Boyfriend Material (Hawthorne University, #2)(18)

“Good idea. Glad you thought of it,” I reply dryly.

He looks between us. “Anything crazy ya’ll are scared of?”

Reece shrugs. “Bugs don’t bother me, but I don’t care for thunderstorms.”

Boone picks up the Mountain Dew, opens the cap, and sucks down a drink. “Serial killers bother me. I’ve watched too many documentaries, and those Ted Bundy types are so random. My uncle lived out on a farm in the seventies and someone stabbed him inside his house. The police think it was Bundy. A man fitting his description was camping nearby. Have you noticed that most serial killers live in rural places? I mean, Sparrow Lake is sort of isolated. Lots of woods, farmland, and lakes. Perfect places to dump a body.”

I chuckle. “Rural Minnesota Killer. Sounds like a good show idea.”

“Dude. Don’t even,” Boone replies with a wince.

Reece pops me on the arm. “Eric here has a thing about bananas. Called them the demon of the fruit world.”

I start. “What? When?”

He nods. “You said it one night when you were trashed. Something about your brother and you.”

I lift my shoulders in a shrug.

Boone narrows his eyes at me. “Come on, spill. Did you choke on a banana as a kid? Did it get stuck in your throat? Was it that mushy feeling, like a slug?”

My lips twitch. “You’ve had too much Mountain Dew.”

Boone cocks his head and gives me a knowing look. “The smell, right? The freaky strings?”

“No.”

“Are you intimidated by their girth because your dick is small?” Reece tosses in.

“No,” I say, exasperated.

They cross their arms.

“Tell us the truth,” Reece says.

I throw my hands up. “Fine. When I was five or so, I went to bed and there was a long curvy thing under my covers. I screamed and Kurt came in and said it was a python, that he’d seen it outside earlier. Then he pushed me on top of it, and I could feel it moving under me on the bed. Turned out it was a bunch of bananas he’d put under my covers.” I can still see his lanky form bent over laughing in my room. “He was crazy like that. Fun. Anyway, I hate bananas. I’m not scared of them.”

“Demon of the fruit world,” Reece reminds me and I chuckle.

A few minutes later, Boone has taken out the trash and is loading the dishwasher with green, fuzz-covered dishes. I’ve vacuumed, and I’m about to head upstairs when Reece catches me by the arm.

“Hey, how was the test?”

“Not good,” I say on a sigh.

His brow furrows. “I knew you were tense when I walked in. Since when do you care about cleaning, right?” He nudges his head at Boone who’s singing as he works. “He’s a good kid. He’s just anxious. And the Kappa thing? Hopefully he’ll figure it out on his own.”

“I hope so.” I went through hell when I pledged. Forced to drink, play stupid games, run errands for the brothers. The alpha in me rebelled from the beginning.

Reece holds my gaze. “And tell your dad to ease up. It’s your senior year. You aren’t perfect. No one is.”

I nod, but . . .

He doesn’t know my family history.

Everyone must be perfect—or they pretend to be.

My dad.

My mom.

And me?

I took the place of my perfect, dead brother.





7





Julia





I walk to the city center four blocks away and find the local pawn shop.

A man with too much aftershave looks the ring over with one of those jeweler’s loupes while I stare at the big TVs on the wall.

Desperation fills me as I mull about Connor. He’s been known to rough up a few of the girls that used to dance at the club because of their debts . . . or worse. One of them, Minnie, quit to go “work” for him, fell into his heroin trap and overdosed a year later. Another, Gina, slapped him one night at the club when he groped her.

There are still missing posters of her on light poles around town.

The other girls told me not to mess with him, but the warning came too late.

My mother had already started buying from him.

She wasn’t always an addict. When I was growing up, she was a manager at an upscale restaurant called Spinelli’s. The clientele and staff loved her. It didn’t have great health insurance, but she assumed it was enough.

One night after working late, she fell asleep at the wheel and ended up upside down in a ditch. She somehow walked away from the wreck but had cracked three vertebrae in her neck.

It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It hurt to breathe.

I remember tears streaming down her face when she stormed out of an orthopedics office after finding out how much her surgery was. She finally had the surgery—what choice did she have—then another one. Her pain got better but never went away.

Connor offered her a never-ending supply of painkillers. Of course, they weren’t free. When her bill became several thousand dollars, he cut her off, then came to me for the money.

The pawn shop owner frowns. “Three hundred for this.”

Nausea swirls. I’ve seen enough pawn-shop scenes in movies to know he’d try to undercut me, but I didn’t realize he’d do it by that much. “It’s worth more.”