Forbidden Love (11 page)

“Oh, don’t say that,” he said in a
disappointed voice. “I really do like you. I do. I do.” He buried
his face in her neck, nuzzling her.

Trisha twisted away. When
one of her arms came up against his chest, he caught her by the
wrist and held it out to the side as if to say,
you have nothing on me, darling
. She
looked at him, startled. Her heartbeat struck against her sternum
in the frenzy of an SOS call. Was this one of those situations that
her mother had driven her psycho warning her about before she came
to college?
Don’t give out your dorm code.
Don’t accept a drink from a stranger. Don’t lift up your shirt for
any spring break photo opportunities. Don’t follow men to a quiet,
dark, deserted place…

Trisha used her other arm to brace herself
against him, and he took that wrist, too. She now felt like a bird
struggling to use broken wings. To her horror, D.J. lifted his knee
onto the bench so that it was snug between her legs, and started
kneading it against her.

“We can do this the hard way, if you’d like,”
he said. “The outcome will be the same, I promise you.”

Trisha panicked. She tried to pull away with
all of her strength, but her wrists only swiveled in his grip. With
her legs, she flailed to kick him in the calves. He dug his knee
into her groin even harder. She cried out. Now she knew what real
danger felt like. She wanted to cast herself back in time and say
no to the third, fourth, fifth, sixth drinks she had happily
chugged. She wanted to be in Rusty’s arms, as bewildering as they
could be. She wanted to be home!

And then she heard a voice, trilling over the
lawn. The voice was screaming something that Trisha couldn’t make
out at first. Within seconds, the voice was upon them. D.J. let go
of Trisha’s wrists, hunching his shoulders and shouting.

“What the fuck?! God
dammit!
”

Trisha saw Millie, all five-foot-nine of her,
towering over D.J. and bringing her hands down forcefully, over and
over again, on his back. She looked like she was holding something.
Trisha cowered on the bench, crossing her forearms over her face in
case Millie’s blows went wild. D.J. kept shouting for his attacker
to stop—Trisha couldn’t help thinking for a split second how
humorous this was—as he bent over and protected his head with his
hands. Something cracked—something plastic and hard.

“Leave her the fuck alone!” Millie berated
him, and Trisha realized that she was striking him with what looked
like a clock radio. “Get the fuck outta here, Dave, before I call
the cops!”

“Christ, Mills!” He was spitting and
sputtering. As the truth seeped into her consciousness, Trisha’s
limbs gained sensation enough to thrust her to a standing position
and down the ragged wooden steps. She stood in the grass in her now
icy bare feet, staring at the loser crouching in the gazebo.

Dave. It had to be. Dave,
Rusty’s high school friend. D.J.? D.J.! Fuck!
He’d tricked her!

How had this happened?
Trisha’s thoughts were electric, snapping and biting at her from
every direction. She put her hands to the sides of her head and
pressed to make them stop. What the hell was she going to
do?
It wasn’t as if she
could have possibly known. How could she have known? She had never
met him, just heard about him from Millie, all those weeks of
complaining. She couldn’t have known. No. No!

Millie stormed into the gazebo, collected
Trisha’s boots, and tossed them at her. They hit Trisha in the gut
and fell to the ground.

“Let’s go,” Millie said, breathless.

Trisha glared at her. “You didn’t tell me who
he was! How could you not tell me who he was?” She raked her
fingers through her hair in despair. This just might be an
irreversible clusterfuck.

Millie folded her arms and leaned forward.
“You came out here on your own, my friend. I don’t fucking keep a
leash on you! And just to let you know, I sent him to come find you
so that you could ask him all the damn questions you wanted about
your big man Rusty. I was doing you that favor I didn’t want to do.
Remember that? Now do you see why I want nothing to do with this
fucker? He’s a douche bag!”

Dave had charged out of the gazebo and was
making his way across the yard and toward the house. He didn’t look
at either of them as he passed, but rolled his shoulders as though
they hurt, muttering and grunting.

It took Trisha several tries to get her boots
back on. Her head felt full of weights, balls of lead that slid
back and forth and tilted her off balance.

What kind of a friend sabotaged your
relationship like that? What had Rusty done to that guy to deserve
this kind of backstabbing? Or maybe Dave just didn’t give a shit at
all about his friends. Maybe he just went after what he wanted. If
that was the case, Trisha was screwed. He’d throw this whole thing
back in Rusty’s face to deal with the burn of rejection.

Trisha looked at Millie. Really looked at
her. The narrow eyes, the paralyzed jaw, the pumping nostrils.
Millie was furious, and Trisha didn’t know why.

“You’re so wrapped up in yourself,” Millie
said, “you can’t see a damn thing. You just follow along after
anyone who gives you attention, like some pathetic dog whose owner
beats him over and over again. And while all that’s going on,
you’re blind to everything else. You turn your back.”

Trisha’s mind was spinning, unable to pin
down any understanding of what Millie was accusing her of. What the
hell was she talking about?

“I’m so fucked up.”

Was she crying? Was Millie crying?

“I’m so fucking fucked up, and your head’s
been up your ass.” She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands,
and smeared her black eyeliner across her cheekbones. “You don’t
bother to pay attention to anything! You and your dysfunctional
affair—”

Trisha widened her eyes. “Shut up!” she said,
and looked around nervously. A few dark heads had gathered in the
window over the sink in the kitchen to gaze out at the
commotion.

“—
sleeping with a
prof—”

“SHUT UP!” Trisha swiped at the air as though
to rake Millie’s face. She was closer than she had ever been to
getting physical in a fight. Her arms and hands pulsed with the
desire to hurt her so-called friend, that bitch screaming bullshit
in the middle of the night, in the center of a frat house lawn.
“Don’t you say another fucking word.” She was quivering. Her words
seethed through clenched teeth. Was everyone betraying her, now?
For things she hadn’t even done? For things she may have done, but
didn’t know she’d done? She felt her fury at the injustice of it
all threatening to rupture right through her.

Millie clamped her mouth closed, but her eyes
said everything.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Trisha
snarled.

“You have no idea how much is wrong with me,”
Millie said flatly. She looked as though she wanted to say
something more. Instead, she walked past Trisha and disappeared
into the shadows alongside the house.

Trisha stood trembling in a patch of feeble
light from the kitchen window. She didn’t want to turn around again
for fear she would see the same ghostly heads, or even more of
them, knocking together in excited gossip as they stared out at
her, wondering who that fucking fool was, abandoned in the backyard
of Wicker House, the one place on campus where nobody ended up
alone. She didn’t get it. She just didn’t get it. She was
struggling to think—how long had Millie been acting like that? She
couldn’t remember. Had she been totally oblivious? Or had Millie
just been playing the martyr, wanting her to fucking mind-read?

And here she was again. Knocked on her ass,
with no clue how she got there. She dreaded going back to her room,
where she would lie awake and have to suffer from a pounding head
that couldn’t give her any answers.

As she wavered on the hard-packed ground,
cursing the ugly gazebo that slouched before her, she felt her
phone vibrate.

She had three missed calls and a voicemail.
From Rusty.

Panic radiated through her chest. It was as
if he knew that she’d betrayed him. She listened to his message,
hugging the phone to her ear to look occupied as she left Wicker
House behind.

Where have you been? What
are you doing? I’ve been trying to get you,
the message said
. I’ve been
gone
—(No shit,
Sherlock)—
and I want to talk to you. I
need to explain some things.

Now
he wanted to explain things? Trisha trudged up the sidewalk
in the dark. The temperature had dropped to freezing. She played
Rusty’s message twice, three times, four times. A couple of cars
passed slowly, halting her heart, but they continued on up the hill
toward the main campus. Her nose was running.

It was all wrong. Hideously wrong. And
thinking about the amount of energy she would have to devote to
unraveling this monstrous knot of disaster made her feel entirely
helpless and exhausted.

Trisha sat down on the stone wall that curved
up steeply toward the college’s main entrance. In the haunting
silence, she cried bitter, cold tears.

About the Author

After earning a master’s degree in secondary
education from UNC, Elizabeth Nelson worked abroad teaching
English, bar-tended at late night clubs in Chicago, and continues
various philanthropy projects that focus on empowering women. But
her love of writing never changed.

Want to see what happens next with Trisha
and Rusty? Forbidden Desire coming to Barnes & Noble soon!

Trisha can’t decide if she should turn and
run from Rusty or give him the chance to explain his half truths
and full lies. She’s opened herself up to vulnerability, while he’s
remained closed off and fed her stories that have come back to bite
him.

And not only her lack of trust is tearing
them apart, but there are others who seem to want to bring them
down—out of spite or jealousy. They know their desires are anything
but safe, forbidden by the school and scorned by the students.

When Rusty comes clean about his lies,
Trisha starts getting her confidence back that she’s heading down
the right path. That he could be the one for her, and her for him.
Will they be able to weather this storm or will the seas be too
rough? Will the rumors end up being their demise, or will their
forbidden desires be strong enough even for the ugliest attack?

Other Books by Elizabeth
Nelson

Forbidden Love

Forbidden Desire

Forbidden Decision

***

Backstage Pass

Backstage Pass:
VIP

Backstage Pass: All
Access

***

Trinity

Desire

Unconditional

***

You Only Live Once
1

You Only Live Once
2

You Only Live Once
3

You Only Live Once
4

You Only Live Once
5

***

Behind Closed Doors –
Alaska

Behind Closed Doors –
Nashville

Behind Closed Doors
–Across State Lines

***

Curiosity Killed the
Kat

The Game is On

A Date with the
Devil

***

Cautious

***

1
^st
Chance

2
^nd
Chance

3
^rd
Chance