When Gracie is humiliated after following her best friend's brother to college and finds he's moved on without her, she grows closer to his rival--the captain of his basketball team--the infamous Kalen Rush, and suddenly Gracie wonders just what len...
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With the dawn of a new day came the outside world infringing on what little peace we'd created for ourselves.
Kalen had prepared me for this, of course.
He'd tucked himself in behind me, his arm going around my front as he held me tightly to his chest while outlining the schedule for the rest of his week as we talked and talked and talked, terrified that this would be the last time we'd be able to do so for a long while.
"Tomorrow I've got to be up early. We've got our first practice back at five, so I'll have to be out of here thirty minutes before then. I'll probably only get to see you in that class you TA unless you want to get lunch off campus? Then dinner, but I'm not sure how we'll make it seem like we're not together if we're with each other all the time..."
"So, no more staying the night?"
I'd turned in his arms, pouting up at him at that latest admonition.
He flicked my nose with his free hand before tugging me even closer, the warmth and safety of his embrace something I'd come to rely on, something I wasn't sure I could sleep without.
How was I supposed to go back to my dorm room, sleeping in the same room with Franny after everything that had happened with us?
It was obvious we had more than a few issues that we needed to work out, but that didn't make it feel even frostier than before.
"No, no more sleepovers I'm afraid."
I responded by tucking my face into his neck and breathing in his scent—something not particularly clean or dirty, but something somewhere in the middle.
It was cologne and soap from his shower earlier in the day mixed with a tinge of sweat and the salty tang of skin, but there was an element to it that somehow had my mouth absolutely watering.
"Tell me why we're doing this again?"
He groaned while placing a kiss on the top of my head.
"You're not making this any easier, you know? We have to do this because my father is apparently a homicidal maniac who thinks your mother stole something from him, and because he thinks you know where she hid what she took."
My heart skipped a beat then sped up double time in my chest.
He wasn't wrong—my mother had stolen something from his father.
And I knew exactly where it was.
Kalen knew that, he just didn't know the full truth.
There was money with the USB that she'd stolen, and I'd never told him.
Sitting up gingerly out of his hold, I placed some distance between us before looking back into his eyes.
