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“Oh my Lord.” Tess covered her mouth with one hand while reaching for my arm with the other. “And you were there all by yourself. Bailey. You could’ve…” When she went pale with all the possibilities of what could’ve happened to me, I snorted.
“I was fine.” But I whipped my attention back to Paige. “I wonder where…” Then I shook my head. How freaky. A rape. What if it had happened in one of those other rooms down the hall I’d been about to search? What if Beckett accidently trapping me in that bathroom had kept me from running into the rapist myself?
Even though I’d just tried to reassure Tess that I’d been totally fine, I shuddered and rubbed my hands over the skin prickling on my arms, trying not to dwell on how lucky I’d been.
“You are not going to one of those frat parties by yourself again,” Tess stated sternly, her gaze boring into mine.
When I sighed and rolled my eyes, she growled. “I’m serious. This isn’t something to brush off. There are some true monsters out there.”
Realizing it wasn’t a joking matter, it really really wasn’t, because Paige had been attacked just last year at a frat party, I nodded, and murmured, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Good.” Tess nodded, appeased. “Now. If you simply must go to another one of those stupid parties, one of more of us will go with you. Not that I know why you want to attend them, anyway. I never had any fun at one.”
At the first college party Tess had attended, she’d gotten drunk by the same guy who’d pushed himself on Paige later that year, but I’d been there to pull her away before he could try anything on Tess. So yeah, I couldn’t imagine she had any fond party memories. But all this just meant I was once again forced to be their lame fifth wheel.
If only I had—
Wait.
For some reason, this made me think of the cowboy. I gasped, completely having forgotten about him until now. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of my soulmate all day long, not since Beckett had followed me into that room. But now… Now I gasped and slapped my hands down on the table, making both couples jump.
“I saw the cowboy last night,” I blurted, “And guess what? I think his name is Chance. Isn’t that awesome? I love the name Chance.”
“You what? Oh my goodness!” Tess clasped her hands to her cheeks. “You actually talked to him?”
My shoulders slumped. “No. We didn’t talk. He got away again. But some drunk idiot told me his name was Chance.” Then I frowned, picturing my unreliable source of information. Could I really believe anything Beckett had told me? He’d been mostly out of it. I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “He also tried to tell me the cowboy was in his fraternity, but there was no way I could believe that.” I snorted. “Could you just imagine my soulmate being a frat brat? No way.”
Paige and Tess exchanged knowing glances, but I ignored them. They just didn’t understand. So what if the cowboy being my soulmate was a crazy daydream? It made me feel better to talk in certainties.
“Why the heck didn’t you say anything sooner?” Tess finally asked.
“Oh, I, uh.” I frowned, unable to reveal what had distracted me from my cowboy sighting. So I lamely concluded with, “I forgot.”
Tess and Paige exchanged another glance, this one more on the confused side. I understood their bewilderment. After I’d talked about nothing but the cowboy for an entire year, it was pretty much unheard of for me to forget I’d had another encounter with him.
Paige was the first to recover. “Did you get his last name?”
I slumped, a bit defeated. It’d taken me a year to get his first name, and she was already demanding a last? Some people just couldn’t enjoy a small victory for five seconds, could they?
“Maybe you could look up his first name in the campus directory,” Jonah suggested.
I sat up straighter in my chair, not even considering that option. “Oh my God,” I said. What if I actually found him there and maybe got an address too? “Yes! Perfect idea.”
My head went a little dizzy from excitement.
“Ooh! Go look now,” Tess encouraged. “We’ll clean the dishes.”
So, while Tess and Paige waved me from the kitchen, I shoved back my chair and popped to my feet, wondering blindly where I’d left my laptop. I ran straight to my room, but didn’t spot it on my bed, or in my backpack until I remembered I’d been on Facebook last night before they’d popped the movie in, at which point I’d set my computer on the floor between the lazy boy and love seat.
Hurrying into the living room, I flopped onto the lazy boy before leaning over the armrest and tugging my laptop into my lap.
The television was on, airing the evening news, but I paid it no mind as I flipped up the lid and waited for the screen to pop to life and ask for my password.
Just as it did, the reporter on the news said, “Police are finally revealing the name of the suspect involved in the rape reported at a Granton University fraternity party last night.”
Intrigued, I looked up just as the mugshot of man in a prison orange jumpsuit popped onto the screen, a man whose face looked as if it’d been beaten to a bloody pulp, but a face I remembered clearly.
“Beckett Hilliard was arrested last night for the rape of Melody Fairfield, where the crime was reported as taking place in a back bedroom of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity...”
