The words hit me like a punch to the gut.Nobody important?That’s not what he’d said when he was inside me the night before. I felt the sharp sting of tears in my eyes but held them back. Why would he say that?
They were carrying take-out cups from a popular restaurant on campus. They’d gone out to lunch together even though he’d told me he didn’t have time to eat with us before we left town.
Reality smacked me in the face. All those late nights that Harrison went out with the team after practice. The times he needed to meet up with friends from class to work on projects. The times he’d canceled plans with me because he was tired. Had any of that been true? How many times were lies? How many times was he with Aubrey instead?
A sick feeling grew inside me. I was afraid it was every single time.
About that time, Drake came back out with another load. “Sorry,” he called to us. “It should only be a couple more.”
Aubrey and Harrison turned their heads to see who he was talking to. Harrison’s eyes locked with mine, and I saw the color drain from his face. He recovered quickly. He smiled and started walking over to us. Aubrey followed.
“I’ll go help you get the rest of your stuff,” Melinda told Drake.
Carrie and Blair looked nervous. The tension in the air was thick.
I was shaking inside but tried to appear outwardly calm. “We’re about to leave,” I said to Harrison.
He walked over and grabbed me in his strong arms, holding onto me tightly. “God, I’m going to miss you so much,” he whispered against the side of my head. I loved how the feel of his hard muscles contrasted with his soft T-shirt. He smelled great, too.
I looked over his shoulder and saw Aubrey looking at us like she was going to be sick. I blinked. She was jealous as hell. It was written all over her face.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.
“Sure,” he put his arm around my shoulder and started walking around the huge front lawn of the frat house.
“See you tomorrow, Harrison,” Aubrey called out as she got in her Jeep and sped away from the frat house.
“Why’s she seeing you tomorrow?”
“Oh. Ah, we have a couple of classes together this summer.”
I paused. “What?”
Harrison looked at me guiltily. “Aubrey is staying in town this summer, so we thought we’d take some classes together.”
I stopped walking and pushed his arm off my shoulder. “When were you going to tell me that?”
He couldn’t seem to meet my eyes. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“I think you know you didn’t.”
He sighed. “Look, I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d be weird about it. There’s nothing between us. We’re just friends. That’s all. Like I’ve said about a million times.”
The conversations we’d had about Aubrey since I’d seen them together at the library that evening in the spring hadn’t gone well. He’d accused me of being jealous and paranoid, and I’d told him he was naïve and clueless.
“Just friends.”
“Right,” he breathed a sigh of relief as if he thought I was finally catching on.
“Then why did you leave all three of my texts on read?”
He glanced at me sharply. “What?”
“I was watching you when you got the third text. You told Aubrey it was nobody important when she asked who kept texting you.”
A look of panic crossed his face briefly, then his features morphed into anger. “You know why? Because she knows how possessive you’re being. If I told her it was you checking up on me again, she’d give me hell for it.”
“She’d give you hell for getting texts from your girlfriend?”
