Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 149510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 748(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 748(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Her feet tangle on each other, and she trips, falling hard on the water-pooled, concrete sidewalk in front of me. I wince, knowing how much that must have hurt on all her exposed skin. The dude in the alcove laughs harder, like a total dickhead. “Come on, Scottie,” he calls carelessly. “Get up. We’re gonna be late.”
I can feel my jaw tick as I step up to the girl and squat down beside her. “You all right?” I ask softly as the rain picks up, coming down even harder. Water drips off the tips of my hair and pauses on the end of my nose before running off to join the rest on the ground.
She’s crying a little but trying not to when she looks up at me, her gaze piercing me right in the chest. Her features are somehow soft and bold at the same time. Plush lips, flushed cheeks, and full, perfectly shaped dark eyebrows that are the exquisite frame for her long-lashed doe-like green eyes.
A tear slips past her right eyelid, mixing with the rain that’s already on her olive skin, and I find myself discreetly reaching out to brush it off. Crinkles form at the corners of her eyes at my touch, and she blinks up at me, her gaze searching mine through the sheen of tears.
She’s as mystified by the gentleness of my touch as I am, and a feeling of unsettling familiarity churns in my gut.
Has someone been rough with her?
“Scottie! What the hell?” the asshole in the alcove calls again. “You’re getting drenched, and my shoes are still taking on water under here. Just get up and come on.”
It takes everything I have not to walk straight over and punch the random fucker in the face, but I don’t, and that’s all that counts. You see, the Hayes men have a history of solving shit with their fists—I guess we learned from the best—but I’m trying to turn over a new leaf.
I ignore his obnoxious self-importance the best I can and ask my question again. “Are you all right?”
She hesitates a beat and then nods, so I stick out a hand and wait for her to take it. When she does, a shiver runs through me. I guess the chill of being waterlogged is finally getting to me.
“I’m always a klutz—” she explains, her sentence cutting off momentarily thanks to an anguished inhale. I follow her gaze to the spot on her leg where her knee is gushing blood.
“Shit,” I murmur just as Prissy Pete arrives with the hood of his Dickson Football-emblazoned rain jacket held up over his precious head in agitation.
“What the hell, Scottie? You’re bleeding.”
It’s an accusation, not an attempt at comfort. I nearly roll my eyes.
“Come on,” he says again, but this time, he drags her up from her seated position straight into a run.
She glances back at me apologetically as she trots to keep up with him on a limping leg, but I just jerk up my chin. Like my older brother Reece always says: Not my rodeo, not my horses.
It doesn’t matter if this particular horse is beautiful.
I’ve got bigger fish to fry, and the grease will start sizzling in about ten minutes when I come face-to-face with Professor Ty Winslow for the first time ever.
Scottie
Dane keeps a grip on my wrist as we scurry down the wide hallway of the Newton Building and head into the auditorium-style room of our first class—English 101 with Professor Winslow.
It’s the only class we have together, and I don’t know why I’m relieved about that fact, but I am. Maybe because it’ll be easier to concentrate.
Dane Matthews has been my boyfriend for the past two years. The clichéd star quarterback and cheerleader couple of our high school, we started dating when we were juniors, and now, we’re both attending Dickson University together. I’m still a starting cheerleader, but Dane is no longer the star quarterback. He barely got on the team as a walk-on, and seeing as Dickson is a Division I school and their current quarterback, Blake Boden, is a sophomore—who was highly recruited out of Southern California and rumored to have a magic arm—the odds of Dane becoming the star quarterback again are slim.
Though, I’d never say that to Dane. He’d lose his shit in a nanosecond.
College as a whole is overwhelming so far, and this is only the first day of classes. But since moving in a week ago, it’s been a constant rotation of cheerleading practice, orientations, and meeting new people. Plus, I’ve never lived in a big city, and New York is about as big of a city as you can get. I can only pray I’ll finally know my way around the campus by the time I start my second semester.
All it takes is two steps inside the lecture hall to remind me of just how different my life is about to be for the next four years. My private high school in Upstate New York was small. There are more students sitting in this massive room than in my graduating class.