Be with Me

Forty-­some minutes passed before the bedroom door opened, and Debbie stepped into the suite, running a hand through her shoulder-­length brown hair, smoothing the ends down. She saw me, and her face flushed red.

Debbie cringed. “Oh! You haven’t been out here too long?”

“No. Just a ­couple of minutes . . .” I trailed off, taking a closer look at Debbie while she straightened the hem of her floral blouse. Her eyes were red and puffy. They’d been fighting. Again. They must’ve made up, but they fought so much I wondered how they had any time for anything other than arguing and makeup sex.

Erik appeared, his fingers flying over the screen of his cell. His short, dark hair stuck straight up. He was good-­looking, I’d give him that, but I didn’t understand his appeal. At all. He was big in the frat that Jase belonged to, was somewhat of a local basketball star during his high school years, but he had the personality of a cornered hyena.

Sliding his phone into his jeans pocket, he smiled at me, but it was a nervous smile, one that made me antsy.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Of course she is,” Erik answered, laughing.

I stared at her pointedly, ignoring him, but she nodded quickly. “Yeah, I’m perfect. We’re going to get something to eat before we head to the party. You want to come?”

My mouth opened, but then Erik also answered for me. “She looks like her knee is bothering her, so she probably wants to stay here.”

I snapped my mouth shut.

Debbie looked uncomfortable as Erik started to usher her toward the door. “You coming to the party?”

I hadn’t really been invited, but I knew if I showed up, no one would say anything—­no one except Jase, and I didn’t want to see him. I shrugged. “I’m not sure yet.”

She lingered. “Okay, well—­”

“Babe, come on, I’m f**king hungry.” Erik grabbed her arm, causing the flesh under his fingers to indent. “It’s getting late.”

A low burn started in my stomach as I looked at that grip. How many times had Jeremy grabbed me like that? Too many to count. Seeing that made me feel nauseated. Made me want to think about things best left forgotten.

Debbie’s wobbly smile faltered. “Text me if you want . . . or need anything.”

Erik grumbled something under his breath, and then they were gone. And I was sitting there, with my leg propped up on the coffee table, staring at the door, but my thoughts had skipped back a ­couple of years.

“You know I’m f**king hungry,” Jeremy said, leaning over and grabbing my upper arm. He squeezed until I cried out. The car suddenly felt entirely too small. There wasn’t enough air. “What were you doing that took so long? Talking on the phone?”

“No!” I knew to remain still, to not pull away, because that only made him madder. “I was only talking to Cam.”

He relaxed, his fingers loosening their hold. “He’s home?”

I shook my head. “I was talking to him—­”

“On the phone?” In a second, his features turned from cute to monstrous. I winced as his fingers dug in through my sweater. “I thought you weren’t on the phone?”

I shook myself out of the memory, happy to discover that all I felt was the residual anger. For the longest time, I would get sick to my stomach even thinking about him, but those days had long since passed.

Jeremy had been an abuser, but I was no longer a victim.

I was over what he’d done to me. Over. Over. Over.

Pulling my gaze away from the door, I squeezed the pillow until my arms ached. I didn’t have proof that Erik was hurting Debbie, more like a sixth sense about it, and I knew that most bruises wouldn’t be visible. Not if Erik was smart, like Jeremy had been.

I spent the rest of the evening eating out of the vending machine from down the hall and thumbing through my history text before crashing early. As I lay there, floating in the la-­la land of almost sleep, I felt pretty damn lame. Here I was, a few months shy from turning nineteen, it was a Saturday night, and I was almost asleep before ten.

Lame didn’t even cover it.

Rolling onto my side, facing the wall, I drifted off to sleep wondering if Jase’s rejection would’ve hurt so badly if I hadn’t ruined my leg.

The ding from my cell phone sounded far away when it woke me some time later. I blinked my eyes open, confused. Green light from the clock on the nightstand flashed a quarter after one in the morning. The ding came again.

Smacking around until I reached my cell, I picked it up and squinted at the message. I read it once. Thought I was still dreaming. Read it twice. Thought I forgot how to read. Then I sat up, blinking the sleep from my eyes. The dark room came into focus enough for me to see that the bed on the other side of the room was empty. I looked down at the phone again.

I need to talk to u

It was from Jase.

The second text read I’m outside, and my heart sped up.

Jase was here.

Chapter Three

I had to be dreaming.

At least that was how it felt as I found my flip-­flops, slipped them on, and then grabbed my key card. For a brief moment I considered ignoring his text, but my body seemed to have a mind of its own.

I was definitely going to want to karate-­chop myself in the morning for this.

As I left my suite, I began to fear that this was some kind of joke because how did Jase know which dorm I was in? Even if he knew it was in West Woods, there were six buildings that made up the complex. I doubted he’d asked Cam.

My stomach dipped and twisted into complicated little knots as I walked down the stairs, clutching the railing. Darkness seeped in from the windows on the landing. Maybe I was really dreaming and this would become a nightmare. The railing would turn into a snake—­God, I hated snakes—­total Beetlejuice style.

Cringing, I pulled my hand away from the smooth metal of the railing and limped my way to the first floor. The lobby was silent with the exception of the soft hum and whirl of a dryer located in laundry ser­vices.

As I stepped into the night, tiny bumps spread over my flesh. I wished I’d had the foresight to grab a cardigan. There was a surprising chill to the night air.

I stopped on the porch, clutching the key card until it left little indents in my hand as I scanned the walkway and trees lining the path. All the benches were empty. There was no one out here. Besides the chirps of crickets, the only sound was distant laughter and faint music, punctuated every so many seconds with a happy shout.

My heart turned over heavily as I stepped off the porch, pushing my hair out of my face with my free hand. This was a joke. Or maybe he meant to text someone else and was waiting outside of her dorm. My skin prickled at the thought of him texting any other girl at one in the morning, which was stupid.

I shuffled several feet down the walkway, peering between the trees and thick hedges. The hollows of my cheeks started to burn as I stopped in the middle of the pathway. I shifted my weight from my aching leg to the other. What was I doing out here? I didn’t even bring my phone with me. It had to be a mistake or a joke or a—­

A thick shadow broke free from under the trees, moving between the hedges. The form was tall and solid and as it stepped into the pillar of light cast from the lamppost, my mouth dropped open. It was Jase, but what was he doing back there? As he turned toward me, his hands left the zipper area of his jeans. Oh my God.

“Jase?” I hissed, hurrying the rest of the way toward him.

His chin lifted at the sound of my voice. “There you are.” He said it like he’d been waiting forever and a day for me. One side of his lips kicked up. “You’re here.”

There was a flutter in my chest at the sight of his half smile. Recalling what he had said to me earlier helped me ignore the dumbass butterfly in my chest. “Were you just peeing?”

The half grin spread. “I had to use the bathroom.”

“In a bush?”

“Someone needed to water it.”

My lips twitched as I stared up at him. The unruly mop of hair fell across his forehead, brushing the edges of his eyes. The old, vintage style T-­shirt he wore stretched across his broad shoulders and chest. As he lifted his hand to push his hair back, he revealed a slice of skin between his low-­hanging jeans and his shirt. Rock-­hard abs peeked out.

I averted my gaze because that was the last thing I needed to be staring at. “You’re drunk.”

“Ah . . .” He swayed to the left like there was some kind of invisible gravitational pull I was unaware of. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say I am drunk. Maybe a little buzzing.”

I arched a brow as he wavered to the right. That’s when I noticed the little pink box on the bench. “Is that yours?”

He followed my gaze and then grinned. “Shit. I forgot about it. Brought you a present.”

My brows shot up as he leaned over, nearly falling on his face before catching himself at the last moment, and picked up the box. “What is it?”

He handed it over. “Something as yummy as me.”

I snorted out a very attractive laugh as I looked down. Through the clear plastic top I could make out a huge, oversized cupcake. I glanced at Jase.

One shoulder went up in a shrug. “Cupcakes are good. Thought I’d be good and share with you.”

“Thank you.” I pried open the box and dipped my pinkie in the icing. Tasting it, I nearly moaned at the sweet richness.

Jase swallowed as he looked away. “I think I’ll sit down. You should too . . . you know, because of your leg.”

Like I somehow forgot that.

Jase watched me as I eased down, finding my knee stiffer than normal. “Is your leg bothering you?”

I opened my mouth, but he rushed on. “I didn’t even think about that. You probably shouldn’t be on your leg so much and—­”

“I’m okay.” I took a quick bite of the cupcake. It was like a sugary orgasm in my mouth. “Want some?”

“Hells yeah.”

I broke the cupcake in half and handed him his half. Within five seconds, he’d devoured it. I finished mine off pretty quickly and after tossing the box in a nearby trash can, I took a deep breath. “You didn’t come here just to give me a cupcake, right?”

“Ah, no.”

“What . . . what are you doing here, Jase?”

He didn’t answer immediately, but when his gray gaze settled on me, his eyes were surprisingly sharp. “I want to talk to you.”

“That much I got, but I think you said everything you wanted to say already, and you showing up here is the last thing I expected.” I felt like a bitch for throwing it out there like that, but it was true. And he sort of deserved it. I was no one’s doormat.

Jase looked away as his shoulders tensed, then he came forward and sat down beside me. The smell of alcohol was faint as he looked at me. Without saying a word, he reached over and plucked up my free hand. My eyes widened as he lifted my hand, turned it over, and placed a kiss against my palm.

Yep. He was drunk.

And my skin tingled from where his lips had met, like an electrical jolt. Speechless, I watched him lower my hand back to my lap.

“I’m a jackass,” he said.

I blinked slowly.

“I shouldn’t have said the shit that I said to you earlier. It wasn’t right and I was lying.” He took a deep breath, shifting his gaze to the empty bench across from us. “I wasn’t drunk that night. I was far from it.”

My heart had begun pounding from the moment he kissed my hand and went up a degree as he spoke, and my voice was barely above a whisper. “I know.”

“And I really didn’t think you’d assume it meant anything because you had a crush on me or whatever.” One side of his lips tipped up again, but he had been right on that aspect. The kiss had meant everything to me. “I just . . . I shouldn’t have kissed you that night—­touched you. Not because it was gross or any of that shit, but because you’re Cam’s little sister. You’re untouchable.”

As I stared at him, the butterfly moved from my chest to my stomach. Was that Jase’s problem? He felt bad because Cam was his friend. Seriously? Part of me wanted to smack him upside the head. The other part of me wanted to crawl into his lap, because if that was his big hang-­up, we could work with that. Couldn’t we? Or did it matter?

But I just sat there, staring at him like I had all those times he’d come to visit Cam. If I started giggling, I was going to punch myself in the face.

“The moment . . . it had gotten away from me that night, Tess. You . . . you are a beautiful girl. Always have been and, goddamnit, that hasn’t changed.”

He thought I was beautiful—­wait. The moment had gotten away from him? Torn between being elated and insulted, I shook my head.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” He glanced over at me, half of his face shadowed. “And if you think I’m the biggest jackass out there, I completely understand.”