Escape In You (2 page)

Ellie smiles, and I know the girl is in for it.
Should have dropped it
.
Sorry, Big Hair Girl
.

Ellie slaps the girl across the face so hard her head snaps to the side. One of the girls screams. Ellie’s hand flashes out again and grabs a huge hunk of teased, bleached hair. “What’d you call me?” she asks, her voice low. The entire kitchen has gone silent now.

“Let go of me, you freak,” the girl yells.

“You’re all the same,” Ellie says, shaking her head and curling her lip. “You talk a big game but can’t back it up. Go back to your little friends and leave the big girls alone now.” Ellie releases her grip on the girl’s hair, pushing her away as she does so. Big Hair Girl stumbles, her hip bumping into the counter.

Big Hair Girl’s eyes are wide and wet, her hand pressed to her cheek. I can't blame her for the watering eyes. I’ve been on the receiving end of one of Ellie’s slaps only once, but the sting was unforgettable. I watch Big Hair Girl with interest. This is a pivotal moment for her. She could drop it and go back to her friends, bitching about Ellie to anyone who will listen. Or she could be really stupid and try to fight back. That wouldn’t end well for her. Next time, Ellie’s hand will be firmly formed into a fist.

The arrival of a guy in a white button-down shirt and faded jeans breaks the utter silence in the room. I hope he isn’t the girl’s boyfriend. Not that Ellie is above fighting boys, but it might get messy. I really don't feel like getting involved.

“What’s going on?”

“She hit me,” Big Hair Girl cries, pointing at Ellie with a shaking finger. “That bitch hit me!”

I sigh. We’re not dealing with a smart one here.

Ellie holds up her hand again. The girl flinches, but Ellie doesn’t strike her. “I thought we already covered your big mouth. Should I remind you?”

“You probably deserved it, Stef.”

I look to the guy in the white button down, but it’s not him who has spoken. Someone has joined him and now leans lazily against the doorway to the main hall. This new guy is taller than his friend and dressed all in black. I can't make out his face, but I don't think it’s anyone we know.

Big Hair Girl—or Stef, apparently—sputters at him, but he only laughs. “Give me a break, Stef. You talk shit all the time. Are you seriously surprised someone finally called you on it?”

“Preston.” Her voices takes on a whine, and she turns to the guy in the white shirt. “Are you seriously just going to stand there and do nothing?” She points at Ellie again, but she doesn't make eye contact with her.

I smile. At least she has the good sense to be scared of my friend.

“Is this the kind of person you want at your party?” Stef asks Preston.

“Let’s just drop it,” Preston says. He smiles at one of Stef’s friends, and the girl practically melts. “Jess, babe, why don’t you take Stef into the living room? I’ll have someone bring you girls some beers, okay?”

Jess flashes him what she must think is her most alluring smile as she comes over to take Stef’s arm. She gives Ellie and me a wide berth. I shake my head, marveling at what kind of girl cowers in the corner while her friend gets slapped. I can't fathom not having Ellie’s back in that kind of situation—not that either of us ever needs much help. We may be bitches, but we’re pretty capable bitches.

Stef gives us one last red-rimmed glare but allows herself to be pulled away. The third friend follows them, not looking at us, and Ellie smirks.

“Well,” she says, turning to me. “This party interesting enough for you?”

Before I can respond, Preston joins us. “Sorry about that,” he says. “Stef can be a little bratty.”

“That’s one word for it,” Ellie mutters and turns back to the keg. Now that things have calmed down the line is moving again, and it’s our turn. Ellie reaches for the pump, and holds out her other hand for my plastic cup.

“Here, let me do that,” Preston says. “Least I can do to make up for my friends being so inhospitable.” He takes the cup from her, smiling in a way that makes it clear that he thinks he’s hot shit. I can tell Ellie isn’t impressed by this, but she lets him draw a beer for each of us.

“I’m Preston, by the way,” he says, handing over the cups. He barely spares me a glance.

“Thanks for the beer,” Ellie says and turns away.

“Hey, wait.” He grabs her elbow and she turns back to glare at him, her eyebrows arched. He must be better at reading dangerous situations than Stef is because he immediately drops Ellie’s arm. “Sorry.” His grin turns somewhat sheepish. “I was just hoping to get your name.”

Her eyes rake up and down his figure. His blue jeans are artfully faded—they’re the kind I can just tell cost a fortune—and his white button-down shirt is untucked, with the top three buttons undone to reveal a glimpse of his tanned chest. His blond hair is a little long and carefully mussed with about half a gallon of product. I can tell Ellie’s mentally cataloguing all of these things and coming to the same conclusion I already have.
Rich snob. Full of himself. Move on.

“Is this your house?” Ellie asks.

He blinks, seeming surprised. “It is. I’m Preston Barkley.”

Ellie holds his gaze for a moment before rolling her eyes and taking my elbow. “Nice to meet you, Preston.” From the emphasis she puts on his name I can pretty much guess what she’s thinking. “But we need to find our friends. Come on, Zoe.”

“Hey,” he calls, but Ellie ignores him, nudging me toward the door. I peek back and see the guy in black approach him.

“Burn, man,” the guy says, laughter in his voice. “Sounds like she wasn’t too interested in the Barkley charm.” Before I can get a good look at his face, Ellie pulls me through the kitchen door.

“I’m thinking maybe you were right about this not being our scene,” she mumbles. “I feel like we’re in some kind of John Hughes movie, and we’re playing the kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Who are these people?”

“Rich ones. There’s a reason we don’t go to parties like this, Ells.”

She makes a face. “But Hunter said he’d be here. I thought we’d run into the whole crowd.”

I look around the packed living room. A few couples are dancing in the middle of the room, but, for the most part, everyone is just standing around with drinks in their hands. “Maybe they showed and decided it was lame. You were pretty late picking me up.”

Just then, a pair of familiar arms wraps around my waist and Hunter kisses my neck. “Looking for me, gorgeous?”

I laugh and push him off of me. “We were, actually.”

“Ellie,” Hunter says, releasing me and turning to Ellie with a stern expression. He crosses his arms. “What is this I hear about you beating the shit out of some sorority girl?”

Ellie laughs and hugs him. “I would hardly call it beating the shit out of her. I barely grazed her.”

He snorts. “Yeah, right. I know you better than that.”

“Where the hell is everyone?” She looks over his shoulder. “We were starting to get worried that you guys bailed.”

“Nah,” he says, taking my hand. “We’ve just commandeered the basement. It’s a little bit less of a Gap commercial down there. Come on.”

I follow him, relaxing for the first time since we arrived. I have a beer in my hand, and I’m about to join my friends. Things are looking up.

As the three of us walk through the basement door, I think I catch a glimpse of the guy in black from the kitchen. He’s leaning against the wall in the living room, steps from where we’d found Hunter, watching me. But then I turn onto the staircase and he disappears from my sight.

Chapter Two

Zoe

“This is more like it,” Ellie says, leaning her head against my knees, her back to the couch where I’m sitting. “I told you it wouldn’t be lame.”

I look down at her lazy smile and laugh. “You’re baked.”

She nods. “Yup. Why aren’t you?”

I hold up the bottle of vodka I had happily received from Hunter. “I’m enjoying my spirits.”

She laughs. “You’re such a dork.”

“Hey, pass that over here,” Hunter says from the floor beside Ellie. He’s lying flat on his back, enjoying the effects of the pot they’d just smoked. “I knew I shouldn’t have given it to you. You always hog the vodka.”

“Shut up, Hunter,” I say and take a swig. The familiar feeling of fire making its way down my throat calms me further. “You can’t drink lying down like that. You’ll spill.”

“Will not,” he mutters as he closes his eyes.

“Sure.” I take another gulp and look around the room. The basement is bigger than my entire house and includes an honest-to-God movie theater, a billiards room, and this rec room, where Hunter led us after finding us upstairs. Shouts and drunken laughter spill out of the billiards room next to us and we can still hear the pounding music and cacophony of voices from upstairs, but this room is much more chill. The lights are dimmed, and most everyone in the room shared that joint with Ellie and Hunter and is now relaxed into fairly quiet conversations. I know many of the people in here, a lot of whom are friends of Ellie’s and Hunter’s that we’ve partied with before.

Ellie slides her head off my knee and lowers herself to the carpet until she, too, is lying flat on her back. “Zoe, you have to try this.”

“Try what? Lying down? I know how to lie down, Ells. It’s not exactly rocket science.”

“No, this carpet, man,” Hunter says, his voice low and relaxed. “You have to try this carpet.”

“Yeah, the carpet,” Ellie says, nodding her head lazily. “You have to try this carpet. It’s ridiculously soft. Like, better than my bed.”

Hunter makes a contented sound of agreement. “It’s really…plush.”

For some reason that makes Ellie giggle, and soon they’re both cackling at my feet. I roll my eyes. “You guys are such lightweights.”

“In their defense,” says someone right next to me, “that carpet is really fucking comfortable.”

The guy in black has joined me on the couch and is almost touching me, he’s sitting so close. The tangle of tattoos on his arms distracts me for a moment before I get my first good look at his face.

I draw in a sharp breath—I can't help it. I’m staring at the most beautiful man I have ever seen. He has longish brown hair liberally sprinkled with natural gold highlights, and it’s all in a pleasing, tousled mess. I wonder what it would feel like to run my fingers through that hair, to mess it up even further. It looks soft. He has strikingly dark brown eyes framed with the thickest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a guy. His eyes seem to flash with some kind of dark amusement, and my heart beats faster. A muscle pulses in his jaw when he swallows—God, I love a guy with a strong jawline—and I want to place my lips there, right at that pulse, and kiss him.

“You okay, Zoe?” he asks, and there’s that amusement in his eyes again.

“How’d you know my name?” I ask, and I’m pleased that my voice is steady. There’s no sense in letting him know just how much I like what I see—though I’m afraid he somehow knows exactly what I’ve been thinking. Something in the way he’s looking at me makes me blush. And I never blush.

“I make it a point to find out information that might be of interest to me.”

His voice is low and raspy and touches something deep within my core, but I force out a laugh.

“Does that kind of line usually work for you?”

He shrugs, grinning. “To be honest, yeah. It does.”

My laugh is sincere this time. “Well, at least you are honest.”

He leans back into the couch, stretching his arm across the back of the cushion so that it just grazes my shoulder. I shiver a little and hope he doesn’t notice. A quick glance around tells me we shouldn’t be interrupted. Hunter appears to have moved off while I was distracted by the sex god—I’m pretty sure I can make out his voice across the room, urging someone else to come down and feel the carpet. Ellie has dozed off. I’m not surprised—that’s her usual reaction to pot and one of the reasons I don't often join in when she partakes. I don't come to parties to sleep.

I smile at the sex god. Flirting with hot guys, on the other hand, is one of the best reasons to come to a party.

“I’m at a bit of a disadvantage here.” I inch my knee closer to his.

“How so?”

“You know my name, and I don’t know yours.”

He holds my gaze for a minute, and my heart thumps. “Maybe I’d rather be a man of mystery.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Seriously, dude. You have to stop with the lines. It’s just not doing it for me.”

He leans in, and his face is inches from mine. “What would do it for you?”

“An actual conversation.” I refuse to fall under his spell. But there’s something dangerous about this guy, something that makes me want to abandon sense and close the gap that separates us.

He watches my face for a minute before his eyebrows come together in an expression I can’t quite read. “I don’t do so good with conversations.”

“Why’s that?”

He surprises me by pausing before he answers, as if he’s actually thinking about it. “I just think it’s easier not to talk, for the most part. People usually just tell you what you want to hear anyway. What’s the point?”

God, wasn’t that the truth. “Yeah,” I say. “I get that.”

We’re both quiet for a minute, but it isn’t necessarily an uncomfortable silence. It feels natural, easy, to just sit here with him while the party carries on around us.

“So your friends up there,” I say, pointing at the ceiling. “What’s their deal?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like that Stef girl. Is she always like that?”

The guy makes a face. “Stef is exactly what you think she is—a spoiled little brat who likes to run her mouth. And she’s definitely not my friend.”

“But Preston is?”

“I guess so. We grew up together.”

Another strike against the sex god. He grew up with Preston, meaning he had more than likely grown up in this neighborhood, or one like it. So he’s a rich boy. Definitely not my scene. And there’s that reluctance to tell me his name.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says.

“I doubt that.” How could he know that I’m considering dropping the whole talking thing and just making out with him for a while? No way anything more serious is going to happen. I don't date, not anymore—it’s too complicated. And I certainly don’t date guys who run with the likes of Stef and Preston. Plus, I have a feeling a guy like this isn’t really the dating type—just like me.