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“I know.”
“Fine,” she hisses. “As long as you don’t try anything stupid.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t try to kiss me… or talk about the past.”
I nod, my chin rubbing against the top of her head, feeling somewhat victorious. This is a step in the right direction, I hope.
Chapter Four
Briana
My jaw drops when Sadie walks into the green room on Cole Harker’s arm. He towers over her, his muscles bulging from just about everywhere, making Sadie look like a child in comparison. Cole glances down at Sadie, a wave of his blond hair falling in front of his brown eyes. His movements are so effortless when he sweeps the hair off his forehead, his attention still fixed on my best friend. What a lucky little bitch. She got the guy, and I got… a pain in my ass.
To most of the girls on campus, Julian is the ultimate prize. But they don’t know him the way I do. He’s a spoiled brat who cares about status and money, waving his father’s connections in everyone’s face. Or at least that’s how it feels to someone like me. Someone who has to work for every single thing they own.
I close my eyes for a second to bring myself back to center, something my therapist showed me years ago. She said children who survived through trauma deal with things differently than others. Rage is something that always brews inside me. No matter how many times I try to ignore that side of me, it always comes knocking when I’m in a vulnerable position.
Like right now.
I’ve never felt so exposed. Being this close to Julian stirs up so many old feelings. I tried to ignore those emotions for years, but now that we’re forced to be together again, it’s hard to deny that some part of me will always care about Julian. And that part of me is in physical pain.
When our eyes meet, Sadie flashes a pearly white smile in my direction, beaming with delight. She won the date with Cole. It took her four years to get the nerve to talk to him, and now she’s clinging to his side, chatting his ear off about who-knows-what. My bestie must see the hardened expression on my face because her smile falters but not enough for other people to notice. She gives me a look that says, ‘Are you okay?’ I nod in answer, afraid to spoil this for her. After all, it’s her birthday, a day I want her to remember, and not for the wrong reasons.
Until I met Sadie, I hadn’t had a normal birthday in years. Not long after my parents were taken from me, my entire life changed. Nothing was ever the same again. My foster parents didn’t give a shit about any of the kids in their care. We were paychecks to most of them. Except for Jodie, my last foster mother, I have no family. No one bothered to claim me after my parents’ deaths. Jodie was the only person other than Sadie who remembered to send a birthday card or cared if I spent Christmas alone.
Sadie tugs on Cole’s thick bicep, and they stroll over to us, looking like the prom king and queen. All smiles and beauty, the only thing they’re missing are their crowns. They make a cute couple. As they move toward Julian and me, I could see them together, now wondering why it took Sadie this long to get near him. She’s gorgeous and tall for a girl, but compared to Cole’s impressive height her five feet seven inches is nothing.
“Look who I picked up,” Sadie jokes.
Cole flashes a genuine smile that illuminates his handsome face. “Sadie won the auction, but I feel like I’m the one who won.”
Gag me.
My eyebrow rises at his comment because it sounds like a load of crap. Who talks like that? I stifle my laughter, forcing a cheesy smile instead. Julian places his hand on my lower back, his long fingers sliding beneath my shirt, exposing my skin to him. The smile slips from my face, the urge to burst into a fit of laughter no longer there. Now that I’m back to thinking about Julian, my entire body goes rigid against his. He must feel my stony demeanor because he pulls me tighter to his side as if his closeness will make me less frigid.
“You two make a cute couple,” I say to Sadie and Cole to break the tension in the air.
“So do you guys,” Sadie says.
I want to murder her for giving Julian any encouragement whatsoever. But I have to let this one slide.
Sadie’s smile remains intact along with Cole’s. He seems genuinely happy she won the auction. I hope for Sadie’s sake that he doesn’t plan to string her along until after he gets what he wants from her, and then the facade will crumble like it always does.
At least in my very limited experience, the honeymoon phase never lasts. The second you get too happy, too comfortable, someone or something takes it from you. It’s the way of life, or at least the way of my life. But I hope for Sadie that her luck is better than mine. It usually is better, so I keep my fingers crossed that everything she’s ever imagined with Cole comes true. If only I could do the same with Julian…
After all of the players enter the green room with their dates, a group of girls I recognize crowd around us, standing at the front of the room where they command the attention of everyone. At least a dozen beautiful girls stare at us, their smiles plastered on their faces. Shannon Brady, the girl I work with part-time at Rizzo’s Bakery stands next to her sorority sisters. Kappa Delta hosts the event every year, with the proceeds this year going to a children’s charity.
I wave and she returns the gesture, flicking her long, dark hair over her shoulder. Like me, Shannon attends Strickland University on a scholarship. Her family doesn’t want her to better herself in any way. They don’t support her dream to graduate from college, and they don’t want her to open her bakery after school. We bonded last year when I sat next to her in marketing class. Around Christmastime, she brought anisette cookies into class, and when I saw the name of the bakery, I asked her more about Rizzo’s. And then after eating a handful of her cookies, and finding out we have a lot in common, she offered to ask Mrs. Rizzo if I could work at the bakery two days a week after school.
Shannon dates Jamie O’Connor, the son of a tech billionaire and one of the starting players on Julian’s hockey team. Unlike Julian, Jamie isn’t a spoiled brat. He’s a nice guy and very down-to-earth. Sometimes, Jamie pops into the Rizzo’s just to say hello. It’s adorable. I like Jamie. We talk about comic books and video games when he comes into the bakery. He told me I was ‘cooler than most girls’ when I knew he drives the same car as Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie. Not like I know much about expensive cars I can’t afford, but I pay attention to things. Movies and games were how I passed the time as a kid. They also kept me from losing my sanity.
Jamie wasn’t part of the auction this year. Except for Trent Kane, none of the players Jamie grew up with were included. All of them bailed because they’re now in relationships. So, that left Julian, Damon Knox, Cole
Harker, and Ryan Nash up for grabs.
Lucky me.
