I didn’t need any more encouragement. Leaving the remains of s’mores and a just missed kiss behind, I sprinted through the sand after her.
She was fastening her belt by the time I’d locked up and snagged a couple of breakfast bars from the cupboard. “It isn’t hot, nor particularly delicious, but it’s something,” I said, jumping in and handing her a bar.
She grabbed it and nodded her thanks. “Drive fast.”
Sliding my aviators into position, I slammed the Mustang in reverse and grinned. “You’ve got the right man for the job.”
Bracing one hand on the dashboard and the other on the armrest, she said, “I hope so.”
Leaving two streaks in the driveway, I was already at seventy by the time I rounded the corner a block down. Emma’s hands didn’t move from their location, like she expected fingertips gripping vinyl surfaces would be her saving grace if we were in a head-on at one hundred and some change.
Once we were on the freeway, I pushed the Mustang to its upper limits and, once the cars moving in the same direction as us were streaking like the cars going the opposite direction, I knew we’d make good time.
When we screeched onto the campus, she checked her cell for the three thousandth time and let out a relieved sigh.
“Drop me off at my dorm. I’ve got to grab my bag and throw on a fresh pair of clothes that don’t reek of campfire and men’s deodorant,” she said, sniffing at the shoulder she’d had tucked into my fresh, not-too-shabby smelling armpit.
“You got it,” I said, taking a hard right, so hard my tail-end drifted behind us, cutting an ugly bald spot through a patch of pristine Stanford grass. Hopefully my family’s alumni status and giving over the years had accumulated enough influence to overlook one grass terrorization.
“Thanks for getting me here so fast,” she said, a hair clip between her lips as she tore through her hair with her fingers. “And thanks for not killing me.”
“Speed is my priority,” I said in an authoritative voice. “Preservation of life is an added bonus.” I rolled to a stop at the front curb of her dorm hall, already feeling the pain of separation.
Fighting her hair into the clip, she grabbed her purse from the back, pausing as she grabbed the handle.
“And thanks for everything else,” she whispered, looking everywhere but at me. Throwing the door open, the morning air careened into the car, taking on a chill that had everything to do with her leaving me. I couldn’t let her out of my sight without telling her everything I’d been keeping from her. Everything I should have told her last night before she was in a rush to get to an exam in fifteen minutes.
My timing, as always, was impeccable.
I grabbed her hand at the last minute, pulling her back down. She looked over at me like I was mad. “What are we doing, Em?”
“Well, I am going to class and you are probably going to go pass out on the quad for a couple hours until you commence your inventive forms of cat calling,” she said, smirking at me as she made another go for the exit.
I held her hand in mine, not because I wanted to, but because I absolutely, positively could not let her go.
“What are we doing?” I repeated, looking at her with the anguish I could feel manifesting over every piece of me.
Closing her eyes, she shook her head. “Something we shouldn’t.”
That cut deeper than last night’s rejected kiss had. “Why not?” I whispered.
“You know why.”
“No, actually I don’t,” I replied with a ferocity in my voice reserved for rare situations. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”
Her drifting eyes settled on mine for an instant before they turned away. “My life just doesn’t work with you in it--I don’t work right when you’re in it.” Her jaw was set, but it couldn’t deflect the effect the sheen her eyes had taken on. I was getting close to something if it brought tears to the surface. I couldn’t back off now.
Knowing this, I shoved ahead, knowing the road immediately in front of us wasn’t a pleasant one.
“Liar,” I said, gripping the steering wheel so hard I was in danger of ripping it off. “We made a promise that we’d be honest with each other, and you can’t be honest with me if you can’t even be honest with yourself.” That came out harsher than I’d intended, evident as I felt sick to my stomach after saying it and the way Emma recoiled from me like she couldn’t put enough space between us.
“I’m the liar?” she asked, her eyes forming slits. Her hand pulled away like mine was made of acid. “Tell me, Patrick Hayward—wealthy, supposedly reformed playboy, good at everything, too beautiful to be real—why are you so interested in me?” she asked, yelling every third word.
“Huh?” she added when I didn’t answer. “A girl from the other side of the tracks who’s going to spend the rest of her life there if she screws up just once. Once!” she said, pointing at me. “So why, champion of honesty, why is someone like you so interested in someone like me?”
I’d not only never seen Emma so emotional before, I’d never heard her say so much in one breath.
“What do you mean?” I asked, turning in my seat.
“Dammit, Patrick!” she shouted, slamming a fist into the dashboard. “The question is so simple even you should be able to get it. Why are you pretending to like me?”
Three things crippled the speech right out of me. The second curse word I’d heard from her, PG-13 rated as it was, her insult to my intelligence, and her assumption that I was pretending to like her. It didn’t make sense, none of it did. That could have been the reason I was unable to form a word, let alone an intelligent reply.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, staring at me like she could see right through me. “Hypocrite.” Lunging out of the car, she spun back around and, leaning down, she said, “Leave me alone.”
“No,” I said, gripping the steering wheel again.
“Leave. Me. Alone.” And then she slammed the door and ran away like she couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
I watched her leave, all the way until she disappeared inside the building. My eyes lingered on the spot she’d disappeared.
“No,” I whispered to no one.
The first couple hours after that were rough. I’d gone back and forth between chasing after her and professing the way I felt about her in every detail—down to the way I lost my sense of balance when she tilted her head back and laughed—to getting the hell away from here and forgetting I’d ever met Emma Scarlett.
I ended up hanging in my car past lunch time, once I settled on finding the middle ground between running away or becoming a certified stalker. On my way to Psych, I still hadn’t decided on the best way to smooth things over.
I considered ignoring her, leaving her alone as she yelled at me to—pretend she didn’t exist—but I was wise in the ways of women and I knew pretending you don’t exist was the final straw that would break the back of the relationship. It doesn’t matter how pissed they are with you, never unleash a full scale ignore attack on a woman you want to make up with—classic rookie mistake.
What I wanted to do when I walked in that class was stand up and ask the professor to put a clamp on it for a few minutes while I professed to an auditorium full of students how bad I had it for Emma and how I was a ruined man if she didn’t feel the same way. Yeah, something along those lines . . .
I knew that, while I was one for theatrics, Emma wasn’t. She would be mortified if I unleashed a can of I’m smitten in front of her classmates. Then I’d be even deeper into the quick sand I was already smothering in.
During my last strides down the hall towards Psych, I finally settled on a plan of attack.
I’d just go with the flow. I’d do what felt right at the time and hope my gut, that had rarely steered me wrong before, wouldn’t let me down when it really counted. Not the most elaborate plan, I knew, but I figured it was better than getting naked, lighting myself on fire, and screaming I love you, Emma Scarlett down the hallway.<
br />
I pulled open the auditorium door a few minutes past the hour, trying to outsmart the sneaky fox that I hoped was still icing his face back at prat hall. However I was going to proceed with Emma, I knew it would go smoother if her idiot boyfriend wasn’t around.
I grunted as soon as I stepped inside, of course he wouldn’t be gone on the day I really needed him to be gone. And of course he’d be sitting right beside her in their favorite seats in the back row. He glanced back as the door whined closed and I would have guessed he hadn’t noticed me, until he dropped his arm around Emma’s shoulders. A tad purposeful in his possession, but it was going to take a helluva a lot more to run me off.
Ty’s fingers barely had time to curl into her skin until she wagged her shoulders, shoving his arm away with her hand when that didn’t work. She aimed a glare at him I thought was strictly reserved for Patrick Hayward.
Whether this was a simple lover’s quarrel or the beginning of the end, I didn’t know, but I did know you didn’t waste a crack—no matter how temporary—in a relationship you were trying to end. I didn’t have time to reconcile how much of a monster that made me seem or justify I didn’t only want them to break up because it was best for me, but because it was best for Emma, before I marched down that last aisle and slid into the open seat on the other side of her.
I leaned in to her. “Can you forgive me for being an idiot?” I whispered, glancing between her and Ty, waiting for him to realize I’d slipped into the seat next to the woman he was all territorial over. “Again?”
My attempts at playing it light and making a puppy dog face went over as well as I hoped it wouldn’t. Her glare turned from Ty to me, and I don’t think I was mistaken when those eyelids seemed to drop further.
I leaned away a bit, and that’s when the worst bodyguard in the history of them noticed me.
“Pick another seat, dickweed,” he growled, reaching behind Emma and shoving my shoulder.
I blew a burst of air out my mouth. “Wow, a name I haven’t been called yet. You must have been hard at work on that one all weekend. That must describe while you’re looking especially ugly today.” Grinning my provocation, I continued, “By the way, double black eyes is a great look for you.”
He shoved my shoulder again, harder. “You’re about to have a pair to match if you don’t move away from my girlfriend.”
I squished my face into a puh-lease expression. “From the looks of it, your girlfriend might be catching on to the well-known fact that her boyfriend is a monkey’s uncle.”
I was too focused on Ty, too set on taking out everything raging inside of me, or else I would have noticed Emma’s shoulders tensing to the point of snapping, her face flashing red with her own emotions firing inside. That would have been the wise way to expend my energy, on calming her instead of enraging Ty, but at this point in my male show of dominance, I wasn’t being wise.
“Emma’s not going anywhere,” he said, his mouth twisting up. “And the next time you lure her to your place, for any duration of time, you’re a dead man.”
It was a casual expression any male who’d hit puberty had thrown around, but something intentional in Ty’s words made me believe he wasn’t bluffing. Unfortunately for him, if he came at me with a death sentence, I was invincible to most things manmade, and I wasn’t a man who bluffed when handing out death threats. I’d killed men, many of them, and while it wasn’t a badge of honor I wore on my chest, it wasn’t something I was ashamed about either. I’d never killed a man who had ceased deserving life, and Ty was getting dangerously close to winding up on that list.
“If she comes back, I’ll be all open doors. And arms,” I said, for her, not him.
However, she didn’t look like she was hearing anything but a couple of imbeciles throwing insults around, above, and between her.
“She won’t,” Ty said, his jaw muscles about to pop through his skin.
I shrugged. “She might.” It was working—my blasé demeanor was pissing him off hardcore. I was hoping he was two more retorts away from exploding out of the room in a furious puff of smoke.
“She. Won’t.”
“She probably will,” I replied, cracking my neck from side to side.
“She—”
I was sick of hearing this repeated. “She most definitely will,” I said, fixing my eyes on him. “Begging me to let her in. Begging,” I repeated slowly.
The dormant volcano simmering between us chose that time to explode. Leaping to a stand, she stared hard at him, then at me. Damn, her eyes were taking on that glassy sheen again.
“I am not some prize either of you can claim,” she shouted, all the way to the rafters and down to where a bored professor was laser pointing at something on the screen.
Every last Monday-afternoon-groggy head snapped to attention, followed by bodies twisting in their seats to stare at Emma.
I hadn’t seen that one coming. A full-fledged outburst in a silent classroom of a hundred? Emma seemed more the grin and bear it type.
Pushing past Ty, she ran out of the room, hair flying behind her and tears spilling before her.
“Happy?” Ty growled, towering over me.
“Far from it,” I answered.
One more shove to my shoulder and Ty turned and followed after her.
When the door slammed closed the second time, Professor Camp cleared his throat. “My advanced degrees, unparalleled experience in the field, and all around mastery of all things of a psychological matter would lead me to the intricate, official diagnosis that she suffers from,” he paused, lowering his glasses, “boy issues.” Looking my way, he said, “Mr. Hayward, I’m guessing you play a large part in that. Be on your way,” he said, waving at the door.
I didn’t need permission, but that’s what got me out of my seat.
“Here’s a question for you eager young minds to gnaw on,” he continued as I jogged down the aisle. “Why are you here learning about life when you could be out living life?” You could almost hear a few brains shattering.
The door was closing behind me as Camp barreled on with his education bashing spiel. “And here’s something else—sitting in class is a waste of your time, mind, and—”
The door slammed shut before I could hear the continued pearls in this necklace of wisdom. I jogged down the hallway, listening for voices. I didn’t go far before I heard the ones I was listening for, and they weren’t being spoken in a quiet, or friendly, tone.
Slamming the outside doors open, I saw Ty’s back, his arms and voice flying into the wind. I couldn’t see her thanks to the gorilla exhibiting every mannerism of an actual one blocking her, but I knew she was there.
“You were nothing when we hooked up,” he shouted as another arm burst into the air. “You were on a one way train to becoming a future man sewer before I made the biggest mistake of my life and made you my girlfriend.”
I launched into a sprint across the lawn, hardly able to wait tackling the SOB.
“I guess I always knew you’d wind up a whore like your mom. I just didn’t see the evidence until this past weekend.”
I would have snapped his back in half had I not pulled back two strides before I rocketed into him. Emma’s scream was the only thing I heard as Ty and I toppled over each other until the momentum from the impact crested.
I landed on top, the red pulsing in me, ready to repay every foul word he’d said to Emma with the business side of my fist.
A pair of hands wound around my arm an inch before fist met flesh. “Patrick—no!” she said, her voice shaking as she wrestled me off of Ty.
The rage died, her touch freeing it. When she had me upright and a body length away from the human sized lawn gnome decorating the grass, she pressed her hand to my chest, looking at me hard.
“You promised,” she said. The promise I wished I wouldn’t have made. “You promised,” she repeated, like she knew my anger was playing devil’s advocate with my rational mind.
“I know.” The last rem
ains of fury released itself in a tremble. “I know,” I said again.
“Keep it then,” she said softly.
What choice did I have when she looked at me like that? “I will.”
“She sure got you whipped fast,” Ty said, upright and grinning his malevolence at us. “I’d say a little something more than studying and sun-tanning occurred this weekend.” Looking at Emma, his grin twisted higher. “What do you have to say about that, Emma? Were you being your typical whorish self with lover boy?”
Like she was already expecting it, Emma caught my arm as I whipped around to finish delivering my message. “Stop it, Patrick!” she shouted, looking desperate.
“Why are you defending him?” I spun on her, trying to see what it was she saw in this loser. I saw nothing but a face filled with dread and secrets. “I’ve never heard one kind word come out of his mouth when he talks to you, so why are you defending who should be your worst enemy to someone who wants to be your best friend?”
“It’s because she knows the only way she can escape her shithole of a life is to glom onto the coat tails of any man who’s dumb enough to not recognize her for the gutter whore she is.”
“You really are a piece of shit, you know that?” I said, seething. Emma’s firm hand holding my arm was the only thing keeping me from charging him again.
“What does that say about Emma then? Since she can’t get enough of this ‘piece of shit’?” Ty said, looking his girlfriend up and down. “I think that makes her a swarming, shit eating house fly. That sound about right?”
“Shut up!” I screamed, feeling the veins bulging in my neck. I’d seen enough of hate in my life to recognize it, and I hated him for talking about her like this. I’d known arch nemeses who’d had more respect for one another than to speak of the other the way Ty was speaking of the woman he supposedly loved.
We were drawing a crowd. Fights happened on Stanford’s campus about as often as a middle class student was admitted. They were going to get quite a show if Ty didn’t shut his mouth soon.