#Selfie (Hashtag Series Book 4) (33 page)

Ivy

Missy was nowhere to be seen.

It’s like she fell off the face of the campus. But I know she didn’t because the BuzzBoss was still blowing up everyone’s feed with mostly random posts.

I still had questions, still had things to say to her. The loss of our friendship and the way it ended wasn’t something I could just forget.

I wasn’t the only one. Rimmel wanted answers, too.

But as the days went by, I began to wonder if we would ever get them.

People on campus still whispered when I walked by, but I ignored it. Really, it didn’t matter what they said. It wasn’t as bad as it first was, and I knew it would fade from memory. With finals almost here, the semester would be over, and when fall finally came around, no one would remember my name.

I still dreamed about Zach sometimes, but now it wasn’t always just him. Sometimes I saw the faces of the men who dragged me into the woods that night, and I’d wake up sweating. I hoped every day they’d finally go away. If not for my sake, for Braeden’s. My dreams seemed to upset him almost more than me.

Basically, after all the chaos, despite Missy being MIA and Braeden still struggling with whether he wanted to talk to his father or not, life was settling down. It was welcome, because lately life had definitely been too eventful.

Now all I needed was to be sure where I stood with Braeden.

Yes, he said he wanted me, he slept in my room more often than his, and he didn’t so much as look at another girl, but I still sometimes worried.

I worried his demons would chase him away, or when summer came, we’d drift apart.

I trudged up the stairs to my room, ready to kick off my shoes and play with Prada. I was still smuggling her into the dorm. Who was I kidding? I loved that dog. I’d probably take her home with me this summer. I’d even bought her a little pink tutu that Braeden thought was ridiculous. Secretly, I think he thought it was cute.

I pulled out my key to open the door. Rimmel wouldn’t be here tonight; she was at Romeo’s. Braeden was training and wouldn’t be here until later, and after the day I’d had, I wasn’t sorry to have some quiet.

It took me longer than it probably should have to realize something wasn’t right in here. The door was already shut behind me, and I’d taken several steps in the room.

My steps faltered and I blinked.

It was bright in here, not the kind of bright from sunlight filtering through the window. In fact, the curtains were all drawn.

Why the hell were the curtains drawn?

The overhead light was on.

Had I left it that way when I left earlier?

No.

And I hadn’t closed the curtains either.

I blinked again, bringing everything else in the room into focus.

“Blondie. You’re late.” The familiar sound of his voice made me smile.

“Braeden?” He was standing in the center of the room… my room that looked totally different.

“I’ve been waiting for an hour.”

“I stopped at the library. I thought you were training.”

“I lied.”

I glanced around again. As inviting as the sight of him standing there shirtless and in nothing but a pair of basketball shorts was, I couldn’t get over what he’d done to the room.

“What is all this?” I asked, wonder in my voice. My eyes couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t stop moving from one corner to the other.

“I told you I’m no good at talking. So I figured I’d show you how I feel.” He motioned with his hands at the transformation.

He turned this room into the beach.

And it was perfect.

There were blow-up palm trees in every corner. There was even a small one on the desk. Paper 3-D pineapples hung throughout the room, tropical paper flowers draped around the ceiling fan, and hanging from the center was a giant red parrot.

The center of my desktop was cleared of all my stuff and set up with a tropical buffet. In the center was a silver bucket of ice and bottles of Corona with several whole limes beside it. There were also real coconuts with their tops cut off. I assumed they were filled with something fruity because of the little umbrellas sticking out of the tops.

Trays of fruit were arranged by color, and there was a round platter of cupcakes, the icing dotted in sprinkles.

Real seashells covered almost every surface, and a big poster of the sun setting over the ocean hung on the back wall.

“I can’t believe you did all this.”

“Well, I had a little help,” he admitted reluctantly. “Rim helped me decorate. And she took Prada for the night.”

“It’s so beautiful.”

“We never really had a beginning. For months, we fought and insulted each other. Then we combusted into bed. We pretended what happened didn’t matter, but it did, Blondie. You matter.”

“Braeden,” I whispered and took a step farther into the room.

He shook his head. “All the shit with Missy, with Zach… hell, even with my father, it got in our way. I let it. This is me swearing I won’t let it again. This is me swearing this is our beginning. You’re it for me.” He took a breath, and I watched his chest rise with it. His dark, chocolate eyes latched onto mine. “Because I still don’t like you, Blondie.”

I started to roll my eyes.

“I love you.”

My heart stopped. Everything stopped. That place deep down inside me burned and tingled.

“I don’t like you either.” My voice wobbled.

The intensity of his stare drilled right into me, like he was searching desperately for my reply.

“I love you so damn much,” I confessed. The words whooshed out of me with momentum, like the weight holding them down had finally been cut free.

“Come here, woman,” he growled.

I laughed and rushed the short distance between us. I almost fell when my feet hit something foreign.

“Tell me you noticed,” he said, dry. His eyes twinkled with humor.

I looked down and giggled.

I hadn’t noticed.

“How am I supposed to notice anything when you’re standing there without a shirt?”

“You’re forgiven.”

Braeden was standing in a blue plastic kiddy pool. It wasn’t filled with water. Instead, it was filled with sand.

“Take off your shoes,” he whispered.

I kicked them off faster than ever before. I readied to jump in, but he shook his head.

“Hit the lights.”

I wrinkled my nose. “But then it will be pitch black in here, and I won’t be able to see all your hard work.” Our curtains were blackouts so we could sleep in on the weekends.

“Trust me.”

The huskiness in his voice was hypnotic. Of course I trusted him. I trusted no one more.

I went back near the door and took one last sweeping glance around. The room plunged into darkness the second I hit the switch.

But it wasn’t nearly as dark as it usually was.

The room was filled with stars.

Bright glowing stars.

They filled the ceiling, and part of the walls. Some were even stuck to the curtains, a few outlined one of the blow-up palm trees.

They were in varying sizes, from large to super small. It was exactly what it had been like in Florida when the sun went down and the night lit up.

The sound of ocean waves crashing against the shore filled the room with peaceful rhythm. My breath caught.

He was recreating that night on the beach.

The beach where something between us changed and we spent our first night together.

Our first kiss had been under the stars.

For a man who said he was no good at words, no good at feelings…

He couldn’t have done anything any better.

I walked carefully across the room, not worried I would bump into anything because the light from the stars would guide me. Braeden held out his hand and steadied me as I stepped into the pool.

My feet sank in the sand, my toes wiggling with joy. Braeden’s arms wound around my waist and pulled me close.

“This is how it should have been that first night down on the sand,” he whispered. “This is our beginning Ivy. I want to make it official. I want there to be no doubt, ‘cause I’m gonna do stupid shit all the time.”

I giggled, and his white teeth flashed.

“I’m gonna leave the toilet seat up. I’m gonna be overprotective, probably bossy, and my temper is always gonna run hot.”

“I don’t care,” I told him, sliding my hands up to rest on his chest.

“Tell me you’ll be my girl, and I swear I’ll love you with everything I got.”

“I’m always gonna be stubborn. I’m not gonna take your shit. My makeup will be all over the bathroom, and I still don’t have a major. Oh, and I want to keep Prada. You have to like her, too.”

“I already told Rim to get your adoption paperwork ready for that rat.” Then in lower tones, he said, “She’s grown on me.”

I smiled. He totally loved Prada.

“So what’s my answer?” He tightened his arms around my waist.

I pretended to think it over. A girl should never sound too eager—even if she was practically peeing herself with glee.

“Blondie,” Braeden growled.

“I’m already yours, B. I have been for a long time.”

He kissed me under the stars. A long, fire-filled kiss that not even the ocean waves could put out. It wasn’t the first time we’d done this, but it might as well have been.

Braeden made me feel like no one else ever could. All this time, I’d been searching, looking in the face of every man I passed, wondering if he could be the one.

The one my soul would recognize.

He was in front of me all along. He’d just been hiding in the dark. It took the light of a million stars to reveal what a piece of me already knew.

I never hated Braeden. I loved him, probably from the first day we’d met.

And I’d love him long after the millions of stars faded overhead.

Braeden

I decided not to tell her.

To keep the secret very few knew.

Missy wasn’t talking. If it came out she knew a student was assaulted and then used a piece of the evidence to ruin the student’s reputation, well, her entire college career would be over. And she could kiss her dreams of theater fame good-bye.

Zach was locked up; with any luck, he’d stay there for a very long time. He wasn’t gonna run his mouth because then he might have to exchange his cushy cell for one a lot less comfortable.

That left me.

How could I tear apart the world of the woman I desperately loved? She’d been through so much, it seemed cruel to bring what little bit of footing she was gaining tumbling down.

I wanted to protect her from what was done to her. The way I couldn’t ever protect my mother… or even myself.

I didn’t know if my decision was wrong.

I hoped I never found out.

All I wanted was for her to be happy. For her to be safe.

And for her to never know.

I had no doubt Ivy could handle this information, but she shouldn’t have to.

So everyone was gonna keep their mouths shut… and if they didn’t?

There would be hell to pay.