Chapter 14 #2
Wolf frowns and shakes his head.
“No, I mean it. I’ve watched you and Stevie these past couple weeks. You treat her like an adult, and it just works.”
He shrugs. “I just pick my battles with that one.”
I laugh.
“What about you?” he asks, and I get a swirling feeling in my stomach when I feel his eyes on me again. “What would your plan
be if you didn’t have all the family businesses to keep you occupied?”
I rub my lips together and think. “Honestly, as much as I love my family, I think eventually I want something for myself.
Something that none of them know anything about. No connections, no pressure. Just . . . my own thing.”
“Good luck with that,” Wolf says with a laugh. “Your family seems well-connected.”
“You’re telling me,” I grumble knowingly. “Eventually, we have to grow up and forge our own paths, don’t we?”
He nods thoughtfully before clearing his throat. “So will you know a lot of the people at this party tonight?”
“I’m not sure who all is coming,” I reply, grateful for the change in subject. “Obviously, I’ll know Hilow. And I got a text
from a family friend I know named Claire that’s going to be there. She was a year younger than me and didn’t go to my school,
but she’s great. Her uncle is a doctor in Boulder and close friends with my dad, so we grew up together.”
Wolf nods, his jaw tight. “What made you change your mind about wanting to go? When he first invited you, you didn’t seem
too keen.”
I rub my lips tighter, tasting my sheer gloss. “Just trying to say yes more . . . remember?”
I feel his eyes on me, pensive, probing, and curious. Wolf has this way of looking right through me. And it’s weird how much
I like it. It makes me feel seen somehow. And even when he doesn’t say anything, I feel like we’re still talking.
This is a very different person from the one I saw around campus at Trinity. Back there, he’d always seemed determined not to look at me, like I was invisible by choice. But the moments when our eyes caught felt intentional somehow. Like he’d been
waiting for it. Maybe it was just because I was best friends with his sister, but it felt like he was always there. Background
noise that wouldn’t go away. Comforting in a strange way, like the sound of lapping ocean waves or birds singing in the forest.
Now being near him so often, I feel the opposite of comfort. Like I want to crawl out of my skin if I don’t do something with
him. What I want to do, I still don’t know.
“What made you decide you wanted to come?” I rebound the question back to him with a hopeful look.
“My sister made me,” he murmurs and looks out the window.
I sigh and roll my eyes. “Okay, Wolf.”
“Don’t believe me?”
“No,” I retort, ignoring how square his jaw is. “I think you want to come because you don’t dislike me as much as you act
like you do, and it’d be easier if you just admitted to being my friend. I mean, we are working together and co-parenting
a bearded dragon.”
“Oh, is that right?” he asks, his voice holding back a laugh. “I guess I missed the part where you helped me hand-feed the
crickets to him every night.”
“I’m ready to take my turn anytime. You just have to admit you want to be my friend and invite me up.” I swallow the knot
in my throat because that sounded more erotic than I intended. Like I want to be invited up.
Maybe I do.
“You think you’re good at reading people, don’t you?” he asks, his jaw taut as he watches me from the passenger seat. “Is
that why you like to set people up so much?”
I shrug. “Matchmaking really is just the art of reading people, and whether you’ll admit it or not, I can see right through you, Conri. You like me.”
He makes a grumbly noise in his throat, and my cheeks heat at the feral sound of it. His large hands twitch over his thick
thighs, and that causes my body to heat as well.
With a sharp inhale, I decide to lay it all out there. “Being real? I’m going to this party because I don’t want to repeat
Trinity.” I pause when I feel his eyes on me again. “I may be good at reading people, but I’m not great at reading myself,
and I think you already kind of know that I didn’t have the best social life at Trinity. Or dating history, for that matter.”
“Is this about that guy you went to the Trinity Ball with who posted all that shite about you?”
My jaw falls open. “You know about that?”
“The whole campus knew about that,” he replies darkly.
My face flames with mortification. “Well, great. Then you have a perfect example of how much I struggle. Before I lived with
your sister, there was no one I wanted to keep in touch with after graduation.” I throw a cautious look at Wolf and notice
he’s frowning pensively, so I try to elaborate more. “I’m sure you have loads of friends from rugby and growing up in Dublin.
But making friends isn’t easy for me, especially as an international student. Your sister all but forced our friendship. She’s
kind of amazing like that.”
My hands tighten on the wheel as I say the next bit. “But she’s not here, so I’m trying to rebuild my social life here at
home. My family is all busy with kids and their partners. I can’t rely on them for everything like I did when I was younger.
I need to find my own life and say yes to invites that come my way—like Hilow’s party.”
Wolf clears his throat. “I don’t think that bloke is looking at you for friendship.”
I roll my eyes. “He’s harmless, and I could use all the friends I can get.”
Wolf makes another growling noise, and my stomach swirls. He’s a hard one to read, this guy. In one breath, he makes me feel
like he doesn’t care about me at all. And in the next, he’s acting like he wants to rip the head off a guy from my past while
sending me adorable pictures of his pet. If this truly is just the big-brother treatment, I seriously need to stop checking
out his ass, because the feelings he’s igniting in me are far from familial.
My blood pressure is still high by the time we reach Hilow’s place. He’s in a house on University Hill, which is historically
a bit of a party neighborhood, as is evident by the people pouring outside various front porches, drinking and smoking. I
manage to find a parking spot on the street a block away, and as we walk toward his house, I exhale heavily, trying to calm
down before we go inside.
Wolf stops in front of the house, so I turn to look at him curiously. “Did you forget something?”
“I’m not very good at friendships either.” He grips the back of his neck and adds, “But you can do loads better than me for
a friend.”
I laugh and cross my arms over my chest. “More like you can do better than me.”
“Impossible,” he murmurs under his breath, and I jerk my head back in disbelief. Surely, he didn’t mean that the way it sounded.
He’s just being self-deprecating. Maybe we’re both too critical of ourselves. We might have more in common than we realize.
“Tell you what,” I state, taking a step closer to him. “Why don’t we both go in there and just do our best to have fun.” I
tilt my head to offer him a coy smile. “We can try to be cool and see if anyone notices.”
The corner of Wolf’s mouth twitches as he fights back a smile. “You’re not even close to cool.”
“I can be cool.” I hold my jacket up to him. “A motorcycle jacket is like . . . really cool.”
He chuckles softly, and his smile falls as his gaze sweeps over my body. “You’re stunning tonight, Stretch.”
Goose bumps erupt over my skin as I fight the outward reaction attempting to break free from my body. He’s right. I’m not
close to cool. Because cool people don’t want to squeal and skip down the street the minute a hot boy compliments them.
I shrug casually. “That’s nice to hear because I usually veer on the side of cringe over cool, even with my hot jacket.”
My breath hitches when I realize he’s taken a step closer to me, his eyes glittering in the darkness. “Cringe is sexier than
cool because at least you’re trying.”
I force myself to take in oxygen. Deep breaths. Deep breaths are required when you’re making word mountains out of word molehills.
Those were just words. Silly words coming out of his mouth. They don’t mean anything. Even if they are quite possibly the
nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
His smile is faint, but it’s there, so I force a wobbly smile back. “Well, let’s go into this party and both be cringe together,
then.”
I turn on my heel and drape my jacket over my shoulders as I struggle to walk straight and show no signs of the girlie party
going on between my legs.
Cringe is sexier than cool.
Weirdest hot words I’ve ever heard, but said in that Irish accent of his, damn, they were effective.
We climb the front porch and make our way inside, the base of the music thudding loudly as we let ourselves in the front door and stand in the entryway, taking in our surroundings. The house smells like booze and weed, and I’m shocked by the sheer number of people crammed in here.
Hilow wasn’t this popular in high school. He was kind of a quiet, generic guy who got along with everyone. He certainly wasn’t
a party boy throwing ragers like this. Since I don’t recognize most people, I can only assume it’s his new college connections,
which means he fared better than I did at the socializing after high school.
“Everly,” Hilow shouts from across the living room, where he’s seated on a leather couch with a few people. He pushes his
long frame up out of the low sofa and strides over to us, beer bottle in hand, with a wide smile and slightly red eyes. “I’m
so glad you made it,” he murmurs and pulls me in for a hug, his hands dipping low on my back. He releases me and shifts his
gaze. “And you brought Wolf. Good.”
Wolf gives no outward response to Hilow. Just a flat look that I know all too well.
“Come on into the kitchen for a drink. I have everything.” He grabs my hand and pulls me through the throng of people, and