Wild: The Ivy Chronicles (18 page)

When we stepped out into the lobby, Emerson was there waiting for me.

And so was Pepper.

I groaned internally. Reece and Shaw stood behind them. Mortification washed over me. This was the scene I had wanted to avoid.

“Georgia, are you all right?” Emerson and Pepper stopped before me, looking me up and down. Here, in the fluorescent light of the police station, my dress looked even more shocking. I’m sure I looked like a train wreck . . . hair a mess, makeup smeared.

“I’m fine. It was a mix-up. The party . . .” I didn’t feel like admitting at the moment that I had gone back to the kink club. I was satisfied to just call it a party. “Well, the guy throwing it broke into the house . . .”

“Yeah. It’s all over campus.” Emerson nodded, her eyes wide.

My stomach twisted sickly. “It is?”

“Yeah, on the news, too,” Pepper added, looking grim.

“Oh, God. On the news? W-why?” I shook my head, wondering why something like this was so noteworthy.

“Really, Georgia?” Emerson looked at me as if it should be evident. “A sex club broke into the Dartford dean of students’ house. You think that wouldn’t get out? Just tell me. Was Chippy the Squirrel there?”

Emerson’s attempt at humor fell flat.

Acid surged up my throat. Clearly, there was no keeping the kink club a secret. “The dean of students?”

If Andy was in front of me right now I would seriously throat-punch the guy.

“Georgia, are you all right? What were you doing there?” Pepper’s brow knitted with worry. “This is so not like you.”

That’s right. Stepping outside the box wasn’t like me. I looked from her to Reece. They made no mention of Logan, and I could only guess they didn’t know he was involved yet.

Her gaze flicked back to my dress before returning to my face. “And you missed Emerson’s show. At the gallery in Boston, remember?”

I closed my eyes with a groan. I had totally forgotten. On top of getting arrested, I sucked as a friend. Another consequence for living life outside my box. “I forgot. Em, I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head. “Forget about it. It’s okay.”

Rachel chose that moment to join us.

Craptastic.
Things kept getting better.

Reece looked at her, then me. His nostrils flared and he swung his stare around the room, clearly searching for his brother. “Where is he?”

I shook my head miserably.

Rachel laughed. “Guess you weren’t his one call.”

“Logan was there, too?” Pepper asked.

Annoyance started to prick at my nerves. “Look, I appreciate y’all coming here, but I only called Em.” I so did not feel like a group interrogation this morning.

Pepper looked crushed, so I amended my tone, wondering why I was tiptoeing so much around them. They weren’t my parents. And I’m the one who spent the night in jail with a prostitute who wanted wardrobe advice for a crime I didn’t commit. “It was a mix-up. They let us go. They’re not pressing charges.”

This didn’t alter their expressions. Emerson and Shaw looked at me like I was some kind of curious creature that might perform tricks for them. Pepper just looked worried, as though I might spew pea soup next. Reece looked tense and unhappy, ready to rip into his brother at the first opportunity. Which was right about now.

Logan and the other guys emerged through the doors. His gaze took in the group of us at once. He hesitated before shaking his head slightly and walking over to us, resignation clear on his face.

He looked slightly rumpled, exactly like he had slept on a bench in a police holding cell. His gaze fixed on me. “You okay?” he asked, his voice low, intimate, even though everyone was watching, listening.

I nodded, an inexplicable lump rising to my throat.

He glanced next at Rachel. She shrugged with a wry grin. “Sure. What’s a night in the slammer? Our new friend Darcy gave me her pimp’s number in case I ever need a job.”

Logan rolled his eyes at her joke.

“What the fuck, Logan? I’m pretty sure getting arrested could cost you your scholarship.”

Logan settled cool blue eyes on his brother. “Yeah, if I was actually charged with anything. It was a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding that landed you and Georgia in jail.”

“Me, too,” Rachel piped in with an overly bright smile. “Not that anyone cares.”

Reece turned his blistering gaze on Rachel. “Considering you were the one to get him involved in that club in the first place, no, I don’t really give a rat’s ass.”

“Back off,” Logan growled.

Rachel shrugged. “It’s all right. He’s not wrong. Of course he shouldn’t care about me. I’ll go wait for my ride outside.”

I watched Rachel go, for some reason wanting to call her back. I felt bad for her.

“Reece.” Pepper touched his arm.

Reece looked down at her and then back at Logan. Remorse clouded his face, which he quickly chased off in favor of looking obstinate again. “When are you going to start making smart choices, man? I get that you and Rachel have been friends a long time, but you can’t let her drag you down anymore.”

“You don’t get it. Rachel is family. When you left me with Dad, I didn’t have anyone. She was there. She understood.”

Reece nodded at me. “And what about Georgia? You gonna ruin her life right along with yours?”

I jerked at the reference to me. “Don’t drag me into your family drama,” I whispered, the quiet of my voice capturing my churning anger. I had my own shit to deal with.

“Reece,” Pepper snapped, looking at me with apology in her eyes.

“I don’t stick my nose in your personal life,” Logan reminded him, facing off with Reece. “I never have. I’m almost nineteen. A little late to be playing the father role now.”

Both brothers looked ready to take a swing at each other. Right there in the middle of the police station. Not the best move.

I squeezed between the two of them, so pissed. “No one can ruin my life.”
I can do that all by myself
. “And your brother isn’t ruining his. Shit happens. This was just one of those things.”

I looked at Logan then. His broad chest lifted with breaths. He stared down at me, his gaze unreadable, but I felt like he was waiting for me to say something.
Do
something.

I moistened my lips and repeated myself, my voice small and only for his ears. “This was just one of those things,” I repeated, shaking my head, silently beseeching him to understand.

Comprehension crossed his face, and then his eyes iced over.

I meant more than getting tossed in jail. I meant us. We were just one of those things. Something that happened without logic. Or planning. Like a meteor hitting the earth, leaving its impact forever deep, a scar on the ground that would never heal.

“So
we’re
just one of those things,” he clarified, not bothering to keep his voice at a whisper. He laughed then. A short bark of laughter that held no humor. I cringed and shot a quick glance around to our friends. They looked as uncomfortable as I felt. “You’re right, Georgia,” he announced. “That’s all we are. The
shit
that happens.”

I flinched. Hearing him confirm my words hurt more than I could have imagined. I tried to speak but it felt like I was choking on rocks. My hands opened and closed at my sides, dying to reach out and touch him.

“We can never be anything else.” He nodded once, his jaw rock solid. “Not until you figure out your shit and grow up.”

His words rippled through me and settled like a writhing serpent in my belly.
I
needed to grow up? Shock and indignation spiked through me. And fear. Fear that he was right. Fear that he was more of an adult here, owning his feelings, and I was the little girl still afraid of making a misstep, disappointing my parents when they weren’t even here to witness my actions.

“And I can’t sit around waiting for that to happen anymore.” He angled his head, resignation hard in his eyes. “Good-bye, Georgia.” His gaze flicked to his brother, his voice flat. “Can I get a lift?”

Reece nodded, his eyebrows drawn tightly over his eyes in concern as he looked between Logan and me. Without another glance at me, Logan walked out of the precinct, taking my heart with him.

“Georgia . . .” Pepper squeezed my hand, her heart in her eyes. Shaking her head sadly, she released my hand and followed Reece and Logan out.

Turning, I faced Emerson with a smile that felt as brittle as glass. The ache in my chest went so deep I had to fight wrapping my arms around my middle to keep myself from splintering apart. I just had to get out of this place. I just needed to shut myself in my apartment before I crumbled. “So. Can I get a ride?”

She nodded, her vivid blue eyes wide and absorbing on my face. “Sure.”

I walked out of the precinct, commanding my legs to move, to hold it together, to follow Em and Shaw to their car.

Chapter 20

I
SHOWERED WHEN
I
got back to the loft, functioning like a robot, not thinking, not allowing myself to feel. When I approached anything that resembled emotion, the pain was too raw, too deep. I stuffed it far down inside me, right alongside the image of Logan walking away from me.

I ate a slice of cold, leftover pizza, which settled like cardboard in my stomach, and then collapsed into bed, sleeping twelve hours straight. When I woke, it was dark and I fumbled for my phone to see what time it was: 8:19
P.M.
stared back at me. So did nine missed calls and countless text messages.

Pepper. Emerson. Suzanne. Mom. My sister even. No Logan, though, and pain that shouldn’t be there sliced my chest.

I started scrolling through the texts. One from Em caught my attention because it was all in caps. GO CHECK YOUR FB PAGE!!

My heart slid into a faster rhythm as I jumped over to Facebook on my phone. I didn’t regularly visit my page. Given that I wasn’t very active, I didn’t get a lot of interaction there.

As soon as my wall popped up a strangled sound ripped from my throat. There I was in my blue dress, handcuffed beside Logan and being led from the dean of students’ house. There were multiple pictures for all the world to see. Well, all my world, anyway. All my followers.

Friends, fellow students I slightly knew but whose friend requests I had obligatorily accepted, were LOLing and OMGing all over my wall. I was getting dancing and laughing emoticons and things like:

WTG!

High-five!

You dirty girl!

Didn’t know you had it in you!

Crazy biatch, why didn’t you invite me to the party?

I know who I want to party with!

Who’s the hottie with you???

As fast as I could I deleted all the posts and then I sat there in the dark, heart hammering so hard I thought I might pass out.

What were the odds that any family member saw it?

I wasn’t an asthmatic, but right then I thought I needed an inhaler.

With a trembling hand, I lifted my phone back up and stared at my missed calls. Four from my mother. One from my sister. Their voicemails were there, beckoning.

Why, oh, why had I taken a nap? If I had been awake I could have deleted the posts as soon as they appeared and no one would have likely seen them. At least no one in Muskogee, Alabama.

You still don’t know anyone from home saw them
.

Mom called me a lot. She liked to keep tabs on me. And today was a Sunday. She always called on a Sunday. Even multiple times.

My thumb hovered over my phone, inching closer to the play feature of my voicemail.

Suddenly a sharp rap on the door had me squeaking and my phone flying. I jumped to my feet and turned for the bedside lamp, stubbing my toe.

“Motherfucker!” I grabbed my toe, feeling my shattered nail against my palm. At that moment I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty for the profanity. My throbbing toe . . . and the last twenty-fours warranted it.

Tears spilled from my eyes that were only partly due to pain.

Another knock sounded.

“Coming!” I flipped on the lamp and limped to the door, blinking back my tears and swiping at my cheeks.

Expecting to see Emerson or Pepper or Suzanne there and totally ready for someone to talk me off the ledge, I pulled the door open.

The impeccably coiffed woman staring back at me pushed me off that ledge.

“Georgia. Good of you to answer the door. I don’t imagine ‘motherfucker’ was the greeting you intended for me.”

“You heard that?” I said numbly.

“I think the entire bar heard that.” The way her lips curled around the word
bar
told me exactly what she thought of me living above one.

I dragged a ragged breath into my lungs. “Hello, Mother.”

IT TOOK LESS THAN
an hour to pack up my things. Mom insisted we could pay someone to pack the rest and ship it back home. As far as she was concerned, she wanted to get me out of this cesspit—her words—and back home where I belonged. Permanently.

I didn’t argue. She hardly looked at me as she moved about the loft, grabbing my things and stuffing them into my luggage. Her inability to meet my gaze conveyed just how disappointed in me she was. I didn’t need to ask why she was here. Whether or not she’d seen the photos on my wall. She had.

My heart felt like a twisting mass in my chest. I wasn’t going to get through to her in her present mood. My best hope was to go home and visit for a few days until she cooled down.

She zipped my suitcase with flourish. “There. Let’s go. We don’t want to miss our plane.”

I nodded.

“You have your ID and phone?”

It was the same question she had asked me every time I left for the airport. Ever since I took my first trip. I nodded again. “Yes, ma’am.”

Mom walked downstairs ahead of me. I paused on the threshold and looked around the loft, telling myself it wasn’t the final time I would be seeing it. I liked living here. My own space. And I had so many memories of Logan wrapped up in the place. With an inhale, I closed the door and locked up after me.

MUSKOGEE WAS THE KIND
of place that changed very little over time. A relatively affluent community half an hour outside of Auburn, the male population lived for football and good barbecue. The women lived for church and gossip. Teenage girls in Muskogee lived for cotillion. As I was reminded as I stood in my sister’s bedroom.

I peered into Amber’s closet, admiring the white gown that hung from her door, and tried to look genuinely interested.

I had dragged myself from my bedroom, where I’d been hiding the last two days, to see it. She had been bugging me to check out her gown ever since I arrived—indifferent to the circumstances of my return or Mom’s black mood.

Mom had yet to talk to me since we got back. A fact that told me how truly angry with me she was. I’d texted my friends and called Dr. Chase, explaining that I went home for a short visit. No one pressed me as to when I would return, which was a good thing, since it wasn’t a subject I had addressed with my parents yet.

“Do you love it?”

I stroked the silk flounces. “It’s beautiful.”

“Here.” She pulled a heavy scrapbook off her desk. Together, we sat on the bed and flipped through the pages that captured every moment leading up to and through the night of her cotillion.

“Did you have a good time?” I asked, pausing at a picture of her with Mom before the fireplace. Mom looked happy. Proud. It made me think of my own cotillion.

I’d attended with Harris as my escort. It had been the highlight of high school for me. Shopping for the perfect dress with Mom. My photograph in the newspaper alongside all the other debutantes. Waltzing in Harris’s arms at a fancy hotel ballroom.

I remember thinking that night was so magical. But now it seemed a dim memory. That girl someone from a very long time ago. The pride in my mother’s eyes a faint recollection.

I glanced at my sister. She was blond like me, but with my stepfather’s green eyes. I had been her—without the fear of rejection. My real father’s legacy was always there. Still to this day. Like a snake ready to strike and release its venom.

I glanced around her room. The pink canopied bed. High school pennants on the wall. Pictures of her friends and boyfriend all over her mirror and in frames on her dresser. My world had been like this. It should feel more familiar. This should feel like home.

Instead, I felt like a visitor. I always assumed I would return to this place someday, but now the urge was gone. I wanted to go back to Dartford. To my friends. To my life there.

“I saw the guy on Facebook,” Amber’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

“What?” I looked at her.

“The guy walking beside you. When you were handcuffed in the blue dress.”

“Logan?” I frowned at her.

“Is that his name?” She returned her attention to her scrapbook, flipping the page. “He was smoking hot. Is he your new boyfriend?”

I studied her bent head before replying. “No.”

It felt weird talking about him here with Amber. He was part of another world. A different world.

And so are you.
Now
. I had another life. One I liked.

“Well, that’s good. Mom has been on the phone with Harris’s mom a lot lately.”

I tensed beside her. She kept talking as she flipped through her scrapbook, looking at photos she had doubtlessly looked at a hundred times. Amber in front of a limo with her boyfriend and another couple. Amber grinning as a corsage was slipped on her wrist.

I wondered if she ever got tired of looking at these photos.

Suddenly, I was glad that I had dated Harris. If for no other reason than that I followed him to Dartford and expanded my horizons and found friends like Pepper and Emerson and Suzanne.

And Logan.

“It’s just a matter of time,” she was saying.

“What is?”

“You and Harris. That’s what Mom thinks.”

I shook my head. “No. Not happening.”

She looked up. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah.” She closed her book with a snap. “I always thought he was a prick. Walking around Muskogee with a huge ego because his dad is the mayor. I mean Muskogee is this big.” She pinched her fingers together in the air. “It’s not like he’s the president’s son or something.”

I smiled. “No. He’s not.”

When I saw that guy in the photo with you . . . I confess I was hoping you had moved on. Especially with someone as yummy as that.”

My mouth sagged. Maybe my little sister wasn’t such a Mary Sue after all.

A gentle knock sounded at the door. Mom pushed the door open. “Hey, girls.”

She might have been addressing us both, but her gaze was fixed on me. Mom crossed her arms and cleared her throat in that way she did when she was settling in for a long talk.

Amber rose and set her book back down on her desk, not missing the cue. She grabbed her keys and phone. “I’m going over to Jeremy’s.”

“Back for dinner,” Mom said.

We didn’t say anything for several minutes. Sitting on the bed, I listened to my sister back out of the driveway until her Prius faded from hearing.

It was a little bit after noon. Mom was off for the majority of the summer, but Dad was working. I did wonder why she didn’t wait for him to get home before having this talk. He might be my stepfather, but they had always handled the big conversations together. It gave me hope. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad since he wasn’t present.

“Georgia.” Mom pulled out Amber’s desk chair and sank down onto it. “I’ve taken these two days to cool down . . . I admit this latest debacle of yours greatly upset me. Me and your father.” She crossed her legs. “But you know I don’t believe in making decisions in the heat of anger.”

I nodded, relaxing. I liked where this was headed. She had cooled off. There was no real harm, after all. No charges had been pressed. It was just a misunderstanding. As for the fact that I had been at a “sex club,” maybe she could just pretend she never knew that. You know, like how she knew I was having sex and took me to the doctor to get me on the pill but a conversation about sex never actually took place.

“You’re going to withdraw from Dartford and move home.”

We stared at each other, her words sinking in. Home.
Home
. The word reverberated through me. I tossed it around and turned it over, tasting it in my head.

I glanced around us. According to her this was home. Only it didn’t feel like home to me anymore.

When I found my voice, it came out a hoarse scratch. “What?”

She uncrossed her legs and closed both hands primly around her knees. “It’s too late to apply to Auburn, so you can attend community college in the fall or intern at the bank. That might be great experience for the future. In the spring you can transfer into Auburn and finish your degree while living here.”

Pain slicked through my chest at her words. “You’d do this to me?”

“Oh, don’t look so stricken. I’m looking out for you. I always have. You’ve had this . . . side to you, Georgia.” She shook her head. “It’s always worried me.” She meant my father. I had his blood running through my veins.

Helplessness raged inside me. What had I ever done to concern her? Enjoy music? Play the guitar?
Almost
get into trouble with the law one time in twenty years?

“So you’re just going to plan my life out for me?” My heart galloped eighty miles an hour in my chest.

She cocked her head. “You don’t seem very capable of doing that yourself these days, Georgia.”

I opened my mouth to tell her that this was my life. That she couldn’t dictate my future, but then she added in succinct tones, “Let me be clear: This is not a suggestion, Georgia. You’re done at Dartford. We are no longer paying your way unless you do this. Your tuition. Your living expenses. It’s all gone. Oh, and your car isn’t in your name. That’s gone, too. Insurance. Everything. If you go your own way, you’re paying your own way.”

I sat there, the air sucked out of me, stunned.

Mom
tsk
ed. “Don’t look so miserable. This is for the best. There was a time when you cared about what I thought. You wanted to please me and listened to me.”

I nodded. I still did, but pleasing her was harder. Impossible maybe. Nothing I ever did seemed to be enough. And she didn’t really mean listen . . . she meant obey.

She continued, “You’ll see, Georgia. Harris will be home in two years, and he’s already expressed to his mother that he can still see the two of you settling down someday. Isn’t that great? You’ll be here waiting for him after he graduates from Dartford.”

I stared at my mother in disbelief. This was who she thought I was. A girl who would live at home, waiting for Harris to take her back on his terms when he was ready?

Mom thought that was good enough for me. That I couldn’t possibly want more? Or deserve more?

She rose from the chair. Lifting it, she slid it back beneath Amber’s desk. “I’ll let you think it over. I know you’ll come around.”