Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 164557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 823(@200wpm)___ 658(@250wpm)___ 549(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 823(@200wpm)___ 658(@250wpm)___ 549(@300wpm)
The football player beside me continues to stare. “I need you to be honest with me.”
“Okay?” I finger-comb my hair before tucking it behind my ears.
“Do I repel you?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Do I repel you?” he repeats through clenched teeth. The veins in his forearm bulge as he rubs the bridge of his nose. This is clearly painful for him.
“Isaac…you just had your fingers inside me,” I remind him.
“Yeah, and now you’re running away. Is it because I didn’t make you come?”
Oh my God. I know laughter is not the appropriate response in this situation, but it’s getting more and more difficult to contain mine. It bubbles deep in my throat, demanding to be free.
“Is that it?” he pushes.
“No.” I inject as much reassurance into my tone as I can. “I was seconds away from coming, I promise.”
“Really.”
“Dead serious. I just forgot I have a house meeting tonight.”
As if I hadn’t even spoken, he says, “Am I undesirable?”
I gape at him. “You’re Isaac Grant.”
“Well, yeah, I thought I was. Usually I can pull chicks without even trying. I walk into a room, and there’s, like, five thousand women ready to go home with me, and all of a sudden, one of them isn’t into me? Suddenly someone is, like, wait, are you flirting with me? Sorry, I have plans, see you later.” He moans in outrage. “I thought I was Isaac Grant!”
“Oh, sweetie. Is someone making you doubt who you are?”
“No.”
He’s obviously lying. The example he gave was very specific.
I reach over the center console and pat his huge bicep. “Whoever she is, she’s not worth this turmoil.” I wave my hand to gesture at his broad, muscular frame. “You’re a god. Your body is…” My eyes glaze over for a second, and I find myself leaning in as if to kiss him before realizing what I’m doing and snapping myself out of it. “Trust me. You’re gorgeous. And your finger game is stellar. Forget this girl.”
His lips curve into a hopeful smile. “Do I have to forget you too?”
“Huh?”
“That’s what you said outside the Coffee Hut yesterday, remember? That you’d meet up with me tonight and then we’d forget it ever happened.”
“Pretend it never happened,” I correct.
It’s the standard line I offer my hookups. If you see me on campus again, pretend we don’t know each other. I don’t need a gaggle of smitten men waddling up to me raving about our one-night stand when I’m with my prissy Delta Pi sisters.
Although to be honest, the last person I expected to arrange a hookup with was Isaac Grant. When he started flirting with me at the campus coffee shop yesterday, I was prepared to brush him off. Instead, he won me over. I’m still confused about how he did it. The guy has nothing to worry about in the charm department, that’s for sure.
“Technically, this doesn’t count as a proper meetup,” he tells me, waggling his eyebrows. “On account of neither of us finishing.”
“Maybe, but this was my only free night for the next few weeks, so…” I lean in and kiss him on the cheek. “To be continued. And if not, it was nice meeting you. But I really have to go now.”
“Drive safe,” he says.
“I will.”
I hop out of his Porsche and dart toward the hand-me-down sedan I got from my sister Ava when she graduated from Briar four years ago. Everyone in my family has attended this university. My mom is a legacy at Delta Pi, which is why I had no choice but to pledge freshman year. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have joined a sorority. Or at least I’d have picked a more fun one. Instead, I’m forced to race home from Hastings because our president is a tyrant.
Only ten minutes from the Briar campus, Hastings is a quintessential East Coast small town complete with an idyllic main street, one-of-a-kind shops, and a historic town square. Isaac and I met behind the senior center tonight, since the parking lot there turns into a ghost town the moment the clock strikes four p.m. and Hastings’s elderly flock to the diner for their early-bird dinners. He lives nearby on one of the tree-lined residential streets, but I didn’t want to go to the house he shares with three other football players, because I don’t need that kind of visibility.
Some might say I lead a double life.
Fine. Faith says that.
But my best friend is only half-correct. It’s not a double life so much as an extremely private one. There are activities I like to partake in, risks I sometimes take, that aren’t in line with the image I’m expected to maintain.
To my family, I’m hardworking, responsible Charlotte. I’m their perfect daughter, their darling sister.
To my sorority sisters, I’m a legacy who’s strong but demure, confident but chaste.