AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I slowed my pace a bit, letting her catch up and catch her breath. I checked my watch while she rested her hands on her knees. “Another two miles, Nicole. It’s not so bad.”
“Easy for you to say,” Nicole grumbled, straightening up and stretching her trim arms over her head. “I wasn’t on the track team for four years, unlike you.”
“I’m not a professional athlete by any means,” I laughed, then started up again, much to Nicole’s chagrin. “You should have come running with me in the Hamptons this summer!”
“I was busy going to all the parties you skipped this summer, Whit. Speaking of which—” She came to my side, her eyes flashing with sudden concern. “Why’d you leave the party the other night?”
“Christian was hammered and being an asshole,” I admitted. The words tasted sour on my tongue. “I didn’t really want to go anyway.”
“Did he say something to you?”
He hadn’t, that was the thing. He’d just swept me into a forcible kiss that tasted like vodka with cheap beer as a chaser and slapped my ass so hard it stung before turning back to his frat brothers and making his usual crude comments. I wasn’t sure why I continued to put up with it. I hoped, deep down, that he’d get bored of me and move on, saving me the trouble of being the one to break it off and dealing with the fallout from my parents.
“No, it’s fine.” I pulled ahead a bit, not wanting to go into detail. Nicole and I used to be close—thick as thieves, honestly. She’d become my little, a sacred relationship between an established member of the sisterhood and a new bid, during my sophomore year and her freshmen year. But during my senior year on campus, she’d started pulling away. I’d been busy, of course, preparing to graduate, and Nicole had always favored the party aspect of Gatlington over its academics.
We were just going in two different directions.
“Are you going to marry Christian?” she asked abruptly.
“What?” I came to an abrupt stop and turned to her, panting.
“Are you going to marry him?”
“Not anytime soon.” I eyed her, trying to read her expression. She had a strange, almost hopeful look in her eyes that vanished when I didn’t give her a yes or no answer. “Why?”
She shrugged, reaching up to wipe sweat from her brow. “Everyone at the house has been whispering about it. You and Christian are like royalty. You’re meant to be together.”
“And maybe we will get married one day, but I came back this year to get my master’s degree. That’s my priority right now.”
“And then your doctorate, or whatever it’s called.”
“Yes, Nicole,” I breathed, having to really dig deep for patience at the moment.
“So that’s like three years from now—”
“I’ll be twenty-five when I get my doctorate, yes. Did Christian put you up to this?”
Nicole blinked, the flushed color of her cheeks deepening with a fresh wave of crimson. “No... But—” Her eyebrows rose as she gazed over my shoulder into the courtyard at my back. “Wow. I haven’t seen him in person yet.”
“Who?” I turned around to see what, or who, she was looking at.
Professor Ellis was sitting on a bench under the shade of a large sycamore tree. A large book rested in his lap, and he was busy taking notes.
“Isn’t that the British professor everyone’s been talking about?” Nicole moved to my side, not bothering to hide the fact she was staring. “Wow,” she repeated. “Rebecca Langley was right, he’s hot.”
I turned from her to hide the ferocious blush now staining my own cheeks.
“Don’t you have one of his classes?”
“Yeah,” I panted, checking my watch again. “Speaking of class, your next one starts in an hour.”
Nicole ignored me completely and continued, “Some of the girls have a bet going to see who can bag him first.”
“Bag him?” I couldn’t help but let out a choking laugh. “He’s a professor. That’s against the rules.”
She made a dismissive noise in her throat. “So?”
So? I opened my mouth to argue, but Nicole’s mouth suddenly stretched into a beaming smile.
