Wrecked Book 3 (5 page)

And here I thought Logan had better taste than that, but apparently he was just after anything with tits.

I tried not to be angry, after all, what did I care right? But it was hard. I wanted to yell at him that he was stupid and a jerk and how could he after the other night?

“Good then,” Kass answered, causing me to jerk my head up to look at her in disbelief. What was good about this exactly? “If he’s got someone else on his mind, then he won’t be bothering you,” she continued, oblivious to my reaction. “And I hope it’s some trailer trashy slut,” she added. “That’s way more his speed.”

“Mason said he wasn’t as bad as he seems,” I blurted in Logan’s defense before I even considered what I was saying.

This made Kass look up at me. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously, searching my face for clues as to why I said that. I did my best to keep my face neutral and uninvested. “Tell that to Lexie,” she retorted. “Lexie says he’s a total animal and a jerk to boot. Treated her like shit, and she definitely wasn’t the first one he treated that way.”

I couldn’t help frowning at her—or correcting her. “Lexie’s full of it,” I said dismissively. “You know how she is. She sleeps with some random guy and suddenly it’s love. Then when he drops her like a sack of hot potatoes, she gets all offended and says that he’s a total dick.”

“Yeah, but fact is whoever she says it about
does
sleep with her and dump her,” Kass pointed out in counter point and it was hard to argue that. “Which does make him a dick.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, but it kinda makes her a little crazy, too,” I told her. I’d actually had a lot of time to work this all out in my head. If Logan had actually slept with Lexie—which I was convinced now that he hadn’t—then it was hypocritical to think more highly of Lexie, who clearly threw herself at him (he who was a complete stranger at the time), and to damn Logan for being a dog. It was pretty hard to accuse him of taking advantage of her when it was clear that Lexie was interested in sleeping with someone she’d only just met.

Kass was staring at me now, disbelief written across her face. She even looked a little annoyed that I was defending him. “How do you figure?” she demanded.

“Well, I mean, who sleeps with some random guy she doesn’t even know and expects to be treated like a princess? Was she really expecting it to be eternal love?”

Kass frowned, thinking about it. I don’t think she liked my rational defense. She wanted to hate Logan—I just wasn’t entirely sure why.

“Okay, so Lexie’s a slut. We knew that already,” she conceded. “It’s not like it’s a stretch, but still. He slept with her and didn’t expect it to go anywhere.”

I held up my hands to say alright. “I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s fair to judge him by one night with a crazy girl.”

We fell silent after that, turning back to our respective books. I don’t think Kass was very happy with me, but I couldn’t just let her badmouth Logan like that. We were over and he’d clearly moved on and maybe he was exactly the kind of animal she said he was… but that night in my room, I’d seen the scars on his body. I’d felt the trembling in his hands as he tried to believe that he wasn’t like his father.

I couldn’t tell her all of that—I couldn’t tell her
any
of that—but I knew that he hadn’t been faking it. No matter what little bimbo he was with now, he’d been real with me. I had to believe that.

Later that day, I sat at a coffee shop. There was free wifi and great coffee, so it was a nice place to study if I was tired of the library. It was especially true when I needed to be somewhere that people weren’t going to look for me. Most people thought I couldn’t exist beyond the library or my room or class. But I actually thrived on coffee.

Talk about the stereotypical college student.

I was making progress on my paper, mostly because I was so determined to think of anything but Logan or Miranda or what Kass said about Logan. Working on academics was strangely soothing to me. It used to be that I had to work and struggle to force myself to be a diligent student, but the more I worked on it, the more it became second nature.

The waitress brought me a large mug full of frothy coffee. I thanked her and sipped at it. It was scalding hot, so I quickly put it back down to let it cool and went back to typing and researching.

I lost myself in the paper and all the work that went with it, so when a thin body plopped down in the chair across from me, I didn’t even realize who it was until she spoke.

“I’m surprised.”

I was surprised, too. My head jerked up to see Lexie sitting across from me, wearing leggings and UGGs. Her eyes were etched out in black and a pretty shade of blue that didn’t do much for her eyes, but looked great with her sweater. Those eyes were narrowed at me now, suspicious and maybe more than a little judgmental.

“I thought you were smarter than that,” she continued, sipping at her latte.

Frowning, I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”

Her face pinched together, making her look like she was sucking on a lemon instead of sipping at steaming, extra sweet coffee and milk. “I told you about Logan to
warn
you,” she said, her voice dripping with something that might have been as strong as hatred or as weak as annoyance. I couldn’t really tell. “He’s bad news, and what do you do? Instead of running the opposite direction, you go straight into his arms?”

I paled a little. Did Lexie
know
about me and Logan? And if she did, just how much did she know…?

“I didn’t go straight into his arms,” I argued, closing my laptop so that I could face her more fully.

She rolled her eyes. “Sure. And I’m sure it was a school project that had you sneaking into Old Main after hours a few nights ago.”

I froze. She saw us together for our ‘date.’ “That was…” I struggled to find some reasonable, rational explanation, but nothing came to mind. She was right. We had most definitely
not
snuck in there to work on some project, much less with Logan of all people. But I wasn’t prepared to explain to her our complicated relationship… if you could call our brief interactions that. Mostly, I wasn’t sure
how
to explain us. And now, it didn’t really seem to matter, because there was no us.

The only person it mattered to was Miranda, and I was set on convincing her he was no one to me.

Lexie smirked. “Oh, you act so much more mature than us, like you don’t have those
primal
desires like we do,” she said, her voice heavily laden with that sneering tone. “But when it comes right down to it, perfect little straight A’s Addy is just as horny as everyone else.” She laughed, and it was an unattractive sound to say the least.

“What is your problem, exactly?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable with her words and her attitude. The last time we’d had a conversation—in a coffee shop, about Logan no less—we’d been friends. But right now? It seemed a lot like we were enemies pitted against each other.

I just didn’t really understand
why
.

Folding her arms across her chest, her lemon expression came back in full. “My
problem
is that you think you’re so perfect,” she snapped, making me jerk back against her words. “And now I know that you’re not. You’re just a little college slut like the rest of us.”

I opened my mouth to tell her that she was out of her mind, but she just smirked and pushed her chair back. Leaving her latte and everything, she got up and headed for the door. She gave me a little wave from the door, then left the coffee shop altogether.

I stared after her for a long time, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she was being so… crazy. And I didn’t even really understand
why
. She suddenly seemed to hate me, when it used to be that we were friends. Sure, we had never been super close or anything, but we hadn’t had an active issue between us. Mostly, we kept topics light and unimportant, leaving us in a safe zone of not having to pick a fight with the other over social, political, or moral grounds.

Now, that seemed to have changed. Things were different now, and I just couldn’t really understand what it was that had caused that change.

After several minutes of just staring at the door, I finally shook my head and opened up my laptop again. I typed in my password quickly and brought up the draft of my paper. I spent twenty minutes just staring at the screen, trying to figure out what to type—or even what my train of thought had been when I last left off. But I couldn’t come up with anything. I was so wrapped up in Lexie and Logan and what right did she have to be upset about anything anyway?

“She’s crazy,” I muttered to myself.

Leaning back in my chair and pushing my computer off to the side, I pulled my coffee towards me and wondered why she was so upset.

I sipped at my coffee, discovering it was finally cool enough to drink, and mulled it over. I hadn’t done anything to her, and even when I figured out she was probably lying about Logan and their activities together. I hadn’t told anyone about that.

Which, you know, probably no one would have believed me, but that wasn’t
why
I didn’t tell anyone. I just felt that she had her reasons and could take care of herself.

So then what was her problem?

I saw a couple at the counter ordering a coffee. The lady at the register was smiling, friendly because it was her job to be, and the guy was being friendly back. The girlfriend however did not appreciate the polite, formality of being friendly that was happening between them. She smacked her boyfriend’s arm and the look on her face told me that the words she whispered under her breath were not words of love and encouragement.

And that’s when I realized it. “She’s
jealous
!” It was ridiculous—it wasn’t like they were together, and according to Logan, they hadn’t ever
been
together—but now that the idea had popped into my head, I was positive that was what it was. Lexie was jealous of me. The girl who was supposed to be some kind of nerd girl.

Shaking my head, I almost laughed out loud, it was so ridiculous. I half felt like telling her that there wasn’t anything between Logan and me anymore and if she wanted him, all she had to do was go through that skinny little blonde freshman he was trying to charm the pants off of.

And probably had.

But thinking of Logan getting
any
girl’s pants off, especially some tart like Lexie or that bubble gum chewing blonde, well, it made my stomach churn. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea.

In fact, the only thing that gave me any peace of mind was the knowledge that Logan had already turned Lexie down.

“At least he doesn’t want
her
.”

My date with Derek was tonight, and I wasn’t really sure how I was feeling about it. On the one hand, it was a good thing. Derek seemed like a really great guy and I thought he was pretty attractive. On the other hand, after the disaster with Miranda at the party with Mason, I wasn’t really sure I was up for much of anything.

Mostly, I felt like sitting in at home and hoping no one would bother me.

That’s why I was sitting on the edge of my bed wrapped up in my fluffy robe holding my phone out in the palm of my hand. I was debating whether or not to text Derek to cancel on him. It wasn’t too late. He didn’t live far from the bar where we were meeting and I hadn’t started to get ready yet. If I canceled now, there would be no real damage done.

Biting my lip, I opened up a new message to send to Derek. Nervous, I got up from the bed and began to pace. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cancel, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go either. Why wasn’t there some middle ground, I wondered?

There is, stupid
, I thought to myself. It’s called staying in, and it usually means taking off all of your clothes. Like I had the other night with Logan… I could picture his body built strongly with hard muscles that fit together so deliciously perfectly that I couldn’t help but burn at the thought of his body. I reacted physically to him, there was no denying it. And with his deep, stormy blue eyes and that long blonde hair… well, it was hard not to get lost in his physical appeal.

But I also remembered the way his hands shook as they came to my waist, the care he took as he couched my body with his trembling hands.

And the tattoos. One for each scar on his beautiful body. I couldn’t bring myself to ask any more than he was willing to explain, I think, what that meant, but I could guess. An abusive father… I could only imagine the kind of hell he went through to receive those scars and I knew without ever experiencing it myself that the worst scars he had were the ones he couldn’t cover up with ink.

I thought that maybe it was this intimate knowledge of what he’d gone through, not just the physical reaction my body got from his, that made him so constantly wrapped around my mind.

I paced in front of my window, chewing on my lower lip as I thought more and more of Logan—and the things we did that night. My first time…

As I turned around so that I could start pacing the other way again, I happened to glance out the window. And just in time, too. There, on the sidewalk just below me, was Logan. He was walking arm in arm with some girl. Not the blonde from the other day, but another girl. A pretty one.