Chapter Twenty-seven
Brynn
I’m having another one of those déjà vu moments, but this time, of the life I didn’t lead.
If I had been accepted to the Zeta sorority and I moved in here with Addison.
Addison is a very chill Zeta who buzzed around me doing my hair, my makeup, and then giving me shoes from her closet that she bought but has never worn because they were too tight.
“I love these,” I say, looking down my absurd white babydoll dress at the cute blue flats she let me borrow.
“Keep them,” she says easily. “They don’t fit me anyway, and if you can’t tell, I don’t have the closet space for shoes I can’t wear.” She glances at the empty side of the room. “I mean, I can right now, but once I get a new roomie, I won’t be able to, so I don’t want to get too used to using the extra space.”
“What happened to your old one?”
Addison’s brown eyes widen and she reaches over to grab a clip off her desk, impulsively pulling back one of my curls and pinning it to see how it looks. She nods, apparently satisfied with her handiwork, then she explains, “She pulled a Rory Gilmore, had a total meltdown and dropped out.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah.”
“I wish you didn’t have to be a Zeta to live here,” I remark, since hanging out with Addison while she got me ready has been really nice. “I’m between places myself, and you seem like a great roommate.”
“You should talk to Sloane about it,” she tells me. “You do have to be a Zeta to live here, but since my old roomie short-circuited, we are down a Zeta. You never know, she might let you join us.”
“Can you do that after rush?” I ask with a mild frown.
Addison nods. “You can. We don’t usually, but it is possible. You’re in the Zeta date auction, so you may as well be one of us.”
I shake my head, looking over my own reflection. “I got tricked into doing this. I don’t even know how it happened, though to be fair, I was a little foggy when I talked to Vanessa about helping out.”
Her eyes widen. “You didn’t mean to sign up?”
“No, and now it sounds like I have to go up in front of people and have a bunch of eyes on me. Not my cup of tea at all.”
“If we’re far enough apart in the lineup, I’ll sneak into the audience and bid on you as soon as bidding opens so you can get off the stage as fast as possible,” Addison offers. “I mean, as long as it wouldn’t make you feel weird. I am into girls, but I tend to have a thing for blue-eyed blondes, not brown-eyed brunettes. I think maybe it’s because I’m a brown-eyed brunette. I don’t know, just feels weird. I had a friend back home who dated a girl who looked just like her. You couldn’t tell if they were dating or sisters, and I think it left an impression.”
I crack a smile. “I bet you like Sloane then.”
“I like looking at Sloane,” she says wryly. “She would never date me even if we played for the same team, so I don’t let myself consider her that way beyond being an aesthetic sight to behold.”
“Smart. If only we all had the willpower to mind-block beautiful people who aren’t right for us.”
She smiles at me in the mirror, fluffing up my dress. “I think you’re ready.”
We head downstairs, and a girl named Shelby positions me where she wants me on the photo wall. I strike a few poses that make me feel silly at best, and ridiculous at worst, but it’s only because I can feel people looking at me and I don’t enjoy being the center of attention.
But I suck it up, and I pose and smile until Shelby gets a picture she’s happy with.
At the end of the day, even if it was a real date I was expected to go on, I would agree to it.
I am the reason the fundraiser is needed, after all.
___
I’m worn out by the time I change back into my clothes and leave the Zeta house. It’s dark, and the lack of sleep last night is catching up with me.
In a weak moment, I consider texting Killian and asking him to come pick me up. I want to curl up somewhere I’m wanted and cuddle my cat before I go to bed.
But I do the right thing and call myself an Uber instead.
I go back to Stacie’s apartment alone and finish packing up my stuff.
I hate that it’s starting to get to me, but I’m also getting worried about the fact that I haven’t heard from Killian. He hasn’t texted me even once, and I don’t know if he’s waiting to see when I’ll crack and text him, but it makes me very uneasy. Especially because he still has Toast.
I don’t want to be the one to crack and text him, but as I’m lying on my old bed trying to study, I can’t keep my mind from wandering.
After wasting nearly a full hour and only managing to read three pages, I finally give up and grab my phone.
“I thought kidnappers were supposed to send ransom demands,” I type, then I press send.
It only takes a few seconds for a response to come. “I tried to get a proof of life pic to send you, but Toast is too depressed you left her here with me.”
My heart sinks. “Is she really?”
In the two seconds it takes him to respond, I’m already considering giving up my boycott and running right back to his apartment.
He must not want to torture me that much, though, because he sends back, “Nah, I’m just fucking with you. She’s warming up to me.” Then he sends a picture of Toast curled up next to him on the couch.
“She looks cozy. Has she had dinner yet?”
“Yep,” he texts back. Then a second later, “Is this what shared custody is like?”
I crack a smile. “I don’t know. Shared custody is my worst nightmare, so I never hope to find out.”
“Too lonely by yourself?” he questions.
I hesitate to answer. “It’s not that, I just… I have difficulty trusting someone to take care of my CAT when I’m not there to keep an eye on things, so I can’t imagine my kids.”
“Better never try to divorce me then,” he shoots back with a wink that feels playful and threatening at the same time.
I don’t want to discuss this with him, but I think I have to. I don’t really have another option at the moment. “I have to move out of Stacie’s apartment this weekend. I don’t know where I’m going to move yet, I don’t have anything lined up, but she wants to get a new roommate, so… I have to get my stuff out and put it somewhere.”
“Ok,” he answers. “I’ll swing by tomorrow and pick it up. We can keep everything at my place for now.”
My stomach twists up because that feels too much like moving in with him. I know he added the “for now” to make me feel better about it, but once he gets me there with my cat and all my things…
Will he let me leave once I find a new place to live?
“I won’t be here much tomorrow,” I tell him. “I have a morning shift at the shelter, then I’ll probably head to campus so I can get some studying done because I have plans in the evening. I also don’t have a key to this apartment now that the locks have been changed, she didn’t give me one, so I’ll have to make sure Stacie’s home before you come.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he tells me. “Just leave all your stuff there. I know what needs to be done. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks,” I say, feeling just a bit of weight fall off my shoulders.
Belatedly, it occurs to me that it’s his fault I have to move out in the first place, so maybe he isn’t owed a thank you.
“How was your day?” he asks me.
“Long,” I answer.
“Well, it’s the weekend. At least you’ll get to relax and have a little fun before it starts all over again.”
Yeah, sure I will.
All I’ll be doing this weekend is running my ass off—working, trying to study without being distracted by the fact that I’m technically homeless, and potentially fighting with Killian to get my cat back so we can live our best lives sleeping in my car… which is still missing, so even that probably isn’t an option this time.
Sounds like a blast.
“I lived in my car for a while my senior year of high school,” I tell him for some reason. “I thought that was going to be the most stressful period of my life.”
And then I went to the wrong party.
And then I met him.
“Why did you live in your car?” he asks.
“It was better than the alternative. I was fueled by dreams of better days so it really didn’t seem that hard. I had this fantasy of what my life was going to be like once I ‘got out’ and I fully bought into the delusion. Call me a nerd all you want, but coming to this school was my fantasy. And I didn’t think it would be like this.”
The last admission slipped out without permission, and as soon as I let the words sneak out, emotion does, too. Tears well up in my eyes, and I angrily brush them away.
My vision blurs from the moisture, but I blink it away and read the message he just sent. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Brynn. Come home.”
Come home.
That shouldn’t hurt, but it does.
His apartment isn’t my home. For a minute, I really thought I’d found the guy of my dreams and maybe it would be, but the guy of my dreams doesn’t do the things he does.
I’m not sure I have a choice, but I can’t go back there.
Killian Walsh only looks like a dream come true. In reality, he’s a beautiful nightmare, and I don’t want to get pulled so far under that I can’t wake back up.
I can’t let him destroy me.
I met him less than a week ago, and he has already ruined my entire, carefully built life.
Think of the damage he could do if I gave him more to work with.
“I can’t,” I type back. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day, and I can’t focus anyway, so I think I’m just gonna go to bed.”
I don’t give him a chance to respond. I power off my phone and plug it in to charge, then I put away my books and set my iPad alarm instead.
I don’t know how I’ll hold up if he pushes too hard, and I don’t want to give in.
This bed may not feel like mine anymore, but it’s the one I want to sleep in tonight. The one I need to sleep in tonight.
I burrow under my blankets for what I know will likely be the last time for a while, and I hope that at least tonight, I don’t get kidnapped by any masked men.