Vandy is all business. “If you asked me to meet you to try to talk me out of my ultimatum, forget it.” The look in her eye tells me she’s ready to call me on any and all bullshit.
I scoop a baseball from the shelf, testing the weight in my hand. “I’m not trying to talk you out of it, but—” I meet her gaze. “I do have a proposal.”
She stares back, face blank. “A proposal.”
“A plan B, I guess.” I shrug, tossing the ball from hand to hand. “Something that benefits all of us.”
Her eyes narrow, hands settling on her narrow hips. “I don’t think I care if it benefits all of us. I just want to protect my brother.”
Another golden flash from childhood slams into me. Vandy, standing stubbornly in the tree house, same position she’s in now, barking orders at me and her brother. Like the tree house, some things never change.
I thunk the ball back onto the shelf. “Will you just hear me out?”
Her arms move to cross her chest and her hip juts out. The position draws my attention to her chest, then down to her curves below her waist. Okay, maybe some things do change.
I run my hand through my hair and try not to blow the fact she’s obviously giving me the chance to plead my case. “You said you wanted to write a big story about the school, right?”
Her eyebrows knit together. “Yeah?”
I nod, looking away. “What if I told you there’s something big going on at Preston Prep. Something that falls right in line with what you want to expose about the school, like all the way down to the elitist foundations and principles of a place like Preston.”
Some of the apprehensive tension leaves her face. “I’m listening.”
I hedge, “I can’t tell exactly you what it is—”
She huffs, “Are you kidd—”
“But!” I hold up my hands. “I think I can get you access. Like a real, undercover, deep dive into the bowels of the true culture of the school. You’ll just have to give me a chance to get it together.” Her face scrunches up and I tilt my head. “What? I thought you’d be into this?”
“I guess I am,” she explains, “but I think I’m trying to figure out how you’ve been here like eight days and you know more about the school than I do.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I suspect it has more to do with me being a white male football player than anything else.”
She snorts. “God, you’re probably right.”
“So,” I say, trying to get this ball moving. The way her and Emory made it sound before, it doesn’t seem entirely unlikely that people might come looking for her. “Are you interested?”
She agrees, “Yeah, I’m interested,” but that gleam in her eyes is pure suspicion. “But there’s obviously a catch. You said this would benefit all of us.”
“If we can make this work, I need two things from you.”
She still looks skeptical. “Like?”
“First, you can’t tell on me, Emory, or anyone else involved.” She opens her mouth to speak, but I hold up two fingers. “And two, you can’t turn in whatever you write to the school or paper until after he and I have graduated.”
Her jaw sets as she thinks it over. I’m asking a lot from her. I haven’t even told her what it’s about. She’s going to have to trust me—me. The guy who fucked up her life, and—although she isn’t aware of it yet—is responsible for Emory needing to do this in the first place.
“Okay,” she finally says, “but if you can’t get me access to whatever this is, then I’m going straight to Dean Dewey, my parents, and your dad, and telling them you guys are up to something.”
I know this is going to be a hard sell, on my end. I might not even be able to do anything at all. But if she agrees to this, then that’s flexibility. I can work with this.
“Deal?” I hold out my hand. She looks down at it and hesitates for a second before sliding hers into mine, gripping it in a firm handshake.
She holds my gaze, her blue eyes full of something steely and resolved. “Deal.”
“Let’s talk about chicks,” Carlton says, reaching for another piece of pizza.
“What about them?” Ben asks. “The fact you haven’t seen one naked in over a year?”
Carlton shoves his hand out, slamming into Ben’s shoulder. The baseball catcher falls off his chair, landing hard on his ass. Emory barks