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“Probably is not a guarantee, Bailey.”

“I’ll try not to puke,” Ryan announced, his eyes already closed. “Because I’m a champion.” Then he started singing. “We are the champions . . .”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Drew stepped up and slapped Ryan’s leg. “You throw up in her car, I’m kicking your ass.”

Ryan cracked one eye. “Mean.”

Drew shoved Ryan’s leg inside, got Bailey settled up front, and shut the passenger door. By the time he came around to Nicole’s side, she was already behind the wheel, so he closed her door for her and she rolled the window down. For a second, they just looked at each other. His hair was a mess from all the dancing, and his lips were still a little kiss-swollen.

“I had fun tonight,” she said quietly.

That slow, troublemaking grin spread across his face. “We aim to please.”

She rolled her eyes, but the smile on her face ruined it.

He braced one hand on the roof of the car and leaned through the open window. Up close under the streetlight, his eyes had gone more gray than blue, heavy-lidded and locked on hers. She wanted to kiss him again, wanted it so badly it hurt. Bailey was sitting right there, two feet away, but Nicole lifted her chin anyway.

His tongue slid into her mouth, and Nicole grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled him closer through the open window, kissing him back just as hard. The alcohol had mostly worn off, but the heat rushing through her had only gotten worse. His hand found the back of her neck, holding her there while he kissed her like those few stolen seconds had to last him the rest of the night.

When he finally pulled away, Nicole followed him an inch before she caught herself.

“Good night, beautiful,” he said, his voice low and rough.

“Good night, yourself.”

He didn’t move back right away. His mouth was still close enough that all she had to do was lean in and kiss him again.

“I need to see you again,” he said. “Please.”

She nodded. There was no point pretending she wasn’t gone. And yes, she gave him the digits, scribbling her number on the back of an old receipt with a pen she found in the center console. Drew read it, folded the receipt, and tucked it into his pocket, looking satisfied with himself.

She started the engine, her cheeks burning, and the remix of Brandy’s “I Wanna Be Down” came blasting out of the radio. Oh, so fitting. She could feel Bailey grinning without even looking at her. In the rearview mirror, Drew stayed under the streetlight until she turned the corner.

Bailey’s voice cut through MC Lyte’s verse, sleepy but amused. “Daaaamn, girl. That was hot!”

Nicole glanced back at Ryan, passed out across the backseat. She had no idea how they were going to get him out of the car when they got home.

“So . . .” Bailey dragged the word out. “You and Drew, huh? It’s really happening?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Nicole said nothing else. That kiss had already given her away.

Chapter Seven

Nicole loved the Atrium on Sunday mornings, when the whole campus was dead quiet. It took up the entire top floor of Whitiker Hall, with floor-to-ceiling glass that looked out over almost all of Drayton and everything past it. This was her favorite time of year, too, when the trees were still mostly green but the leaves were just starting to turn gold.

Across from her, Toni and Lauren were sunk into their chairs, textbooks and highlighters scattered across the low table between them. Nicole had her legs tucked under her and The Grapes of Wrath open in her lap, trying to push through the last hundred pages for English.

The three of them had met during freshman orientation. Lauren was the RA on their floor, Nicole and Toni were brand-new freshmen, and they’d been in each other’s business ever since. Like the weeknight they’d driven past Toni’s boyfriend’s house at two in the morning to make sure he was home like he said and not somewhere up to no good. Or the time Lauren thought she might be pregnant, and all three of them went to the drugstore to buy a test.

“So,” Toni said, and shut her textbook with a thud. She set the massive thing aside, leaned back, and fixed those green eyes of hers on Nicole, the ones that had every brotha on campus tripping over himself. “When were you going to tell us?”

Lauren was giving her the same look, and all of a sudden Nicole felt like she’d been called into the principal’s office.

It could only be one of two things: either they’d heard about her and Drew at the party last night, or they’d somehow figured out who her father was. Bailey and Cedric were the only people at Drayton who knew, and she trusted both of them not to tell a soul. But maybe Toni or Lauren had gotten their hands on that issue of Jet from a couple of months ago, the one with Nicole and her family on the cover, and put the pieces together.