Breathless #2 (The Breathless Romance Series - Book #2)

BREATHLESS
#2

The
Breathless Series Book #2

BAD
BOY FRAT

By
Claire Adams

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2015 Claire Adams

Get
Each of My Newly Released Books for 99 Cents
By
Clicking Here

Click Here to Read Breathless #1

Read about the first frat boy in the
book SLAMMED by clicking
here

Read
about the first frat boy in the book STEPBROTHER WOW by clicking here

Like
me on Facebook
:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Claire-Adams/547513332025338

Newsletter
:
–
Click
here to get an email as soon as the next book in the series is available.

Get your
free copy of my never released book when you sign up for the authors VIP
mailing list.

Click
here to get your free book

Chapter
One

In spite of how distracted the girl at lunch had made
me, I knew I didn’t have any choice but to go to my afternoon classes. Georgia
told me not to think about it, to give Johnny a chance to explain it if there
was anything to explain, and I went on my way, headed to classes.

But I almost thought that I might as well not have
bothered; as I sat there in class, telling myself over and over again that I
had to focus on what was going on, what the professor was saying, I kept
thinking about Johnny, about the stupid girl, and about Claire White. The
implication was that Johnny was somehow involved in this other girl’s suicide;
why else would the stupid girl from the dining hall even bring it up? But how
was Johnny involved? If it was a suicide, how could anyone else really be
involved? I wondered—was it some kind of thing where Johnny had bullied her? Or
had he done something else?

I pushed aside the idea that Johnny could possibly
have done anything directly to make someone kill themselves. I had known—not
well, but a little bit—a girl in high school who had committed suicide. She
hadn’t been able to take the pressure from her parents, she hadn’t been able to
take the pressure from the school we went to, and someone had spread the
rumor—after she had died—that she had been a lesbian as well, but I never knew
if there was any truth to it. As far as I had ever known, people committed
suicide for deeply personal reasons. Sure, bullies could push them do it, but
the idea of Johnny bullying anyone was absolutely absurd. He was so sweet, so
kind and nice, I couldn’t think of any way that he could even possibly be
capable of that kind of vileness.

I remembered that he was playing an away game that
night; I couldn’t even ask him what the situation was, or what his connection
was to this Claire White girl. I went from one class to another still thinking
about it; still worrying about how I could get the information I wanted. I
genuinely didn’t want to doubt Johnny; I wanted to just ignore the stupid
girl’s comment, and pretend I had never heard it. I wanted to totally put it
out of my mind and assign it to spite because she was clearly into Johnny and me
clearly—at least for now—had him. I tried telling myself that over and over,
and it didn’t help. Who was Claire White? What did her suicide have to do with
Johnny? Could I even ask him?

I decided as my last class of the day was in progress
that the only thing I could do to get at least a little bit of peace of mind
was to text him. He was probably on the bus, or maybe in whatever city the game
was happening in. He wouldn’t be able to call me, and obviously I couldn’t ask
him the question that weighed on my mind the most, but I could have some
contact with him, I could get some reassurance. It occurred to me that I also
had no idea when he would even be home from the game—and I had no idea who else
I could ask without betraying my total lack of knowledge. I didn’t even really
know where he was playing, what school our team was up against.

So sitting in class, I sent Johnny a text.
Hey, babe, thinking of you! How many days
until you come back to me?
I kept my phone in my lap and waited throughout
the rest of class to hear from him; I got a buzz that nearly made me jump out
of my seat—a totally unrelated text message from one of my high school friends,
sharing an inside joke we’d had. I tried not to be disappointed, but I couldn’t
help but feel like I would rather my friend have thought of the joke after I’d
heard from Johnny. I forced myself not to text Johnny again. I was not going to
be the kind of girl who couldn’t trust her boyfriend when he was away from
home.
Is he even my boyfriend?
The
thought shocked me. I realized that I had been taking things much more
seriously than anything that had happened gave me any right to do.

I somehow managed to get my notes written down, and I
absorbed maybe one word out of every five that the professor said in the
lecture, and I knew that it was going to be just as bad as it was my first
week. It had been so much easier to deal with when everything had been good and
I had had no knowledge of Johnny having anything like a past. I had had a brief
moment of complete ability to concentrate on my work, on the classes I had. I
would have to work harder. I would have to put any thoughts about Johnny—good
and bad alike—aside whenever I was in class, or I would doom myself to failing
half my classes; I would never have to worry about my English or Writing
classes, and Introduction to Academic Life I would have to put actual effort
into failing in order not to pass. But Math, and a couple of the other required
freshman classes, I would absolutely have to learn how to pay attention.

I tried not to read anything into the fact that Johnny
hadn’t replied to me as the class ended; if the bus was full of rowdy college
boys, if they were all hanging out and roughhousing on their way to their away
game, then he probably wouldn’t have heard my text or even noticed it. He
probably wasn’t even thinking about his phone at all.

I reminded myself that we weren’t even technically
serious—we’d had one real date, and just because I’d slept with him and just
because he’d told me it meant something to him, it didn’t mean that he even
considered himself my boyfriend yet.
Let’s
be real, he’s a frat boy and an upperclassman,
I thought bleakly.
Hold onto him for a month if you can and
then you can start worrying about whether or not he’s your boyfriend.
I
scolded myself for thinking more about Johnny than he really deserved after
only knowing him for a couple of weeks at the most; he probably wasn’t thinking
about me at all—and I couldn’t be mad at him for that. It wouldn’t be fair to
him to expect him to be as involved as I was—not when he’d probably been with a
slew of girls. I didn’t mind the idea of him being with other women before me,
as long as he wasn’t with them still. I remembered the nasty girl from the
dining hall and the party telling me that Johnny was a well-known player.

I had just about convinced myself that I wasn’t going
to even think about it anymore as I was walking across campus, headed back to
the dorms. I’d eat a snack, maybe watch some TV and get some studying done, and
then I would see if there was any way that I could find out when Johnny would
be back. I was thinking that there had to be a way to ask Johnny what his
connection was to this Claire White girl without making him think I was being
nosy or accusing him. As far as I knew, the girl was just trying to scare me
off of a guy she had privately decided was “hers.” I started feeling better,
thinking that I would just ignore her comments and move on with my life; I
would have to get used to girls being petty and jealous about Johnny.

I spotted the girl from the dining hall was I was
nearing the dorms, talking to some of her friends while they all wandered from
a class or somewhere else on campus. I had no idea what they were talking about
before I got close to them; they were all relaxed, from what I could see as I
came up behind them. The girl glanced up at the sound of my feet on the pavement
behind her and grinned, as nastily as I had ever seen anyone smile in my life.
“Have you talked to Johnny-boy yet?” she asked me, calling out as I skirted the
group of them, trying not to even look at her. I felt my cheeks burning with a
blush. “I bet Johnny is just so excited to tell you all about it!” The other
girls in the group with her laughed, as if it was the funniest joke in the
world.

I hurried past them and had to swipe my card at the
front entrance twice to get it to read properly. I was so shaken by their
incredible meanness, by their rudeness—even if she had it out for me, what
right did that girl have to dredge up someone else’s tragedy? I hurried up the
stairs, not even bothering to wait for the elevator. The girls—if they were
going to one of the other dorms—would have had to have passed through the
freshman girls’ dorm building, and I didn’t want to give them an opening to
make fun of me again.

It wasn’t just the fact of them making fun of me that
made me feel so panicky; it was the worry that they might know something about
Johnny that I didn’t. Something awful. What if it turned out that he had abused
that poor girl, and that was why she committed suicide? What if—and this really
lingered in my mind as I ran up the stairs to my floor—what if it hadn’t really
been a suicide at all, and somehow that girl knew about it, even though it
wasn’t common knowledge? How well did that girl even know Johnny? If she really
had worries about Johnny’s involvement with some girl’s suicide, why would she flirt
with him? And was her issue with me, or was it with Johnny?

I got to my door out of breath and with my heart still
pounding in my chest. I fumbled with my keys in my nervous hands, nearly
dropping them.
Chill, Becky. They don’t
know where you live. They probably stopped even thinking about you as soon as
you were out of sight.
I forced myself to take a deep breath and finally
managed to unlock the door to the room, dropping my backpack down on the floor
next to the couch before throwing myself down onto it, turning the TV on and
putting on one of the series that I liked.

I stared at the TV and pretended to watch, even though
I knew I’d just have to re-watch the episode again later. My mind was spinning
around in my head. I pulled my phone out of my bag, hoping against hope that
Johnny had texted me and I had just managed to miss it. There was nothing
there, and I found myself questioning the situation between him and me, between
Johnny and the girl Claire, and the nasty, rude girl who had told me about
Claire White.
She’s just being a bitch
because Johnny is interested in you,
I told myself.
If she really thought he was a terrible person, why was she trying so
hard to flirt with him the other night?
I couldn’t think of a good
reason—but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. My fingers itched to text Johnny
again, but I forced myself not to. If I sent him a dozen texts in a day without
him responding to even one of them, I’d look like a lunatic. Instead I read
through his older texts to me, reminding myself of how sweet he was, how funny
and kind. Surely he couldn’t have had anything to do with a girl who had killed
herself.

Chapter
Two

I was still brooding over the issue of Claire White
and Johnny and the cruel upperclassman girl who apparently had decided to make
it her personal goal in life—or at least for the semester—to ruin things
between me and Johnny, when Georgia came in from her last class of the day. She
looked just as cheerful as ever, humming to herself as she came through the
door, practically bouncing to the side of the dorm where her room was and right
back out to throw herself into the chair. “Why so glum, chum?” she asked me. I
shrugged.

“It’s just what that stupid girl in the DH was saying
about Johnny,” I replied, frowning. I picked at imaginary lint on my jeans,
embarrassed even that I was admitting to the fact that it had gotten to me. “On
top of that, when I was coming back from classes, I ran into her again—with a
bunch of her friends.” I told Gigi about the girl’s taunting, about how her
friends had laughed.