Promise Me (4 page)

“Yes, you do think he’s cute! Kate has a cru-ush,” she sing-songed. “Kate has a cru-ush.”

I threw the pen that came in the welcome basket from the management company at her, but she ducked out of the way, laughing.

“I don’t have a crush,” I told her, rolling my eyes. “I barely know the guy. And besides, I’m here for an education. I don’t have time for boys.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Sara said, calling me out.

“It’s true! I don’t have time for guys. I have to get a job, and I have to study.”

“And with all that, you can’t possibly squeeze in any time for dating. Whatever. Just admit that you’re not over Max, and that’s why you don’t want to date.”

“That’s not the reason,” I assured her, because it really wasn’t.

Max was a guy I’d dated for a year. He was nice enough, but I hadn’t been in love with him. In truth, it had always felt like something was missing from our relationship, and I could never really put my finger on what it was. And knowing that he wasn’t ‘the one’, I definitely hadn’t wanted to even attempt long distance. So I’d ended things with him a few months earlier.

Of course, Sara had a hard time understanding that. She’d drooled over Max the whole time I’d dated him, and she couldn’t believe I’d ever break up with him. She still assumed he’d dumped me, and I’d stopped fighting her on it. I figured there wasn’t much more I could say to convince her, and it didn’t really matter anyway. But one thing was for sure. I was taking a break from guys.

I felt privileged to be at UT, and I wasn’t going to screw it up. I’d seen how hard life could be without a good job and a college degree. My mother hadn’t gone to college, and her crappy waitressing job wouldn’t have been enough to keep us solvent even if she hadn’t had a drug problem. And even though Dan had come in like a knight in shining armor to rescue us from hell, I knew that wasn’t always the case. I wasn’t going to bank on some guy swooping in to take my worries away. I was going to make my own luck and pave my own way. And getting my degree was the first step toward making sure I never had to live like we had for most of my life. If I never set foot in another trailer park, that would be just fine with me.

“Fine,” Sara agreed, letting the Max thing go. “But you shouldn’t discount the possibility that there are hot guys all around that I’m sure would kill to go out with a hot, sexy blond bombshell like you.”

I laughed, considering bombshell was the last word anyone would use to describe me on most days, but on a day when my hair was in a knot on top of my head, I had no make-up on, and I was wearing an oversized Chicago Bears t-shirt and cutoffs, I knew I wasn’t going to be winning any beauty contests.

“Oh, you’re gorgeous, and you know it,” Sara told me.

“I’ll agree with that,” Drew said as he and Micah came back into the apartment with Sara’s bed.

“Me too,” Micah agreed.

I felt my cheeks get hot as I realized they’d heard the tail end of our conversation.

“I – what?” I said to them, trying to play it off.

Drew grinned at me as he passed by. “We talked about it. We think you’re both hot.”

Micah laughed as Sara smiled widely.

“Oh, my God. I can’t do this,” I told them, turning back to the mugs I’d been stacking. “I have to unpack.”

Sara blew me a kiss. “I can see you blushing,” she teased in a loud whisper after the guys had disappeared into her room.

“I’m doing nothing of the sort,” I assured her, even though my cheeks were blazing hot.

In truth, it was sort of flattering that they thought I was hot. I’d never admit it outright, but who didn’t like to hear that sort of thing. Maybe I was going to like Texas after all.

Chapter Two

Jack

“I can’t wait to get you alone,” Alyssa purred in my ear as we walked to my door, her hands pawing at my chest as she clung to me.

She was drunk, and she was horny. The two things were practically synonymous for her, and it was why I’d dragged her out of the party before she was ready to leave. She was getting a little too flirtatious with some of my friends, and I could tell they liked it a little too much. Quite honestly, I couldn’t blame them – although I’d never admit it out loud. Alyssa was gorgeous and sexy, and with huge tits, a tight ass, and legs that you just knew she’d wrap around you while she fucked you – which she did. She turned heads almost everywhere she went.

I knew for a fact that the majority of my friends – and a whole slew of guys I didn’t know – wanted to screw my girlfriend. It wasn’t going to happen as long as I was with her, but with Alyssa turning up the flirting whenever she had too much to drink, I imagined some guys assumed her loyalty to me didn’t run very deep. They were wrong, and a part of me wished she’d just stop.

Of course a part of me felt like I couldn’t really blame her for doing the exact thing that had gotten me interested in her in the first place. It had been her repeatedly sticking her chest in my face, telling me I was sexy, and running her hand over my stomach, as she whispered dirty things in my ear that made me succumbed to her whims and sleep with her after only meeting her a few times. It was who she was, but I definitely didn’t want that to happen with anyone else. So as long as her flirting remained harmless and no one crossed any lines, I figured I could deal with it.

I knew she had a way about her that made you want to do what she said – and it was worse when she was naked. At first, that was pretty much the only reason I was with her. She was fun, sexy, and charismatic, and she was fantastic in bed. I hadn’t really been looking for anything serious when I met her, but she kept coming around, and after a while I realized I wasn’t really seeing anyone but her. We sort of fell into being exclusive, and after a year together, I was good with our situation.

Alyssa was cool, and we had fun together, but it wasn’t like we had some deep connection or anything. I knew she wasn’t ‘the one’, but I was only twenty, so I wasn’t exactly looking for someone to marry. For now I just wanted to focus on school and have some fun when I wasn’t studying my ass off and doing whatever else I could to get into a great med school. And Lys was cool with that. She gave me my space when I needed it, but she was there when I needed her. It worked for us.

“Jack, hurry up,” she whined as I tried to fish my keys out of my pocket.

Maybe if she wasn’t leaning against me and trying to shove her hands into my shorts, I could locate them easier.

“Ba-by,” she cooed, dragging out the word

“Lys, I’m trying to find my keys,” I told her, trying to stay patient, but it wasn’t easy when she was drunk, and I was mostly sober.

I was volunteering at the VA hospital in the morning and had to be there early, so I couldn’t exactly get wasted. And I’d had to drive us home from the party, but Alyssa’s state of inebriation had her assuming that I was as drunk as she was and was just as eager to screw around. Not that I wasn’t anticipating what would happen once we got to my room, but we’d never get there if we couldn’t get into my apartment.

Alyssa’s hand slipped down to cup my dick, right as my fingers brushed my keys in my pocket, and I jumped back, making her giggle.

“Ooh, jumpy tonight,” she teased.

I started to snap at her, but when I saw the amused look on her face, I let my irritation slip away and smiled at her instead. Her light brown hair was flowing over her bare shoulders, her cheeks were flushed, and the top of her strapless dress had slipped down enough to give me a prime view of her ample chest. The smirk on her lips was adorable, and she was looking at me like I was the only person in the world she wanted to be staring at. It was an awesome feeling.

Maybe that was why I stayed with her. I loved that look. It made me feel important, and I’d always liked to know that I was wanted. Maybe it came from an early childhood spent feeling like I was a burden most of the time, or maybe it was just because I’d always been a sucker for girls who could level me with a look that showed exactly how strong they were on the inside. Either way, that look always did me in, and I had a feeling Alyssa knew it.

She also knew that with that look I’d give her exactly what she wanted – attention and affection. She’d grown up with parents who couldn’t have cared less about her, so she was starved for love of any kind. A part of me understood exactly how that felt, so I did whatever I could to make her feel wanted. Most people didn’t know how much Alyssa’s parents’ indifference affected her, since she seemed so strong and confident on the outside. But that was the thing about those of us who’d been through hell as kids. We were fighters, and we’d never let our weaknesses show – except to those we really trusted.

Keeping my gaze on Alyssa, I closed the distance between us and put my hands on her slim hips, dragging her against me. “I want you,” I told her.

She smiled. “Then open the damn door and take me.”

I narrowed my eyes at her as my own smile shifted to a cocky smirk. “I plan to – once I can get my keys out of my damn pocket.”

I watched Alyssa roll her eyes and turn away from me, but I didn’t let her go far. As she started pounding on the door to my apartment, I pulled her back against my chest and slid my hands down her flat stomach, wishing I could reach her bare skin.

Neither of my roommates came to the door, so I said, “I think they’re still out.”

“They’re home,” she told me. “I saw Cullen and Micah’s cars downstairs.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I reminded her. “Besides, it’s late. They’re probably in bed.”

Or they were probably busy with girls of their own and didn’t want to be bothered.

“Open the door, Cullen!” Alyssa yelled as she banged harder. “Come on, Micah! Jack lost his keys!”

I sighed and hoped my roommates wouldn’t take a vote to murder me in my sleep for having the loudest girlfriend on the planet as I finally extracted my keys from my pocket.

A few seconds later the door opened, and Cullen stood there wearing basketball shorts and nothing else. He looked at me in confusion. “You lost your keys?”

Considering I was holding them, I could understand his confusion.

“Something like that,” I told him, as Alyssa pushed passed him into the apartment.

“Thanks Cullen! I’m going to your room, baby,” she called over her shoulder. “Be there in five minutes or I’m leaving.”

“She sounds demanding tonight,” Cullen said as soon as Alyssa was out of earshot.

I sighed as I dropped my keys on the hall table and ran a hand back through my hair. “She’s demanding every night.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I guess it’s not so bad when she’s demanding you drop your pants so she can suck your cock,” he said, raising a suggestive eyebrow at me.

I grimaced, remembering the night before. “You heard that?”

Cullen shrugged. “I hear a lot of things.”

“Sorry, man.”

“No sweat. I’m hoping you’ll be hearing that from my room soon.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s the lucky girl going to be?”

I’d known Cullen for over a year, and he was the pickiest sonofabitch I’d ever met. If he met someone who’d passed his scrutiny, she had to be special.

“The new girl who moved in across the hall,” he said with a smirk.

“New girl, huh?”

His smirk morphed into a smile “Yeah. She and her friend moved in today. Micah, Drew, and I helped them bring their stuff up. Micah got her friend’s number.”

“And you got the other one’s number?” I prompted.

He shook his head. “I didn’t ask for it, but I will. And if not, I know where she lives. I figure I can make an impression in no time.”

So he’d struck out. That didn’t happen often. Usually it was the other way around.

“She’s that worth your time and energy?” I questioned, knowing he wouldn’t be talking about her if she wasn’t.

He nodded. “That and then some. Man, she made a Bears t-shirt that probably belonged to her dad look sexy. She wasn’t even trying, and she looked fine as hell.”

“Good deal, man. I hope it works out.”

“Me too,” he said, scratching his bare stomach. “It’s been too long.”

I started to open my mouth to make a smart-ass comment about that being no one’s fault but his own, but Alyssa cut me off before I could get the words out.

“Jack, what the hell is taking you so long?” she yelled from my room. “I’m naked, and I want you.”

“She’s naked and she wants you,” Cullen echoed, raising his eyebrows at me in suggestion.

“She can wait,” I told him, and then I yelled back to Alyssa. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Fine,” she grumbled.

“So this girl’s a Bear’s fan?” I asked him, thinking that was kind of hot.

“I guess. We didn’t really talk about it, but she said she was from Illinois. I was honestly more concerned about how she looked in the t-shirt than what was on it.”

That made me laugh. “Touché. Although it
would
be cool if she was into sports.”

Girls who liked sports were such a turn-on to me. Maybe it was because I’d played football and baseball in high school, and although girls had been interested in me because of that, I’d always liked the girls who knew their way around a field better than a locker room.

“It would be, but she’s cool in other ways,” Cullen assured me. “I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes the next time I talk to her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Kate.”

As soon as he said that, even though I knew it was the most ridiculous thought I could have had, my mind drifted back to a Kate I’d known once upon a time. Of course she didn’t go by Kate. I was the only one who’d called her that. To the rest of the world, she was Kaitlyn. And she was from Indiana, not Illinois. I had no idea why she was suddenly on my mind, and why for half a second I had the ridiculous thought that she was the girl Cullen was talking about. I knew she wasn’t. They just had the same name, and even that wasn’t much of a stretch. There were a million girls named Kate in the world. It was just a coincidence.

What was more shocking was why I was even thinking about her. I’d left my memories of Kate in Indiana when I’d left my nightmare of a life there eight years earlier. It was rare that I even thought of her these days, and it had to take a hell of a lot to drag me back to a time when my life was terrifying and unstable and so bleak.

In truth, being ripped away from it like I had been was the best and worst thing that could have happened to me. And ever since the day I’d been told I was being sent to live with my aunt and uncle in a suburb outside of Houston, I’d been trying to forget how awful the first twelve years of my life had been. Of course Kate had been a bright spot in the darkness – well, her and my mother. They were the only good things about my childhood as far as I was concerned, and I hadn’t seen either of them in so long that I’d almost completely forgotten what they looked like.

And that was sad, considering I’d adored my mother, but I had no pictures of her from when she was alive. My aunt had some from when they were teenagers, but she’d been estranged from my mother for almost fifteen years before she’d died. It wasn’t until I’d needed a place to live that I even knew my aunt existed, and that I had an uncle and cousins. I’d grown up thinking my only family members were my mother and my asshole of a father.

But my Aunt Deena had taken me in without question, and even though she wasn’t my mom, she did everything in her power to make up for the fact that I was essentially an orphan. She treated me like her son, she helped me get past what my father had done to my mother, and she gave me a life I could have only dreamed about. I knew I never would have ended up on the path to be a pediatric physician if it wasn’t for her and my Uncle Rob.

That was why I didn’t think much about Kate. She was a reminder of the life I’d left behind, so it was surprising that she’d even floated to the top of my mind when Cullen had said her name. She was in the past, and even though I owed her so much for what she did for me when I was a kid, I knew it wasn’t healthy to dwell on what we’d gone through. Five years of therapy had taught me that, and the last place I wanted to go was back down that depressing worm hole.

My past was what it was, and I could never change it. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t move forward. And speaking of moving forward, there was a very naked, very willing girl in my bed, who I knew would be more than accommodating in helping me shut out the parts of my past that had crept into my mind in the last few minutes. I figured I’d better get back to her before I found myself huddling in a corner of my room, crying for the little boy who was too scared to fight back and blamed himself for not being able to save his mother’s life.

I looked up at Cullen. “I’m glad you met a cool girl, man. I’m going to go see what mine is up to.”

“I’ll put my earplugs in,” he said jovially, and I smiled and shook my head as I walked back toward my room. Earplugs were probably a good idea.