Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
SEVEN VIRTUES, NORTH CAROLINA
Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Cybersecurity attacks can happen anywhere. Even e-readers can be hacked just by opening a single e-book infected with malicious content, according to research published at Defcon.
#defcon29
—Castor Newsroom
Four Years Ago—January
Wrapping my scarf tighter around my neck, I take a moment to inhale the cool air in my lungs before making my way across campus so I’m not late for my art history lecture.
If I were still living in Texas, I’d be in shorts and a T-shirt , I think with some amusement, despite the fact that it’s January and noticeably cooler. It’s one of the many changes I’ve quickly adapted to since moving to North Carolina. That and the rolling mountainous landscape in the small college town near the infamous Biltmore Estate is as far from the never-ending plains of Texas.
Texas. Kensington. Ethan . A tiny ping in the region of my heart stabs when I think about how long it’s been since I’ve received a text from him—even just a cheesy GIF or funny meme. Despite the obvious, I can’t stop my heart from being disappointed by the fact that now that I’m out of his family’s vicinity, I also guess he feels he no longer needs to keep his promise to me even to check in.
I mutter to myself, “I could be dead for all he knows. Then again, it’s not like I expect a man to look out for me anyway.”
Squaring my shoulders, I toss my hair and flash a smile at a handsome guy I recognize from my dorm who holds the door for me as I race up a flight of stairs to the second floor of Constantine Hall.
After what happened last fall at the party, it was hard to remain where I knew I didn’t want to be. I contacted the admissions office at Seven Virtues University and quietly arranged for a mid-year transfer the week I returned from my visit home during parent’s weekend. Though her timeline wasn’t as set in stone as mine was, Austyn was working as diligently as I was for her move to New York.
Both of us were done with the life we were living in Austin and each of us had plans that led to our dreams coming true. I championed her decision to seek out the bright lights and big city—a place I promised her I’d visit once I got settled—even as she offered up recommendations for me to help me with mine.
Finally, it was just the two of us together, right before holiday break, toasting each other with chai tea. “The one thing I’m going to miss about moving is you.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
“I don’t?”
“Nope. Want to know why?”
I lean back and watch as she picks up her guitar and plucks the strings. An Indigo Girls song that Austyn swears is our secret soulmate song fills the air. Just after the intro, her incredible voice belts “Power of Two.”
I am helpless to do anything but sing it back to her.
When it’s done, Austyn sets her guitar aside before her wet eyes meet mine. “It’s like the last stanza of that song, Fallon. We’re closer to being free than ever before, and if we have each other, we can do anything. We don’t have to be together to do that.”
Careful of her guitar, I dive across the space and wrap my best friend in a hug that seems to last forever back then but wasn’t near long enough, considering I haven’t seen her face in weeks.
Now, having moved, being first stunned then elated when my mother followed me to Seven Virtues since her job as an IT auditor permitted her to work anywhere, signing up for new classes, and having a front-row seat to Austyn’s New York adventure with the world in the palm of her powerful hands, life is good. I haven’t lost any of the important relationships I feared I would by moving to North Carolina.
Austyn and I talk almost daily—swapping stories about everything between what we’re doing every day to the men sliding in and out of our lives. Whereas Austyn is meeting smoking hot older men—the kind of guys right up my alley—I have a ready-made smorgasbord of hot young bodies, all of whom appear to be interested, but it isn’t in any way reciprocated.
I might break down soon though because, truly, there are only so many batteries I can order from Amazon before the shipping giant starts to target sex toys as my primary advertising.
Truth be told, I’m not playing hard to get. I’m just looking for a man and nobody I’ve met here has made me want to spread my legs to let him pump his cock in and out of me. I don’t want some boy who has no clue what to do with their scrawny bodies. They can shoot me puppy eyes and flash their dimples—it will be a long wait before I let one charm me into bed. For right now, it’s easier to ignore them all. Like me, Austyn is selective. She seems to have set her sights on a singularly arrogant, disappearing mess—her roommate’s brother.
To say we’re both sexually frustrated is an understatement. I wondered aloud to her on the phone the other night, “I have enough problems getting laid at this school.”
A welcome bubble of laughter escaped her lips. “Well, what did you expect?”
“I had such hopes some hot professor would bend me over his desk. Maybe I’d tempt one of the priests into thinking they’d made a mistake when they’d joined the seminary,” I flat out told her. Her laughter almost took out my hearing. In my head, I tacked on, I want someone who makes my clit tingle the way Ethan did at our graduation party .
That’s when Austyn chooses to remind me, “You go to a university whose name has the word ‘virtue’ in it.”
“Trust me, that isn’t as much of a problem as one might think,” I informed her dryly. Then I proceeded to tell her about the number of condom wrappers in the bathroom every Sunday morning and her laughter again pealed out.
“So…your problem?”
A pair of green eyes flash from the depths of my memory as he knelt in front of me at my high school graduation. “Huh?”
“Hello, Fallon. Why aren’t you getting any?”
“What is my problem, you ask?”
“Oh, please tell me.” I heard her comforter rustle as she got comfortable.
“I can suck a dick and finger a man’s ass without breaking a sweat. But ask a man to manage to suck my nipple at the same time he’s fingering me—it’s a no go. They can’t manage two body parts at once. And we let these men operate heavy machinery?”
Austyn screamed with laughter, her beautiful voice panting out my name, “Fal-Fal…oh my god.”
“I mean, let’s face it. Most of them can barely have their heads between our legs and remember to slide their fingers in and they’re incompetent.”
After I proceeded to tease her out of her bad mood due to her own man not calling her, I buried the hurt feelings I felt when I reminded myself Ethan had forgotten all about me and his promise to be there for me when I drawled, “I’ll continue to hold out hope your uncle is secretly pining away for me because the pickings around Seven Virtues are slim.”
Austyn snorted before changing the topic. What she didn’t realize is my ideal man is someone I can lean on, someone who isn’t afraid to take on me and my attitude. Ethan Kensington was the current bar, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a man out there who couldn’t top him.
Or that I shouldn’t be looking for him, according to my mother.
Talk about a shock—I about passed out when I was helping my mother unpack my dorm room at the beginning of the semester and during a conversation where she was placing photos around my mid-year dorm room, she casually mentioned how much Ethan reminded her of my father.
Lifting one of me, Austyn, and Ethan, she mused, “There’s just something about him—whether it’s that silent strength or his great butt—that is certainly attention grabbing.”
Choking on my own breath, I managed, “Mom, are you involved with Ethan?” Because if that was the case, I’d sure as fuck be abandoning my new dream and joining my best friend in New York. School or no school, I wouldn’t be able to be around the man I’ve been crushing on for well over a year if he and my mother were getting horizontal together. Fuck, is that why he stopped texting me? Has he been texting her instead? I turn around and study her face to find her studying me intently.
Objectively, my mother’s a beautiful woman. About ten years older than Ethan, there’s nothing to stop a relationship between the two of them.
Nothing at all.
Her wise eyes met mine. “No, I was merely making an observation, darling.”
All the air seemed to rush back into the room at once.
“But Fallon…” she began.
I held up a hand. “I already know what you’re going to say.”
She placed the frame down and came closer. Taking my hand, she led me to my bed before sitting on it and pulling me down next to her. Cupping my cheek, she said, “You remind me so much of myself at your age.”
I opened my mouth to thank her, but I was flabbergasted when she continued, “My interest in older men was because I didn’t have a good opinion about myself, Fallon. My home life wasn’t the best. I was determined to escape it. It made me feel older than I actually was. Maybe that’s what attracted your father.”
“Or maybe it’s because you’re you—remarkable, smart, and gorgeous,” I corrected her.
Her eyes were unfocused as she recalled memories I’ll never have. “Your father was my everything. He had this way about him that made me feel like I was more than enough. He was willing to give up ? —”
I reached up and covered her hand with my own. “What did Dad give up?”
Her eyes blinked back into focus. “That’s a story for a different time.”
“Mama?”
She squeezed my fingers. “That’s the kind of man I want for you, Fal. One who cherishes every part of you. Nothing else about him matters.”
“Truly?” I hesitated before rushing out, “Even if the man were older than I was?”
“The only thing the man who captures your heart has to do is to make certain that after he makes my daughter fall in love with him that she never doubts it.” Mama leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead.
Now, as I scoot past some of my fellow classmates, I ignore the vibration in my jacket pocket. The important people in my life know where I am and what I’m doing. If it’s Mama and it’s an emergency, she will call.
With that, I whip out my laptop and begin to take notes on St. Jerome’s oil on wood by Da Vinci at the Vatican.
Two hours later, I’m saving my notes when I recall the frantic buzzing at the beginning of my lecture. Hoping it’s just another news alert about my best friend, I’m shocked at the message on my Lock Screen:
Ethan:
Are you ignoring me, witch?