Wild: The Ivy Chronicles (4 page)

Pepper and Reece talked animatedly about their new place and the newly opened Mulvaney’s across town. Okay, Pepper was mostly the animated one. Reece just watched her with a sexy smile on his face.

Aside from the garage Shaw would soon be opening, Emerson and Shaw were excited about a new client who had just commissioned three bikes from them—and Emerson had an offer from a fancy gallery in Boston to feature a collection of her work next month. The happy vibes were almost smothering me.

My phone rang once as Emerson was coaxing me into sharing a slice of tiramisu with her. A glance down confirmed what I already suspected. It was Mom. I let it go to voicemail, determined to enjoy dinner out with my friends.

When I returned to my room later, I played Mom’s message. It was a reminder for me to call Mr. Berenger first thing Monday morning.

Sighing, I got ready for bed, telling myself I’d call him Monday afternoon after my morning classes.

Settling into bed, I stared into the dark. Thin orange light bled in through the blinds’ slats. I focused on my to-do list for tomorrow and Monday. Study for exams. On Monday I needed to meet with my advisor regarding my course selection for next year. And now I needed to call about the bank job.

Sighing, I rolled onto my side. I needed to get some boxes and start thinking about packing up my stuff, too. Just three more weeks and the semester would be over. There was plenty else to occupy my mind . . . so why did I keep thinking about that kiss? Why did my mind keep going back to Logan? His face was there so clearly. The searing blue eyes. Those lips that were always grinning—except when I was kissing him. And when he was kissing me back.

My hand dragged up my stomach to cup my breast. I was a healthy C cup. There was more than enough for my hand, but I wondered how I would fit in Logan’s palm. And that made my breath catch. My fingers brushed my nipple and then squeezed it harder. A small whimper escaped me as my mind played over last night.

I wiggled on the bed, an ache starting between my thighs as I worked my fingers over my breast. My lips tingled, remembering the press of Logan’s warm mouth on mine, moving surely . . . his tongue. Wishing it had been more. Wishing I hadn’t run away.

Idiot
. Wrenching my hand off myself, I rolled over onto my side, punching my pillow with my fist twice, feeling somewhat better and vowing to forget about Logan. He was not the kind of guy I needed to fixate on. I knew the kind of guy that worked best for me . . . If I found him, great. If not, then I was just fine alone. I had a bright future with or without a guy in it.

I drifted off to sleep, feeling angry at myself, which was probably a bad idea. I slept fitfully, weird images plaguing me.

I was drowning in my dream, tangled up in an ocean full of pearls. I kept waving to the lifeguard standing on shore, who was Harris one moment and then Logan in the next. Finally hearing my cries, Logan dove into the pearls and swam out to me, but before he could reach me I went down, choking, lost in a sea of pearls.

MONDAY ROLLED AROUND AND
I got so busy that I didn’t get around to calling Mr. Berenger. At least that’s what I told myself. Tuesday arrived, though, and I still didn’t call him.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Reece’s offer to stay in the apartment above Mulvaney’s. It tiptoed around me, gnawing at the edges of my thoughts every day. I turned it around in my head, trying to rationalize how I could make it work, how I could do something like that without my parents totally flipping out on me. Simple. I couldn’t.

When Mom called Wednesday night to check on whether I had called about the bank job, my excuse sounded lame even to my ears.

“Sorry, Mom. My study group ran late. By the time I got out it was past five.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror hanging on my door. I was a horrible liar. If Mom could see me, she’d know. My brown eyes had gone really big under my eyebrows and the color faded from my skin—like I was surprised at the words coming out of my mouth.

“This isn’t like you, Georgia. I asked you to call him on Monday. I’m starting to wonder if you even want this job.”

“I do,” I insisted, grimacing a little at my lying reflection. My bothersome eyebrows, several shades darker than my blond hair, lifted high as I made my excuses.

“Well, I certainly hope so. Because your father and I certainly aren’t going to let you sit around all summer, hanging out by the pool and getting pedicures. Even Amber has her summer lined up lifeguarding at the neighborhood pool. Responsibility, Georgia. We expect nothing less from you.”

When have I ever done anything less than be responsible
?

I bit back the caustic reply . . . and others that scalded the back of my throat. I’ve been the perfect daughter. I’ve done everything my parents ever told me to do. Everything they expected. In high school, when Mom insisted that I give up the guitar and drop out of choir for the debate team, I did. When they said I should be a business major, I did that, too. When had I ever given her a reason to think I needed a lecture on responsibility?

“I’ll call him in the morning,” I promised.

“I hope so.” She sighed. “Don’t disappoint me, Georgia.” Laced beneath the words I hear the words she never says, but are there just the same.

Don’t fail me like your father did
.

My
real
father. Not the man she married when I was three. No. The father who left me when I was two months old because he couldn’t handle the responsibilities of a wife, child, marriage, and job.

My birth father had been a musician. I never met him. He took gigs anywhere he could get them and lived in his van. When I showed an aptitude for music, Mom only allowed me to pursue it until high school. She insisted that with my heavy course load, something had to go and music was it. I knew, though, deep down, that Mom hated that part of me because it reminded her of my father. So I had let that part of myself go, almost ashamed of it, wanting only to please my mother and stepfather.

Don’t be him
. That’s what she was saying. Without saying the words, that’s what she
always
managed to say. What I always heard.

And I wouldn’t. Long ago, I had vowed to be the opposite of that man. The kind of daughter Mom needed me to be. Someone she could be proud of. Responsible and solid. The kind of girl who went to college and married a lawyer or doctor and took summer internships at a bank.

Harris’s voice echoed in my mind right then.
Boring
.

Sounds from the room next door drew my attention and I knocked lightly before entering Pepper’s room. She was changing from her work clothes into a pair of frayed denim shorts.

“Hey,” she said, snapping up her shorts. “How’s it going?”

“Good. Where are you headed?”

“I’m meeting Reece at Mulvaney’s. We’re going to Logan’s game.”

Everything inside me tightened at the mention of Logan. “He plays baseball, right?”

“Yeah. It’s the playoffs. We missed the last couple games . . . been so busy with opening the new Mulvaney’s. I think Reece feels bad he hasn’t been there for him lately. He can’t miss this one.” Her freckled nose wrinkled as though she smelled something foul. “Their father won’t be there. I don’t think he’s left the house in months.”

Reece and Logan’s father was confined to a wheelchair as a result of a car accident several years ago Not that that was the reason he wouldn’t go to his son’s game. He was a bitter man who spent most of his time drinking, and wasn’t the most supportive or attentive father even before the accident that put him in a wheelchair.

Pepper grabbed her messenger bag and paused on the way to the door. “What do you have going on tonight?”

I shrugged. “Pretty studied out for exams. Guess I’ll just start packing up a couple boxes.”

“Oh. Want to come?”

Did I want to go to a high school baseball game? Did I want to sit in the stands with a bunch of parents and high school kids and gawk at a teenage boy like some kind of cougar reliving the moment I had kissed him and he had kissed me back?

With another shrug, I nodded once. “Sure.”

Chapter 5

T
HE GAME HAD
JUST
started when we arrived, and I could tell Reece was anxious to get a seat in the stands. Not an easy feat. It was loud and crowded and we had to climb to almost the very top of the stands and squeeze in between students.

“There he is.” Pepper motioned to the field, pointing eagerly and bouncing on the balls of her feet.

I searched, my heart hammering in my chest and then seizing altogether when I spotted him. I didn’t know a lot about baseball, but I knew he was the pitcher. Standing on the mound, he stared intently at the player coming up to hit. I’d never seen him wearing a baseball cap before and damn if it wasn’t a good look for him.

He rotated a baseball behind his back with the sure movement of his fingers. He held himself still, waiting with seeming idleness, but there was a coiled energy about him that brought to mind the explosiveness of our kiss with a rush of awareness that left me breathless and turned on sitting there on the hard bleacher seat.

I fidgeted, drinking in the sight of him. I’d never seen him so alert, so serious.

Except that moment following your kiss
. He’d looked serious then. He’d looked intense, his blue eyes deep and probing and so sexy it hurt.

This Logan was unsmiling as he stood stock-still on the mound, his lean body rigid like a gun cocked and ready to fire.

The batter squared off in front of the base, tapping his bat once and lifting it in readiness, hands flexing as he adjusted his grip.

A hush fell over the crowd as everyone waited, watching. I didn’t even breathe. I leaned forward, curling my hands around the edge of the bleacher.

Then Logan let go. His body uncoiled, leg winding up and then back down as he released the ball.

The batter swung, missing.

The crowd surged and cheered, myself included. Then silence fell again. Even from this distance, I could read the batter’s scowl. Logan adjusted his cap and rubbed a palm along his snug-fitting pants. I tried not to stare at his butt, but in those pants? Impossible.

I wasn’t his only admirer either. As he threw the ball again and the batter missed for a second time, a group of girls a few rows below us screamed his name and followed with several catcalls.

Pepper shook her head with a laugh. “That’s our Logan. No heart is safe.”

My cheeks heated and my skin hurt. I didn’t know why. It’s not as though my heart was in danger. Just my lips.

The rest of the game passed with me riveted to wherever Logan was on the field. Whether he was up to pitch or hitting the ball, my gaze tracked his lithe movements.

At one point, Reece pointed out some scouts sitting in one of the lower rows.

“Are they here for your brother?” I asked.

“Logan already committed to Kellison University.”

“That’s where he’s going in the fall?” Then he would officially be in college. A new college with a new crop of girls for him to divest of panties. He was a jock. They’d treat him like a superstar on campus.

It was a good reminder of just how different we were.

“Yeah.” Reece nodded, looking very much like the proud older brother. “We’re going to miss him.”

“It’s not that far,” I said. Forty minutes at the most.

“Yeah, but he won’t be working at Mulvaney’s anymore. He’ll be caught up in school. Playing ball.” Some of the pride slipped then and Reece looked a little sad that his brother would be moving on.

Pepper sensed this, too. She covered his hand with hers and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “We’ll always be family. This is a good thing. He needs to get out from under your dad. And Rachel. Time for him to live a life of his own.”

Rachel? I understood the reference to his dad, knowing most of the Mulvaney backstory. Logan often got stuck in the caretaker role for the cantankerous man, driving him places and taking care of the house when he wasn’t at school or work. Mr. Mulvaney would finally have to hire someone or accept help from his sister and stop relying on Logan. But Rachel? He had said she was just a friend. Obviously, she was more than that.

“Speak of the devil.” Pepper nodded toward the dark-haired girl walking up the stands, searching for a place to sit. She was still dressed in head-to-toe black, her lips that bright coral-red from the other night. She still possessed that hard, almost untouchable beauty.

Students recognized her. They nodded in her direction as she made her way up the steps, her heavy boots clanging over the metal. I couldn’t hear their words, but they were followed with laughter and sly glances.

“Rachel!” Reece called, waving her over. Her hard expression gave the faintest crack. She smiled the closest thing to a smile I had seen on her face yet, but that smile slipped when she spotted me. Clearly, she remembered me.

A panicked flurry of butterflies erupted in my belly. Would she mention the kink club? I still hadn’t said anything about it to Pepper, and I didn’t want it to come out this way.

Reece scooted down, making room for her.

“Hey, Rachel, this is my friend, Georgia,” Pepper introduced.

“Hey.” She nodded once at me and then looked away to the field as if I was of no interest. I released a breath.

“Hello,” I returned. Apparently she wouldn’t out me.

Through the rest of the game, I felt Rachel sliding glances my way. I caught her looking several times. It was with great effort that I trained my stare straight ahead. I also made a point not to be overly exuberant in my cheering so she didn’t read anything into it. She was probably wondering why I was here. Suddenly I was wondering that, too.

What would Logan think when he saw me? That I was sniffing around because I liked our kiss? Because I wanted an encore? God. I flushed hot with embarrassment.

The rest of the game passed with Logan’s team pulling ahead. They won 7–5, largely due to Logan.

Everyone stood and began filing down the stands. In the crush, a few people slipped between me and Pepper and Reece, putting distance between us.

“What are you doing here?”

I looked sharply to my right. Rachel had hung back and positioned herself beside me as we descended the metal steps.

I shrugged. “Pepper asked me to come.”

Her darkly lined eyes stared hard at me. “No.”

It was a single word, but it dropped like a stone between us.

I stared at her for a moment, trying to think how to respond. I knew that I didn’t want to ask for elaboration. I was afraid what more she might say.

She continued anyway. “You’re like all the others, after a taste of him.” She looked me up and down before pushing past me, tossing the single word over her shoulder. “Pathetic.”

The words gouged me, and I hated it. Hated that I had become this insecure—this vulnerable. My breakup with Harris had stripped me and left me raw and bleeding. I’d been trying to patch myself back up ever since. Trying to figure myself out for the last couple months. There were days when I felt close to luring whoever I was, who I was supposed to be, who I wanted to be, out into the world. And then something like this happened that cut me back down.

Rachel’s words felt like a stab into the open wound.

I watched as she moved ahead, weaving her way down to the bottom of the bleachers and catching up with Reece and Pepper.

I TRAILED AT A
sedate pace, determined to keep my distance from them as they approached the dugout. A chain link fence separated the players from the fans, but Reece’s deep voice carried as he called for Logan. I knew from Pepper it was important to Reece that Logan knew they came. That Logan knew they loved and supported him.

Logan’s head popped up at the sound of his name. His signature grin broke out and he separated himself from his teammates and stepped up to the fence to talk to his brother and Pepper. Rachel soon joined them, too.

Logan pushed back his cap on his head slightly, revealing more of his face. Still so good-looking it made my chest ache a little.

God. This was stupid. Me being here. I couldn’t take it back now, but I wasn’t going to rush to the fence and be the pathetic thing Rachel just claimed I was.

Logan nodded, smiling almost modestly, and I knew they must be congratulating him, insisting that he won the game. He shook his head and motioned behind him, probably insisting it was a team effort. I could read it in his body language. Logan might be one of the most self-aware guys I’d ever met, but he wasn’t full of himself.

He was looking at Pepper, listening to her when suddenly his posture changed. He head shot up, scanning the diminishing crowd, searching.

For me.

I ceased to breathe. Pepper must have mentioned that I’d joined them. Or maybe he just sensed me. I didn’t know. I only knew that he was looking for me. I knew it the second before his eyes jerked to a stop on me.

I moved slowly, my steps dragging, unwilling to meet up with them, but knowing I’d have to eventually. I couldn’t pass that spot without stopping. The polite thing to do would be to congratulate him, and I was all about politeness. Good manners had been mixed in with my baby cereal.

I’d have to face him and then I would see the same knowledge in his eyes that I had seen in Rachel’s. He would think I was pathetic, too. That I came here because I wanted another taste of him. Just like Rachel accused.

Then, miraculously, I was saved. The coach called for all the players.

Logan stared at me one moment longer, his blue eyes unreadable from this distance, before he turned and grabbed his stuff from the dugout alongside the rest of his team. They all trotted toward the locker room.

I stopped alongside Pepper and Reece. Pepper looked at me. “Hey, you just missed Logan. He had to go.”

I nodded, fixing my lips into a bland little smile.

Pepper turned to Reece. “Text him and see if he wants to grab dinner—”

“He has plans. Big after-party,” Rachel explained, looking at me. Of course, she would be looking at me.

“Oh, sure.” Pepper nodded in understanding. “Then it’s just us.”

We all started down the path that led past the concession stands. The fried goodness of funnel cakes filled the air.

“You stay out of trouble tonight, Rachel,” Reece said, sounding so much like a dad that I smiled.

“Always do.” With a flutter of her fingers, she headed for the parking lot, her hips doing that sexy slink again. I somehow felt certain she was headed for trouble.

Pepper tugged on Reece’s sleeve. “I want a funnel cake.”

“I thought we were going to dinner.” He pointed toward the concession stand. “And that line is really long.”

She played with the hem of his shirt, flashing the world a glimpse of his super-cut abs. “They don’t serve funnel cakes at any restaurant I know.”

He relented with an exaggerated sigh, pulling her close and tucking her to his side. “This is true.” He looked at me. “Georgia? Want one?”

“No, thanks.” I inclined my head to the parking lot. “My mom called. I’m gonna call her back. I’ll wait by the car.”

Of course, I was lying. Needing to use the phone seemed like a good excuse. And I needed an excuse. I didn’t want to be stuck standing in line with them in case Logan came back. I couldn’t undo coming to this game, but if I could escape without talking to him, I would feel markedly better about the whole thing.

My shoes crunched over the gravel lot as I made my way to Reece’s Jeep. I leaned against the door and pulled out my phone and started thumbing through it. I was browsing my sister’s Instagram when a pair of baseball cleats stopped directly in my line of vision. I looked up, my gaze skimming Logan’s legs before stopping on his face. How did a guy so big move with ninjalike stealth? I hadn’t heard his approach, and Amber’s latest pictures of gummy bears and her freshly painted toenails wasn’t that riveting.

“No funnel cake for you?”

I shoved my phone back into my pocket. “Not in the mood.” At least my voice came out normal.

“Were you ‘not in the mood’ to tell me hello, too?”

Heat crawled over my face. “Hi,” I said lamely.

“Why’d you come?” That was direct. Nearly as direct as those piercing blue of his eyes.

I shifted my feet, opting for distraction. “Gr-great game.”

“Yeah, thanks.” He shrugged one shoulder, brushing it aside as if it were nothing, but his eyes were no less relentless, dismissing my attempt at distraction and demanding an answer.

“Really. It was an important game. Congratulations.”

“I know.” And yet he didn’t seem that eager to discuss it.

“Congratulations. You were—” Incredible. Amazing. Self-possessed and confident. “You won the game. Are you . . . sad a little? It was your last game.”

He shook his head once. “There will be other games. In college.”

“I heard you’re going to Kellison. Congratulations.” God. How many times was I going to say that?

A mocking smile played about his lips that made my belly flutter. He probably heard compliments all the time from any one of his countless groupies. I stepped back a pace, bumping into the door of the Jeep, suddenly not wanting to be confused with one of them. I glanced away, worried that he would see something in my face that I didn’t want him to see. The thing that Rachel had seen.

I looked across the parking lot, ready for Pepper and Reece to return. I spotted them. They were almost to the front of the concession line now. A woman stood at the counter, five little kids surrounding her as she placed an order. It was going to be a while yet.

I could go stand with them. Then I wouldn’t be alone here with Logan.

“Didn’t expect to see you here, Georgia. You’ve never been to a game with Reece and Pepper before.”

His voice drew my gaze back to his face. I’d never kissed him before. Never thought about Reece’s little brother in the way I did now.

And that made me feel pathetic. Just like Rachel said. Harris called me boring. Rachel called me pathetic. I was two for two when it came to things I didn’t want to be.

“Yeah. Well, I didn’t have anything going on and Pepper invited me . . .” My voice faded and I felt so lame standing there. Acting like I didn’t want to come. That my being here was just a casual thing. After the other night, my being here felt so very obvious and I wanted to punch myself. Hard.