Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts Duet #1)(43)

I miss our talks.

“Me too,” I’d nearly replied, but of course that wouldn’t fly. The more Autumn and I spoke, the more I knew her and spent time with her, the harder it would be on me.

They’re sleeping together.

I stopped midstride and sagged against the wall of the Econ building and took a minute to gather up what I felt and push it down.

“You’re surprised, Sock Boy?” I muttered. “Keep going.”





After Econ—a new economics class, since I’d dropped the one Autumn took too—I grabbed a coffee at the student union, then headed to Professor Ondiwuje’s poetry class. I sat slouched in my seat, my pen twirling around and around as the echo of Autumn’s voice on the other side of Connor’s bedroom door resounded in my head. I gripped the pen so tightly my knuckles turned white and then nearly dropped it in shock as a hand clapped my shoulder.

I whipped around to see Connor in the row behind me.

“Jesus, you scared the shit out of me,” I hissed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m auditing the class,” he whispered back, looking calm, relaxed, confident, and radiating his own brand of I got epically laid last night.

I could’ve hated him if he didn’t look so happy. Then a sense of territorial defensiveness washed over me.

This is my fucking class. My refuge. My outlet.

“You’re auditing this class?”

“I sort of have to.”

“Why?”

He shifted in his seat. “I figure I should learn a thing or two about poetry, now that Autumn and I are a thing.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that mean?”

His smile widened, blinding me with white teeth and triumph. “We did the deed last night. All night.”

“Congratulations,” I said through clenched teeth. The words coming out of his mouth hit me like fists to the gut all over again. “That’s not what I was asking. Why are you here?”

Connor was lost in his memories of last night. “Sorry if we kept you awake but damn… She’s nothing like I expected. A firecracker.”

Nausea boiled in my guts. I glanced at the nearest classmates who didn’t need to hear these private details about Autumn.

“She’s also really fucking intelligent,” I muttered, as if I hadn’t been jerking off to her in a goddamn public bathroom hours earlier.

“She is,” Connor said. “That’s sort of why I’m here. If I hope to keep her, I need to brush up on my romance.” He gave me a knowing, hopeful look. “I was hoping to enlist your help—”

“No,” I said loudly.

Professor O turned his gaze my way. “Not a fan of assonance, Mr. Turner?”

The class tittered.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

The professor resumed his lesson, and after a moment, Connor leaned over my shoulder again.

“So, here’s the thing…” he whispered hesitantly.

“No, there is no thing,” I hissed back. “You need to shut up. I’m trying to actually learn something.”

Connor was stunned into silence, and sat back in his seat, his confusion wafting over my shoulder.

After class, I gathered my shit and headed up the auditorium stairs instead of down, to the back stairwell without a word to Connor. He followed, his voice echoing down the two flights in the back stairwell.

Outside, he grabbed my shoulder on the back pathway of the Creative Arts Building and turned me around.

“Wes, Jesus, will you wait a second?”

“I don’t have a second.”

“Dude, talk to me.”

“I’m late for—”

“Autumn read your poem.”

I froze. My stomach tightened. “What poem?”

He rummaged in his bag and then he handed me a paper. One of my papers with my words on it.



Without you,

The hours stretch

into suffocating days;

gasping through nights



My hand made a fist, crumpling the paper before I could read the rest, as the world suddenly felt airless.

Fuck, she knows…

I divided straight down the center: anxiety at being exposed, coupled with a strange sense of relief.

She knows.

But she slept with Connor.

Now a swirl of confusion battered me, a terrible suspicion making its way up through the storm.

“She read it,” I said slowly. “And?”

“And, well, it’s kind of funny, actually.” He coughed. “She thought I wrote it.”

“But you told her you didn’t,” I said, already knowing the answer.

“I kind of just…went with it.”

“Is that why she slept with you?” I asked. A pit of dread settled into my stomach. “Because she read that poem?”

It was one thing to write a couple of texts to help a friend out. Another if my words affected Autumn enough to convince her to get naked with that friend, to lie in his bed and share her body with him.

Connor shook his head. “Not entirely.”

“Partially? Fractionally?” My lip curled. “Give me a ballpark percentage.”

“I don’t know, it was like the…catalyst?” He held up his hands. “Let’s put it this way, it sure as hell didn’t hurt.”