Foreplay (The Ivy Chronicles #1)(30)

“Reece just cornered me back there, when we got separated.”

“Ooh.” Her eyes flared. “What did he say?”

“Oh, he knew all about it.”

She winced. “Awkward much?”

“Oh, yeah, and his brother. Logan? He’s eighteen and still in high school.”

“Oh, that’s awesome.” She laughed, clapping her hands. “Wait till I tell Annie.”

“Yeah, Reece pretty much thinks I’m a terrible person.”

She stopped laughing. “Impossible.”

“Yeah. He does.” I nodded doggedly, my footsteps beating out a hard rhythm across the gravel. “You should have seen the way he looked at me.”

“Well then he’s a jerk. Screw him. Who needs him?”

She unlocked her car and I opened the passenger side door. I sank down onto the seat with a heavy sigh.

“You can hone your skills on any guy you want.”

I laughed brokenly and corrected her. “No. Not any guy I want.”

I wasn’t one of those girls who didn’t know what she looked like when she stared at herself in the mirror. I knew I was attractive enough, but with thousands of other pretty twentysomethings around who dressed much better (and in far less clothing) than me, I wasn’t anything extraordinary.

“Yes! You’re the full package, Pepper. Hunter’s already noticed. Hell, you don’t need Reece or any other guy for that matter. Maybe it’s time you just go for it, Pepper. Stop beating around the bush and go after Hunter.”

Nodding, I stared out the windshield as she pulled onto the street and left the strip of bars and restaurants behind. “You’re right. It was a dumb idea.”

“No, it wasn’t. And even if it was, I think it was my idea, so blame me.”

A smile brushed my mouth. I looked over at her. She frowned as she stopped at a red light, and I could tell she was feeling bad.

I relaxed back against the headrest. “No one made me do anything. I know you credit yourself with mad skills of persuasion, but I decided to do this.”

She sent me a skeptical look. “Really?”

“Really. It is possible to go against the Great Emerson.”

She sniffed as she turned onto Butler, the main street that cut through campus and crossed in front of our dorm. The academic buildings were quiet as we drove past. Several upstairs windows glowed with light. I envisioned the students within, buried in their lab work. They possessed too much ambition to cut loose for a wild night at the bars. A few weeks ago I would have been one of them, ensconced in my dorm room or at the library. It was crazy to think that a phone call from Lila, meeting a hot bartender, and bumping into Hunter had changed all that. I told myself it was the combination of the three, but what did I know? Maybe it was just time for a change. To break out of the shell I’d forced myself into the morning my mother dropped me off on Gram’s front stoop.

Whatever the reason, a switch had been flipped inside me.

With Reece’s face running through my mind, his light-colored eyes so sharp and scornful, I felt vulnerable and shaken. It was an uneasy sensation. Reece didn’t make me feel safe at all, which was everything I needed. Everything I craved. My lips tingled in memory of his kiss, and I admitted that it wasn’t the only thing I craved anymore. Hopefully things would work out with Hunter and then I could have both—what I craved and what I needed.

With a sigh, I rested my head against the glass of the window. The coolness seeped into my cheek. “I’ll have to go back. Apologize to him.”

“To Reece?” Emerson slid into a vacant spot in front of our building. This early, it was relatively easy to score a good space. She put the car into park and swung around to face me. “What for?”

“I was using him.”

She laughed. “Oh, Pepper. You’re too nice. You think he cares that you mistook him for his man-whore of a brother? So you flirted with him a few times. No harm in that.”

I saw his face in my mind again, the anger in his eyes. He looked like he had cared.

“I think I owe him an explanation at least. I lied . . . I denied everything and then I ran off like a coward.”

Emerson shook her head and killed the engine. “You have scruples, I’ll give you that.”

We got out of the car. It beeped locked after us as Emerson continued. “Men use girls all the time and never apologize. My own father is at the top of the list. He’s the king of players, even at fifty-four. I went through half a dozen nannies because he usually ended up sleeping with them and then fired them afterward because things got too awkward.” Emerson fumbled for her door key. “And don’t let me get started about my mother and the prize shit she married. And my stepbrother.” Her shoulders shook with a visible shudder. “I won’t even go there.”

We stepped into the harsh fluorescent lighting that buzzed like an incessant gnat. I studied her almost warily as she punched the UP button on the elevator.

She rarely talked about her father, and her mother was a dead subject. I didn’t even know she had a stepbrother. This gave me new insight into her and confirmed what I’d always suspected. There was more beneath the surface. She was more than the carefree party girl who fooled around with a different guy every night.

I wasn’t going to push her to talk. After my father died, there had been a string of loser guys in my mother’s life. She never hooked up with the decent, settle-down types. Some of her boyfriends were so mean that I learned to be grateful for the ones who didn’t see me at all. The ones who looked through me like I wasn’t there.