“Why are you so surprised?” I blew an errant curl out of my eyes. Oh God. What if he didn’t want me here? Would Jagger let me stay?
“You never said Sam was a girl,” he accused Jagger.
Jagger chewed another bite. “Dude, Sam has always been a girl. You said you were cool with this.”
Grayson flipped out his phone and flicked through screens. “No. Let me read these. ‘Hey man, is it cool if our friend Sam takes the other bedroom? We’re old friends from Colorado, and Josh is cool with it.’”
I took my prized K-cups to the machine. If I was putting up with this bullshit, I was sure as hell going to need coffee. “Yep, I’m Sam, short for Samantha, a.k.a. the friend from Colorado.”
“And you’re a girl.”
I tilted my head and smirked. “Apparently.”
“You’re not sleeping with either of them.”
“Nope.”
“And I just…” He squeezed those amazing eyes shut and took a breath before opening them again. “Samantha, I’m incredibly sorry for what I implied.”
Oh, look, he can apolo—
“But if you could put some clothes on, that’d be great.”
So much for him removing the stick from his ass. He nodded his head, pursed those beautiful lips, and retreated toward the front door, muttering something about the gym.
“What the hell is his deal?”
Jagger’s grin was a step past shit-eating to downright comical. “No clue, but that’s the most worked up I’ve ever seen the guy, and I’ve lived with him for almost a year. Way to go, Sam.”
“That’s not a compliment.” I spooned sugar into my steaming cup of coffee. “I really need to pick up honey, and please tell me you have creamer.”
“Ember lives here every other weekend,” he replied, moving past me to the fridge, then handed me a bottle of Amaretto creamer.
“Thank God for little things.”
“Sweet and blonde,” he commented with a wink. “Just like I like my women. Oh, a letter came for you yesterday. I left it on the entry table. Make yourself at home, and welcome to Alabama, Sam.”
He patted me on the back and left me sipping my coffee as I headed toward the front door. Sure enough, a letter addressed to Samantha Fitzgerald from Troy University sat on the polished wood.
I balanced my cup as I opened the letter, hissing as the skin of my thumb split. I popped it into my mouth and set my coffee down, opening the letter with my empty hand. The sweetest pressure settled in my chest as I unfolded it. This was my fresh start. This was my hope.
“Dear Ms. Fitzgerald,” I started to read along. Then stopped.
No. No. No.
How? They’d admitted me. They’d promised me a clean slate, that my grades from last semester wouldn’t matter. They would start me on academic probation and then let up when I did well this first semester.
“Sam?” Ember asked, balancing two cups of coffee as she stood in front of me. I hadn’t even registered her coming in. “Are you okay?”
Failure stung like a bitch. Oh wait, that was my thumb. “Shit.” I squeezed the skin, opening the paper cut, and almost laughed when I saw it wasn’t bleeding. Anything that hurt that badly should at least give you something to show for it.
Kind of like the last two and a half years I’d wasted in college.
My voice didn’t shake, or hold any tone. It was as numb as I was. “Upon further review of your transcript, we regret to inform you that we cannot accept you into Troy University.”
It doesn’t matter what state you move to. You’re still a whore.
Chapter Two