“Red’s your color,” she says coyly, looking from her earring to me. “So when do I get my money?”
“I paid. Double. Don’t you remember that ten-dollar bill you threw at me?”
She laughs like she’s trying not to. Meanwhile, Lenni has appeared at her side and is watching us with interest. “Well, we better go,” Jade says after a glance at Lenni.
“Hot date tonight?” I can’t help asking.
“Yep. And I still have to shop for his gift bag.” She winks and I remember that first night I trained her at Somerset, when she teased me for sending the girls I fucked home with gift bags. It makes me laugh and burn with jealousy at the same time. Is she sleeping with anyone? Suddenly I need to know.
“All right,” Lenni says with a wave at everyone, “see you guys later.”
I stare after Jade as she and Lenni cut across the grass, their shoulders bumping as they lean close together and laugh quietly over something. I wonder whether she’s told Lenni every detail of our kisses. Jade’s in black jeans and a black-and-yellow plaid sweater with a torn hem that sets off her multicolor hair and the white combat boots I always see her clomping around in.
I wish she’d turn back and hang out a little longer, but I guess that would only make it more obvious to our friends that, against all odds, something’s happened between us. Maybe Cam can convince Lenni and Jade to party with us tonight and we can fade into the crowded darkness of a bar.
“Focused on the game, eh?” Cam squeezes the back of my neck, snapping me to attention.
“Huh?” I blink and turn to him.
“Yeah.” He smiles knowingly. “That’s what I thought.”
TWENTY
jade
Only when we’vereached the edge of the parking lot do I glance back toward the breezeway where Lenni and I found Reeve and the boys after the football game. I knew I was in trouble the second we rounded the corner and there he was leaning against the red bricks in that sexy way men have, his gaze troubled and his eyes impossibly bright as he stared out across campus.
That flutter of excitement and anticipation and sickness told me it wasn’t a fluke that I found myself wanting his attention the other night after the library. I want it more than ever—and that’s a problem. But the breezeway stands empty now, Reeve and his friends gone. I just wanted one more look.
Lenni is watching me as I swivel my head back where it belongs. “What?” she asks like she already knows exactly what.
I let out a massive sigh. I’ve needed to tell her and hoped I wouldn’t have to, hoped those two kisses—and these feelings—were freak events with no meaning and no chance of happening again, but I’ve been sadly disillusioned. If our night at the library didn’t prove that, looking around at the crowd at today’s game did.
Pretty girls out in support of their favorite player are standard fare at any Shafer game, but a closer look today told me just how many of them were targeting the one and only number 27 with their body paint and “Marry Me!” signs. Normally I’d have rolled my eyes. Today all I could do was avert them as jealousy, possessiveness, and—worst of all—understanding washed over me.
“Okay, can you make this easy on me and tell me what you already know? Has Cam said something?”
“Do you mean what I already know about the way you giggle like a schoolgirl around Reeve Dalton?”
“I do nothing of the sort! You’ve completely misread my laughing at his jackassery.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I’ve just told you all I know, but clearly there’s more. What exactly are you afraid Cam might have told me?”
Huh. So Reeve didn’t tell Cam that we’ve kissed. Or he swore him to secrecy. “So we kissed,” I spit out. “Twice.”
Lenni stops to turn to me and grabs me by the shoulders. “Are you seriously telling me you made out with your sworn enemy not once but twice and you never told me?” Her jaw drops. “God, I’ve been an idiot. When am I going to realize it’s always the guys you say you have no interest in that you fall for?”
I slide her hands off my shoulders and take her by the arm to walk on. “Fall for? Please don’t get delusional. It was a couple of kisses andyes, they were fucking fabulous and they’ve turned me into a giggling schoolgirl, okay? But that’s all I can say for sure. The rest of it is just a mess of confusing feelings.”
“So . . . there are feelings.”
“Don’t forget, hate, disgust, and regret are feelings too.”
“Clearly not the ones you feel for Reeve, though.”
“No, I still do. He’s just as cocky and infuriating as I always thought. It’s that there are other parts of him I didn’t expect.”
“Parts that make you like him?”
