There was also another glaring issue with Joel now I knew he played for the Scorpions, but I wasn’t about to bring that up.
“Hey,” I kept it cool.
“Okay, J, you can put your tongue away now.” Josie tapped his cheek. “Me and my girl need drinks. Well, I need a drink and I want to introduce Calli around.”
“Stay away from Brad, Jos.”
“The guys know I’m off-limits.”
“Damn right, they do,” he growled, and it was so at odds with the goofy happy Joel I’d met earlier, I wondered what I was missing.
“Come on.” Josie yanked me away, and we slipped into the house.
The music hit me first. Like a bass drum, it reverberated inside me, making my bones rattle. “It’s loud,” I yelled, and Josie snorted.
“You really don’t get out much, do you?”
“I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly at high school.”
Understatement of the century.
“Good thing this isn’t high school then. Look.” Josie pulled me into the first room we came across. It was quieter in here, people sitting around chatting and drinking. “I didn’t have many friends in high school either. I’m too much for a lot of people, but it’s like my armor, ya know? I get...” She inhaled a deep breath. “Bad anxiety.”
“You do?” I could hardly believe what she was saying.
“Yeah.” Her smile was uncertain. “I always hung around with Joel and his friends at school, so last year was hard for me. I don’t find it easy to make girlfriends, so I’m really hoping I haven’t come on too strong and scared you off already?”
It was so weird. Josie was everything I wasn’t. Confident and bubbly and beautiful. But I guess you never knew what was going on for a person on the inside.
It was right then, I decided that I liked Josie Molineux. Maybe I could be the friend she needed and maybe she could be the push I needed to make the most of college.
But I should have known by now that life wasn’t usually that kind.
“Eeek, there is he,” she whisper-shrieked, clutching my arm to steady herself.
I inhaled a deep breath, steeling myself to face my brother. I didn’t know how I knew it was him, but something inside me did. I guess it was those old familial ties stirring to life.
“He’s so fucking hot.”
Slowly, I turned to greet him.
Callum James.
My estranged brother—the first guy to ever break my heart.
Only it wasn’t Callum at all.
A ghost from my past stared back at me instead.
“Z- Zach?” I choked out, sheer panic flooding every inch of me.
“You know him?” Josie glanced at me. “But I thought you said you didn’t—”
“What is he doing here?”
This was bad.
Very fucking bad.
“Wait a minute, I’m confused.” She glanced from me to Zach and back again.
Zachary Messiah.
My first best friend.
My first love.
My first everything.
Including the worst heartache I’d ever experienced. And that was saying something for the girl who was abandoned by her father and brother, only to lose her mom a few years later.
I felt his hard stare. Felt his soulless gaze drilling holes in the side of my face. But I couldn’t look at him again. I wouldn’t.
This cannot be happening.
“I need to go,” I rushed out.
“Go?” Josie blanched. “But we only just got here. Don’t worry about Zach... see, he’s leaving.”
I risked peeking over at the door, and sure enough, he and his friends disappeared into the hall, taking the air with them.
“Do you want to talk about what just happened?” Josie asked.
“No,” I said, feeling the icy claws of the past wrap around my throat.
I needed to go.
I needed to run back to Abrams and hide inside my room and figure out how the hell this happened.
But I did none of those things.
Instead, I looked at my new friend and said, “I need a drink. Something strong.”
Because the boy I’d fought so hard to forget was here.
He went here.
And it was the worst possible thing that could ever have happened to me.
Zach
“Zach, my man, ready for a kick ass season?” Saul, the Scorpion’s shooting guard, held out his fist and I went through the motions.
Fist bump.
Guy hug.
Slaps on the back.
I’d gotten good at playing the part the last couple of years. This year was different though. That part was the same, but I wasn’t.
“Shit, man,” Saul’s friend said. “You must have grown two inches.”
Fucking idiot.
I hadn’t grown.
Physically, I was the same Zach I’d been when I’d transferred here in the spring. But emotionally... emotionally I’d checked out a long time ago.
“Hey.” Joel joined us, chugging on his beer. Joel, I liked. No, that was the wrong word. I could tolerate him. He didn’t push for more, happy to let me stew in my own thoughts.
I wanted to believe he got it. But I knew he didn’t.
How could he?
How could anyone?
No one could know what it was like to live in the shadow of your big brother, only to be thrust into his place, like some fucked up version of the body snatchers.
“Yo, J, when’s Josie getting here?”
“You keep your dirty fucking hands away from my sister.” He gave Saul a pointed look. “That goes for all of you. You know the rules, she’s off-limits, so don’t even think—”
“Whoa, dude, relax. Although you know she’s free game now she’s a freshman, right? If it isn’t me or one of the other guys from the team, it’ll be some jock thinking he can—”
“I need to piss.” I moved around them, heading down the hall to the bathroom.
This was Joel’s house. He lived here with some other guys from the team. They’d asked me to move in, but I’d drawn the line at that. Instead, I’d opted for a studio apartment just off-campus. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. The one place I didn’t have to worry about keeping up appearances.
I’d also been given a room in the Delta Pi frat house, but I had no desire to live with a bunch of frat brothers either, playing house in my brother’s old stomping ground.
As I moved down the hall, guys called out my name, and girls let their eyes linger too long. I’d never really enjoyed this, the worship and adoration, but I enjoyed it even less since arriving back at SU a couple of weeks ago.
“Hey, Zach,” a cute blonde stepped in my way.
“Hey,” I ground out. “Uh, Steph—”
“Sapphire. We met before the summer, at the party, remember?”
I couldn’t remember much about the weeks leading up to summer vacation.
Everything was hazy. A dark black mist cloaking my memories.
But it was better that way.
“Hmm, not really, sorry.”
“That’s okay.” She wrapped manicured fingers around my arm. “You were going through a lot.”
Understatement of the fucking century.
“Maybe we could get reacquainted?” Sapphire made a show of licking her lips and batting her lashes at me. She was hot, and my dick seemed to like her given the way he was straining against my jeans.