Friend Zoned (Barnett Bulldogs #2) (33 page)

And now I’ve run out of time.

When I’m done taking care of this, then I can focus on Violet and what’s going to happen between us because at this point, I just don’t know.

I really don’t.

And that sucks some major ass, too.

If I’m being totally honest, it probably sucks more than what’s about to go down.  My world has revolved around Violet for the last eight years.  She’s my very heart and soul.  What she did…

It fucking hurts.

Straightening my shoulders for the shit show that’s heading my way, I move quietly towards the kitchen.  Only now do I hear the soft babble of voices.  Feeling as if I’m walking to my death, I inhale a deep breath before finally making my presence known.  Both my parents are sitting around the kitchen table with two of my father’s advisers.  I know Josh is in charge of PR because he’s the one who lectured me before I left for college, but the other guy… I have no clue what he does.

Although clearly it has something to do with image.  Or he wouldn’t be here at this time of night.

My eyes immediately arrow to my father.  As we stare silently at one another, anger radiates off him in thick oppressive waves.  His eyes are all but burning with it.  Feeling very much like a recalcitrant child, I shift uncomfortably under the full weight of his icy glare.  It’s been a long damn time since I’ve felt this way in the presence of my parents.

Gritting my teeth, I wait for the heaviness of his wrath to hit me full force.  Because I know it will.  My father continues glowering at me for a few more moments before finally biting out my name.

“
Sam
.”

I give a stiff jerk of my head in acknowledgement before my eyes slide reluctantly to my mom who is sitting rigidly next to my father.  She looks pale.  Disappointed. It makes me feel like a real piece of shit for being the one to cause her any heartache.  She has enough BS to deal with from my father.  She certainly doesn’t need it from me.

Josh quickly gets to his feet, as does the guy next to him, before awkwardly clearing his throat. This entire situation feels brutal.  “I guess we’ll leave the three of you to talk.”  His eyes barely skim over me before bouncing back to my father.  “Give me a call when you’re finished and we’ll discuss what options are available to deal with the situation.”  He clears his throat before tacking on, “Jeff and Victoria are already looking into what can be done in regards to damage control.”

Damage control.

Fucking great.

There are people,
my father’s people no less
, who are feverishly working to clean up this mess as we speak.

The stiff nod my dad gives in response is barely perceptible.  After that, Josh and the other guy exit the kitchen rather hastily as if they’re both trying to escape the suffocating tension that now blankets the room.  For just one wistful moment, my eyes trail after them.  I just want to scrub a frustrated hand through my hair, but I don’t.  It won’t help.  Because the silence is so stifling, we all hear the front door open before firmly closing behind them.

Rather uncomfortably I continue hanging out in the doorway with my hands stuffed into the pockets of my jeans. Never in my wildest dreams, or nightmares as the case may be, did I ever imagine just such a scenario.  I really didn’t.  Maybe I’m naïve.  I’ve tried to be careful about what I do, who I hang with, who I allow myself to get close to.  And the fact that Violet, my best friend, the girl I’ve been in love with for the last eight years, is the one who put me in this untenable position, seriously fucking kills me.

It really does.

But I can’t think about that right now.  I can’t think about her.  I have to deal with the fallout.  With my parents who look pissed as hell.

As soon as my father is certain that his underlings have vacated the property, he tears into me.  Hell, I expected no less.  The entire way over, I’d been preparing myself for the very worst.  Because this is a big fucking deal and I know it.  In no way am I trying to downplay it.

I can’t.

The words, when they finally come, literally explode from his lips in one long tirade, “
A picture?  A fucking naked picture?  Jesus Christ, how the hell could you let something like this happen?
”

“I’m sorry.”  Instead of telling them the truth, that I know absolutely nothing about it, that I’m just as shocked about it as they are, I hear myself saying instead, “It was a private picture.  I don’t know how it ended up online.”

It would be oh-so-easy to throw Violet under the bus right now and lay any and all wrong doing neatly at her door. To tell them that I didn’t even know a picture existed until it was being shoved in my face this morning but… I find that I just can’t do it.  Even though the smart thing would be to absolve myself of any and all culpability in this situation, I don’t.  As pissed off as I am at Violet, the need to protect her is much too ingrained within me to do anything less.

For just a moment, my father stares at me like I’m the biggest idiot he’s ever come across in his forty-some years on this earth.  And yeah, I pretty much feel like a dumbass right now.

My words sound lame as hell, even to my own ears. 

I almost cringe when he starts laughing.  Slowly he shakes his head from side to side before tossing his hands up in the air.  Then he slams them back down again, making the table shake.  My mother flinches but doesn’t say a word.  “Are you really that stupid?  We’ve only
talked about this kind of thing a thousand times before!”

His face turns even more thunderous. “
Nothing
is fucking private in our world!  There is no such thing as
privacy
when you’re a public figure!  Pictures
always
get leaked.  It’s not a matter of
if.
  It’s a matter of
when
.  You know this!  I know you do because I’m the one who has been continuously drilling it into that thick skull of yours.”

Looking exasperated, he scrubs a large hand over his face as if he’s trying to tear the flesh right off his bones.  “Please tell me there’s not a video or something else out there that we now have to worry about surfacing.”

Drawing my rigidly held shoulders back indignantly, I pull myself up to my full height as my dad continues glaring.  It’s a bitter pill to swallow.  I’ve never done anything to disappoint either of them before.  “Of course not!”

“
Of course not
,” he mimics under his breath, “how could I even ask such a thing?”  He turns to my still silent mother before shaking his head as if he’s the asshole in this situation.  “Clearly there’s nothing to be concerned about, Beth.  I mean, it’s not like there’s a naked picture of our son floating around out there for the world to see.”  Sarcasm drips from every word as he continues scowling.

Blistering heat hits my cheeks as my fists bunch uselessly at my sides.

Laying a tentative hand on my father’s stiff forearm, my mother tries to quietly soothe him.  “Derek, please…” her words end up trailing off.  Clearly she doesn’t know what to say to make this situation any better either.

“
What?
”  His voice rises and my mother winces just a bit before hesitantly withdrawing her hand.  “Are you really going to sit there and tell me this isn’t a big deal?  That it’ll blow over or die down in no time at all?  That it won’t end up affecting my campaign?  Or that I won’t be standing in front of a crowd, trying to discuss my plans for the next six years in office, the impact I want to make, the fucking
legacy
I want to leave behind, but will instead find myself fielding questions regarding the morality of my own
son
?  Of our entire
family
, for that matter?”

Those questions hang suspended in the air for a long painful heartbeat before falling to the floor and shattering into a million broken pieces.  It’s softly that my mother finally murmurs, “In a few weeks, I think it will be forgotten.  That picture could have been much worse.”

Fire catches in my father’s eyes before he grounds out, “Do you realize that I have never had anything tarnish my reputation? 
Nothing
,” he annunciates each word slowly as his eyes land squarely upon me again.  “Until now.”  He shakes his head.  “I’ve spent my entire life in public office, that’s over twenty years, and not once have I ever had my good name dragged through the mud.  My morals and ethics have never been called into question.”  Abruptly he leans towards me as if he’s moments away from lunging.  “And do you know why that is?”

Being that this is more of a rhetorical question, I keep my trap firmly closed.  There’s no right answer that’s going to squelch the fervor building in his eyes.  It just needs to run its course.  The only thing I can do is stand there, taking all the shit he keeps throwing at me.

“Because I’m careful about the decisions I make. About the company I keep.  I’m constantly weighing the consequences of my actions.”  He stabs a long finger in my direction.  “Clearly that’s not something you’ve been doing!”

“Dad…”

“Don’t fucking
dad
me.  We’re way past that now!”  As he roars the words, spittle flies from his mouth.  “Don’t you get it?  Everything you do affects me! 
Everything
!”

My shoulders slump as I force myself to steadily hold his gaze.  “I know,” I finally admit, “I’m sorry.”  Inhaling a deep breath, I let it escape gradually.  Almost like a slow leak from a deflated balloon.  “What do you want me to do?”

Still looking disgruntled, he shakes his head.  “Josh and Mark are dealing with it as we speak.  We’ll get the websites that are posting the image to take it down immediately or face legal ramifications.”  As some of the anger finally recedes, exhaustion sets in.  I see it in the way his broad shoulders slowly collapse, as if he’s carrying the weight of the world on top of them.  And the fatigue that suddenly seeps into both his eyes and words.

Once again I feel bad that I’m the cause of this shit storm.

His eyes pierce mine before he reminds me rather ominously, “But it’s out there, Sam.  It will
always
be out there.  And that’s something you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Sam

Even though I feel like I’ve already been put through the goddamn ringer, I have one last stop to make before I can finally drag myself home for the night.  No matter how bad I suspected it would go with my parents, it exceeded expectations and ended up being ten times worse.  In all my life, I don’t think I’ve ever skulked out of that house.  But after my father verbally handed me my ass, that’s
exactly
what I did.

Even though I had nothing to do with what happened, being what tarnishes his otherwise spotless political reputation has me feeling like a real piece of shit.  I just want to head back to the apartment, crawl into bed, and crash for about fifteen solid hours.  I want to avoid everyone until this whole freaking thing blows over.

But I can’t do that.

Because I need to talk with Violet.

I need her to do the impossible.

I need her to make what happened today, what she did, somehow okay.

Not speaking with her this entire day… it’s the longest we’ve ever gone without conversing.  Worse- Violet is the one person I turn to when I need sound advice or just someone who will listen.  She’s the one I wrap myself up in when I want to forget about the rest of the world.

Without her…

Without her I feel like I have no one.

Sure, I have the guys.  But come on, it’s not like I can bare my freaking soul to them.  Jesus Christ… they’d have a goddamn field day with that.  I’d never hear the end of it.

For the last eight years, Violet has been my everything.  The one person I trust above all others.  And today she broke that trust.  Crushed it beneath the heel of her boot before grounding it into tiny little fragments.

Fuck… I’d really like to believe that I’m just being overdramatic, but I don’t think so.  Not after the day I’ve had.  Not after the shit I’ve had to endure from just about every quarter.

There aren’t many people you find in this world who you can be yourself with.  I may only be some twenty-two year old college dude, but even I know that.  With Violet, I can strip away all the layers, all the pretenses, and just be Sam.  Not Sam Harper, Senator Derek Harper’s son.  Or Sam Harper, the Barnett Bulldogs football player.

I’m just Sam.

Violet’s best friend. Her boyfriend.  Her lover.

And now…

And now I don’t know…

How do you come back from something like this?

Once I’m at her dorm, I take the elevator up to the thirteenth floor.  As soon as I step inside, four girls crowd in after me.  Even though I have a ball cap pulled low over my brow, recognition shines brightly from their eyes.  My jaw tightens as they smile and giggle all the while ogling me from across the tightly enclosed space.

As much as I want to verbally snap at them, I rein it back in.  The last thing I need to do is lash out and have
that
end up online as well.  So I just stand there stone faced, staring straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact with any of them.

Even so, I feel their intense stares crawling over me.  It leaves me feeling agitated and pissed off all over again.

As soon as the doors slide open, I shoot out of there like my damn ass is on fire.  I’m not even a full step away before I hear them start shrieking and laughing all at once.  They can’t even be bothered to wait for the doors to close behind me.  Thank god they didn’t shove a copy of that freaking photo under my nose for me to sign. 

With my shoulders hunched, I keep my head down as I walk through the long narrow hallway to her room.  It honestly feels like everyone I pass, turns to stare in my direction.

When I’m finally at her suite, I give a few quick raps, waiting impatiently for her to open the door so I can get the hell out of this hall.  My jaw clenches as I continue waiting.  Ten seconds turn into twenty and then thirty and still there’s no answer.  I knock a little louder this time before jamming my hands into my pockets and shifting uncomfortably from one foot to another.

“Sam?”

Swinging around, I find a very pale, nervous looking Violet about two feet from where I’m standing.  Normally the first thing I’d do when I see her is haul that luscious little body of hers into my arms.  Unable to hold back, I’d already be sliding my lips possessively over hers, encouraging her to open up so I could sweep my tongue inside all that sweetness.  By this time I’d already be wondering just how long I’d have to wait before hustling her off into the bedroom so we could finally be alone.  Where I could do all the deliciously wicked things I’d dreamt about for years.