Sean stood frozen in the spot where the girl had shoved him away and then called him out for acting like a total jerk. One second he'd been buzzing from the alcohol, the next he'd been kissing the prettiest girl in the world. And then, just minutes later, everything had gone horribly wrong.
What the hell had he just done?
The girl was gone, but he could still see the expressions that had raced across her face right before she left. First, she'd been stunned. Then, she'd been angry. But by the end, she'd simply looked hurt. And so incredibly disappointed, as if she couldn't believe he would treat her the way he had, like nothing more than a piece of meat.
What the hell was wrong with him lately?
Any buzz the alcohol had given him, any numbness he'd managed to attain, immediately disappeared in the wake of her disappointment in him. When she'd shoved him away, when she'd looked at him like he was scum and then laid out the really good reasons why he actually was scum, it had been like having a huge bucket of ice water dumped over him.
Sean felt like he was finally waking up from a long, bad dream.
Especially given what she'd said to him when they were on the dance floor: "Whatever happened, I'm sorry." It was as though she'd seen straight through to his heart, everything he'd been trying to hold back, to hold inside, to ignore and forget. And when she'd reached up to touch his cheek, it had been the first time he'd felt alive, truly alive, in months.
When Sean was a little kid and got into his first fight on the playground at school, his mother and father had taught him how to apologize. Tonight, though, he didn't need his mother's voice in his head telling him the right thing to do. He knew it already. Because he'd been a dirtbag.
An epic dirtbag.
Sean pushed through the crowd and out the door in hopes that she'd still be outside talking to friends, telling them what a total ass he was. But she wasn't out there and he hated the thought of her heading back to her dorm alone at night, even though the campus was usually safe.
Plus, since he didn't even know her name, how was he going to let her know how sorry he was?
"Damn," Kurt said, shaking his head as he walked up. "I never thought the day would come when you'd strike out. Big time, too. I guess that's what happens when you try to put the moves on a supermodel; they're not that easily impressed."
"What did you just say? You know who she is?"
"Seriously?" Kurt looked at Sean over the rim of his beer cup. "You didn't know you were putting the moves on one of the hottest supermodels in the world? Everyone has been talking about Serena Britten being a freshman this year. People have been trying to spot her, but she's been pretty elusive until tonight. I couldn't believe it when I saw that she was here dancing. Of course, that was right when you swooped in to make your move."
When she'd been dancing with her eyes closed, her hands raised as she moved to the beat, her long hair falling in waves over her shoulders and her legs going on forever, she hadn't looked as young as the other girls. Sean had wondered if she could be a sophomore or junior, and had thought there was something familiar about her. But he hadn't been able to put his finger on it. Now, though, he could totally picture Serena's face on the cover of the magazines his sister Maddie pored over.
Suddenly, what she'd said right after she'd shoved him away made perfect sense: "I know you've probably seen my pictures in magazines and think I'm easy."
Damn it, no. He didn't think that. He hadn't even known she was famous. And if he wasn't absolutely sure that showing up at her dorm room tonight to apologize would only freak her out more, Sean would already have been halfway across campus to tell her all this.
When he headed back inside, it wasn't to party or to drink any more, but to change into his shorts and running shoes. Already he knew that the only chance he'd have of getting any sleep tonight would be through pure exhaustion.
Especially when the disappointment in Serena's eyes wouldn't stop haunting him.
CHAPTER THREE
After baseball practice early Saturday morning, Sean headed on foot to the freshman dorms. Now that he knew who Serena was, he must have heard her name at least a dozen times since last night. Clearly, the only reason he'd missed the news of her being on campus was because he'd been so deep in his numbed-out haze of drinking every night and then trying to keep his shit together out on the field and in class during the day that he hadn't paid attention to anything else.
As he pushed through the front doors of her dorm, though he hadn't been nervous around a girl since his early teens, his heart was pounding hard. He had just jogged up the stairs to the second floor when one of the doors opened and someone stepped into the hall.
The girl had on baggy jeans and an even baggier sweatshirt. Her hair was tucked up into a Stanford ball cap, and she had a loaded messenger bag slung across one shoulder. But even if most people would have looked right past her, he recognized her immediately. What, he wondered, was Serena doing wearing that disguise? Because that was clearly what it was.
She kept her head down as if she was thinking really hard about something, so it wasn't until she was nearly at the stairs that she saw him.
He didn't wait, couldn't wait another second to tell her, "I need to apologize to you for the way I acted last night."
For a moment surprise lit her features, but then her expression closed up so that he couldn't figure out what she was thinking--or feeling--at all. "It doesn't matter," she said in a flat voice as she moved past him and down the stairs to head outside. "Just forget about it."
But it did matter, and he couldn't just forget about it. Or about her.
He'd been up all night trying to figure out a way to make things up to her, but now that he was with her again, the words he'd planned to say got muddled together in his head. "Last night, I was drunk and--"
She spun around on the grass to face him, her previously restrained expression now blazing with anger. "Do you really think that saying you were drunk and didn't know what you were doing is how you apologize to a girl for grabbing her out of the blue and trying to convince her to sleep with you two minutes later?"
Damn it, he thought as she turned and started walking away even faster, he hadn't meant to screw things up again. Or to make things worse. Especially when beneath her anger he could still see her disappointment.
"You're completely right that it doesn't matter how much I had to drink or what state of mind I was in. I shouldn't have come on to you the way I did, and I definitely shouldn't have tried to convince you to come upstairs to my bedroom. There's no excuse for it, and I really am sorry for the way I behaved. You should be able to kiss a guy at a party without him dragging you off to bed by your hair." He wished more than anything that he could just hit rewind and go back a day. A year, actually. So that he could have his mother back in time to save her from cancer and not screw things up with Serena. "I have two sisters, and if any guy tried to do to them what I did to you, I'd tear him apart."
In her obvious shock at everything he'd just said, she stumbled over a thick tuft of grass. Her bag was so heavy that she would have fallen if he hadn't grabbed her arm. He heard her gasp softly at his touch before she pulled her arm away, but her face remained flushed...and she looked even more beautiful than she had the night before when she'd been in his arms.
He had come here today to tell her how sorry he was, not to hit on her again, but Sean still couldn't stop his reaction to her. It was natural. Primal. Chemical. And so powerful that just being near her made him feel better--and clearer--than he had in months.
She took a deep breath, then blew it out, pulling her hat off and shaking out her hair as if she didn't quite know what she should do next. Maybe, he hoped, it was because she could still feel their connection, too, despite what an idiot he'd been?
"I also want you to know that I didn't have any idea who you were last night." When she looked at him in disbelief, he raised two fingers on his right hand. "Scout's honor. I thought you looked a little familiar, b
ut it wasn't until after you left that my friend Kurt told me who you were."
The way she tensed at that told him more than she likely intended to reveal about how she felt about her fame. Clearly, she wasn't big on it. The thing was, Sean wasn't too surprised by this because his rock-star brother was like that, too. Drew hated when his ever-increasing fame got in the way of his music. Then again, Sean thought, modeling wasn't exactly the same as writing and performing songs, was it? So if she hadn't done it for the fame, why had she done it? And why was she here at Stanford when she could have been in Paris making thousands of dollars an hour in front of the cameras?
"If you didn't recognize me, then why did you come up to me like that?"
Was she joking? Did she truly think that the only reason a guy would approach her was because she was famous and he wanted to say he'd made out with a celebrity?
Wanting to be as honest with her this morning as he'd been scuzzy the night before, he said, "You are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, but it was more than just your beauty that drew me, Serena." When she looked back up at him, he felt as though he was falling into her deep blue eyes. "You saw me." He swallowed hard before adding, "And when we kissed, it was the most explosive, most intense thing I've ever felt in my life--" He reached for her cheek in the exact same way she had reached for his the night before. "--and everything bad just disappeared."
*
The very last thing Serena had expected to see this morning was the guy from the frat party.
But he'd just surprised her even more with his heartfelt apology.
She didn't have much experience with the opposite sex--much actually meaning none given the way her mother had hovered over her for her entire life at photo shoots and at industry parties and even in their hotel rooms--but she was still almost certain that most guys wouldn't have apologized. No, they'd have told their friends that she was a frigid bitch, and they'd have been happy to let her think she'd brought it on herself by responding to his kisses the way she had. But they definitely wouldn't have said that there was no excuse for what they'd done.
And everything he'd just said about the explosive sparks set off between them when they kissed? Well, the truth was that she was already feeling those sparks again.
Simply by being near him and looking into his eyes.
Last night, she'd been so intent on trying to experience new things that when he'd kissed her and it had been incredible, she'd temporarily forgotten everything but him. And that's what had gotten her into trouble. She couldn't let herself forget again just how hard she'd fought to leave her life as a model behind to come to Stanford and figure out who and what she actually wanted to be. Not just a hanger for designer clothes, not just a blank slate for makeup artists to paint on, but a teacher or a researcher or a writer. Or maybe something else entirely that she would discover during the next four years. The point was that she needed to give herself the chance to find out.
So even if he was one of the most beautiful boys on campus, and he made her heart flutter like crazy--along with other parts of her body that had only come to life with his kiss--Serena would never forgive herself if she let a guy derail her focus. One bad experience at a frat party didn't change the fact that her new life was still full of so many opportunities. She just needed to be smarter about the ones she went for from now on.
Still, even knowing all of that, it wasn't easy to take a step back from him and the delicious warmth of his hand on her skin. "Look--" she began, before she realized she still didn't know his name.
"I'm Sean. Sean Morrison. And I know we got off to a rough start, but if you'll give me another chance, if you let me start over, I promise I won't blow it this time."
"Sean," she made herself begin again even though she was so incredibly tempted by what he'd just said, "I can tell that you do feel bad about what happened, and I appreciate that. A lot, actually. But--"
"Hey, aren't you that famous model?" Another student had been riding past on his bike when he'd slammed on the brakes and skidded around to closely scan her hair and face. "You are her! Serena Britten live and in the flesh."
She belatedly realized she was holding her baseball cap rather than wearing it. She hadn't meant to take it off, not when her long, wavy hair tended to be a dead giveaway. But she'd been so flustered by how earnest Sean's apology had been--and how incredibly alive she felt around him despite everything--that she'd forgotten to stay in disguise.
"Can I get a picture with you?"
Knowing from previous experience that the easiest thing to do was just say yes and smile for the picture--even if the way the guy had said flesh gave her the creeps--she nodded. "Sure. No problem."
"Hey, man, can you take it?" The guy shoved his phone into Sean's hand without waiting for him to respond. "And Serena," the stranger said as he turned back to her and stared straight at her chest, "why don't you take off that big sweatshirt for the pic? You know, since I'm not sure my friends back home will believe it's really you unless they can see your smoking hot body."
Serena knew better than to be shocked. She'd heard plenty of things like that before--it was just the way things went when you modeled bikinis and lingerie for a living. Nonetheless, for a few moments she could only stand there speechless, staring at the jerk who had just told her to put her breasts on display for his friends.
"Here's your phone back, asshole," Sean growled, snapping her out of her stunned state as he took aim with the phone.
It bounced off the guy's forehead and he barely caught it before it crashed onto the ground. "Dude! What the hell was that for?"
"Apologize to Serena."
"For what?"
Sean growled the words, "For talking to her like that."
"What the hell are you, her bodyguard?"
She hadn't realized quite how tall or how muscular Sean was until he took a very menacing step toward the stranger. "No. But I'm happy to be one if she needs it. And she's still waiting for you to apologize."
The guy shoved his phone into his pocket. "I don't need the picture that bad." But it was clear that he was more than a little scared of Sean coming after him as he added, "Sorry," before quickly riding away.
"Jesus," Sean said as he scowled at the stranger's retreating back, "no wonder you don't want anything to do with any of us. We're all a bunch of assholes."
No question, she'd dealt with her fair share of assholes over the years. Only, Sean Morrison no longer seemed like one of them. Because even though he had screwed up last night, she could see how genuinely, truly sorry he was about it. Something told her he'd never, ever do anything like that again. And, she thought with a little inward sigh of longing, if she said good-bye to him for what would surely be the very last time, she was really going to miss the way his kisses had made her feel. As though her heart were whirling and twirling around inside her chest at the sinfully sweet thrill of being in his arms.
And yet...
She still couldn't lose sight of why she was really at Stanford, of all the dreams she hoped to follow. Plus, from the quick Internet search she'd done this morning, it didn't look like anyone had posted a picture of her making out with Sean. Hopefully her luck would continue to hold on that front, because she hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep to be able to deal with a call from her mother--or worse, if she'd really meant what she'd said about never forgiving Serena. Because after all the lessons Genevieve had taught her since she was a little girl about how men couldn't be trusted, Serena shuddered to think how she would react to a picture of her daughter with her tongue down some guy's throat in the middle of a drunken frat party.
No question about it, even the possibility that a picture might leak from last night was a really good reminder not to take that kind of stupid risk again. Which meant she couldn't keep standing here wishing Sean would kiss her. She needed to say good-bye, instead.
"Thank you for coming to say you were sorry. But even if there is some kind of connection between us--" And there was really no p
oint in pretending there wasn't when she knew they both could feel the sparks shooting off between them when they weren't even touching. "--I really need to make sure I stay focused on my classes." Serena was almost positive she was doing the right thing by walking away from him...only why did it have to be so hard? "So if you'll excuse me, I've got a paper to write."
With that, she made herself head into the library to get started on her paper for her Poetry and Poetics class. But all the while, she had to work really hard at pushing the thought of Sean Morrison--and his kisses--away.
CHAPTER FOUR
The following Friday, Serena tried not to flinch as her History and Theory of the Novel professor came too close and leaned over her to point out something in her book.
"Do you see the lyrical way the author uses metaphor to express emotion?" Professor Fairworth read aloud a passage from the classic text, but she could have sworn he was looking down her shirt rather than at the book on the table in front of her.
As several students chimed in, Serena worked to concentrate on the book they were studying. She'd had to fill out a special application for this class, where only fifteen students were lucky enough to study with the Newbery Medal-winning professor. But as the weeks went by, she sometimes found herself wishing for the anonymity of being one of four hundred students in a huge lecture hall, instead. A class where a professor couldn't "accidentally" brush up against her, or stare at her boobs.
Vowing to wear her big, shapeless sweatshirt in class from now on, regardless of the heat in the room, she shifted slightly away from her professor and held her breath as she waited for him to dismiss them for the weekend.
Finally, he stepped away from her. "Good work, everyone."
Serena immediately put on her sweatshirt and was quickly shoving her books and laptop into her bag when he added, "I'd appreciate it if I could have a few more minutes of your time, Serena."
The sound of the door closing behind the rest of the students in her class felt like the locking of a prison door. Telling herself she was being overly melodramatic, she forced herself to relax her tense muscles. "What would you like to speak with me about, Professor Fairworth?"