Forcing Gravity (36 page)

“Hey Holly,” he said, grinning from ear to ear as he scooped her up into a hug.

She batted her eyelashes a few more times and said, “Find me later, cutie.
”
A
nd then she winked at him and she was gone.

I realized I could spend months studying the flirting behaviors of women, and I’d still be lost. I was pretty sure the gift to turn a guy on with just a look or a smile was not one I possessed. It was always easier for me to just talk to a guy, but maybe that’s why I had more of them who were friends than boyfriends. That was a disturbing thought.

“Ethan!” two girls squealed simultaneously as they bounced over to us.

“I had no idea you were this popular,” I muttered to him, and he just smiled.

Through his teeth he said, “
It’s
how I get laid so much.”

“Pig,” I said, elbowing him in the ribs.

“Yeah, but you love me.
Hey
Celeste.
Hey Delia,
”
he said, greeting the bouncing girls as they walked up.

“Sadly, I
do,” I mumbled, ignoring the trampoline twins.
“
I’m going to do a lap. Henley, do you want to come?”

I turned around to see if she wanted to join me, but she was being chatted up by a really cute guy
who I was pretty sure I’d
seen on the Hollister website
, so I didn’t interrupt. I did, however, notice that she had the hair flip down and made a mental note to ask her how exactly she did that wit
hout coming across like she was having
a seizure.

“Okay, I guess I’m on my own,” I said to no one in particular.

“Who’s your friend?” one of the twins asked in her baby voice as I walked away. I didn’t wait around to hear Ethan’s answer.

I sipped my drink as I made a lap around the house, but I didn’t really talk to anyone. I wasn’t above starting a conversation with someone interesting, but no one I came across really fit that description, so I just walked an
d
observed.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t observant enough or I would have noticed who was in attendance that night. Instead I ran smack into him when I walked around a corner.

“Logan,” he said, equally surprised to see me.
“Hi. How are you?”

My blood ran cold, and my heart started pounding as
I realized it was Jase.

My mind flooded with thoughts of the story Ethan had told me, but I still couldn’t picture Jase as that kind of guy.
He looked just as sweet and kind and charming as he always had, but maybe that was the trick.

I could see there was a level of excitement in his eyes as he appraised me, but it was masked by a feeling of doubt.
Outside of the brief words we’d exchanged outside the club, the last time I’d talked to him had been the morning he’d dropped me off at my dorm after I’d spent the night. We’d been in a very different place then.

“Hi
Jason
,” I said firmly,
steeling myself to push him away, simply because I knew it was the right thing to do.

“
Jason?” he questioned. “
You’ve never called me Jason
.”

He was right.
I hadn’t called him Jason since the night we’d met, and he knew that by using his full name, I was sending him a message, but I decided to make my intentions crystal clear.

“
Yeah, well, things change
,” I said coldl
y.

I sipped my drink and looked away. Ethan was watching me from across the room. He gave me a look that asked if I needed him to rescue me, but I just shook my head enough for him to know I was fine.
Thankfully he wasn’t charging across the room. The last thing I wanted that night was a fight.

Out of the corner of my eye, Jase was appraising me with a puzzled look on his face. “What exactly did I do, Logan?”

I turned back to him and watched him follow where my eyes had been focused. When his gaze settled back on me, I could see in his eyes that he’d figured it out.

“Ethan
finally
told you about me, didn’t he?”

I shrugged nonchalantly, not
wanting to drag Ethan into our conversation
.

“What did he tell you?” Jase asked softly, and I could hear the concern in his voice.
He knew that I knew.

“He told me enough,” I said simply.

Jase sighed, long and loud. “I’m not the guy he thinks I am.”

“And what guy is that,
Jason
?” I asked, purposefully using his full name
again
. I needed to hear him confirm for me what Ethan had disclosed.

“Someone who takes advantage of women,” he hissed, so low that I could barely hear him, but I was certain he didn’t want any of the ten w
omen who were hovering nearby, o
n the off-chance
that
they could get a piece of the famous
Jason
Brady, to hear what he was
confirming
to me.

“Is that wh
at you’d call it?” I asked, irritated that
he was making light of something so severe. “Because where I’m from, we call that rape – gang rape, in fact.”

“Keep your voice down,” Jase
hissed,
a definite pleading tone in his voice. “My p
arents did enough to
ensure my name didn’t get leaked to the press
when that whole situation happened
. I do not need it
getting out now.”

“You are unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head and gritting my teeth.

An innocent girl had been raped by multiple guys, including the one standing in front of me,
apparently,
and all he cared about was his damn reputation. Well what about her?
What about h
er reputation and her life? Did he even consider how what they’d done to her that night had affected her? No, probably not, because he
’d
left school soon after
and never had to see her again
. He went off to pursue his acting career and become rich and famous. He didn’t think about the fact that that girl had lost everything that night.
Asshole.

“Why am I unbelievable?” he asked. “You don’t even know the whole story. You just know what that jackass told you.” He jerked his thumb in Ethan’s direction, clearly getting fired up.

“
Jason
, I don’t need to know the whole story. I know enough
.
And t
hat ‘jackass’ has
been my best friend for more than a decade
, so back-off, or I
will
have to hurt you.”

“Fine,” he said haughtily, as he
crossed his ar
ms in front of his chest. “Believe
what you want
, but you should know that I didn’t
have
anything to
do
with what happened to Amanda
that night
. She was my friend, and I
never
would have hurt her
.”

There was so much conviction in his voice that I almost faltered.

“
You know what
, I don’t believe you
,” I said, before spinning on my heel and walking away from him
.

“Logan, you know me,” he called after me. “You
know
I wouldn’t do something like that.”

I
didn’t turn around. I pretended like I couldn’t hear him, but I could hear every word as clear as day, and what he said resonated through
to
my very cor
e. He was right. I did know him.

I
tried to act like what he
’d
said hadn’t affected me, but in truth,
the doubt had started to creep up in my mind
when I heard the insistence in his voice and the look in his eyes
.
He wanted me to believe him, to see that what I’d heard about him was wrong.
I knew he had every reason to lie about what had happened, but for some reason,
a part of me
, the part that had doubted the validity of what Ethan had told me from the beginning,
thought
Jase just might have been being
honest with me
.
And as I walked away from him, eve
ry piece of me wanted so badly to believe him.

But I had to remember that as well as I knew him, I only knew the guy he was today. I didn’t know the guy he’d been four years ago, and because of that, I didn’t turn around.

“Hey, where you going so fast?”
Carter asked
, pulling me into the kitchen on my way by.

“Hey Carter,” I sighed. “I was thinking about leaving. I don’t really know anyone here, and I’m not sure I’m having that much fun.”

He smiled his
award-winning smile. Seriously, was everyone in L.A. this gorgeous?

“Don’t go just yet. It’s my party, so I demand that you stay.”

“You demand?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
I was not in the mood to be told what to do.

He quirked a
smirky
grin at me.
“I request it,” he said. “Does that sound better?”

“Yeah, it does,” I said and couldn’t help smiling back. He was really
freakin
’ cute
, and right then
, I needed something cute to take my mind off of Jase
.

I glanced over my shoulder, but Jase wasn’t behind me, so I focused my attention back on Carter. I could do this. I could talk to him. I could push Jase to the back of my mind.

“Good,” Carter
said, his tone all butter. “Now, come have a drink with me.”

He took my hand and led me to one of the bars stationed around the house. It still shocked me that a teenager had bartenders at his
party. I
was so not used to that
wor
ld.  Where I came from, it was S
olo cups, beer, and if you were lucky, some unknown brand
s
of vodka, tequila
,
and rum with some basic mixers. I had a feeling I could order pretty much anything at Carter’s party and the bartender would be able to make it.

“What’ll you have?” Carter asked me.

“A mojito,” I said, as his arm slid around me, pulling me against his side. He smelled like an Abercrombie and Fitch store, and I remembered Ethan telling me he was a model for them. It was no wonder he could aff
ord a house like that
a
t
eighteen
.

“A mojito?”
Carter asked, looking down at me. “That’s a sexy drink.”

“I’m a sexy girl,” I said,
as I attempted to flirt with him
, Henley’s short dress and heels giving me new confidence.

Carter’s brown eyes sparkled as if he knew a secret. He leaned down, so his lips were right next to my ear. “You’re probably the sexiest girl at this party.”

Yeah, that was so not true,
but instead of arguing
,
I shivered inadvertently at the mix of his words and his warm breath on my skin
and smiled
.
I thought he might try to kiss me, and wasn’t sure if I wanted that, so I just stared straight ahead and tried
to play
coy.

“I love that dress,” Carter
murmured, his lips lightly brushing my earlobe.

The bartender handed me my drink, and I half-expected him to raise an eyebrow at me. I was so obviously not
twenty-one,
and he hadn’t so much as asked to see
an
ID, so I figured Carter must have
had
an arrangement with him.

“You don’t love my dress,” I said, taking a big sip of my drink as his lips pressed against the skin under my ear
, and I fought the urge to shiver
. “You’re a guy. Come on.”

“You have the longest, sexiest legs, I’ve ever seen, and yes, I am a guy, so of course I noticed.  I also noticed your shoes, but from there my eyes just traveled up, up, up and then I found the bottom of that sexy dress. So yeah, I love it.”

His hand reached out to finger the bottom of my dress, and I felt his fingers graze the outside of my thigh.

“Okay,” I said, pulling back. “I think I’m a little too sober for this.”

“I’m sorry,” Carter said, but he didn’t seem sorry at all. “You do something to me, Logan, and I can’t help it. I want to be close to you.”

Wit
h that, his arm looped around my waist
,
and he pulled me against him. With my increased height, my eyes were inches from his. His eyes hooded as he looked at me, as if intoxicated by what he was seeing, and a part of me felt like laughing. It had to be an act.