Foreplay (The Ivy Chronicles #1)(49)

“You shouldn’t be wasting your time on me.” He rose abruptly and grabbed his discarded shirt. Shrugging it over his head, he continued in a hard voice, “This was fun, but I think you’ve had enough foreplay lessons, don’t you? You’re more than ready for your Polo-wearing frat boy.”

I watched him, his lean body leaving the circle of light cast by my lamp until he fell into shadow near my door. Part of me wanted to call him back and assure him that he was wrong. But wrong about what? That I wasn’t wasting my time with him? That tonight wasn’t somehow enough? That he actually couldn’t have done what he said and harmed his father? I knew next to nothing about him. I couldn’t say any of that.

I let my instincts kick in. The same instincts that helped me survive after my father died, when it was just me and Mom. I watched him exit my room and close the door behind him. Clutching the blanket close to me, I got up and locked it.





Chapter 16

Wait. He said he put his father in a wheelchair?” Georgia demanded over a stack of pancakes at our favorite waffle house a few blocks from campus. Her fork cut into a link of sausage and then swirled it in syrup. She pulled the glistening meat off her fork with a snap of teeth and chewed, staring at me as though concentrating on something complicated.

Emerson shuddered and sipped her coffee, carefully adjusting her leopard print sunglasses on the bridge of her nose and angling her face away from the window to the right of her. A barely touched bowl of oatmeal sat before her, which I made her order, insisting she would feel better with some food in her stomach. “How can you eat all that?”

“I can eat like this because I run five days a week and I don’t get piss drunk,” Georgia replied, cutting a perfect, bite-sized triangle out of her pancake stack. “Now. Back to the bartender. Did you ask him what he meant by that?”

I toyed with my hash browns, stabbing at them. “No. He was in a hurry to leave after that admission, and to be honest, I was kind of in a hurry for him to go, too.”

“No joke.” Emerson sighed. “The hot ones are always sociopaths.”

“Really?” I looked at her across from me in the booth. “Always?” I glanced at Georgia for help. “Always?”

Em cringed, touching her forehead. “You’re too loud. And if not sociopaths, they’re at least damaged.”

“Now you tell me that. If that’s the case, why were you in such a hurry to hook me up with the hottest guy you could find then?”

“Did you want to hook up with someone homely with no skills in the bedroom? I thought the point was to get you some experience.”

“Ignore her.” Georgia batted a hand in the air. “She’s moody because she’s hungover. Hunter is hot and not damaged. The same can be said for my boyfriend.”

Emerson muttered something into her coffee mug that sounded suspiciously like “Are you sure about that?”

Georgia shot her a look. “Funny.”

“I’m just saying you never know what’s really inside anyone.”

“Well, that’s a cheerful thought.” Georgia shook her head and reached for her juice. “Listen, I doubt he meant it like that. Maybe his father injured himself on the job, working long hours to support the family and Reece blames himself. You know, something like that. The guy obviously didn’t hurt his own father or he’d be in jail. And if he was that malicious, why would he feel obligated to run his father’s business?”

“Maybe he wanted the business for himself all along,” Emerson supplied.

“Gosh, you’re full of optimism this morning,” Georgia snapped.

“Sorry, I just don’t want Pepper hurt, and he’s starting to sound like someone capable of doing that.”

Georgia took a sip of her juice and seemed to consider this. As did I. We made out twice, and each time he made me come without any expectations for himself. He could have hurt me plenty of times.

Georgia swirled more sausage in her syrup. “I just think she needs to find out what he meant.”

“Yeah,” I murmured. In the light of day, my flight instinct had diminished. Now curiosity had hold of me. What really happened to Reece’s father? A guy who stopped to help a girl stranded on the side of the road wasn’t the type who would put someone in a wheelchair. Especially not his own father. “I want to know.”

Emerson muttered something into her mug again.

“What?” I demanded.

She leveled her blue eyes at me over the rim. “You know what they say. Curiosity killed the cat.”

Even though I had decided to see Reece again and get to the bottom of his confession, it took me several days to get around to it. Partly because of my wavering resolve and partly because I was busy. Between writing a paper for World Lit, studying for my Abnormal Psych exam, and working two shifts at Little Miss Muffet’s, I hardly had time to sleep.

It was probably for the best anyway. I needed a little space to remember why I began this whole thing with Reece. It was purely curiosity that refused to let me put him behind me for good. At least this was what I told myself after I turned in my paper and found a parking space in the parking lot at Mulvaney’s. Upon entering the bar, the tantalizing aroma of chicken wings assailed me. Apparently it was ten-cent wing night. The place was full of stocky rugby guys. A few girls sat at tables loaded with baskets of wings. They, too, looked like they might belong on the men’s rugby team.