I scan the room for Lauren and Ally. Surely they have a couch I can crash on tonight and maybe the next three weeks—at this point, I’d take the next three days. I pick up my pace and begin circling the room. Lauren cackles from the entry, and I catch them heading outside.
“Wait!” I bolt for my suitcase before maneuvering toward the door, but navigating my way out of this human maze is like moving boulders.
I make it to the porch, and the cool dew baptizes me with the scent of night jasmine. My suitcase bounces out of the house from behind and slices a nice, clean gash into my ankle.
“Pennington!” Somehow shouting his name as an expletive makes the situation a little more bearable.
I look up in time to see a black Jeep pull away with Ally in the passenger’s seat.
“Great.” I let out a hard sigh and clop down the rest of the stairs like I actually have someplace to go. In the distance an owl gives an eerie cry. The wind licks the wound at my ankle with its iced tongue and I shiver. I’ve never been alone like this before, in a strange town with nowhere to go. It’s as though I laid myself in a steel jaw trap and the cruel world were closing in on me with its nefarious arms.
A couple to my left laughs while locked in an embrace. It’s not until they pull away do I see it’s Cruise and a tall redhead wearing thigh-high boots and a miniskirt violating more than its fair share of public indecency laws.
He catches my eye and holds it a second before glancing down at my suitcase. My stomach explodes with heat at the sight of him. Cruise whispers something in her ear, inspiring me to turn away as if I were at a bus stop waiting for my invisible ride—only I’m not. I’m stuck at Garrison, at Alpha Sigma Phi no less—tomorrow is Christmas Eve, I’m homeless, and hungry, and my feet are pissed off and bleeding.
“Hey, Kenny.” Cruise swoops in and gleams a boastful smile.
I glance over in time to catch the girl in the thigh-highs making her way back to the party.
I give a private smile at the thought of Cruise striking out so close to midnight.
“I would have pegged her for a homerun,” I say.
“She was.” He gives a lopsided grin and takes a hold of my suitcase. “But I’d rather grab a bite with you.”
Cruise
The moon glows overhead clear as a streetlamp, making the clouds look like black paper cutouts against the navy expanse. The sky threatens us with rain, but since the heater is out at my place, with my luck, I’m betting on snow.
But, for whatever reason, my run of bad juju seems to have temporarily halted because a goddess by the name of Kendall Jordan is sitting in my truck with one hell of a banging hot bod. And, holy shit, would I ever love to bang that body. But she’s not the banging type. She made that abundantly clear when she accused my dick of having a “road show.” She’s funny as hell, though, I’ll give her that.
We pull into the Johnny Burgers lot, and I slow down as we pass the front.
“Drive-thru or dine in?” I ask, hinting at the game of Questions from earlier.
She leans over and inspects the place. Her hair drapes over her shoulder like a long black scarf, and her pale grey eyes glow like those of a cat. Instinctively, I want to reach over and touch her but resist the effort. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot of resisting around Kenny in the very near future. She’s not the type to voluntarily fall on her knees, and that alone makes me want her twice as bad.
I look over to the burger joint. The windows are painted with a snowy scene of Santa making his way down a chimney with burgers and fries bursting from his sack. Miles of holly garland outline the doors. I look for the mistletoe—no such luck.
Kenny blinks into the place with her long dark lashes, and the lights go out in the establishment before she can answer.
“I guess that’s drive-thru,” I say, pulling in and we place our orders. Kenny hasn’t said much, other than filling me in on Pennington’s housing botch up. I’m not used to quiet girls. Moaning girls—screaming girls, now that I’m used to. Quiet worries me, makes me feel as if I’m doing something wrong.
She reaches for her purse.
“No, I got it.” I pay the girl in the window before Kenny can mime the offer. I catch her inspecting me with what I’m hoping to God is lust but can just as easily be regret for ever setting foot in my truck, so I busy myself with putting away my wallet. “You’re so damn good-looking it borders on illegal.” I say it calm, more as a fact than something engineered to land her in bed. I think both me and my dick have come to terms with the fact Kenny Jordan isn’t choosing in tonight.
She blushes a severe shade of pomegranate, and a sharp bite of heat cuts through me. I can’t remember the last time I made a girl blush. Hell I didn’t know they could blush, at least not the man-eaters I associate myself with.