I need to go back to my room. I need to deal with this. I need to do…something. For a moment, I think about calling my father, asking if my insurance and my cards being cut off is just some grand mistake. As if the situation could be resolved that simply.No one’s going to fix all your problems for you.But that doesn’t stop me from wishing they could.
I’m about to pull myself up so I can walk back to my dorm, when a man stumbles up the path toward the house.
Even from a distance, it’s easy to tell he’s drunk. Maybe not just drunk. Cross-faded. He’s listing to one side. He’s tall, muscular, with close-cropped blond hair, and there’s a lot of him to list.
“Is this the baseball party?” he slurs when he gets up the path.
He does look like a baseball player, though no one I recognize from our team. Maybe he was playing against us or maybe he’s just here to start shit. “And you are…?”
“I’m not Blake,” he snaps.
“That’s good. I’m not Blake either.”
He gives me a once-over, eyes sweeping up from my ankles to the crown of my head. “You are definitely not Blake.”
“You are definitely drunk.”
He shrugs and doesn’t deny it.
“All right, this is the baseball party,” I concede.
His forehead scrunches like he forgot he asked the question. “Obviously.I’mhere.”
I’m about to ask what, exactly, he means, when two other partygoers make their way up the path. “Holy shit, that’s Blake Forsyth,” one yells. She raises her phone camera. Flashes go off as she snaps a picture, then examines whatever image she took. “No, wait, that’s not him.”
WhoeverNot Blakeis, he rolls his eyes. Hops up on the porch next to me with surprising fluidity for a drunk guy, even if he stumbles a little on the landing.
“This seat taken?” he asks, then sits himself beside me before I can answer. Up close, he has a straight nose, a square jaw. He smells like whatever he’s been drinking—something smoky; whiskey, maybe—and he looks just like every country club guy I grew up with.Except for his dark gray eyes, which are currently studying me.
The girl with the camera flashes another picture. I flinch.What the fuck?
“Find another party.” He practically growls it at her.
She backs away, laughing, already talking to one of her friends aboutoh my god, that was so weird right…until their voices are carried off in the night.
“Okay, who’s Blake?” I ask when they’re gone.
“My brother.”
“And people know who he is?”
“Yeah.” The man flashes a grin. “People know who I am too. Or they will soon.”
“So are you famous or infamous?” I tease.
He laughs, though it doesn’t sound entirely amused. “I’m Brayden Forsyth.”
In my time shadowing my father’s business, I’ve met important men—and men who thought that they were important. I can’t tell which Brayden actually is.
“I’m Savannah—” I cut myself off. Because Burke Holdings, my father’s company, is starting to be in the news. Brayden might want to be infamous, but I was raised to always protect the family name and business, even when that business doesn’t exist anymore. “Savannah like Georgia.”
As soon as I say it, my heart sinks.I’m supposed to be there this year.A possibility that looks more and more distant. Next to me, I can’t tell if Brayden has stopped listening. Maybe he’s forgotten I’m here. Being plus-sized means half the men I talk to treat me like I’m invisible and the other half want to fuck me in private while ignoring me in public.
I feel like I have to tell someone—anyone—about Morningside. Who better than a drunk guy who clearly won’t remember it anyway? “I got into this program in Atlanta. It’s for bioinformatics. I really want to go. I think that’s what I want to do with my life.” I think of all the things I didn’t say to my father to convince him to pay my tuition—and he didn’t do that anyway. “I want to be a scientist, I think. To do something to help people and not just to make a profit. Anyway I don’t thinkit’s gonna work out. You ever think you have something all set and the universe has different plans?”
That catches Brayden’s attention. He turns to me, eyes storm gray. “You were supposed to come to Atlanta?" He doesn’t have much of an accent, but he has enough of one to drop thets from Atlanta.
“I was,” I admit.
