Out on Good Behavior (Radleigh University Book 3) (14 page)

“Scout’s honor.”

“There is no way you were a scout,” I say, even though he is absolutely the type.

“You win us flip cup, I’ll tell you whether I was or not.” He waggles his eyebrows and I laugh, and we head inside.

For all that I’m not terribly athletic—my sporting experience starts and ends with joining the neighborhood softball team for two years to meet girls—I am damn good at this game. I pound my beer and flip my cup in one perfect shot while their first guy is still chugging. “Damn, you are impressive,” Doug says affectionately as I down the celebratory Jell-O shot he brings me when we win. “Do you want another hot dog? You’ve earned it.”

“I can’t,” I say apologetically. I’ve heard enough about Sam’s love of dolma and nazook to know I should be saving belly room. “I really do have to run.”

“Oh, come on,” Charlie, one of the guys we just trounced, says, wiping a dollop of ketchup from his burger off his face. “You have to give us a shot at a rematch.”

“Can’t just embarrass dudes on their home turf like that,” another guy, Marcus, adds.

I glance at Doug, who’s already setting up eight new cups, and sigh. I know I should go, but after tonight, when I’m officially done with Doug, these guys are gonna like me a whole lot less. Sam wouldn’t begrudge me having fun with them one last time, right?

I’m back at the table before I can even contemplate the answer to that question.

This time, I’m a little less impressive. The guys put me third for strategic reasons, and by the time I lift the cup of lukewarm beer to my lips, I’m feeling a little out of it. I don’t chug it nearly as fast, and as my team chants their encouragement, it echoes in my head with a pounding pulse. I finish anyway, and it takes me seven or eight tries to flip my cup. When I finally do it, I nearly keel over.

“Hey, you okay?” Doug asks from his starting spot.

“I’m fine.” I wave my hand to let him know not to worry, but I nearly smack myself in the face. “On second thought, maybe I need to sit down.”

He guides me to the couch, and I feel myself getting sleepier with every step. “Dude,” I say quietly, and am I slurring? “What the fuck is in that beer?”

“It’s just beer,” he assures me. “We all drank the same stuff.”

“The Jell-O?”

“Just vodka. Nothing weird.”

I nod, feeling like a puppet. I trust Doug, but more importantly, I can’t think anymore. I just need to close my eyes for a minute, and I’ll be fine.

Just a minute.

I wake up feeling like death, and my mouth tastes like I’ve been making out with a raccoon. Blinking down at my body, I see I’ve definitely fallen asleep in my clothes. And not just any clothes, but actual nice ones—my best jeans and a wrap top I usually reserve for holidays at church, though I wear it with a tank top underneath for that and right now I am definitely not. In fact, my boobs are pretty nicely displayed right now—or will be, once I retie it properly—which is exactly why I picked this top for my date with—

No.

No no no no no.

My head whips around to take in my surroundings, and I get so instantly dizzy that it takes me a full minute to realize where I am.

In Doug’s room at the Sig Psi house.

With sunlight streaming through the window.

Which makes this…the morning
after
my big date with Samara.

The date I never showed up to.

Holy shit. I am a monster.

I rub my eyes until I can actually see clearly, and that’s when I realize I’m alone in the bed. I look down at the floor, and there’s Doug, curled up with his head on a pillow, sleeping like a baby. The bed belonging to his roommate, Jorge, is mercifully empty, though the clock on the nightstand says 10:42 a.m., so for all I know, he slept here last night with us. It’s not like I remember coming up here, and I certainly don’t remember crawling into these sheets.

What the fuck happened last night?

I slip out of bed and look at myself in Doug’s grubby mirror. My shirt may be askew, but it’s still tied, the edges of my black lace bra peeking out from underneath. My jeans are still on, zipped and buttoned. Whatever went down last night…well, it doesn’t seem like anything did, literally or figuratively. I don’t even have any beard burn on my face, and considering Doug only shaves like once a week, that’s pretty telling. The only clothing I’m missing are my boots, and those are easy enough to find on the floor.

So again, I have to wonder…what the hell?

Unfortunately, my pounding headache makes it hard to think, but a quick search of Doug’s toiletry bag yields a bottle of Advil. It’s only as I’m pouring three into my hand that I finally figure out what happened to make me lose my entire night.

That fucking Xanax.

How could I have forgotten I’d popped one of Lizzie’s pills to keep myself calm for my date? And
how
could I have forgotten that Xanax—especially in the dosage she’s got—and alcohol do not fucking mix? So now, basically, I’ve combined chemical coping mechanisms only to screw myself into the worst, most stressful situation of all, because I am an asshole and how the hell am I supposed to explain to my girlfriend—if I even still have one—that I was so nervous about a date I should’ve been excitedly counting down the minutes to that I stupidly knocked myself into a coma?

I grab my phone from my butt pocket and light it up.

Shit. Three missed calls. I check my texts, and sure enough those are full too.

Hey, are you in there? I’ve been knocking for a few minutes already.
Time: five minutes after eight.

Ten minutes later:
I’m guessing you’re not in there, and my feet are starting to hurt from standing in your hallway. I’m gonna head back to my room and wait for you there, OK?

Ten minutes later:
I called the restaurant and moved our reservation half an hour, but that’s the latest they’ll seat.

And finally, when there’s been no response from me for an entire hour:
Guess you’re not coming. Hope everything’s okay.

That’s it. And it only takes a minute of scrolling through the texts to figure out what’s bugging me about them. There’s nothing from Lizzie, nothing from Cait. If Samara were really worried that something had happened to me, she would’ve contacted them. Or maybe she did, but
they
weren’t worried. Either way, however well I’ve been thinking I’ve been concealing my anxiety…clearly, I haven’t been fooling anyone. And that knowledge just makes everything worse.

How did I ever think I deserved her?

No, fuck that.
I’m not giving up that easily. I fix my shirt in the mirror, use Doug’s toothpaste and deodorant to make myself a little more human, pull on my boots, and do the best I can to clean up my hair and makeup. Even if I’ve burned any chance I had with Sam, she deserves better than to think I don’t give a shit, that I just didn’t show up because I don’t care. She doesn’t have to forgive me, but she does have to know how sorry I am, and, yeah, maybe how crazy I am about her too.

Because I am. Because I wanted to be there with her last night. Because I want to be with her now.

I slip out of Doug’s room and out the door of the Sig Psi house, ignoring all the whistling trailing after me. I’m still feeling a little dizzy, and it takes me a minute to orient myself, but finally, I manage to pick my way over to Wilson Hall.

Where no one answers when I ring up.

I step away from the security desk and dial Samara, but it rings three times and goes to voicemail. Not that I’m surprised she’s screening my calls. I don’t bother trying again, and instead call up Cait. That one doesn’t even ring, which means she’s probably in the gym. I could go there and drag her back here to bring me up, but before I do, I try Sam again. And again. And again.

No luck.

The gym it is.

• • •

By the time I let myself into my apartment, I’m physically and emotionally exhausted from searching for Samara on every square inch of the Radleigh campus. I can’t blame her for not picking up her phone any of the billion times I tried her, but even Cait has no idea where she is. I am completely at a loss.

For now, I just need to be patient, recharge, shower the smell of the Sig Psi house off my skin, and then figure out how to make the world’s most epic apology.

No problem.

The place is quiet when I close the door behind me. “Lizzie B.?” I call out as I hang up my leather jacket on the hook by the door. “You here?”

Silence.

I walk further into the apartment and spot a note on our little round dining table.
Have fun
, it says in her scrawl.
I’ll see you tomorrow.

Clearly Lizzie’s in her own universe; “fun” is the last word I’d use for what lies ahead. I drop her note back on the table and continue on to my room, grumpily throwing open the door.

And there, lying on my bed, hair fanned out around her, fingertips dangling over a book she must’ve dropped to the carpet in her slumber, is Samara.

I’m tempted to pinch myself to make sure she’s real. How long has she been here? And what—

Wait.

I blink, and blink again. I was so startled and relieved to see her when I first walked in that I didn’t even notice what she’s wearing. Or isn’t wearing. One of those long, golden legs is adorned with an honest-to-goodness lacy garter. A garter that matches the lacy frills emerging from a skintight pink satin corset rising and falling with every one of Samara’s delicate breaths.

She is fully decked out in the most fuckhot lingerie I have ever seen.

I want to wrap her in my arms, bury my nose in her hair, and kiss her senseless so badly it aches. I want to stare at her in that outfit for days, want to peel it off in seconds, want want want.

But I haven’t earned it, haven’t earned her. She deserved so much better from me, and I don’t know why she’s here now, but I know I need to make her stay.

I glance at the book on the floor—is that flower on the cover supposed to look so vaginal?—and then back at Sam. She hasn’t so much as stirred since I walked in. Kissing her awake seems too presumptuous, so I kneel by the bed and lift her fingers to my lips instead. Her eyelids flutter open, revealing those gorgeous tiger eyes that melt me every time, and I say, “Hey.”

She blinks and I wonder if I should take back my hand. I don’t know if she’s here to read me the riot act; I don’t know how to reconcile her being here with what happened last night at all. But then her lips curve into a slow smile and she says, “Hey,” and I leave my hand wrapped around hers.

“I’ve been trying to call you.”

“I’ve been asleep, apparently.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since…ten, maybe? Eleven? Lizzie let me in, then said she was going over to Connor’s.”

Samara’s been here for
hours
. I’ve been chasing her all over campus and she’s been
here
, waiting. For me. For this. For whatever’s coming next. “Sam, I am so, so sorry about last night, and this morning, and…everything.” I squeeze her hand and use it to pull myself up so I’m sitting on the bed at her knees. “I hate myself for not showing up, especially because I
wanted
to show up, but I was so nervous that I took one of Lizzie’s mega-Xanaxes, and then suddenly I was waking up in—”

I cut myself off, but she doesn’t miss it. “Where?” she asks quietly, and I know she’s been wondering this since long before I opened my mouth, since long before I even returned to my room. “Where did you wake up this morning, Frankie?”

There’s no way to make this sound good; all I can go with is the truth. “With Doug, at the Sig Psi house.”

She sucks in a sharp breath, but doesn’t say a word.

“Nothing happened with him, Sam. I promise you. And you don’t even have to take my word for it.” I reach into the back pocket of my jeans for my phone, hit Play on the voicemail Doug left me at some point during my rabid campus search, and then hit the speakerphone.

“Frankie? Hey, where’d you go? I woke up and you were gone before we could even talk. And listen, I just want to make sure you know nothing happened last night. I don’t know why you were so out of it after a couple of beers, but I put you to bed as soon as you passed out. Can you just, like, let me know that you’re okay? Okay. Thanks.”
There’s a long pause and then a breath that suggests he’s gonna speak again, but instead, he hangs up.

Samara presses her lips together. “He sounds like a good guy.”

“He is.”

“But nothing happened.”

“Nothing but a text back to tell him I’m okay.”

“And are you?”

It’s a loaded question, but an easy answer. “I am now.”

That finally gets a smile out of her. It’s small, but it’s there, and I’ll take it.

“So…this outfit,” I say, my voice turning raspy as my gaze flickers over her body, lingering on the small, perfect breasts pushed up by the boning of the corset, the curve of her hips underneath the second-skin satin. “Did you wear it here to seduce me or destroy me?”

That tiny smile turns sly as fuck. “Can’t it be both?”

“I think it must be. You look like an angel sent from hell.” I glance down at the scrap of lace encircling her thigh. “I have to admit, if you left me alone here right now, it would be some well-deserved revenge.” I dart out my tongue to wet my lips; my mouth is desert dry. “Cruel and horrible, but deserved.”

“Do you
want
me to go?”

My eyebrow shoots skyward. “You’re kidding me, right? I’ve been looking for you for hours. All I’ve wanted to do since the minute I woke up this morning—since the minute I saw you for the first time, really—is be with you, preferably in this bed. I don’t want to do anything but this, like, ever again. I just feel shitty about it happening after last night.”

She curves her palm around my jaw and leans in, but she doesn’t brush her mouth against mine. Instead, she takes my lower lip between her teeth and bites down, tugging until I groan with the pleasure and pain of it. “Here’s the deal, Francesca,” she says, her voice so low I have to strain to hear it. “I made a decision this morning that I would hear whatever you wanted to say. And now, it’s my turn to get what I want.”

“Anything,” I say, and I mean it with every fiber in my being. “What do you want, Sam?”

A lone fingertip grazes my forearm, tracing the ink there, the lines from a classmate’s poem I had tattooed there last semester.
This is the story of a woman who had done it all wrong.
“I want what I came dressed for. So, is that still on the table?”

A rush of warmth floods my body, every nerve cell pinging. “If you still want me then
yes
. Hell yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

The last yes isn’t even fully out of my mouth before she swallows it in hers, burying her hands in my hair and pulling me back to the bed with her. I surrender completely, letting her take control of this kiss, of anything she damn well pleases, knowing it’s only a matter of time before the roles are reversed and she’s melting under me instead.

But she isn’t giving up control just yet. Her hands yank open my shirt and push it from my shoulders, her nails raking my back on the way down. We’re only half on the mattress, kissing too hungrily, too desperately to care. I hate that we could’ve been doing this all last night, that we
should’ve
been, but I’m here now, and so’s she, and all of it feels like such a miracle I could kick myself for ever doubting this.

“You’re thinking too much,” she murmurs, shifting back on the bed, then tilting her face up for another kiss, which I gladly relinquish. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”