new place is awesome. There’s a heated pool, a hot tub, and a game room downstairs. Come with us? Please?” She clasps her hand together beneath her chin, her big blue eyes beseeching.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that no one says no to Vandy Hall. At first, she just seemed spoiled, but being under the weight of that adorable pout makes me realize why. Telling her no would be like swatting a puppy with a rolled-up newspaper. I sigh. “Yeah, sure.”
Georgia lurches upright, startling me. “Let’s go get our swimsuits and I’ll drive us over.”
“Oh, wait,” I say, but she’s already jumped up and is headed down the stands. I race to catch up with her, squeezing past the group of guys who sit at our lunch table. I suppose they’ll be at the party, too. Emory, Reyn, Ben, Carlton, and Tyson seem to go everywhere together. I’m at the end of the row when a pair of long legs blocks my way.
Oh, right.
And this jerkoff, too.
Sebastian’s sprawled back on the bleacher, taking up too much space for one person. He gazes up at me with a cocky grin that makes me want to plant my boot in his face.
“Move,” I demand through gritted teeth.
“Say please,” he demands, “and I’ll let you pass.”
“Sebastian, I swear to god. Get out of my fucking way.”
“Why should I?” His eyes sweep down my body. “I kind of like the view.”
“Dude,” Emory says, shoving him in the arm. “You may like the view but she’s blocking the court. Let her go.”
Emory’s not really coming to my aid or anything here, but I appreciate it anyway. “See? You’re bothering everyone. Not just me.”
He pushes himself to his feet, close enough that our bodies are nearly flush. He leans down and says, “Don’t worry, I’ll get that ‘please’ out of you eventually.”
I fight down a shudder at the feel of his breath washing over my ear and shove my hands into his shoulders—hard. He stumbles, and then falls, landing clumsily into the group of guys surrounding him.
“What the fuck, Wilcox!” Ben shouts, jostling him away. The other guys gripe at him too, and I take the distraction as an opportunity to get away, rushing down the steps to meet up with Georgia.
“Were you saying something before we got separated?” she asks, walking out into the lobby.
“Oh, right,” I stammer, still flustered by the altercation with Sebastian. That guy just won’t give up. “I don’t have a bathing suit.”
She grins. “Don’t worry, Sugar, I’ve got you covered.”
As it turns out, Georgia doesn’t.
Have me covered, that is.
Oh, she has bathing suits—bikinis exclusively—and none of them provide much coverage at all.
“I don’t know about this,” I say, looking at myself in the mirror. We’re in the small changing room off the pool at Reyn’s house. “I’m the biggest river rat you’ll ever meet, and this is more skin than I’ve shown in my entire life.” Even when the girls at the cliffs went swimming, we mostly just did it in our underwear.
“It’s hot,” Georgia says, tying the string of her bikini at the hip. “You look incredible.”
I look like a fucking joke, with my dark makeup and battered dog tags setting starkly against the bright, happy turquoise string-thing.
I cut my eyes at her. “Yeah, I’m not super into looking hot or incredible.” I tug at the top, making sure my tits are secure. One false move…
I’m not insecure about my body. It’s nothing special, but I’m thin and curvy in the right places. I know I could look good if I wanted to. Which, I don’t.
It’s the scars that are a problem.
I always had passable cover stories, back home. A cooking accident. A bad cliff dive. A track mishap. A fall off my bike. They were believable in their gradual deliveries. An incident here, an incident there… not super suspicious, and if it ever was?
Well, river rats don’t ask questions.
Vomiting out all of those cover stories at once is a different beast. Transparent. Not even remotely believable. Might as well say I ran into a door. I’d probably need to pass around a spreadsheet just to keep up with it all, anyway. Georgia hasn’t even seen the worst of it yet, hidden behind my long hair, and already I see her eyes tracking the strange dots on my thighs, the slash on my ribs, the discolored skin around my collarbone.
Georgia, by contrast, has the most perfect, smooth, glowing skin. Girls at Preston are like that, all clean