Boyfriend Bargain (Hawthorne University #1)(2)
This isn’t normal.
I exhale rapidly, trying to breathe properly, but God help me, I can’t…
Dashing for the locker room, my legs pump to get me there. I fling open the door and dart inside, my body shaking as I jerk off my jersey, followed by my pads.
Standing in just my pants, my eyes are wild as I sweep the place, taking in the giant lion painted on the wall with the Never Give Up slogan underneath. Dashing to my wooden locker, I reach in and yank out the small silver medallion that’s hanging from a hook.
I don’t wear it during games, but maybe I should. Maybe I should, just as a reminder.
“Nothing gold can stay,” I manage to whisper aloud, the words the title and last line of a poem by Robert Frost. Cradling the necklace in my palm, my thumb rubs the silver circle, feeling the etching of the letters.
From a distance, I hear pounding footsteps—medics and trainers, always ready.
My chest beats and beats and beats, gaining speed, gaining momentum, and darkness creeps into my vision as I slip the chain around my neck.
My knees buckle and I collapse on the floor.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I whisper to the girl I killed.
1
Sugar
Two weeks later
Listen, I don’t normally hide behind a dusty old support column in the basement of the Kappa house, but when I do, I’m a true ninja. In fact, I’ve been holding up this piece of wood for a full ten minutes, sipping on disgusting spiked punch as I periodically stick my head out and survey the dimly lit room. It’s my first frat party—pretty sad for a senior—and I’m as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of drunk, gyrating co-eds.
Surprisingly, not one person has noticed my furtive glances from my hidey-hole except for the leering frat guy in the corner. Worst of all, he’s wearing a too-tight black shirt over his beer gut that reads Blink If You Want Me, and unfortunately, sometimes I accidentally do look in his direction and we make eye contact. Obviously I blink. I mean, it’s not like I can just not blink.
He sends me a rather dainty finger wave and motions for me to come over. For the hundredth time.
“Jesus,” I say under my breath. Never in a million years my eyes glare.
Besides, it’s the hockey player I’m here for—the one who hasn’t arrived at this party to celebrate the big win over Western Michigan this weekend.
Cursing under my breath, I check my watch for the second time, as if something might have changed in the last few minutes. Do these party people ever sleep or study? How do they deal with hangovers the next day? Ten PM already on a Sunday night and I should be back in my room, curled up on my bed devouring Ding Dongs and Doritos while I go over notes for tomorrow’s classes.
My shoulders press into the column as a swarm of giggling girls in high heels stagger past me. One of them bangs her elbow into my side but barely gives me a second glance. Rubbing the sore spot, I call out in my sweetest Southern accent, which comes out when I’m pissed. “Don’t worry about me, y’all. I’m fiiiiine!”
They never even turn around. Ugh. I sigh. All I want to do is leave this party, put on my sweats and camisole, and veg out, maybe turn on some HBO after my studying is over. It takes a lot of work to attend one of the most prestigious—and most expensive—colleges in the Midwest. Welcome to Hawthorne University.
I blow at a piece of white-blonde hair that’s come out of my headband. Maybe he isn’t going to show.
Then it happens.
An electric current crackles in the air and the partygoers stop talking, looking around expectantly, almost as if they know something big is coming.
It’s him. Has to be.
No one else has this kind of stupid effect on people.
Standing on my tiptoes, I watch as Zack Morgan, AKA Z, AKA the Heartbreaker, AKA Douchebag (that one’s my own contribution to the list) strides through the ground-level basement door, dipping his head so he doesn’t bang it on the frame.
Heartbreaker. Pfft. In other words, he’s a womanizer.
That’s a moot point, though. I’m not here to discuss societal stereotypes of future pro athletes. I’m here to bargain.
Two other players—one blond and one a redhead—flank him on each side like chess pieces protecting their king. I squint. I think those guys are his…wingers?
The DJ turns down the music to announce the hockey team has arrived, and a buzz goes through the crowd as partiers clap and cheer.
The players move, the sea of people parting enough that I see the entirety of him in his full-blown glory and a tingle of something zips up my spine.
Finer than frog hair is what my southern mama would have said about him, and there’s no doubt it’s true. He’s hot as hell and it slams into you when you look at him, like a great wind in a hurricane.
Without being too obvious, I study him from the bottom of his black motorcycle boots up to the tight jeans that cling to his thighs, all the way to the fitted, super-sleek dark grey leather jacket encasing his well-built upper body. On anyone else, that jacket would come off as pretentious—like a wannabe biker—but he looks like he just stepped off a movie screen.
He’s a big-ass Viking.
I examine the six-foot, six-inch frame of the NHL’s number one draft pick. Apparently, he’s so slick on the ice that the Nashville Predators drafted him this past June, willing to wait a year for him to finish his senior year at HU.