Foreplay (The Ivy Chronicles #1)(59)

“Something you ate gave you a bad dream?” I heard the skepticism in his voice. “What was the dream about?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You called for your mom.”

My heart clenched. Physically hurt inside my chest. “I did?”

“Yeah.”

Yeah. I called for her all right. That night. And later. The night she dropped me off at Gram’s I cried. I screamed for her. “What else did you hear?”

He studied me, his eyes gleaming in the gloom. “Want to talk about it?”

“No,” I snapped before I could stop myself. “I don’t want to talk about when my mom abandoned me. Left me on my grandmother’s doorstep like I was some rolled-up newspaper.”

He didn’t move. Just held still, hands searing imprints on my shoulders. “That happened?”

Yeah, I thought. That happened. And other stuff that I would never talk about with anyone. I never had. Mom abandoning me? That was no secret. I could give him that little insight into my colorful history. But not the rest.

I nodded, my voice lodged somewhere in my throat, refusing to surface.

He tugged me back down on the bed, his arm wrapping around me. I stared out at my room washed in the soft purple of morning and wished that his arm didn’t feel so good holding me. It wasn’t supposed to. That wasn’t part of the plan.

“Now you know about my dysfunctional family.”

He was silent for a few moments, his hand drawing small circles on my arm. “I understand a bit about dysfunction.”

I turned to stare at him. “Okay. Your turn.”

He groaned. “Do I have to?”

“C’mon. I showed you mine. You show me yours.” It mattered for some reason. Logan had already revealed a lot, but I wanted to hear it from Reece. I wanted him to confide in me.

“Let’s see. You know my mom died when I was eight.”

“Yes.”

“Well, she died because she overdosed on Tylenol. Not on purpose. She had these migraines . . . I remember seeing her pop a few that day. Well, turned out she took a few too many. A lot actually. Her liver shut down in her sleep. She didn’t wake up the next morning.” He uttered this all matter-of-factly, but I saw in his eyes the anguish he kept banked. What had that been like for him? Waking up and finding his mom still in bed, unmoving. Dead.

“Oh my God.”

“My old man was never exactly the warm and fuzzy type before that, but after . . .”

I nodded, understanding.

“Guess we’re not that different, after all,” he added.

I rested my cheek on his chest, knowing we were going to have to get up in a few minutes and get dressed, but for now, we held each other as his words sank in and made my stomach knot. We’re not that different. Two people that didn’t have the faintest clue about belonging to a normal, loving family.

“No. I guess not.”

I hurried across campus, stopping at the crosswalk for the light. I bounced anxiously in place, burying my hands deep in my jacket pockets. I was already late for Statistics.

“Hey, Pepper! Hold up!”

My head whipped around to watch Hunter jogging toward me. He gave me a light hug. I closed my eyes, enveloped in him.

“Hi! How’s it going?”

“Good.” He nodded across the street. “Headed that way?”

“Yeah. Kensington.”

“C’mon. I’ll walk you. I just got out of class.”

We crossed the street together. My hand escaped my pocket to flex nervously around my strap.

“I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving. I need a break.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I returned. “Can’t wait to see Lila.”

He rolled his eyes. “We’ll have to hear about her new boyfriend.”

I tsked. “Behave. This one is nice.”

“Do I have to be? She changes boyfriends like socks.”

“We can’t all be devoted to someone for years on end,” I teased.

He looked at me with wide eyes. “First of all, it was maybe, maybe two years.” He waggled two fingers at me. “And we’re not dating anymore, remember?”

I grinned, staring straight ahead. Sensing his gaze on me, I slid him another look and my pulse quickened at the way he was studying me. Almost like he had never seen me before.

“What about you? Are you dating anyone?” Two things happened in that moment. First, an image of Reece flashed across my mind. Not that it should. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in a week. Not since he spent the night with me in my dorm. Second, I realized that he was asking if I was single. He’d never asked me if I was dating anyone before. Obviously he’d never cared enough to ask. But he cared now.

“No. Not really.”

“Hmm,” he murmured. “You sound a little uncertain. There’s someone. And now your cheeks are pink, so I know I’m right.”

I pressed a hand to my face as if I could feel said pinkness there. “No, they’re not. It’s just chilly.”

“Oh, you have a boyfriend.” He chuckled.

“Shut it! I don’t.” We stopped before the steps leading into Kensington. I stepped to the side, clear of the flood of students passing in and out of the double doors. I stood on the bottom step, which brought me almost to eye level with Hunter.