Chapter 10
EVE
Waking up to Andrew draped halfway over my body, his hair messy and his face buried in the pillow, was a head fuck.
It took me a solid minute to work out that I was actually awake and this wasn’t some wacky vivid dream.
Then I immediately started second-guessing the decision to stay in his bed, so as carefully as I could I slithered out and fled back to my own bedroom.
To my relief, Ethan and Brodie were gone, and I could take a moment alone to run through the night’s events in my head. First Haze, then Andrew…What the hell was happening? Would Connor suddenly make a pass at me next?
No. Connor was with Lacey, and I would seriously hope he wasn’t the kind of guy to cheat on his girlfriend. Besides, Lacey was awesome, and I’d never do anything to jeopardize our friendship…even if I had briefly wondered what it’d be like to sleep with both Sullivan brothers.
Sometimes I wondered if they’d do it at the same time, but that was because my brain needed bleaching.
Somehow I’d overslept, and a glance at the time made me shove aside all my relationship anxiety as I put my foot on the gas to get showered and ready for the day before I was really late for class.
Odd that Andrew had still been asleep, too…
he was usually one of the first awake in the morning for fucking fencing or polo or whatever lame rich dick sport he played.
“Good morning, Evie Marie,” Haze greeted me when I raced into the kitchen with only one arm into my sweatshirt. “Did you want breakfast?”
“Morning!” I greeted him with a bright smile, liking the sound of my first and middle name like that.
No one had ever used it as a nickname before, and to have it come from Haze…
it felt like another step forward in whatever this was between us.
Which pleased me so fucking much. “No, thanks. I’m late. See ya!”
Haze frowned, then put down the bagel he’d been slicing in half. “I’ll walk with you,” he offered, brushing his hands off into the sink. “Give me five minutes?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, I’m super late. I’ll be totally fine to get to class on my own though. I’ll catch you later!” Before he could argue over the safety of me walking the short path to our main campus, I hauled ass out the door.
By all accounts, Meadowridge College was one of the safest places in the country, so there was just no need for them to permanently babysit me.
It was giving me claustrophobia, even if they had good intentions about it.
Whatever was happening with my father couldn’t touch me here, and that was a relief.
“Hey, Eve!” Lacey called out when I approached the main building. She was coming from the dorms and jogging to catch up to me. “You’re late too?”
“Yeah, I overslept,” I admitted with a grimace. “How about you?”
Lacey gave a watery laugh and shrugged. “I lost track of time while breaking up with Connor.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “You what?” My pulse was fluttering so hard in my neck that I really hoped she couldn’t see it as she examined my face.
She shrugged again, looking sad, but not as devastated as I’d have expected—as devastated as I’d have been in the same position. “I broke up with Connor. Can we maybe do lunch and I’ll tell you all the boring details? I really need to talk with someone who understands.”
That comment confused me, but she was my friend and I would be here for her through whatever was happening. “Yes, yeah, of course! Are you okay? We can skip class and talk now if you want?”
This time her laugh was more genuine. “I don’t know about you, but I’m falling way behind after taking the last few days off!
I can’t skip any more or I’ll have to start sleeping with my professor too.
And Professor Zanderlind is a whole lot less sexy than Ethan Sullivan.
” She gave a dramatic shudder, then waved as she hurried off in the direction of her class.
Her news had stunned me so thoroughly I barely retained any information during my own class, nervously counting down the minutes until it was over so I could get the full story from her.
My first thought was that she knew about that accidental kiss when Connor and I were kidnapped, but after replaying that scenario in my head a dozen times, I decided she wasn’t like that.
She would understand that it was a mistake, and in the throes of panic I’d accidentally thought Connor was Ethan.
But then if not that, what? Lacey said she broke up with him. What had he done? It’d suck to have to pretend he didn’t exist, considering we lived together, but if he’d fucked up and hurt her I wouldn’t have a choice. It was girl code, and I would not break it.
I was one of the first out of class, nervously hurrying over to the dining hall to meet up with Lacey. The guys had said that Connor and her had been together for ages, like they were each other’s only real relationship. So what had changed?
It felt self-centered to think it had anything to do with me, but I couldn’t help wondering how I’d feel in Lacey’s shoes.
If my long-distance boyfriend moved into a house with a random girl who was already sleeping with his brother and best friend…
yeah I wouldn’t love that. Thankfully, she didn’t leave me hanging in suspense, arriving barely a minute behind me, with Nina not far behind her.
I gave Lacey a questioning look, trying to silently ask if she was okay sharing her breakup story with Nina too, but she just shrugged and grabbed a menu before heading over to our usual table.
“Okay, so Eve’s eyes are bugging out of her head because she wants to know why I broke up with Connor this morning,” Lacey announced as we all sat down.
Nina nearly fell off her seat. “You what? Why?”
Lacey sighed, slouching back in her seat as she wrinkled her nose. “Uh…lots of reasons, to be honest. One being that I’m actually not attracted to him, and the idea of having sex with him gives me the ick.”
I choked on my own saliva. “Excuse me?” I asked in a strangled voice, sure I’d just heard her wrong.
Lacey grinned, seemingly amused by my reaction.
“Not that he’s not a great-looking guy or anything, but ever since I got back to Meadowridge I feel like…
ugh, this sounds so bad, but it’s like I’m kissing my brother.
Bad enough that I’ve just been avoiding him way more than I should, but that sort of leads me to the real reason why I needed to break up with him.
I met someone else while I was in Malawi and I can’t stop thinking about him.
Thinking about how kissing him would feel right, and not ick.
We’ve recently started chatting again, neither of us able to stay away, and it felt a lot like cheating. I had to end it with Con.”
She said it all in a bit of a rush, like ripping off a Band-Aid, and then gusted a long sigh at the end. “Holy crap, that feels good to admit out loud.”
My head was swirling. “What the fuck, Lacey? You…okay. You met someone else? So Connor didn’t do some awful unforgivable shit that makes him dead to us for hurting you?”
She laughed, shaking her head. “No, oh my God no. He would never. Wait, would you do that for me?”
I shrugged, nodding. “Of course.”
Nina firmly agreed as she righted herself on her chair.
“One hundred percent yes. But I’m still reeling over here from how you’re not attracted to Connor freaking Sullivan.
The man looks like he stepped straight off the page of a dark romance novel or something.
Talk about crafted for the female gaze, because ho-ly sheesh. ”
As subtly as I could, I elbowed her. “I think what Nina means to say is…are you okay? You seemed really sad when I saw you this morning.”
Lacey sighed again, propping her chin on her hand. “I’m fine, I just…I sort of expected him to be a little bit upset? Like, we’ve basically been in an arranged engagement since we were kids, our parents pushing us together for as long as we can remember—”
“That explains why he feels like your brother,” Nina muttered, making Lacey smile again.
“—but I guess I thought he would be just a bit upset, or angry or something when I broke it off.”
I frowned, confused. “He wasn’t? That’s rude.”
She laughed. “Right? That’s what I thought! I mean, it’s good because I obviously didn’t want to hurt him or anything, but like, at least fake it a bit for the sake of my ego instead of offering me a hug and saying, Thank you.”
My jaw dropped in shock, then a laugh bubbled out of me so hard I couldn’t have stopped it even if I tried. I could just picture it so clearly, and it was so…Connor. “What the shit?” I snickered. “Nice one, Connie. Really in touch with those feelings.”
“Ugh, so true,” Lacey groaned. “I should have known better. Anyway, we’re done, and he seems honestly relieved about it, so I’m kinda glad for the sake of my dignity that I got in first.”
“Still, he could have squeezed out a tear or two,” Nina grumbled with a frown. “Then again, I feel like hell would freeze over before that man cried.”
Lacey and I laughed our agreement, then placed our lunch orders with the waiter. The fact that the Meadowridge dining hall operated like a restaurant for main meals was quietly my favorite thing, especially with how hungry I was.
“What do you have planned this afternoon?” Nina asked as we waited for our food. “I was thinking of checking out that women’s self-defense class you were telling me about, Eve.”
“Oh, that sounds fun!” Lacey said with a bright smile. “Are you going, Eve?”
I nodded, wrinkling my nose. “I think I need to. Connor told me to stop being such a victim all the time, and he kind of had a point. It’s at six, right? I might catch up on classwork in the library, then run home to change.”
Nina snort-laughed. “We all know it’s not classwork you’re doing in the library, ho-bag.”
My face flamed hot and I groaned, covering my eyes with my hand. Nina didn’t know I was hooking up with Ethan, but she knew the library had been the scene of more than one clandestine kiss. “I mean it this time.”
“Sure you do,” Lacey teased. “But is it cool if I come with you guys?”
“Of course!” Nina agreed enthusiastically.
I nodded, dropping my hand away from my eyes. “You can tell us all about this other guy too. We need all the details.”
“And photos,” Nina added. “We definitely need to see photos.”
Lacey’s whole energy shifted into lovestruck happiness so fast it made me blink, and a rush of relief flooded through me faster than I could fully process.
She’d already moved on from Connor, if they’d ever really been in love—romantic love—at all.
I was happy for her, and maybe a little bit quietly happy for me even if that made me the most self-centered bitch on Earth.
But now more than ever, I couldn’t deny I had a bit of a crush on the younger Sullivan brother, and now he was single.
I bit my lip, because those were inside thoughts that I’d never actually act on. Much like the desire to drive off a bridge or put a fork in an electrical outlet, just because the thought popped into my head I didn’t actually need to follow through.
But damn I wanted to.