Reckless Secrets (8 page)

Bre was still out with her dad. He must have been the last dad to leave town. Nic was like Logan, needing sleep after partying with her dad. Taylor was on shift at the dining hall until after dinner. Payback for having the rest of the weekend off. I had no one to talk to and nothing to do but homework.
 

I headed to the science library just for a change of scenery. On the way there, I had to wind through a game of Zombies. Particularly since Halloween, you'd be walking around campus and suddenly you'd see someone sprinting, trying to get away from a crowd of people who were trying to tag and zombify them. In this case, a stocky guy was running up the hill from the library with half a dozen other guys after him. A couple of them looked like they'd been on the track team in high school. They were gaining on him fast. Zombies do have superhuman strength. I felt sorry for the guy who was being pursued.

"Go! Go!" I yelled at the runner, who was quite possibly the last human standing in his dorm. I tried to protect the human race and play defense by blocking some of the zombies.

As the crowd of zombies parted to go around me, one of them paused and catcalled at me. "Hey, you're cute. Can I have your number?"

"Sorry. I don't date the undead."
 

"I won't be undead forever." He winked at me.

He wasn't bad looking. If not for Logan, I might have been tempted. I turned and yelled at the stocky guy. "I have your back. Run!"

I was smiling as I walked down the hill to the library and ran into my friend and chem study buddy and lab partner, Dex.

"Dex!" I jogged to catch up to him at the door to the library.

He waited and held it open for me. "Nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon than study?" He was smiling.
 

"Me? What are you talking about? Just now I was saving humanity from the zombie apocalypse."

Dex rolled his eyes. "That game has gotten out of hand. You can't go anywhere without running into a horde of zombies."

"Says the man who's his dorm champion." I paused to catch my breath. "One of them asked for my number."

"That doesn't surprise me. The undead are amazingly horny."

I shook my head. "What about you? Why aren't you sleeping off a hangover after partying with your dad like practically everyone else on this campus? You'd think the campus was full of undead." I slid in the door out of the cold November air and into the foyer area in between the next set of double doors.

Dex grinned. "Some people know how to party responsibly." He winked. "Hey, Dad really liked you. That's high praise. Dad's very discriminating."

"Did he?" I smiled, pleased. Dex had one of the good dads. "I thought he was awesome, too." Dex's dad had helped bring down our evil chem prof. "How come you never told me you have such a cool dad?"

"You never asked."

I grinned back and followed him into the library. "I owe him."

"We all owe him." Dex led the way up to the second floor where the study tables were.
 

"The question is—will we even need to study for chem now that the witch is in jail?" I couldn't help smiling.

"Don't get cocky, kid." Dex dropped his backpack onto a prime study table. "We don't know what a new prof will do about the test grades and scores we already have. The semester's more than half over. We may still have to work like hell to bring those grades up."

The whole class was basically failing because of the way Dr. Rogers taught and graded.

I shrugged. "Maybe. But not if we get a cool replacement like Professor Kim. He was awesome when he filled in for Dr. Rogers—funny. Easy to understand. He actually made chemistry seem almost easy. I know he'd be fair. He all but told us how unjust he thought Dr. Rogers was being and how she was a horrible teacher."
 

I set my backpack on the table across from Dex and pulled out my laptop. "Speaking of chemistry, I need your opinion." I brought up the missed-connections page. "I hope I'm wrong, but I think Byron has a crush on me."

Dex shook his head and gave me a "well duh" look. "Of course he has a crush on you, Ellie. That was the whole point of buttering him up and flirting with him. That was why we got all the extra help from him."

I made a face at Dex, feeling guilty again. "You're supposed to make me feel better, not worse. It was your plan that got me into this mess." I quickly brought up the post I'd read earlier, the one written by the guy who'd been helping a secret crush with her chem. I swung my laptop around so Dex could read it, watching as he did.

"Definitely Byron." He shrugged again, like
What can you do?
"Sorry. Want me to tag you? Or Byron? Or both?"

"Do and I'll kill you."

He laughed.

"I'm serious. Don't you dare." I stared him down. "What do I do now?"

"Continue stringing him along until the semester is over and final grades are posted. Shouldn't be too tough."

"Shut up. I'm not going to keep giving him false hope."

"It's just another month and a half."

"No."

Dex pursed his lips, then shrugged. "What's the alternative? Stop going to your standing Tuesday chem help session? I'm warning you, if you don't go, you're taking a chance with our grades."

"Am not. Byron isn't vindictive."

Dex looked skeptical and shook his head. "You have no idea how the male mind works. You know what they say about a nerd scorned."

"No. I don't. You're just making that up."

Dex glanced back at my laptop screen and frowned as he read something. "Logan has a black eye again, doesn't he?"

"Yeah," I said, unconcerned. Of course Dex would be careful about bringing that subject up. I couldn't understand, though, why he wasn't teasing me about it. "Why? How do you know? I didn't see you at that little pregame bash. I thought you and your dad would be there."

Dex was still frowning slightly. "We stopped by after the action." Dex paused. "Dad hates those kinds of events. He really hates making small talk. It was purely a duty call. I will say Logan's antics spiced things up and made the party worth the stop and the small talk easy. They were still cleaning up the mess when we left. Nice that you have a boyfriend to play white knight for you. I heard what that Schwartz guy said was pretty vile."

I blushed. "Yeah." I bit my lip. "And true—my ex did sleep with my mom."

"Shit, that's awful. I'm sorry." Dex looked really uncomfortable.

I shrugged. "Everyone's sorry but her. And she's the only one who should be. Even the ex apologized." I took a deep breath and stared at my hands on the table. "Let's not talk about it again, okay?"

"Sounds good to me." Dex paused. "Ellie, take a look at this." He spun my laptop around to face me.
 

I looked at him, puzzled.

"Someone else has a thing for Logan." Dex grinned like he was trying to joke and take the sting away. But he didn't fool me. He was still uncomfortable. "The downsides of being a hunk."

I frowned just slightly. "Do you want me to write a missed connection about you to up your prestige around campus?
Cute, slightly nerdy guy studying on the second floor of the sci library at the table in the corner. Smart guys turn me on. HMU, the admiring brunette sitting across from you.
"

"Shut up and read." But he was trying not to laugh at my antics.

Hot guy at The College Grind, a black eye again? I like fighters. I see you everywhere I go like we were meant to be. But you never notice me. I was the blonde sitting by the window with a navy pea coat slung over my chair when you arrived just after three. You got coffee with an attractive woman who looked like she was almost thirty. I can be more fun than she is. Promise. HMU—a blonde who's worshipping you from afar.

My mouth went dry and my pulse raced. I froze. The post was time stamped just minutes ago.
Amber.
The older woman had to be Amber. Logan had lied to me. Ditched me for Amber.

"Ellie?"

I glanced up at Dex, stunned.

"You okay? You look like you just saw a ghost."

I nodded. "I'm fine. Post-traumatic shock after seeing that zombie horde."

"Don't worry," Dex said. "Don't be one of those insecure, clingy girls. The blonde says he never notices her. A guy has to like a girl a whole lot to take a swing at another guy for her like Logan did for you. Logan likes
you
."
 

Did he? It looked an awful lot to me like he'd just lied to me and gone out with Amber.

Chapter Five

"Logan said 'I love you'? Wow." Nic sat on her bed in the room she shared with Taylor.
 

Taylor sat on her bed and I sat in her disc chair. It was already almost eleven on Sunday night and this was the first time we'd had to catch up since Friday morning. They'd heard about the Dr. Rogers scandal. Everyone on campus had. But I had so much more to tell them.

"Like
I love you
I love you. Not like
This is the best chicken potpie I ever ate. Thanks for making it for me, I love you?
"

"Like
I love you
I love you," I said.
 

"Look, I get his dad is an ass. You don't like violence and are unhappy Logan got in a fight, even though it was to protect you, which I think is really sweet of him, chivalry is not dead, but why aren't you happier?" Tay sat up straighter, looking like she really didn't understand. "The whole thing sounds pretty romantic to me. If I had a guy as hot as Logan tell me he loved me, my friends would not be in any doubt that I was delirious with joy. Over the moon."

I pulled my phone out and brought up the missed-connections page. "I think my chem TA has a thing for me, too." I spoke almost mindlessly as I handed the phone to Tay, who read it and handed it to Nic.

"That's random and off topic," Tay said. "Though probably true. So you have two guys after you—a hot guy every girl wants and a nerdy lab TA?" She shrugged. "Lucky you. I don't see the problem. Don't let the nerd liking you bring you down."

"Read down a few posts," I said. "And you'll see why I'm worried."

Nic was still holding my phone. She frowned as she skimmed the posts, looking confused. "Oh."
 

I knew she'd found the right one. She paused and looked up at me. "Who are you worried about? The blond chick he never notices or the older woman?" She handed the phone to Tay to read.

Just the phrase "older woman" sent a chill through me. And reminded me of Mom and Austin. I bit my lip. "Look at the time and date stamp."

Nic jumped up and plopped next to Tay so she could read over her shoulder.

"I had
just
talked to Logan after his dad left this afternoon. He told me he couldn't see me. He was too tired and had too much to do. He was going to take a nap and then study. And then…" I took a deep breath.

Nic gave me a sympathetic look. "Maybe it isn't him? Maybe you're getting too full of yourself thinking all of these missed connections are about you." The way she said it, I knew she was gently ribbing me, trying to make me feel better, even though she was contradicting what she'd said earlier.

But I didn't feel better at all. I was miserable. "I love him. I don't want to lose him. What am I going to do?"

"Fight for him," Tay said.

I fought back a wave of anxiety. "How can I compete against
her
? Have you seen what she looks like?" I grabbed my phone from Tay, brought up Amber's picture, and shoved the phone back at her.

Nic looked at Amber and then at me and shrugged. "She's got nothing on you, girl. Except age."
 

Tay handed my phone back to me. "And that isn't in her favor."

I loved Nic and Tay at that moment for being such true friends. But I shook my head. "And experience. She's just like my mom—confident and sexy. Competitive." I left the next part unsaid:
knows how to seduce men and wrap them around her finger.

"Look, don't go all massively depressed on us," Nic said. "Logan says he loves you. Then the next day he goes for this Amber? That doesn't make any sense. Either he's a lying douchebag, in which case, dump him. You're better off without him. Or there's some logical explanation. Just talk to him, Ellie." She smiled at me. "Talk to him. What can it hurt? One way or another, you'll find out where you stand. Better to find that out now than later."