Southern girls are better than the FBI.

He crosses the street and heads into the entrance of Memorial Park, a large and rather grand cemetery with huge oak trees, a stone entrance, and purple and yellow pansies in the flowerbeds. An interesting place to run, but it does have paths.

I get back in my car, finish my donut, and crank up the engine. No way am I following him there. As far as I’m concerned, my days of trying to get Zack Morgan to notice me are done.

“Urgent” by Foreigner rings out from my phone and I snatch it up.

“Yeah, I’m on my way,” I tell Mara.

“You’re fine. Don’t rush and drive too fast.” Her voice is dry with a slight Southern drawl that’s been fading for the past twenty years she’s lived here.

I sigh. “I won’t.”

“Did you get me a churro?”

“Two.” I smile, picturing her in her purple velour tracksuit in the back office of the Boobie Bungalow, counting the weekend’s take and preparing a bank deposit. Her dyed blonde hair will be in a softly curled Marilyn Monroe style, and she’ll be wearing bright pink lipstick and lots of eyeliner with fake lashes.

After my mom died when I was eleven, she was the first person to arrive at my front door in Alabama. Mama’s good friend since high school, she arranged for her memorial, packed up the trailer, and flew me back to Minneapolis with her. My daddy wanted nothing to do with me. Heck, his name wasn’t even on my birth certificate. Sure, Mara and I could have taken him to court, but if there was one thing I knew for sure at that age, it was that I didn’t want anything to do with the man who’d ruined my mama.

“So what’s up? Did you need something else? I can pop by Costco later if you need cleaning supplies, but if you want more churros, I’m still here.”

“No, just checking on you.” She pauses, and I picture her settling into her leather seat and propping her tiny feet up on her desk. “You seemed down this week. You okay?”

“Mostly. There’s nothing to be done.” My tone isn’t optimistic. Very few waitlisted students manage to secure a spot. I have to accept the truth. “I’m a reject.”

“You’re not a reject.” I hear her rustling papers and imagine she’s looking up at the poster of Clint Eastwood on the wall. Whenever she doesn’t know what to say, she always looks at him for guidance. I smile. She loves that man, swears she ran into him at a bar one night and they had a thing. It’s possible. She’s a beautiful woman.

“It doesn’t have to be Vanderbilt,” she says, and emotion tugs at me.

“I know.” My voice is subdued.

“Fuck a duck with a bowtie. It’s because George went there, isn’t it?”

I sigh, cringing at my father’s name. “I just want to prove I’m just as good as they are.”

“You have nothing to prove!” She exhales, obviously pulling out a smoke by the sound of the click of her lighter. “Want me to make you a cake? Or pie? You love that lemon icebox one.”

A smile ghosts over my face. Mara thinks the cure to all my ailments is sweets. She’s not far off, and I don’t blame her. Mama did the same. I cried a lot when I first moved here, a whole new world for a girl from the trailer parks of a small southern town. Kids made fun of my accent, and even the teachers didn’t know what to make of my sadness. I didn’t fit in here, and even now I sometimes feel like a stranger in a strange land. I chew on my lip. Perhaps that’s a tiny part of the reason I want to head back to the South for law school. Even though I don’t have any family to speak of, it’s still…home. It reminds me of Mama.

“Sugar? You there?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

My brow wrinkles as I recall reading Zack’s bio online last week where he mentioned his favorite things. An idea stirs around and takes hold, and for the first time since I woke up this morning, I’m thinking there might be a way to thank him for returning my coat.

“Hey, do you have the stuff to make a cherry pie at your place?” She lives with her longtime boyfriend Luis in a small apartment above the club. “And do you happen to have a good recipe for cherry pie?”

“Not really, honey. Cherry pie is disgusting. It’s just gloopy fruit salad mixed with some dry crust. No thanks.”

I grin. Mara is firm about her pie opinions.

She takes a hit of her cig and I hear her blowing the smoke. “I thought you liked lemon icebox. That’s the one I make better than that Pioneer Woman everyone raves about.”

“No, I do, but I know someone who likes cherry, and I was thinking maybe I might whip one up. He…I…kind of…we had this thing…and then…” My voice peters out. I can’t exactly tell her how I had hot sex with a potential future fake boyfriend.

“Bennett?” Her voice has sharpened, and I grimace. She never liked him—although I didn’t know that until we broke up and she confessed to it after a few too many glasses of wine.

“No.”

“Hmmm, and since when have you ever made a pie?”

“Never, but I thought you might want to help?” I put a pleading tone in my voice.

She sighs. “All right. The club is closed today anyway—but I’m not tasting it. That stuff is gross. Come over after class.”

I smile. “I love you.”

9

Sugar

Zack waltzes into our poetry class, and my stomach flutters.

It’s midday and the auditorium is packed with mostly underclassmen and a ton of athletes, probably because it’s an easy elective and interesting if you dig American poets—which I do. Hello, Emily Dickinson.

He strides in and sweeps his gaze across the crowded lecture hall, moving his eyes up until he finds me, tucked into a corner in the very last seat next to a wall vent, shivering because the heating is shit in this building. My coat is thrown over me like a quilt and he grins when he sees it.

That smile is…devastating to my ovaries.

Shut it down, Sugar.

But then, instead of heading to the open front seats like he usually does, he takes the steep steps up until he reaches my row.

I wonder if he sees the horror growing on my face. I really, really didn’t want to have to face him until I had a pie in my hand and more makeup on my face.

He looms there, looking down the aisle for an empty seat, eyes landing on the one next to me.

“Excuse me,” he says, sliding in to brush past the students already there. He eases past them, uncaring that some of them are having to get up to let him pass. Most of them murmur hellos and “Great game last week, Z!” as he scoots by, and he gives them a brief nod.

He comes to a halt in front of me and my eyes go up and up, taking in the designer jeans, the way his long-sleeved black and gold HU Lions T-shirt clings to his chest. His hair looks damp and disheveled, the ends curling around his shoulders. He’s just had a shower.

Red colors my face.

I had sex with…that…him. My lower body tingles at the memory. My breathing accelerates. He had me pinned against the wall last night. He took me apart and made me come and oh my God— “Hi,” he says.

Dammit.

Why is his voice warm yet so insinuating…as if instead of hi, he’s really saying, I’m sexy and I know it.

“Hey, yourself,” I say, sitting up straighter and adjusting my coat over my bosom.

He watches me, a small smile tugging at his lips.

The classroom door opens, and one of the TAs rushes in and heads to Professor Goldberg with a stack of papers. They stand and talk among themselves, giving us a little time—which Zack takes full advantage of.

He glances down at the empty seat with my backpack in it. Without asking, he picks it up, sets it at my feet, and takes the chair. We’re in even closer proximity now that he’s sitting, not to mention his leg is pressed against mine.

Here’s the thing about lecture hall seats at Hawthorne: they were probably built in the 60s and were made for normal-sized people without any extra room. Zack’s body is definitely not your average man’s build. I watch—with a bit of amusement—as he wedges his six-foot, six-inch frame in the small seat, his knees pressed against the back of the one in front of him, no doubt the pressure being felt by the girl sitting there.

She looks over her shoulder in annoyance, sees who it is, and immediately smiles. With shoulder-length golden brown hair and a pretty face, she’s wearing a Delta sorority shirt. “Oh, Zack, hey. I didn’t know that was you. Glad you could join us back here.” She invites him to their next party, some shindig they’re having next week.

A second later, she scribbles on a piece of paper and passes back her number. Her eyes rove over his shoulders. “You know, in case you want to come. Call me.”

“Right,” he says with a smile as he takes the note. She turns back around and he tucks it in an outside pocket of his backpack.

I lean over and whisper, “Will she be the one next?”

“Maybe. I wonder if she likes Kappa parties.”

“Or bathrooms.”

“Or anywhere,” he says.

I arch a brow. “You like having sex in public places?”

“I’m up for it—with the right person.” His gaze grows hot, his grey eyes darkening, and I feel my chest expanding.