassing. I looked down at my phone, until the screen turned to black and then I put it on my bedside table so that I could lie down without it making a lump against my hip.

  I really did miss him, even though I barely knew him. We’d spent one summer together out of my nineteen summers, but it had been enough. It was enough to make him an intimate part of my life. I found myself turning to Sam whenever anything happened. He was the person I called when I needed to talk, even when I had nothing to talk to about. He was the person I turned to when I needed someone to remind me that there were bigger problems in the world than my bad hair day and that I would make it through a day of frizz even if it seemed like I wouldn’t.

  I closed my eyes. I missed Sam. I didn’t want to admit it, not even to myself, but I did. I’d found that I wasn’t smiling as much now that he and I were not just at different schools, but in different states. I found myself wishing that I was talking to him when other guys on the campus tried to make their moves. It was something that I found hard to accept. It had been difficult enough accepting the transition between us being strangers to us being friends. He’d always been a loser, which in turn kind of made me a loser for hanging out with him.

  He was a cool loser, though. At least, that’s what I thought. He’d shown me stuff that I would never had dreamed about looking at before, but was actually kind of interesting. He wasn’t into all kinds of weird stuff like online games, but weird stuff that was cool. He built motorbikes in his garage and he knew how to ride them. He drew pictures in watercolor pencils and they were really good. He had a video game collection that dominated a complete wall of his bedroom, but didn’t dominate him. He claimed that he’d completed every game, but I wasn’t sure whether I believed him. I wasn’t sure a person could have played that many games in an entire lifetime without being, I don’t know, a loser.

  I opened my eyes when I realized I’d just spent a vast amount of time thinking about Sam. It needed to stop. I needed to get Sam off of my mind.

  CHAPTER 3

  I looked down at the doormat that I’d placed in the hall outside my door. There was nothing strange about the doormat. It looked just the same as when I’d bought it. The friendly little poem about friends being welcome was still clear for all to see.

  The poem wasn’t the reason why I was looking at it, though. In truth, I’d learned the poem by heart in the store before I’d ever bought it. No, the reason that I was looking down was that there was a coffee cup sitting right in the middle of the mat.

  At first I thought that somebody had dumped it there. I looked up and down the hallway with an angry scowl in the hope that I might catch the offender, but there was no one to be seen.

  It was clear when I got closer that the coffee was intended for me, anyway. It had my name written on the cup in an elegant script that meant the coffee had travelled into the campus and hadn’t been bought within it.

  I picked up the cup and inspected it. It was still hot; although I had no intention of drinking it I lifted the lid. A thick topped of cream covered a gingerbread scented latte. It was my favourite. I inspected the cup for further clues. There was nothing, not even a number.

  I pulled out my room key and unlocked my door. I was still staring at the cup when I walked inside. There was nothing on it other than my name. Why would someone do that? Why would someone leave a coffee with only my name on it?

  I started to wonder whether it was poisoned. My mind started to jump to wild actions like calling the police. What if it was an attempt on my life? What if someone really thought I was stupid enough to drink unattended coffee just because it was marked with my name?

  “You look confused.”

  The coffee went flying out of my hands as the voice behind me caught me off guard. All the nerves in my body jammed up as the coffee made a swift return back down. The burning hot droplets fell all over my chest and I held back the gasps of pain that my lungs were pushing out.

  “Oh, shit,” Sam said, rushing over to me. “Shit.”

  He pulled off his shirt and started to pat me down with it. “I really didn’t see that coming,” his eyes were apologetic, and I didn’t even know why.

  What was Sam doing in my room? Why had he taken his shirt off? Did he knew that the faint line of dark hair that ran down from the bottom of his belly button and disappeared behind his waistband was sexy as hell and that I was unable to concentrate on anything else when it was in view?

  “Are you okay?” he asked. He could see my dazed expression. I could feel my cheeks starting to burn with a heat that rivalled my blistering chest. Did he know what I was thinking? Did he know where I was looking? “Do you want me to go get someone?”

  I shook my head quickly.

  “I’m fine.” I tried to keep my eyes focused on his face, so they would not sink back down his body to the little line which was driving me wild. “You shouldn’t have taken your shirt off: I’ve got towels over there.”

  “Well, that’s some thanks I get.”

  “You want thanks for trying to kill me and failing?”

  “Oh, you’re so funny,.” We looked at each other, fondness battling with the desire to continue our little verbal battle. I wondered i
f I should pull my top off to show solidarity with him.

  “Aren’t you wondering what I’m doing here?”

  “Actually, yeah, just a little bit.” I hadn’t spoken to Sam since I’d called him two days before. He’d been busy going to classes and I’d had nothing important enough to keep him on the line with. “Did missing me become too unbearable for you?”

  “I guess you could say something like that.”

  “No, but seriously, don’t you have classes that you’re missing?”

  He shrugged. “I thought I’d drop by to see you.” He looked shifty. There was something that he wasn’t telling me and I wasn’t going to let it go until he shared.

  “That’s not the only reason.”

  “No, it’s not the only reason,” he agreed. “It is, however, the only reason that you need to know about.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, stop it.” He waved his hand at me. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  He walked over to my bed and sat down on top of the feather soft pink throw which I’d put over the stock sheets that the college had provided. “So, I was hoping that I could crash with you.” He eyed me with what looked like anxiety. “It’s cool if you want me to find a hotel, though,” he offered quickly.

  “You want to stay with me?”

  “Seriously, it’s fine. I’ll get a hotel.”

  I shook my head. He was reading my expression wrong. I was just surprised that wanted to stay with me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to. “No, it’s fine. You can stay here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure, I’m sure,” I nodded. “As long as you don’t mind sleeping on the floor, that is.”

  He chuckled. “And there I was thinking that you were going to share your bed with me.”

  Was he being serious? Was he flirting? I couldn’t tell. I must have looked shocked, because he followed it up quickly with, “Don’t worry, I’m only pulling your leg.”