Wrecked Book 3 (4 page)

Mason nodded, glancing over at me. “Yeah, he is. He texted me and said he’d be a little late, but that he’s definitely going to be here.” He jerked his thumb towards the kitchen. “Especially since there’s some left over beer from the other night.”

He meant one of his frat brother’s parties. They had them often enough—they
were
a frat after all—but Mason mostly just went to those things because he was a brother and because of his
actual
brother. Mark could be a bit of a wild child and Mason was there to rein him in when things got hairy.

I rolled my eyes and he grinned.

“Has he ever considered what the world would be like as a
sober
person?” I asked jokingly. Mark really wasn’t that bad, but we gave him a lot of hell over it.

Mason shrugged. “He wouldn’t even know what to do with a world that didn’t spin around him.”

We fell silent then and turned our attention back to the movie. More people were dying, senselessly it seemed, and I think I missed the reason behind the massacre. I was leaning over, about to ask what the hell was going on and why that couple was having sex while their friends were dying all around them when I heard the door open.

Mason turned around in his seat to see who it was. When he figured it out, he made a frustrated sound.

“Jeez, Mark,” Mason said, irritation clear in his tone.

I turned my head to look at Mason. His expression was a mixture of irritation and exasperation.

“I told you. Only people we
know
. Don’t you ever listen?”

“I
do
know her,” Mark answered cheekily and I had a feeling he meant biblically. “Her name’s Miranda and she’s a freshman.”

I froze in my seat, popcorn half way up to my mouth. My eyes glazed over and I didn’t even see the movie that was playing before me, even though I knew that it was basically the goriest part of the movie.

It can’t be
, I thought. Miranda was a plenty popular name, right? And there were probably a lot of freshman Mirandas around, right?

It
couldn’t
be her.

But then she spoke and I knew that no matter how much I hoped and wished, it
was
her. Miranda Ansell.

“Hi, sorry to just barge in, but I’m kind of new here.” Her voice was happier than it had been the other day as she spoke to me and I wondered if she hadn’t yet realized that I was here.

Quick, worthless plans of escape raced through my mind. I could sneak out, maybe through the back door or something. Or maybe, while no one was looking, I could head to the kitchen and when everyone had settled back down for the movie, I could sneak out the front door.

Even as I came up with the plans, I knew it was hopeless. I wasn’t getting out of here without her noticing me.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kass said in a friendly tone, moving so that she could shake a long, slender hand that was pale and meatless. “And this is my roommate, Addy.”

I tensed up, but acknowledged that I would have to bite the bullet. Getting up from my seat on the couch, I turned to face her, bracing for impact. “Addy, eh?” she commented, her smile turning sly. “Is that what you’re going by now?”

Everyone in the room seemed to freeze suddenly, like the air had been sucked out of the room and everyone was holding their breath, waiting for it to come back.

At least, that’s what it felt like to me.

Then the moment passed and Kass looked at me quizzically. “You two know each other?”

“Oh, sure,” Miranda said. “We go way back, right, Ri?”

The more Miranda spoke, the more Kass looked confused—and a little concerned. I could tell that she didn’t like Miranda, and I knew it was because of the underlying tension that she brought to the room. No one knew exactly what her problem was, but they knew it was with me.

“Yeah,” I managed to get out. “I went to high school with her sister.”

The mention of Beck caused Miranda to tense and I thought for a moment that this was it. She was going to spill the beans, and I was going to have to face all of my friends about the person I used to be.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she just smiled and said, “Yeah. Those were wild times, weren’t they?” She glanced around the frat house and gave each of us a once over. “This is a little tame for you, isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” Kass asked, clearly confused and who could blame her? Everyone knew me as the good girl, the class act. I was the girl who went to bed early unless she was up studying late and who always said no to parties, because they weren’t her thing.

It was understandable that she would be a little confused about what Miranda was getting at. The girl she remembered was completely different than the one Kass knew.

Miranda opened her mouth to answer, but a ringing stopped her. She dug into her pocket quickly, frantically. Pulling out her phone, she answered it immediately, cupping her free hand around the mouth piece and turning away from us. Whoever she was talking to, she definitely didn’t want us all listening in.

As she found a place to stand in the hall and whisper furtively into her phone, Kass turned to me. “Ri?” she asked. “Who the hell is this girl?” This question was half directed towards me and half towards Mark.

He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “I met her on the quad. She was looking at sororities and my frat had a booth, so I encouraged her towards our sister house. We got to talking and when I told her that I was having a party with my brother, a get together with some friends, she asked if she could come. I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal.” He glanced over at her before looking back at me instead of Kass. “I had no idea you guys already… knew each other.”

He looked uncomfortable and I couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t had a little fun with her before taking her here tonight. It seemed weird to me that she might even be having sex. She was Beck’s little sister and I just remembered that dorky girl with the braces who followed us around everywhere.

But clearly she had changed a lot since then.

I looked over at her. “We haven’t really talked in years.”

Before anyone could say anything else or ask more questions, Miranda rejoined us. She snuggled up close to Mark and offered all of us a wide smile. It was fake—I thought, though I couldn’t be sure—and it seemed mostly directed at me.

She leaned up and whispered something into Mark’s ear. He smirked and nodded his head, then the two of us said good bye. They disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the rest of us silent in their wake. We all listened to the fridge open and the giggling start. Then there were footsteps on the stairs and the door shut.

I couldn’t believe that this was Beck’s little sister. She was so different, so opposite from how I remembered her… How could someone change so much?

When the sounds had mostly stopped—other than the screaming from the horror movie—Kass rounded on me again. “Okay, what the
hell
?” she demanded. “Who is that bitch and how do you know her?”

I shrunk from her. “She’s just someone I knew a long time ago,” I hedged. “She’s the sister of a friend of mine.” I didn’t elaborate more than that and Kass didn’t push, though I knew she wanted to.

Her eyes narrowed and I could tell that questions were burning inside her. I thought maybe it was the present company that kept her silent, but she wanted to have this discussion with me. Desperately.

She wanted to know who Miranda was.

“Are you excited?” Kass asked me, her grin wide across her face full of sparkling with teeth.

We were sitting in the living room at home, both of our sets of school books taking over most of the floor, table, and some of the couch. She had a big test coming up in one of her classes.

I blanked for a moment. What was there to be excited for, I couldn’t help but wondering? After the destruction that had been Mason’s party, I didn’t think it was possible to be excited for anything. Everything in my life was falling apart it seemed and I couldn’t think of a single thing that I was looking forward to. “What?” I asked dumbly.

She rolled her brown eyes at me. “For your
date
remember?”

I blinked at her once, surprised. Date? It took me a moment, but when I remembered, I cringed inside. My date with
Derek
. Kass’s attractive, premed, singer brother who asked me out the first night we met. Which just so happened to be the first night I slept with
Logan
.

Which I had definitely not mentioned to Kass. Or anyone else for that matter. And I definitely didn’t intend to. The whole thing was such a mess and I didn’t want anyone to know what was going on. And not just because it was all just a huge mistake. If Kass knew that I had slept with another guy… lost my
virginity
to him when I was just starting things up with her brother, well, I knew how she would react to that.

She’d be
furious
. And I would have no defense, because she had every right to be mad over it. I was basically cheating on her brother before we were even anything.

Or was I?

Forcing a smile, I said, “Oh,
that
?” I gave a laugh that I hoped wasn’t too fake or too nervous. “I just figured you wouldn’t really want to talk about it, you know? I didn’t want things to be weird.”

Right. Because things weren’t weird right now as I lied through my teeth.

She grabbed my shoulder and yanked me closer until we bumped together. Her eyes were glittering with excitement and I realized that this was really important to her—and that no matter what, I could
never
tell her about Logan.

Good
, I thought. This was one more reason to keep me as far from him as possible.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she told me. “I want all the juicy details!” She paused a moment, thought about it, then made a face. “Okay, not
all
the juicy details. Just the cutesy stuff. And if you guys do the deed, kindly keep it to yourself because I don’t want to know
any
of the weird bedroom things my brother is into.”

“Kass!” I said, widening my eyes to tell her that she had definitely crossed some sort of boundary.

“What? I’m just saying that I
don’t
want to know, so that there’s no weirdness.” She winked at me and laughed.

I laughed, too. She was excited and now that I stopped and really considered Derek, why shouldn’t I be, too? Derek and I weren’t anything just yet, so my tryst with Logan didn’t apply, right? It was a one time mistake that I needed to get out of my system, because
Derek
was the person I was supposed to be going for.

He was the guy for me, right?

I considered his dark eyes and his easy smile. He was confident, but not cocky, with a gentle, sweet nature that was all about being a good guy. Wasn’t he everything I was looking for and then some?

I decided he was the kind of guy I could get used to and forcibly shoved the image of Logan’s scarred, tattooed body from my mind.

That chapter of my life was over and a new one was starting. I was okay with that.

We went back to studying for a moment. I tried to focus on business ethics, working on the paper that was coming up for class. I had a killer topic, but it was hard to gauge how the teacher was going to like it.

“Have you seen that Logan guy lately?” Kass asked me.

She was trying to sound casual, I could tell, but even the mention of Logan set me on edge. I jerked my head up to look at her, eyes wide. Did she know I had slept with him?

But she was looking down at her book, going over some lines and highlighting them with her neon pink pen. She was trying so hard to be casual that it was incredibly unconvincing, but it did put me at ease, because at least if she knew about me and Logan she would be screaming at me, not trying to have a calm conversation. I knew that much at least.

“Um, no,” I lied, looking back down at my book. I couldn’t focus on the words. They were all meaningless jibber to me, but I was trying to keep as cool as she was trying to keep, and I thought maybe if we both just focused on pretending to not care about the conversation, everything would be fine.

It was probably a plan born to fail.

“Oh,” she said, still in that nonchalant, no big deal tone of hers. “I just thought maybe he was still bugging you.”

I shook my head, though I knew she probably wasn’t looking at me. Like me, she was likely still looking down at her book not reading a god damned thing.

“No,” I said, my voice strained. “I haven’t really seen him.” I paused, glancing over at her. She didn’t seem all that interested… “Well, I mean, I saw him the other day. In the hall. He was talking to some girl.”

I was proud to say that my voice stayed even and unemotional as I said
some girl
. Even though it irritated the hell out of me. Her stupid face popped into my head, all made up and perky and popping pink bubble gum. She was a poster child for dumb blonde.