Broken At Love (Whitman University) (2 page)

“I’m sorry I said that. It’s not fair; I don’t know you.”

“It’s okay. It’s only natural for you to assume what you hear around campus is the truth. I’m the new guy.” I shrugged, letting my shoulders slump.

Her eyes went soft around the edges. The tension between us ramped up; I knew Annette would describe it as electricity, as a sign of attraction on some deep level when all it meant was that our bodies demanded physical contact.

She gave up a tiny gasp when my eyes found her mouth again. “Maybe we should go back downstai—”

I cut her off with a kiss, hesitant at first because that’s what she expected, and waited for the inevitable sighed acceptance. From there, sex was as foregone a conclusion as the meeting downstairs. But the night still required patience, so I eased back the moment I felt her start to relax into me.

“I couldn’t resist. We can go back to the party now.”

Pushing never got a guy in anyone’s pants. Okay, maybe it had, but that wasn’t my style. Quinn Rowland took what he wanted, but it needed to at least seem like her idea. Top seed or not, Annette was no different.

Instead of answering, she leaned back into my mouth. Her heart pounded against my chest, skin hot, hands busy. So I took, and followed the rulebook because it never let me down.

Kissed her neck. Let my forearm “accidentally” brush her boob, and when she didn’t protest, touched her on purpose. Watched her open up a little at a time, starting with her mouth and ending with every last piece of her. Including her heart. It had to be her heart, too, or I lose.

Sex
and
feelings. Shame
and
regret. That was the game.

Annette, the girl who had refused to let the rest of the guys inside her, paused only once. We’d gotten comfortable on the bed and with one another’s movements. The red dress lay on the floor in a crumple; her tanned, naked body stretched against me.

“Quinn,” she said quietly.

I raised my head, meeting her lust-filled gaze. “Are you okay?”

The expected question. Faked concern got them every time.

“Yes. I’m just…I’m not…I don’t usually do this. I never do this.”

She bit her lip again in that pouty way I had begun to suspect was orchestrated. It came across as hesitance, but under my hands her body screamed otherwise.

“Neither do I. No matter what you’ve heard. I feel…don’t you feel the connection between us?” I didn’t move, smiling at her and waiting for this unbearably predictable moment to end.

“I definitely feel something,” she breathed against my lips, kissing me with more urgency before wrapping her long legs around my hips.

That’s when phase one ended. The preliminary phase.

Set.

As she eagerly let me claim my prize for the next hour, the lie she’d believed so easily turned over in my mind. A voice deep inside me whispered the truth but she couldn’t hear it, even as our damp bodies moved in rhythm.

I do this all the time, Annette.
All
the time.

***

The guys hadn’t been right about Annette being hesitant to jump into bed, but she made me work for the rest of the victory. She wanted to feel important, considered, and like I desired more from her than the admittedly better than average sex we were having at least twice a day. So I let her believe I wanted more, too. If she knew the real me, she’d run.

And be the better for it.

Three days passed with me playing the dutifully interested frat boy. Annette and I danced. We held hands. I brought her drinks. Her friends were jealous. We had sex on the beach while the sun rose and I blatantly ignored advances from at least a dozen other girls I’d normally have boned and sent packing.

It exhausted me, the pretending to care. Listening well enough to respond appropriately. Finally, as the sun peeked over the horizon on the fourth day—the first day of semifinals at Flushing Meadows—she went ahead and took a hesitant step.

The bedroom we’d claimed warmed slightly from the rising morning, bathing our sweat-fresh skin with a cool breeze wafting in through the open balcony door. Sleep tried to drag my eyelids down, but nice guys who gave a shit didn’t fall asleep two minutes afterward, so instead I watched her chest as her heart stopped pounding.

“What are you thinking?” I asked, propping myself up on an elbow and reaching out to settle a hand on her flat stomach.

“I don’t know.” She rolled her head my direction, biting her lip in that playful way and sliding my hand upward, skin prickling in its wake.

She had a great rack. I might even miss it a little.

Her body responded to my teasing fingers, and if the game was going to last another day or so, I planned to take advantage. But as my lip pushed my fingers out of the way, Annette served wide. Double faulted. Handed me the win.

“I was thinking, Quinn.” She paused, gasping and fisting her hands in my hair, but I halted my efforts at the serious note in her voice. “I’ve got a sorority semi-formal next month. You’ll go with me, right?”

Our eyes met when I looked up; my eyebrows lifted in silence.

“I mean…I like you.” Annette looked away, her gaze sliding toward the open window, then back again. Hesitance hung there, but also hope. Happiness. Desire.

It would all turn to hate. I was a jumble of broken pieces, as Alexandria so sweetly pointed out, and Annette only liked the ones I’d let her see.

Even a whole Quinn Rowland wasn’t a pretty picture.

Relief lifted weight off my chest as she waited for me to return her admission of feelings, to echo her desire to take our relationship outside the confines of the party and the U.S. Open. I scooted away, the first real smile I’d shared with her stretching my cheeks. “I don’t think so. Now get the fuck out.”

Match
.

The Australian Open

Chapter Two

Emilie

“Okay, so Dad doesn’t want to come, but are you going to be at the gallery show?” I paused, staring at my reflection in the mirror over the sink. My mother answered, giving me a bunch of reasons she couldn’t be at my first art exhibition, as I stared. It could be her face. Her Peruvian genes trumped every single one of my father’s Irish ones in the womb.

“Fine, Mom. I get it. There will be other shows…yes, there will. I’m not changing majors again and you can tell Dad the same thing…” My roommate Ruby threw open the door, letting it bang against the wall and launch closed behind her as she made a racket kicking off her shoes and flopping. “Yeah, Ruby’s home. I will. Love you, too.”

I hung up my cell phone and tossed it on my unmade bed, lying back on the tousled covers.

“They’re not coming to your show, huh?” Ruby squinted at me, her typical blunt manner grating the way it did when she invaded my privacy.

“No. My dad took some Doctors Without Borders speaking engagement that night and he wants her to be there.” The excuse paled, even for them, but I wouldn’t get a better one.

My father didn’t approve of my majoring in Art, which meant my mother didn’t approve either. I’d changed my major to Graphic Design, to appease them, but it hadn’t really worked. Apparently nothing other than Pre-Med or Pre-Law would make him happy, and I couldn’t stomach either. The sight of pretty much any bodily fluid made me want to yak and the thought of sitting in an office all day staring at a computer made me want to die.

Lose, lose.

But if Dad pulled my tuition money and shut down my trust fund, I’d have to cave.

Ruby shrugged and I smiled, content to drop the subject. “How was rehearsal? Get to the makeout scene yet?”

She grunted, a frown turning down her red lips. Ruby moved to sit on the end of my bed, prime position for being able to peek at herself in the mirror while she talked. “I swear, if Melvin Hickens has ever kissed a girl before now, I’ll eat my hat. Hell, I’ll even
wear
a hat.” She shuddered. “And if he tries to shove his tongue in my mouth I’m going to need a lawyer.”

I snickered. “I’m tempted to suggest it to him just to watch you not be able to freak out in the middle of your opening-night performance.”

Ruby finished sweeping her hair into a ponytail, pulling blonde strands of hair around her face just so, then turned and grinned. “So are we going to Quinn Rowland’s Australian Open party or what?”

I clapped a hand over Ruby’s mouth and waited for Annette to come barging in with those crazy eyes, screeching about evil Quinn Rowland. “Ruby, seriously. You know you can’t say his name out loud.”

She rolled her eyes, then giggled as I frowned at the smear of bright red lipstick on my palm. “He’s not Beetlejuice.”

One of the guys in my art history class, Toby Wright, had passed me a coveted invitation with a plus-one, and Ruby had been begging to go ever since. Now, her giant green eyes went sappy as she fell to her knees at my feet. Ruby threw her face in my lap, blonde hair tickling my thighs as she fake-sobbed. “Please, Emilie! We never get to do anything fun. Nothing exciting in the least ever happens here!”

Attending Ruby’s plays made my semesters brighter but sometimes her tendency to overdramatize every moment of regular life exhausted me. I moved my knees, pushing her to the side until she collapsed on her back, one arm thrown over her face.

She peeked at me from under her forearm. “Please? I know Quinn used and abused Annette, broke her heart, pushed her into therapy, whatever. But come
on
, Em. These are the best parties we’ll ever go to, everyone will be talking about it for months, and seriously, Annette shouldn’t have slept with the guy after knowing him for two hours, anyway.”

“All valid points…” I hedged.

The truth was, I wanted to go. Art history was a great class and I loved Toby. It would be fun to hang out, and Ruby wasn’t exaggerating about the status of Quinn’s parties. Plus, Annette
shouldn’t
have slept with him. Everyone knew about Quinn Rowland and his womanizing ways.

Not that it stopped half the girls on campus. The guy got laid more than a member of a British boy band even though he never called, never dated, and apparently never gave a shit about anyone but himself.

He’d seemed different to me on the pro tennis tour. More focused. Maybe he just didn’t have anything else to work toward since his injury forced his retirement at twenty years old. I’d felt sorry for him at the time.

“So we can go?”

“What about my art projects? The gallery showing is in less than two weeks.”

“You’re almost done.” Ruby stuck out her lower lip. “Come on, Em. We won’t tell Annette.”

“We won’t tell
anyone
,” I insist.

***

We spent hours getting ready, because not only are Quinn’s parties the best of the year, he’s also part of the undisputed hottest fraternity on campus. Toby’s not too shabby; we went out a couple of times, but I just wasn’t really into it. I liked him, though, and we’d stayed friendly.

The mirror reflected me but with more makeup than usual. Far from ugly, but on a campus full of some of the richest kids in the country, far from the prettiest girl in any room.

As if to prove my point, Ruby’s stunning frame appeared in the mirror behind me. She spun around, the bright red dress flaring around her thighs. “What do you think?”

“Gorgeous, as always.” I turned back to the mirror, curling a couple last stubborn pieces of too-smooth black hair. “Is this dress okay?”

It was hers, and shorter than anything I owned. It made me feel daring and sexy, two things that sizzled excitement through my blood. Ruby and I had been friends only since we were thrown together in the roommate lottery our freshman year, but I had been significantly bolder since that moment of chance.

“Duh. The emerald makes your skin do crazy hot things. You know I’m hella jealous of your mixed parentage, right?” She tugged my arm, making me drop the flat iron into the sink.

“Sheesh, Ruby! I almost burned myself.”

“You look amazing. Any hotter and the boys will be too afraid to talk to you. Let’s go.”

I let her drag me away from the mirror and down to her Acura. It might have been January, but winter in South Florida meant an occasional nip in the overnight air, not snow and heavy coats. Ruby had vetoed even the thin black cardigan I’d tried to slip over my bare shoulders.

“You have the invitation?” she double-checked.

“Yep. Green means go.”

My invitation was green—overnight guests were given white ones. I didn’t mind; no other Delta Epsilon girl had even been invited. That we knew of, anyway. With Annette’s total meltdown after Labor Day we couldn’t be the only ones afraid to breathe a word in the house that started with
Q
and ended with
uinn
.

The drive to the beach didn’t take more than fifteen minutes. Whitman University essentially sat on the Gulf Coast, but Quinn’s family home stretched across acres of private beaches. My family didn’t have to worry about money but we didn’t own our own flipping beach.

Or a house that probably had its own zip code.

We pulled up to the front door and stepped out into the twilight, the mansion rising into the deepening sky. Pretty cream-colored siding and blue shutters completed the massive coastal architectural dream. A valet—or rather, a freshman Sigma Epsilon Alpha pledge—took Ruby’s keys. The kids waiting to get inside stretched along the manicured privacy bushes, the pops of purple and red from the lush flowers bright in the early evening. The line disappeared around the western corner of the house, and the laughter and chatter interrupted the peacefulness of the coastline at the end of a long day.

“Ugh. Lines. What is this, some trashy Miami nightclub?” Ruby wrinkled her nose.

My roommate hated waiting for things, and she had very little practice. Neither did I, if I was being honest, and the idea of traipsing around in these three-inch heels made me want to punch the first frat boy who tried to pick me up. “We need a drink.”