“Don’t do this,” he said. “Don’t… be afraid. I swear, I worship the ground you walk on. I would never hurt you. You must know how I feel by now. Just… look at me. Please!” He shrieked the last bit as she resumed her fumbling. But his yelling had the opposite effect. Edy whirled on him, incensed.
“Do you honestly think I could want you after what you did to your cousin? You’re sick, Wyatt! You’re sick and you disgust me!”
He moved for her, as if to wrap her in an embrace. Edy shoved him so hard he fell, before she turned and unlocked the door.
“And what if I didn’t do it?” he shouted from the floor. “What would you think of me then? Or are you like all the rest, with your mind made up at the start?”
She had the door open now and could have easily disappeared, but his words had bolted her to the floor.
“You’re trying to trick me,” Edy said quietly.
Wyatt’s eyes began to fill. “I’m not. Ask her if you want.”
Edy couldn’t. She wouldn’t ask a thing like that. But she gave Wyatt a single, cautious, confused glance before disappearing into the party.
She’d rode with London, who she asked to take her back to her dorm. She was soaking wet and trembling now from the blast of AC and her own rushing thoughts.
London wasn’t ready to go, but maybe Tamela was, she suggested. A thorough search of the room revealed that Tamela had already left. Who else had drove? Kaylee-Courtney looked absolutely hammered. Considering she was a menace on the road during the best of times, Edy didn’t think it wise to put her life in the girl’s hands.
“Ready yet?” said a voice from behind.
Edy turned to see Silas. “Umm, for what?”
Silas raised a brow. “To go back to your room and get sober.”
Edy hesitated, sure her leaving with him wouldn’t look so good. But what were her other options? Stand there with her headlights on display because she’d entered a wet t-shirt contest without her consent? Or to ride with a drunk driver? She wasn’t willing to take the chance on a total stranger, of course. So that left Silas.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Outside, she hesitated only once more with the realization that she’d be climbing on to the back of his motorcycle.
***
Wyatt spent the rest of his party in bed, contemplating what he had done. When Kennedy slipped into the room with him and began rubbing his back, he slid over, putting distance between them. When she asked if she could stay the night, he ignored her. When she got up and left, he didn’t care.
In the dead of the night, when the music quieted down, Lottie came to visit him. She wanted to know what had happened when he and Edy were alone together. He told her. After all, the blame laid with her just as much as anyone for his inability to get anywhere with the girl he loved. Lottie cringed at the story.
“She left with another guy,” Lottie said. “The one she was dancing with.”
At that, Wyatt sat up, certain he may swat her if she kept on talking. “What?” he said.
“She did. But all’s not lost yet. We can turn these sour grapes into wine.”
Wyatt wasn’t in the mood for her scheming just now. He looked at her reluctantly, willing to marry himself to the faintest hope, to commit to it again and again. “Well?” he said when she didn’t speak right away. “How’s that?”
Lottie grinned. “You spent time alone with her. That guy took up so much of her time too. There were lots of witnesses to it.”
“So?”
“So we’ll talk about that whenever we can. Give people ideas. It’s bound to get back to Hassan eventually.”
Yeah. It was bound to get back to Hassan, if his propensity to know every bit of gossip in high school was any indication. Wyatt thought of that ill temper of Hassan’s and his love of jumping to conclusions. Slowly, surely, he began to smile.
Maybe the night hadn’t been so bad, after all.
It was bound to get back to Hassan.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hassan stretched out on the floor and folded his hands behind his head. The room really was cooler where he was. What’s more, his back still ached from the strain of breaking tackle after tackle against Iowa. He’d been out to prove something and had put up insane yards in the process. His teammates had chanted his name in the locker room, which he’d basked in until catching the other running back, Paul’s, brutal glare. Then Freight had doused Hassan in ice cold water and it was over, with them looking forward to the next game. But the pain held on and now his back preferred the unforgiving hardness of the floor to his bed.
He had an appointment that day and man, was he looking forward to it. After ignoring phone call after phone call from his mother, Hassan had finally gotten the disposition up to talk to her. It turned out she wanted to discuss Mala, which wasn’t a surprise. She wanted to tell him that Mala wasn’t far from him at all, in college at Tulane, thanks to a family who wanted to keep her within his sights. Would he be interested in having dinner with her and her dad?
Hassan saw it as an opportunity. After all, Mala’s dad was the one pushing for this marriage, wasn’t he? If he could only talk to him, maybe even show him how unwilling he was to marry the girl, then it was possible that he’d suggest calling things off. Who’d want their daughter married to a guy who wasn’t interested?
Then there’d be the look on Edy’s face when he told her he’d negotiated a way out of this problem—his problem. Because it was his problem that he had dragged her into. It was only right that he solved it.
“So, this girl was completely into me,” Cash said. “She didn’t even trip when I asked her if she had a friend to join in. She was cool with that too. ‘Anything for you,’ she said.”
Laughter rang out around the room.
“You are so full of shit,” Tennessee Jones said. He, along with Xavier and Lawrence, rounded out the team’s elite wide receivers. “There was no girl, let alone two.”
“Fuck you,” Cash said. “There were two girls and I had them both.”
Hassan seriously doubted that. Cash could get carried away with his stories. He had a way of confusing what he wanted to happen with what actually happened. But it was all funny just the same.
“I went to that off campus party I told you guys about. The one where there’s, like, fountains of alcohol and weed everywhere,” Xavier said.
“Yeah?” Hassan said, voice drifting with fatigue. “How was that?”
Xavier snorted. “Ask your girl. She was there. Sexier than I thought, too. Bravo to you, pageant queen.”
Hassan’s eyes flew open. “Edy?”
He shrugged. “How many do you have? The dark one that’s a dancer.”
Freight eyed Hassan curiously. “When’s the last time you talked to her?”
There was no way in hell Hassan was answering that. But he did want to know more about this party. How could he ask about it without sounding completely pathetic? He sat up, looking from X to Freight.
“So, she went to a party. Must’ve been with her teammates,” Hassan said, trying on nonchalance. After all, he’d been to parties with his teammates. What was the big deal?
X laughed. “Went to a party? Your girl was the party. Shaking her shit up on the table. Getting sprayed with alcohol. And that outfit she had on…” He looked at Hassan and trailed off. “Never mind.”
Tennessee cleared his throat. “There’s one thing you should know,” he said and it took a moment to decipher the expression on his face. Worry, maybe? Fear? He inhaled. “She spent a lot of time with this one guy. I noticed and kept an eye on her for you. You never can be too trusting with these girls, you know. Anyway, I was right about her. She went in the back with a guy. Then she left the party with another. Sorry, man.”
Hassan swallowed. Suddenly there were too many eyes on him and he leapt to his feet.
“Sawn!” Lawrence called and Hassan burst out the room, down the hall, and away at a speed he would’ve thoug
ht impossible.
He didn’t know how long he ran. He didn’t know where he was heading. Not towards Edy, that was for sure, because something was happening. Something was happening between them and to them, and it happened without his permission.
A great well of pain swelled within him and he shoved back the two words that battered and bruised him: Liar. Cheat. Liar. Cheat.
He collapsed to his knees on a grassy Indian burial mound. A sob shuddered through him, shocking Hassan with its complete and utter power. Ragged breaths escaped and he bit down on his fist to fight back. He wanted to run further, harder, longer—long enough so that he collapsed, mindless with exhaustion. But his thoughts wouldn’t let him. Edy owned him, of course. She always had.
“Sawn.” It was Lawrence, pulling him up to his feet. Lawrence who dusted him off. “Come on,” he said. “There are… eyes.”
But Lawrence hadn’t come alone. Cash came along, followed by Freight, slow runner that he was.
“I’ll talk to her if you want,” Lawrence said. “This is Edy. There’s got to be… some explanation.”
But one look at Lawrence told Hassan that he was as skeptical as he was, that he had every right to be broken.
Freight suggested they go over to a stretch of lake, making Hassan realize how far he’d run and how fast. How worried had Freight been to even try to catch him? On a better day, that thought might have made him laugh. Freight was known for a lot of things, such as brute force, a formidable seize, devouring enormous bags of greasy food… but not speed. He was never known for speed.
Hassan shook his head. “I have to get back to the room. Mala and her dad will be here soon.”
Lawrence raised a brow, but said nothing.
“Who’s Mala?” Cash said.
Hassan hesitated. Hearing about Edy had made him vulnerable. He wasn’t willing to share anything else just now. “No one. Someone from home. I’ve got to go.”
He started off, without looking to see if they would follow.
Hassan barely had enough time for a shower and change of clothes before his cell phone rang and Mala’s dad said they had arrived. Feeling nervous, Hassan inhaled deep and looked himself over in the mirror, wondering if the button up and slacks he wore were good enough for dinner. Surely he didn’t need a tie, right?
Mala’s father was tall and broad shouldered, a tanned man who shook by clasping Hassan’s hand in both of his and jerking vigorously. He introduced his daughter.
“Lovely tonight, isn’t she?” he said in aggressively accented English.
“Yes, of course,” Hassan said. He wasn’t there to insult the girl. He just didn’t want to be with her.
Mala beamed.
Back in Boston, she’d worn a lot of traditional clothes, saris and the like. That night, she wore a slender, long sleeved dress that accented her slip of a figure and long, lean legs. Her hair, which looked long enough to tuck into a belt, shone under the dorm lights. She swept it into a tumbling, graceful up do.
Her father drove a Jaguar. When Hassan climbed into the back seat, folding uncomfortably, Mala’s dad insisted she join him in the back. Awkward.
He looked out the window and thought of Edy. What was she doing now? Talking to the guy she left the party with? Laughing with him? Laughing at Hassan? How long had she been playing him for a fool exactly? What if she and Wyatt…?
He put that thought from his mind. This was Edy. He’d known her his whole life. He’d know if she was lying. And she’d never purposely hurt him. So what if it seemed to be no big deal that they hardly saw each other anymore? Unless that meant that she didn’t feel the same as she used to.
What if she didn’t love Hassan? What if she cared about him because they’d grown up together and stayed with him for that reason alone? A wave of nausea hit him at the thought and he wrestled with a prickling of tears. He was overreacting, wasn’t he? There had to be an explanation why she would slip into a bedroom with a guy, then ride off into the night with another.
God. Hassan must’ve been an idiot.
“I enjoyed watching your Iowa game. You were very good,” Mala said carefully.
“Yeah?” Hassan looked at her. “Thanks.”
She appeared to pick at nothing on her dress. “You’ve been shown great favor in life with talent and… good looks.” She blushed at her own words.
Hassan looked at her. Was she actually attracted to him? He hadn’t even thought it possible. For him, the whole idea of her being forced on him made her the most unattractive option in existence. But if he looked at her, really looked at her, it was easy to see she was a pretty girl. Shy. Quiet.
She certainly wouldn’t dance on fucking tables and ride off with some dick.
“Thanks,” Hassan said and noticed Mala for the first time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Edy was busy vomiting again. While Naomi tut tutted and rubbed comforting circles on her back, London laughed like a rabid hyena.
“And so he said to me, ‘Well, have you got a friend to join in?’ So, I grabbed Rhea by the waist and said, ‘If we’ve got each other, we don’t need you’.”
Tamela and a few of the other girls laughed enthusiastically.
Edy heaved again. “So, do they really sleep together or what?” she said into the toilet.
“I’m not sure if they do, or if they just like people to think they do,” Naomi said quietly.
Edy thought about this. The team had a wild reputation and it was one the upperclassmen made sure to perpetuate.
“How are you feeling?” Naomi said.
“Like shit,” Edy said and dry heaved until her stomach spasmed.
Her roommate sighed in response. “I told you to drink more water. It’s why you spent half the night smashed. Who was that cutie you rode out with, anyway?”
“You mean Silas?”
“If that’s his name.” She hesitated. “Does Hassan know Silas? Are they good friends or something?”
Edy lifted her head from the toilet. She knew where her roommate was going with this and she wasn’t interested. “Leave it alone, Naomi.”
“I’m just asking because he might take it the wrong way.”
Did she really think Edy didn’t know that? In her sober mind, she’d reeled over how many ways the previous night could have been interpreted. But what could she do, besides trust that Hassan knew better than to jump to false conclusions?
“He knows me better than anyone,” Edy said weakly. She shuffled out to the bedroom with Naomi on her heels and sat down hard. “We’ve been through a lot. He trusts me.”
“And if he doesn’t,” Tamela jumped in, “then fuck him. There are plenty of fish in the sea.”
Edy looked up in time to catch London wink at her. She snapped her eyes to the floor, quickly.
The girls all chimed in, a chorus of agreement on how many men were out there for the taking. They didn’t understand that there was one Hassan and he was her heart. She didn’t even want to be having this conversation.
Before Edy realized what she was doing, she was up and pulling on shoes, grabbing keys, then heading for the door. Hassan’s dorm was a hike away, but she had to see him. She had to talk to him before he heard any nastiness and interpreted it for himself. Every step brought her a new explosion of panic, before she took off running, then stopped to throw up. When the heaving subsided, she took a seat, willing herself to gather her thoughts, master her panic, and continue only once she had done so. The sun disappeared from the sky in the interim and, finally, Edy headed for Hassan’s room.
***
Hassan entered his room, feeling more confused than ever. He’d just had a nice dinner and an even nicer conversation with Mala and Mala’s dad. They really were decent people. And when he brought up breaking off the engagement he’d never wanted, Mala’s dad fixed him with a broad smile.
“You’re young. You have a girlfriend, no?” he said.
For some reason, Hassan looked at Mala apologetically. “Yeah,” he
said, though he didn’t know what the hell he and Edy were just now.
“I, too, had a girlfriend before I married. It’s common everywhere. My daughter, she was upset at first, until I told her that this is what men must do. ‘Do not interfere,’ I told her. Hassan, you are a good boy and will make the right choice for your family, for my family, for us all. You are like all Indian boys: devoted to their parents.”
Hassan had said nothing. ‘The right choice,’ Mala’s father had said. Hassan had never been able to see it that way, no matter how desperately he’d wanted to. He’d wanted to make his parents happy. He’d wanted to give them what they asked for. But his soul had always gone its own way. It had gravitated to Edy, loved her, wanted her endlessly, for all the good that had done him. But if there was no Edy, would he be able to bend enough to accept Mala then?
He'd looked her over, taking in her sweet smile and her sweeping hair, and thought that if there was no Edy, what did it matter who he was with?
Now, he stood in his dorm room, witnessing a four-way argument with Lawrence and Freight, Cash and Xavier. Hassan had no idea what had happened while he was at dinner, and he seriously doubted he wanted to know either.
Silence echoed as they all stared at Hassan.
“Just tell him!” Freight blurted, and shoved Lawrence toward him.
Lawrence scowled. “You can’t be sure…”
“We’re leaving,” Cash said. “You tell him.” Cash grabbed Freight by the forearm and headed for the door. Hassan stepped aside to let them out. Xavier passed with an apologetic smile.
“Do I even want to know what that was about?” Hassan asked as he shut the door behind them.
Lawrence sighed. “I need to talk to you, I guess. About that party.”
Hassan didn’t think he had the stomach to hear anymore. He shot Lawrence a leery glance. “What about the party?”
Wrecked (Love Edy Book Three) Page 16
