Rush (6 page)

The strange thing was, he’d never asked
me how I felt about killing Carter. He’d seemed to assume I meant to do it.
Even my own father thought I’d done it on purpose. And no matter what I said,
they wouldn’t change their minds.

My plan to seduce Caroline was pushing
on me, trying to get me to confess to Marie. I didn’t want her to know. She’d
only argue with me and put a big guilt trip on me and I didn’t need that. So I
kept my mouth shut. I was going forward with the plan. No matter what.

Chapter 5

Caroline

I had several sorority functions that
weekend. Rush—when all the girls who wanted to belong to a house went from one
function to the next, wearing the approved clothes and sporting the approved
attitude, hoping to be accepted—was over and most of the accepted candidates
had pledged a house. I remembered how nervous I’d been during my own rush week,
terrified no-one would like me and I’d end up as a reject, otherwise known as
an independent. By some miracle, one of the more prestigious houses had
accepted me.

Yet I still lived in the dorms. Why was
that? Maybe I was more of an independent than I thought.

Tonight, my house was having a dinner
with the pledges—they lived in the dorms by necessity and could only visit the
house—and I had to be there. As I welcomed the freshman girls to our house, I
wondered what Max would think of all this. I could picture the wry lift of his
mouth as he watched all of them, dressed in outfits so similar they almost
looked like a uniform, filing into the house. The idea he might find us amusing
made me want to squirm.

Well, what did he know? A high school
dropout who’d run away from home, who spent his spare time smoking weed. By
belonging to a sorority, we were developing our social skills and our network
of contacts, things that would serve us well later in life. Sorority women were
much more successful than independents and if Max couldn’t appreciate that,
well, his opinion hardly mattered.

Yet the words and tune of the song he’d
sung by the river started running over and over in my mind, distracting me from
the evening’s activities. “Avery” was about a runaway. Was that why Max had
chosen that song to sing?

Or maybe he was only referring to the
name of the town—Avery’s Crossing.

We crowded into the dining room and
chose our seats, Paige and I taking chairs next to each other. Tiffani, the
chapter president, was her usual glossy brunette self, complete with cat-eye
makeup and nails lacquered in navy blue. I could smell her perfume from my seat
halfway down the table from her. She presided over all our house meals as if
she were queen instead of a sorority house president.

“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” Paige
said.

I nodded. “I’ve got some things on my
mind.”

She leaned closer to me. “Would one of
those things start with the letter M?” she said in an undertone.

“You know I can’t talk about that.”

Her eyes sparkled as she smiled at me.
She loved having secrets, even if she couldn’t keep one worth a damn. I
wondered how many people she’d told so far. Maybe I’d gotten lucky and she hadn’t
spilled the beans yet.

“Have you dealt with the big M lately?”
she said, continuing the stage whisper.

“No.” Yes. Was I blushing? I hoped not.

“What are you two whispering about over
there?” Tiffani leaned over the table. “Don’t keep secrets.”

“Oh, Paige is just teasing me about my
class load,” I said.

Tiffani wrinkled her nose. “I know we
say our education is the most important thing, but let’s not talk about classes
tonight. ‘Kay?”

“Sure, Tiffani.”

Paige kicked me under the table. She was
probably planning to corner me as soon as possible and wring every bit of intel
regarding Max out of me. Since I didn’t want word getting out, I’d just have to
slip out of the house and sneak back to the dorms before she could get me
alone.

***

On Monday, the first class I had was in
essay-writing. I didn’t actually need the class to graduate with a French
degree, but it seemed like the kind of thing that might come in useful later. I
took a seat in the middle of the room, just out of the reach of a broad bar of
early morning sunlight streaming through the old double-hung windows.

A big male body slid into the desk next
to mine. I glanced over as I set my laptop on the desk and did a double-take.
Max. Max?

“What are you doing here?” I whispered.

“I’m in this class.” He smiled smugly at
me as he stretched his long legs to the side of his desk.

“No, you’re not.” I returned his smile
with the fiercest glare I could muster. “You’re following me.”

“That’s so not true. I’m really in this
class. Ask the prof.”

I glanced at the man standing by the
lectern. “But I thought this was your first year. This is an upper division
class.”

He smirked. “I’m just that good.”

I still didn’t believe him. Shaking my
head, I turned back to my laptop and started setting up a file for my notes. I
would not look at him or notice the utter fineness of his body, nor would I think
about the way his black hair slipped forward over his eyes in that irresistible
way that made me want to touch it.

“How are you?” he said in a low tone
that seemed to get inside me and make my whole body vibrate.

“Fine,” I said, still not looking at him.

“No delayed reaction from that fall?”

I glanced at him sideways. “You’re the
one who took the most damage. Are you okay?”

“Never better.”

I ran out of busywork. My file was set
up and the lecture hadn’t begun yet. I could continue avoiding his gaze, but
what would be the point? The longer I refused to look at him, the ruder my
behavior would be. Still, I couldn’t encourage him. Trent might hurt him if he
found out Max was flirting with me.

I turned to Max. “You’d better be
careful. Trent sometimes meets me after this class.”

“He does, huh? That’s too bad.”

His lingering gaze seemed to imply he
wanted to be more than friends. That was hard to believe, given my
shortcomings, but the long looks continued and I didn’t know how else to
interpret them. Could Max really want me?

He wasn’t going to get me, of course. I’d
never cheat on Trent. Still, I couldn’t get the thought of Max’s hands on my
body out of my mind.

How would he taste? How would his hair,
his bare skin feel under my hands? This room was awfully hot. I fidgeted with
the neckline of my sweater and wished I’d worn something cooler.

“It’s hot in here,” he murmured.

“Yeah.” I frowned at him. “I still think
you’re following me. You keep showing up, and this is a big campus. It can’t
just be coincidence.”

“Maybe you’re following me.”

“What? Why would I do that?”

Another smirk. I wanted to wipe that
superior expression off his face. “Because you can’t stay away from me,
obviously.”

“Oh, of course.” I sent him a smirk of
my own. “Thank you for clearing that up for me.”

“You’re welcome.”

He winked at me and I couldn’t help it.
I laughed.

The silver pendant he always wore peeped
out of his shirt collar again. All I could see was the very edge of it, which
looked circular. I pointed to it.

“What’s that?”

He put his hand over it. “Just something
a friend of mine gave me.”

“Can I see it?”

The professor cleared his throat and Max
straightened out and faced front. I couldn’t figure him out. He seemed like a
truly nice guy, other than the outrageous flirting, and that was harmless,
really. The dangerous schemer Trent had described was someone I’d never seen.

Maybe Trent had misjudged him. Maybe he’d
let their past—whatever it was—warp his perception of the person Max was now.
If I could just get the two of them together to talk, they might be able to
stop hating each other.

A coffee date, just the three of us. It
would be a start, anyway.

***

“No way in hell,” Trent said when I
suggested it to him.

“Why not? It’s just coffee.” I sat down
on my pale aqua bedspread and crossed my arms.

“I don’t want to see him.”

“Trent, he’s your stepbrother.”

He fixed me with a hard-eyed stare. “Believe
me, I wish I could forget that fact.”

“I just don’t understand why you’re not
willing to try to work things out.”

His hand slashed down through the air. “It’s
none of your business. Drop it, okay?”

I made an impatient sound. “You’re
making no sense.”

“I hate him; he hates me. End of story.”

“But if you got together and talked
things out, maybe you could mend fences.”

He shook his head. “Our fences are fine
the way they are.”

“But—”

“Trust me, Caroline, Max would tell you
the same thing. We don’t want to talk.”

I jumped up from the bed and started to
pace my room. There wasn’t a lot of space for it, but I made do with the three
or four pace distance I had. Trent backed up a step and leaned against my door,
giving me a tiny bit more room.

“He has no family. That isn’t right,” I
said.

“First of all, it’s his own damn fault.
Second, why do you care? Have you been seeing him behind my back?”

“No!” Liar. If I’d had pants, they would
have burst into flame. Luckily for me, I was wearing a skirt. “It just makes me
sad.”

“Don’t be. There are things you don’t
know.”

I whirled to face him. “Yeah. So
enlighten me. Tell me about it.”

Trent leaned his head against my door
and closed his eyes. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

“Well, then, I don’t want to.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Trent. I’m your
girlfriend. I have a right to know.”

He opened his eyes and watched me pace
for a couple of turns, his jaw working back and forth.

“Can’t you just take my word for it that
he’s dangerous?” he said.

“No. Why should I? You need to be a lot
more specific than that.”

“All right.” He pushed off from the door
and stalked toward me, his square jaw tense and angry-looking. “Stop pacing.”

I stopped. We stood at the foot of my
bed and stared at each other like opponents in a boxing match.

“So tell me,” I said.

Trent drew in a huge breath. “He killed
our little brother.”

“What?” I stared open-mouthed at him.
That couldn’t be right. No.

“I said he killed our half-brother. The
son of his dad and my mom.”

“But...why? Why would Max do something
like that?”

“I don’t know.” Trent raked his fingers
through his pale hair, making it stand on end. “He always claimed it was an
accident, but I didn’t believe that.”

“Why not?”

“He never seemed to have much remorse.”

“But...he seems so normal.” More or
less. “I can’t imagine him wanting to kill someone.”

Trent’s eyes narrowed into cruel slits. “You
have been seeing him.”

“No, I haven’t. I just ran into him on
campus once.”

“I’m not sure I should believe you.”

“You can believe whatever you want. I’m
not seeing him.”

Trent loomed over me. “You’d better not
be.”

I lifted my chin. There was no way I’d
back off from this one. “Are you threatening me?”

“No. I’m warning you.”

“Don’t even think you can tell me who I
can and can’t see,” I said, beginning to pace again. “How did it happen?”

“He shot him with my stepdad’s gun.”

I halted to close my eyes. “Oh, my God.”

“It was bad, Caroline. Real bad.”

“Was he playing with the gun?”

“Yeah. He claimed he thought it was
unloaded. It went off by accident.”

“But you didn’t believe him.”

“No. And I still don’t.”

I put my hands to my forehead and blew
out my breath. “This is so not what I thought you’d say.”

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. Joyriding. Breaking and
entering or something. Maybe robbing a gas station, at the worst. Not murder.”
I looked over at him, knowing my expression was as bleak as it could get. “How
old was he?”

“Max or Carter?”

“Both.”

He reached into his back pocket and
pulled out his wallet, flipping through the pictures he kept there until he got
to the right one. Then he handed the wallet to me, displaying a snapshot of a
smiling, blond toddler. The kid was preciously cute, with big blue eyes and a
dimpled grin. He’d kept a picture of Carter in his wallet and yet somehow I’d
never known it was there or that he’d had a little brother. “Max was ten.
Carter three.”

I blinked. Ten? Ten years old? “He was
just a little kid himself, Trent,” I said with a frown.

“Some kids are just evil. You’ve seen
news stories of murdering psycho kids.”