Falling for Seven
Authors: T.A. Richards Neville
Falling for Seven
T.A. Richards Neville
Falling for Seven
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Copyright 2016 T.A. Richards Neville
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events, locations or organizations, is entirely coincidental.
***
The University of Boston used in this story is completely fictitious and bears no resemblance to the real Boston University. Street names, and place names are also made up solely for the purpose of this book.
***
Julian Lawson. We shouldn’t have mixed—we don’t fit. I am good for him and I am bad for him. He is worse for me. We will destroy each other in time and everyone knows it.
Everyone including us...
He is the star quarterback for the Boston Lions and I am just a girl that goes to the same university. I am also his coach's daughter, and crazy in love with my best friend-turned-boyfriend. But there's a fine line between love and pain, and I no longer know which side of that blurred line I am standing on. Admitting out loud that my relationship with Jordan was toxic was not something I found easy to do.
So I didn't.
And then this happened:
Julian and I were thrown together in what was supposed to be a harmless college assignment. And yet, I know there is no way that I am coming out of this unscathed.
I made a huge mistake sleeping with Julian. A mistake I can't afford to repeat, no matter how good—and bad—he makes me feel.
Somebody once told me that to love another with your whole heart was the bravest thing a person could do. I was not brave, not at first. And then I met Julian and everything changed. Now I am the bravest person in the world and if I can survive loving Julian, I can survive anything.
…for anyone who has bought, borrowed, or took the time to read my books.
I am grateful to all who shared my stories with me.
Contents
There is always that pivotal moment in a person’s life when something so significant happens that it changes who you are going to be forever. This was that moment for me—he was that moment for me. And this is my story.
I HAVE BEEN SITTING here in my dorm room for almost two hours. I should be typing up my notes, but an endless rotation of questions and scenarios I have gone over a million times are all I can focus on for any considerable length of time. Truth is, I don’t need the pages and pages of notes. Everything I need to know about him is in my heart and my head. I see his changes with my own eyes. Were they even changes at all, or were they always there? Whatever the answer is, it doesn’t matter
.
I can’t stay here, too much has happened. I need a break and I refuse to twiddle my thumbs while the person I think I may have fallen in love with moves to another state and into a new life. Don’t feel sorry for me, because I might not like it, but I don’t want to stop him either. I feel a certain level of relief that he’s leaving.
I feel detached from my body as I sit and watch my fingers skim the smooth planes of the airline ticket. Destination: California.
Home.
The feeling doesn’t bring the happiness it should. I’m not really feeling anything, contemplating the thought of going back to the place I’d grown up. But I’ll go, because I have to. I need the closure, if nothing else. I have to know that I am making the right decisions.
I mentally shake off what I’ve already decided and swipe my fingers over the mousepad, springing the black reflective screen of my iMac to life.
And I start to type my half of the assignment.
“I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU ar
e
doing this to me!”
“Angel, not everything is about you. Not anymore. There is a time and a place if you wish to act like a child, and right now is not it.”
My dad, Michael—and I am really using the term ‘dad’ loosely here—rifled through scattered papers in front of him, searching for the piece that would make my mom homeless. Indefinitely.
This was the real reason he had insisted on uprooting me all the way out here to the East Coast. My figure skating at the same university he coached football was a convenient diversion of a cover up. One of my dad’s master plans in motion. There was no way he could have left me back in California without a suitable guardian or his controlling hand to keep watch over his delinquent Mexican daughter. There was always that chance I fell in with the local gang. That’s what young Mexicans did, right? Joined gangs? My dad would know, he was the expert in racial stereotyping.
I was also still a minor, and with no mom actively on the scene, I had grudgingly left everything familiar to me and gritted my teeth through my final year of high school in friggin’ Boston. If it wasn’t for the fact I had no other choice, I would have told him to fuck so far off—
“Without your mother and you in college here, we don’t need the apartment.”
WTF was with the “we”?
“She’s gone—
for good I hope
,” I heard him mutter, “and we need to move on with our lives. Honestly, it’s not that big of a deal. Do you think this is a big deal to her? Walking out on you.
Again
?” He flicked out his wrist and pulled a face, straining to see the face of his Rolex. “I really have to get going, my appointment with the bank is in twenty minutes, and then I need to get back to the campus.”
“I won’t forgive you for this,” I said with finality.
“No need.” He gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek.
“I’m moving into the dorms.”
He laughed out loud. “I haven’t got time for your teenage drama. We’ll talk tonight.”
I felt the walls of my throat tighten. “Don’t do this, Dad. Don’t leave her out on the curbside like she’s disposable waist.”
He shook his head, his frown indicating his incomprehension of why I’d rather be on any other page but his.
“Dickface,” I muttered to myself. Ugh, I was so angry I could cry. That sounds truly pathetic, I know, but sometimes there is nowhere else for the anger to go.
<>
I had been a freshman at Boston University less than a month, and I was drifting through the morning in a haze of amplified anger. I couldn’t focus long enough to take in anything substantial from my lessons, so on my eighth day I decided it was a pretty good time to skip out on my World History Class.
There was a sports bar on the corner of Lincoln Street by the student villages. I would never get away with being served alcohol—especially not at 11a.m. in the morning—but a soda and a dark corner would do for now. Inside it was exactly how I wanted it: low lighting—too low for a Wednesday morning—and the lunchtime rush was an hour away. I bought a coke and took myself off to a table at the farthest end of the room with not a window in sight. I stabbed out a text message to my step sister, Marilyn, and
told
her, that I was moving into her dorm.
Please God,
I telepathically prayed,
let there be space. Please let there be space.
I was so fucking angry. I was waiting with baited breath for the day my dad would finally see what an oversized prick he was. He was cutting off my mom like she was a lifetime inconvenience and not the woman who was half responsible for creating me. He showed no remorse, guilt—compassion. Acknowledging her existence was a chore, at best. I think he mistook taking my mom’s home from her for disowning the family pet. I chugged on my coke to cool my heated blood but it done nothing to wash my anger.
My phone lit up with a message.
Marilyn:
OMFG! Today is your lucky day. Emily ditched dorm life in favor of her boyfriend’s dick every night, so she’s out. Her room is yours. I’m so excited I just peed a little!!! xox
Me:
Ew, gross. I’ll be over first thing in the morning. Give you some time to cool off. Love ya x
Marilyn:
back atcha babe xox
The glass door burst open and I instinctively glanced up. Six and a half feet of long, lean muscle filled the doorway. The suggestion of strong abs strained against the fabric of a charcoal-gray base layer, his muscles pulling and flexing under the action of just opening a door. He wore a black ball cap pushed to the back, his unruly hair peeking out at the nape of his neck.
He looked up and right at me, then smiled, a perfect line of white teeth, and I felt myself smile back.
I lowered my prying eyes and took a long, drawn out sip of coke as he walked up to the bar. The fizz was cold against the back of my throat and shot me bursting back into reality. Okay, so a gorgeous guy had walked into the same bar as me, so what? It happens.
Move on.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen one before. That, and I had a boyfriend. He wasn’t just my boyfriend, either. He was my best friend, my better half. It had only been six months of exclusivity, but I could breathe a sigh of relief just from breaking the barriers of friendship. I’d worked hard for what I had with Jordan Grayson in the time I’d been here, and I wouldn’t throw it away for anything.
Ever
. I’d never seen him coming, either. One day we were joking around like we always did, and then the next day we had eyes only for each other. There was no rhyme or reason for it, we just happened, and I’d no idea how we hadn’t happened sooner. He was so right for me it was scary.
I pulled up a web-browser on my phone listing hostels in the Santa Monica/Venice area and bookmarked the page for later. The act was pointless. Even if my mom was staying at any of those places, they were hardly likely to tell me. My mom regularly used to do this kind of thing—disappear for weeks with no way of contacting her. I’d managed to hide it from my dad for the most part, but when he did find out he would fly me out to stay with him until she found her way back home. I’d have been in his full care if it wasn’t for our housekeeper, Movida, assuring my dad she would look after me whether my mom was there nor not.
“Hi.”
I’d never seen him approach, or even heard him for that matter.
“Hi.” I looked up into blue eyes; a dark and intense shade of sapphire, and I was smiling again. Or was I? I had no idea what my face was up to. I could hardly feel it, my mind was so close to combustion from a sensory overload.
“Mind if I sit here?” He gestured to the vacant seat across from me, a thin, curious smile on his lips.
Did I mind?
Yes, I minded. I came here to be alone. I was trying to be angry and he was ruining it. I shook my head to tell him it was fine. I didn’t have it in me to send him away. I could put my brooding on hold, for now.
He sat down and shook his mussed brown hair free from his ball cap. He was kinda sweaty looking, like he’d just come straight from the gym. He also had no drink with him, no food, nothing. I looked up at him, wondering what he was up to. That conversation of having a boyfriend was always an awkward one. I hoped I wouldn’t need to have it.
“What’s your name?” He asked in a voice that curved into genuine interest.
“Angel.”
The cute stranger laughed, popping a dimple. “No shit. That’s your name?”
Okay, that irritated me a little. “
Yes
that’s my name.”
“Angel what?”
“Is that any of your business?”
He smiled, no teeth just all midnight-blue eyes. “I’m hoping it will be.”
I scoffed. “Nice.”
“That wasn’t a line.”
“Really? You sure have a way of making it sound like one.”
“My bad, I’m sorry.” He brushed a hand over the top of his tousled mass of hair. “Really, I am.”
I Sighed. “Rivera,” I conceded.
“I knew it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You knew what exactly?”
A chorus of giggling and excessive talking ricocheted through the near-empty bar and both of us looked up to see what all the commotion was. I would have put it down to the hungry mass of students who would have just let out for lunch, but my new acquaintance looked irritated and had already started pushing back his chair to make a break for it.
“I’ll see you around then…
Angel
.”
The slow and delicate was he spoke my name brought me out into a fresh wave of goosebumps.
“Jules, what’re you doing over here?” A curvy blonde with a full head of beach waves slipped in beside the stranger. Her arms reached up to his broad shoulders and she pulled herself onto tiptoes, giving him a slow kiss on the lips. There was no tongue but it was just as intimate. I couldn’t feel more out of place or isolated.
She turned to look at me, her smile tight and judgmental. She looked back at her guy, and then back to me. She threw out her hand to me, and not knowing what else to do, I shook it. “I’m Kit. Who are you?”
It was bordering pushy the way she demanded my identity from me, but I wasn’t sure she knew how aggressive she sounded. I shook her hand, mine feeling more sweaty than anything else.
“Angel,” I said. For some reason my eyes darted up to the stranger as if seeking his reassurance.
“Angel. Hmm.” Her eyes rolled upwards as if I had really given her something to think about, and then she smiled. “I like that. Angel. Yep, I love it. It’s so different.”
Jules grinned behind her, his chin resting in his cupped hand. He looked embarrassed. I didn’t know if he was embarrassed he’d been caught with me or the way his
friend
was acting.
“Taylor’s birthday party tonight. My place.” Kit turned her pearly white’s back to Jules. “You’re coming, right?” He wasn’t left enough time to answer. “And you, Angel, you have to be there. Is this your first year? I haven’t seen you here before.”
“It’s a big university,” I pointed out. I grabbed my phone and stood up to leave. “See you around.”
I was heading to the ice-rink this afternoon, and as much as I didn’t feel like it right now, keeping busy was most likely for the best. It would get me through the rest of the day and then I would call the hostels while my dad holed himself up in his office with his playbook after dinner.
A cool hand clamped onto my upper-arm and I bolted to a stop.
“Wait.” It was kit from the bar. “Come tonight.” She handed me a square of paper. “Here’s the address. If you’re Jules’ friend, you should definitely be there.”
“We’re not friends.” I shifted in a restless state on the spot, gripping onto the shoulder of my backpack for all it was worth.
Kit smiled, or she tried to smile. Whatever it was, it was strained. “You looked friendly enough to me.” She sounded like she was accusing me of something, but then her whole face brightened. “Just drop by, it’ll be fun. I’ll see you there, yes? Great.” She leaned in and hugged me—yes, she hugged me. It wasn’t that I hadn’t planned on saying no. She never gave me the opportunity.
I stood there motionless after she left, wondering what the hell had just happened.
<>
I stood outside of 122 Layburn Drive. The house was huge; probably a house share, and I started to rationalize why I had come here and how a complete stranger managed to talk me into it. Kit looked harmless, but I got weird vibes off her. She was giving off mixed messages and I wasn’t much of an interpreter. I’d probably sound far-fetched to anyone else and I really didn’t know her well enough to be judging her like this. I sucked in a breath and sunk my teeth into my lower lip.
“Keep doing that and you’ll chew that lip right off.”
“Oh.” I startled at the voice next to me.
“You going in?” he asked, stopping to wait for me like we were old pals.
“I guess.” I wasn’t convincing even to myself. Why was I here again? I felt like I’d been bullied into it. I took six steps onto the freshly mowed lawn and then I saw the light of day.
“Actually, no. I’m not going in.”
The guy shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
The Ice rink was still open and I threw my clothes into the locker and pulled on a plain black, long sleeved training leotard. I laced up my white ice skates and fastened my hair into a tight bun, making sure all the pieces were secure. I normally wasn’t so particular, but hair flying in my vision was the last thing I needed on the ice.
The rink was empty apart from me and a few other figure skaters taking a private lesson, the janitor already starting to clear the stands. My breath was frosty in front of me, and I loved it. I loved the clear mind skating left me with and the cold freshness, cleansing my skin and my thoughts. On the ice there was nothing to worry about other than making sure not to fall and getting my routines right. Everything else could wait.