When Gracie is humiliated after following her best friend's brother to college and finds he's moved on without her, she grows closer to his rival--the captain of his basketball team--the infamous Kalen Rush, and suddenly Gracie wonders just what len...
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"So...you've gotten pretty close with Kalen recently."
"So what if I have?"
Franny eyed me with a cool suspicion, but it wasn't in anger. Curiosity shone in her eyes, and I rolled my own at the fact that she was being so aloof instead of coming right out to say what she was thinking like she normally did with her trademark blunt honesty.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing there?"
Pinning her hair up in the mirror after turning her entire body towards mine in our shared dorm, her worry and concern for me shone through and I abandoned the books and laptop on the bed in front of me to give her my full attention.
"Honestly? I have no fucking clue what I'm doing most of the time, I just hope that whatever happens doesn't end up with me having my heart broken."
Again.
But she didn't really need to know that part about her older brother.
No one needed to know about that.
Especially not after the way he'd been treating me and everyone else the entire semester that we'd shared.
"Gracie...I know my brother has probably warned you off him at least a hundred times but...you'll be careful around him, right? I mean, you snuck out to see him last night and didn't come back until the morning. I'm just trying to look out for you."
"I know you are. I'm being careful with him, I swear. We haven't even...it's not like we're in a relationship or anything. We're just...hanging out, I guess? I'm not seeing anyone else aside from him, but from what I can tell he's not seeing anyone else either. We don't really talk about that stuff around each other."
"Then what do you talk about?"
"I don't know...life? Our past, our families, what they expect of us. His father's a serious asshole, you know that. What he said to me at the funeral? It's nothing compared to how he treats Kalen. We talk about the NBA and about where I want to work after I graduate. It's not like he's only about sex, because he hasn't even tried to go there with me, not yet anyway."
"And do you want him to go there?"
I leveled her with a blank stare, my eyebrows raised suggestively.
"You've seen him. What do you think?"
"Well, while I do prefer the female figure, I can definitely see that man's appeal. Yes, it's pretty obvious how much you want him. But what if it becomes something serious? Is your dad going to be even remotely okay with that?"
"No. Not one bit."
I shuddered at the thought of what my father would say if I brought home the son of the man who helped destroy his marriage, and in turn, his life—at least from the way he would frame it in his mind.
