Crushed (4 page)

I manage to get the mess through the rubber band only twice before she squirms away, although there’s so much damn hair, I don’t think I could have done another loop even if she’d been still and docile: two words I don’t think will ever apply to Chloe Bellamy.

She turns around to give me a dirty look, and I glare back. “Alpha enough for you?” I ask.

Her eyes narrow. “I know what this is about.”

“No time for pop psychology,” I say. “Time for some resistance training.”

She responds anyway. “You’re mad because I squeezed that cute boy’s muscles and not yours.”

Jesus
.

“I
would
have squeezed your muscles,” she rambles on, “but I didn’t want to disrupt that big old bunch of gauze on your right arm. I’m thinking either knife fight or a tattoo that you have to cover up. Club employee rules.”

It’s the latter, but if she keeps running her mouth there just
might
be a knife fight.

“Quit stalling,” I say, moving toward her and wondering how inappropriate it would be to gag someone while teaching them proper form for squats. “Now let’s do this in front of the mirror so you can see what you’re doing. We want to train you to do squats and lunges correctly from the start so you’ll eventually be able to do them on your own.”

“Yeah,
that’s
gonna happen,” she says. But then she lets me move her toward the wall of mirrors on the far side of the gym. “So can I see your tattoo?”

Hell no
. I stand beside her, both of us facing the mirror, her face pink and animated, mine dark and glowering.

“Okay, do what I do,” I say, meeting her blue eyes in the mirror. “We’re going to lower ourselves to a sitting position, making sure our knees don’t extend beyond our toes.”

I do a squat to demonstrate. Generally I do squats with weight—lots of it—but since the most physical exercise Chloe seems accustomed to is running her mouth, I figure I’d better start at the beginning. The very beginning.

“Okay?” I say, doing another since she didn’t mimic my motion the second time.

She watches my movement in the mirror. “One more time,” she says.

I comply, and then mutter a string of curses because Chloe Bellamy has just reached out in the middle of a busy gym and patted my ass.

“Very nice,” she says, sounding surprised.

“Chloe!”

She shrugs. “You just got so upset when I was ogling that other guy instead of you, so I wanted to make you feel good.”

For a second I want to laugh, and because of that I’m tempted to tell her that this arrangement is over. That she can go back to being her chocolate-munching lazy self, because I don’t laugh.

Not anymore.

Chloe’s different, and I
hate
different.

She’s not like the women who eye me like a piece of meat, nor like the love-struck girls at the bar who act like I’ll settle down once I find the right girl.

And she’s definitely not like her sister Kristin, who knows exactly how gorgeous she is and knows that all she has to do is wait for the guys to come to her.

Chloe is . . .

I don’t even know.

She gives a long sigh. “I’m sorry I fondled you.”

She does a quick half squat. “Okay?”

I hold her wide blue gaze in the mirror, startled to realize that without all that hair distracting from her features, she’s actually quite . . . well, I don’t know what.

Interesting?

Arresting?

I don’t know if
pretty
’s the word.

“No, not okay,” I snap, annoyed by the train of my thoughts. “You need to go down farther.”

“That’s what she said.” Chloe tries again for another squat, and I keep my hand on her shoulder, gently forcing her to go just a little bit lower.

“But that’s hard,” she protests.

I give a grim laugh. “Yeah. That’s kind of the point.”

Chloe turns her head to face me then, meeting my eyes for real instead of in the mirror.

Awareness flashes across her face, and I jerk my hand away, feeling a little unnerved, because I have the strangest feeling that Chloe Bellamy knows that when I say it’s hard, I’m not talking about the squats.

I’m talking about life.

My life.

Chapter 4

Chloe

I love college.

I spent my entire senior year of high school gnashing my teeth in annoyance that Kristin got to go to college first.

That sort of jealousy was actually a first for me. See, Kristin and I are so different that even being a mere year apart (usually a recipe for disaster with teenage daughters, I’m told), we never
really
fought, because, well . . . what were we going to fight over?

I didn’t want to borrow her lip gloss. She wasn’t exactly fighting for my spot on the debate team.

So high school was fine. I mean, it was . . . whatever.

But I was jealous when she went to college, because I
knew
college was going to be my thing.

Even though I knew we’d likely end up at the same school (I’d always had my eye on Davis, as had Kristin. As had every Bellamy since the history of Bellamys), but even knowing my big sister would be there, I’d had every intention of thriving.

And I have.

So far it’s been as great as I imagined, from the first day freshman year to last year’s kick-ass internship.

I prayed my little heart out that I’d get hooked up with an awesome roommate, and the big guy came through for me. Tessa is this tiny redheaded bundle of awesome. Next year will be the fourth (and last, sniff!) year that we’re roomies, but it won’t be the last that we’re best friends.

The rest came pretty easily, too.

I’ve got a rock-solid group of friends. I love both the econ and bio departments and all the faculty there.

I even met a couple cute boys who kinda sorta seemed to dig my quirkiness, dated them awhile, traded in my V-card on principle to one, and then ultimately dumped them both, because, well, I’ve been sort of hung up on you-know-who.

And it’s that you-know-who that brings me to the flip side of college life: the bittersweet phase known as
summer break.

See, Cedar Grove has the not-so-great nickname as the Silver Spoon of Dallas.

The town is about twenty-five minutes away from the city: close enough for the residents to fool themselves into thinking they’re urban when it suits them, far enough away to be
elite
when it suits them.

And the latter suits them pretty much all of the time.

Anyway, the point is . . . us “kids” of Cedar Grove? Unless it’s a cushy internship, not many of us go the summer-job route during our college years.

Most of our parents do the token “It’ll be good for you to get a real job,” and in response we do the token application to the movie theaters and the lone ice cream shop, but they have only so much room for the June–September workforce, and most of the jobs are snatched up early by people who need them.

People like Michael St. Claire who don’t have rich parents to float them.

Anyway, summers here in Cedar Grove consist of hanging out at various people’s pool parties (in Kristin’s case), finding ways to avoid your mom’s insistence on dress shopping “just for fun” (my case), and a whole lot of Devon Patterson coming over for dinners.

So it’s like I said.

Summers are bittersweet.

Bitter, because I have to watch my sister and Devon make up for a school year’s worth of missed make-out sessions.

Sweet, because summer’s the only time I get to remind Devon that I’m even alive.

Tonight, however, is especially bitter. It’s the first night since Kristin and I got home that Devon has made the time to come over, and Kristin is alternating between pouting because he’s been busy, and letting her hand slide way too far up his leg, considering my parents are, like,
right there.

I manage to get a couple of questions in around mouthfuls of chicken while Kristin picks at the green beans on her plate, but my parents mostly dominate the conversation, asking Devon what was next now that he’d graduated, and does he like Kristin’s new haircut?

Normally I love it when my parents give him the third degree after not seeing him for a while because it lets me get the updates without having to seem overly interested myself.

But tonight I can’t stop noticing that Devon seems . . . off.

I’ve known him since the fourth grade, and he’s practically been a part of the family since he and Kristin started dating when they were fifteen.

He’s always been one of those easy, got-it-all-figured-out kind of guys, but tonight he’s acting weird.

I look at my sister to see if she noticed, but she’s too busy wiping calories—and flavor—off her grilled chicken.

Typical.

After dinner, Kristin and I start to do the dishes, and Devon insists on helping, which is nice at first, but then I realize that it’s just a chance for them to grope each other while my parents finish their wine in the dining room.

I should be used to it.

I
am
used to it.

But tonight, I’m just not in the mood. My head is pounding, my legs feel like they’re broken after that stupid workout with Beefcake this morning, and my heart . . . it just
hurts
.

I make it through loading the plates and silverware into the dishwasher and then bail without guilt.

It’ll be a fun project for Kristin, having to figure out how to get the gunk off the potato dish without ruining her manicure.

I start to grab a Coke from the fridge, then hesitate as I imagine Michael St. Claire’s glare. I grab a Diet Coke instead.

I don’t care about being skinny. Not
that
much, anyway.

But I
am
tired of feeling out of control.

Granted, a sugar-substitute beverage is not going to help me take over the world or anything, but still, it feels like progress.

Baby steps, right?

I head out to the pool, watching from the chaise longue as the last of the daylight fades away when someone plops down on the chair beside me.

“Hey, Chlo.”

Devon.

Just like that, all the tension and headache melts away.

He and I don’t often get time alone.

Okay, hardly ever.

But every now and then he seems to remember that we were friends long before my sister even knew he was alive, and I get rewarded with moments like these.

Kristin-free moments.

“Hey,” I say softly as he stretches out his legs on the chaise. He’s wearing green cargo shorts and I try hard not to stare at the shape of his calves, I swear, but I look anyway.

Why is he so beautiful? And why do I have to notice?

“Where’s Kristin?” I ask, trying to remind my lust-addled brain that Devon is not for me.

I try to force my mouth to stop watering. It’s just his legs, for Christ’s sake. Hairy legs. Male hair is practically pubes . . . which so does not help my train of thought.

“On the phone,” he replies. “One of her sorority sisters is having some sort of crisis.”

“Probably a highlighting appointment gone wrong,” I say, pulling my legs up to my chest and wrapping my arms around my knees until I remember that I’m wearing shorts and that the fat white underside of my thighs is exposed. I quickly extend my legs straight out, but that sort of makes the leg fat spread out like a beached whale.

Lose-lose.

I sigh and try to forget about it.

Devon’s not paying any attention to my legs (of course), but he idly reaches out to take a sip of my Coke only to wince and make a face at it. “Diet?”

“Mom buys it for Kristin.”

“So why are
you
drinking it? You run out of the real stuff?”

I don’t know if I
love
that Devon’s totally ignorant, or if I’m totally annoyed by it.

I mean, on one hand I guess it says a lot about him that he doesn’t automatically assume that I’m drinking Diet Coke because I need to, well . . . diet.

But on the other hand,
come on, dude
. You don’t think a girl with a few extra pounds isn’t
highly
aware that the nondiet stuff isn’t going to make her look good in a pair of skinny jeans any faster?

I open my mouth to tell him this, but I hesitate.

Devon and I haven’t talked about anything that personal in a
long
time.

And I know that some people think the Holy Grail of friendship is being able to sit in comfortable silence with another person, and Devon and I have always had that, which I’m grateful for.

But I don’t fool myself into thinking we’re besties.

Once upon a time, I told him everything, and he told me as much as an eleven-year-old boy is likely to tell anyone.

But lately?

Lately I’ve been wondering if Devon doesn’t still think of me as my ten-year-old self, because there’s so much he doesn’t know about the grown-up Chloe.

He doesn’t know that the bold preteen he once knew who pretended she didn’t care what other people thought of her is having a harder and harder time holding on to that illusion.

He doesn’t know that twenty-one-year-old Chloe has more than a couple self-esteem issues, one of them centering around that Diet Coke can that he’s commandeered.

And he
definitely
doesn’t know that grown-up Chloe has grown-up feelings for him.

I don’t have a clue how to tell him that this brother-sister thing he thinks we have going on is pure agony.

And since I can’t tell him how I feel, I tell him something else instead.

Because maybe it’s time to revisit the bold, say-anything Chloe.

“I went with diet over regular because there’s fewer calories,” I blurt out, my gaze locked on the unmoving blue water of my parents’ pool.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see his hand falter in the process of taking a sip of the Diet Coke, and he turns to look at my profile, and then . . .
horror
. . . I see his eyes briefly run over my body.

My soft, untoned, prefers-real-Coke body.

I resist the urge to cover up, but I do suck in my belly. Just a little.

“Chlo—” His voice is a horrifying mixture of surprise and dismay.

“Don’t,” I mutter.

“Don’t what?”