A thousand butterflies took flight in my stomach at the way he looked at me. I felt like a deer caught in headlights. Denial was impossible. I didn’t have it in me to lie. “I have to meet someone,” I said hurriedly, suddenly overwhelmed at the idea that I’d been on his radar all this time. Even before I kissed him outside the kink club.

“Sure. Don’t want to be late.” He stepped aside and waved me through the kitchen.

My fingers nervously flexed on the strap of my messenger bag. Something had changed. He wasn’t the same. There was a new resolve in his eyes, a firmness to his voice that made me uneasy.

Suddenly his previous promise to leave me alone didn’t feel like such a promise anymore. At least not one I believed. No. As I walked past the counter toward the exit, I felt his stare on my back and didn’t feel safe with the assurance that it was “all on me.” For some reason, I felt certain that Logan was done waiting for me to make the first move.

Chapter 12

THE FOLLOWING WEEK WE had an honest-to-God heat wave. Girls who stayed on campus through the summer could be found spread out on towels in the quad in tiny shorts and tank tops. Some wore bikinis. And where girls in bikinis were, guys could be found hovering close by.

Walking past the quad on the way home from the library, I thought about Emerson and how she would have been one of those girls last summer, happy to flaunt her body in a bikini and flirt with hovering guys. Now she was busy with her new life—Shaw and their bikes and her art.

I hadn’t seen her since the night I moved out, so I was eager for Pepper’s birthday party tonight. It was at the new house. Just a small group. Mostly couples, so I had asked Connor to go with me. I didn’t know if we would ever be anything more than friends—okay, so I knew we would never be more than friends—but he was a good guy and seemed excited to go.

Of course, Reece went all out and splurged on Pepper. He catered the party, so the delicious aroma of char-grilled meat greeted us when we stepped inside the house. Pepper let us in, hugging me and whispering in my ear. “He’s cute.”

I smiled in acknowledgment and accepted the margarita placed in my hand.

“For you,” Emerson said, then turned to meet Connor. She didn’t treat him to the same bubbly welcome that Pepper had, and instead regarded him with the icy reserve of an overprotective father—but then that was Em. Trust wasn’t given but earned.

We soon split off into boy-girl groups, Connor joined the guys and Emerson, Pepper, Suzanne, and I stood in a tight circle.

“You always go for the uptight ones,” Emerson accused around the salted rim of her margarita glass.

“He’s cute,” Suzanne offered. “And looks nice.”

Nice: aka, boring. “He’s not uptight,” I insisted, knowing this much was true at least. He was not like Harris.

Em lifted a dark, finely arched eyebrow. “He’s a grad student. In the Business School.”

“Stop it. You’re being judgmental,” I snapped.

“Be nice, Em,” Pepper chided. “She brought a date to my birthday. She must like him.”

I smiled and hoped it didn’t look like the wince it was. I didn’t like him that much. To be fair, when he’d tried to kiss me yesterday at the Java Hut, I dodged his lips. Not a good sign. Deep down, I knew the reason I brought him with me tonight. He was meant to be a buffer. If Logan showed, which was very likely, then I would have a date to keep him at bay. Not that I expected Logan to misbehave. This was Pepper’s party . . . at his brother’s house. It would be fine.

Especially after the other night. I’d seen him twice from a distance: Once inside the bar as I was heading to my room. And another time as I was in the parking lot getting into my car and he was heading across the parking lot to start his shift. I felt his gaze even though I pretended to be looking somewhere else beyond him each time. Yeah, I knew he had seen me. He’d made no attempt to speak to me. Not even a wave. I had effectively killed things between us—just as I’d intended. And if I felt a tiny bit like crap over that realization, I’d get over it. It wasn’t the first disappointment of my life. It wouldn’t be the last. Mom had taught me that lesson well. Life was full of disappointment.

My real father had been one of her biggest disappointments. The few times she spoke candidly with me on the subject of him, she had been clear. He was the greatest mistake of her life. She regretted it. Him. Me. She didn’t say it but what else was I to interpret? Some mistakes were like that. Colossal and irreversible. Logan Mulvaney would not be that mistake for me.

There was the right path and the wrong path, and if I ever had any doubt which was which, I need only ask my mother. She always had an opinion, and I knew she would want me to avoid guys like Logan Mulvaney.

I think you want me to say dirty things to you.

I cringed. Some guys were impossible to forget though.

“Georgia knows I’m just messing with her,” Em said, snagging my attention back to the here and now. “If she really likes this guy, then I’m going to love him. You know that, right, Georgia?”

I nodded reflexively and then froze as the front door opened and Logan stepped inside. A thousand prickles rushed over my skin. He wasn’t alone either. Rachel was with him. I was never so relieved in my life than at that moment. I had a date. He had Rachel with him. I took a big gulp of my margarita.

Pepper clapped her hands and made it across the room to hug him. Even as tall as Pepper was, Logan easily folded her in his arms. Pepper hugged Rachel, too—an embrace the girl accepted awkwardly. His gaze did a quick sweep of the room before landing on me.

We stared at each other across the living room. The moment struck me as so strange. This guy had been in my sphere for a long time, but I’d only thought of him as Reece’s impossibly beautiful, shallow kid brother. Never considered him beyond that. Never thought of him as more. Never been tempted.

And now, in this room, he was the center of my universe. Everything in me prickled with awareness of him.

A hand brushed the small of my back and I sucked in a sharp breath. Connor stood beside me. “You okay? Can I make you a plate of food?”

“Not yet.” I shook my head and took another sip of the margarita Emerson had placed in my hand. “Thank you.”

Connor looked longingly at the spread of food across the room.

“Go ahead,” I encouraged. “Make yourself a plate.”