Diamonds (All that Glitters #1)(40)

When she finally spoke to Jude, he seemed suspicious on the phone, but when she explained that it was an emergency, he backed down. After that call with her dad, there wasn’t any way for her to get out of it, and she promised Jude she would make it up to him as soon as they could meet again.

She was packing for Las Vegas when Celia called up the stairs. “Bryna! Your boyfriend is here.”

Bryna cringed. Boyfriend. She must be talking about Gates. It was all so f*cking confusing. She couldn’t tell Celia that she and Gates weren’t dating without raising red flags about what had happened over Christmas, and she hated explaining anything to that dimwit. Hopefully, the air would be cleared up soon enough.

She stepped out into the hallway as Gates reached the top of the stairs. “Hey, B.”

“Gates,” she said with a nod. She gestured for him to follow her back into her room.

Once he was inside, he shut the door. His eyes surveyed the mess. “Well, I was going to see if you wanted to go out, but it looks like you’re leaving.”

“LV State invited me to a recruitment weekend.”

“Vegas?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Can I come, too?”

“Don’t you have shit to do with your movie?”

“Nah. I have some free time before I finish off the promotion. You still coming to the premiere with me?”

“Yeah. Yeah. That’s fine,” she said, distracted. “You can come to Vegas, too. Whatever.”

“You okay? You seem out of it.”

“Jude and I were supposed to have this big talk this weekend, but my dad found out about this weekend visit, so I have to go now. I’m so pissed, and I don’t know how this talk is going to go at all.”

She tossed an LV State T-shirt into her bag and then tried to force it closed. Gates pushed it down, zipping it for her.

“Try not to stress it, B. You clearly love the guy.”

Bryna dropped the suitcase she had just picked up and stared up at him with terrified eyes. “What did you just say?”

“You love him, don’t you?” Gates asked. The typical humor in his eyes was replaced with sadness.

“I…don’t want to talk about this,” she muttered.

Not with Gates.

Not with anyone.

Love. That was the biggest four-letter word out there.

Do I love Jude? Her throat closed up, and her palms started sweating. She felt sick.

No, she wasn’t going to think about that.

“All right. Are you staying on campus, or should I get us a place at the Bellagio?” Gates asked, changing the subject.

“I’m supposed to stay on campus, but get us a room in case the place is shit,” she suggested.

“Done.”

Gates immediately got on the phone with his manager and asked him to book them a room on the Strip for the weekend. They stopped at Gates’s place to pick up an overnight bag and then headed out.

They arrived on campus just off of the Vegas Strip late that night. After checking in at the visitor’s center, she was given directions to the campus hotel. The room was nice enough that she decided to stay there.

Gates drove back to the Bellagio alone with big plans to go to the casino and stay up half the night playing blackjack.

She had a meeting the next day, so she got some much-needed sleep before heading to the president’s building in the morning. His assistant directed her down the hall to a large conference room. She stepped inside a roomful of other students. She wondered what they were all being recruited for. How many parents did the president personally contact to get them here?

She saw President West speaking to a few students on the other side of the room. He smiled when he saw her, but she walked in the opposite direction. Is he seeing me or dollar signs?

She might have ended up here at her father’s insistence, but she wanted to like LV State. It had always been her top choice. She had been on campus since she was a baby. She wanted to rule like she did now at Harmony. But with nearly fifty thousand students, would that be possible? The thought set her on edge. She wanted to find her people…now. She didn’t want to wait for school to start to make friends and step into the limelight.

Bryna tried mingling with a few students and found out that many of them were there for a scholarship interview. They were finalists for a full-ride merit scholarship. She ended up sitting next to one of the girls during lunch with the president. The university had flown the girl in from some small town in Alabama, and she had a thick Southern drawl that made it difficult for Bryna to understand half of what she was saying. It was clear…these were not her people.

By the end of lunch, she was glad to skip the tour for her meeting with the head football coach, Coach Galloway. While he was a young coach, he had earned the spot at LV State two years ago after there was a scandal with the previous coach. Coach Galloway took the team to a national championship victory that year and wasn’t planning to leave anytime soon. Her father had made it a point to become friends with him, so she was relatively well acquainted with him.

She walked into the athletic complex and straight to his office. She knocked twice.

“Come in.”

She pushed open the door. “Coach Galloway, it’s so great to see you again.”

“Bryna, how are you?” He stood, shook her hand, and gave her a dimpled smile.