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CHAPTER TWO

Late the next afternoon, Liv bursts into our dorm room, wired and hungover but salivating for some gossip.

“Hey! You stayed with Zander last night, didn’t you?” Her overstuffed backpack hits the floor with an earth-shaking thud. “Did you see what happened to that guy?”

I snap shut Anne of Green Gables , the book I’m reading for children’s lit. “Yeah. Didn’t you?”

“No. I was outside and they weren’t letting anyone back in.” She collapses onto her bed. “So I just left.”

“Well, believe me, you’re lucky you didn’t see it. It was god-awful.”

“I heard he bashed his head open on the pool table.”

I nod.

She’s not bothering to hide her morbid fascination. “You don’t think he died, do you?”

“I hope not,” I say, because I don’t want to dwell on the very real possibility that he did.

She sits up to undo her messy bun and comb her fingers through her long, black hair. “Is Replay Six still playing there tomorrow night?”

“As far as I know.”

She pauses and sighs. “You’re freaked out about going back, aren’t you?”

“A little.”

“Well, it’s not like you can avoid the O-Chi house forever.”

Liv the sage. But she’s right. My entire social life revolves around Zander and O-Chi. Without them, I’d be a hermit.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she says with a shrug and a flick of her hand. “Everybody’ll be having fun, and by the end of the night, you’ll have forgotten all about it.”

Maybe. Depends on how many beers I have.

The next evening, almost the moment I arrive at O-Chi, Zander informs me the guy who OD’d didn’t die.

Relieved, I twist the lid off a Bud Light and flop onto the couch between him and Liv.

With an hour to kill before the band arrives, all us regulars have gathered in the living room to spill the tea on Thursday night.

“His girlfriend called this morning,” Zander says. “Braden talked to her.”

“What did she say?” Liv asks.

Braden rests his beer on his knee. “Mostly, she just wanted to thank us. You know, for calling the ambulance and all that. She said they got him to the hospital just in time.”

I frown. “Just in time before what?” Before his heart stopped beating? Before he suffered permanent brain damage?

He shrugs. “I dunno. She didn’t say.”

“Did she tell you his name?” For some reason, it feels important for him to have an identity. Something other than “the guy who OD’d.”

“Jason.”

I nod. Jason.

“Oh.” Braden points his beer bottle at me. “And she wanted me to tell you ‘thank you.’ You in particular. ”

“Me?”

“Yep. She said, ‘tell that nice blond girl I said thanks.’ For taking her back downstairs, I think she said.”

Zander pulls me tight against his side and runs a hand up and down my arm. “That’s my Betts. So sweet.”

I smile and turn to kiss him, but he’s looking over my head at Braden. “Doesn’t look like we’re gonna get blamed for this,” he says with a hopeful grin.

“Nope.” Braden salutes him with his beer. “Doesn’t look like it.”

Mia, O-Chi’s other Sweetheart, screws up her face. “How on earth did he get Molly all the way out here?”

I’m glad she’s asking because I’ve been wondering the same thing. We’re in the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina, deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Asheville is the closest city, but it’s over a half hour away, and it’s more like a large town .

Cole rolls his eyes and jerks a thumb at Mia. “Na?ve city girl.”

I’m pretty sure she’s a Miami native. And seeing as I’m from a Virginia suburb close enough to DC to be on a Metro line, I don’t think it would help if I jumped to her defense.

The guys proceed to mansplain how Brownhill is the ideal target for drug dealers. It’s the perfect combo: a college that draws privileged rich kids and a local law enforcement that doesn’t have the resources they need to deal with big city crimes.

To their credit, the O-Chi leadership has put in place some precautionary measures for tonight’s big party.

They set up two coolers full of ice water out by the keg, told all the brothers to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, and asked the band to remind everybody to take a break and “cool the fuck down” every now and then.

It’s great that the frat is being proactive and that Jason is going to be fine.

But none of it erases what happened.

The grim memories linger in my mind as, a few hours later, I find myself in the O-Chi basement again.

Replay Six has drawn such a huge crowd that I’m wedged between a metal support pole and some gangly drunk guy who elbows me in the shoulder with every thump of the bass drum.

Behind me Zander sways, his hands on my hips and his chest brushing against my back.

The band is on a platform set up where the pool table normally sits.

And I’ll bet there’s a blood stain on the floor underneath it.

I’m still seeing Jason’s convulsions playing in my head, over and over again, like a GIF.

How long until it goes away? I glance around me and see so many of the same faces I saw Thursday night.

But no one seems bothered by the fact that someone almost died down here. No one but me.

Shake it off. Get over it.

I snatch the mixed drink out of Zander’s hand.

It’s in a repurposed Dasani bottle, a smart little trick the brothers came up with so they could drink something other than beer without risking spilling it.

In their eyes, sloshing cheap keg beer around is okay, but wasting top-shelf liquor is criminal.

I sniff the contents. “What’s in this?”

Zander grins and shrugs. “Cole made it.”

Cole isn’t exactly the straightest arrow. Knowing him, this “cocktail” is pure grain alcohol with a splash of Kool Aid.

“Go for it,” Zander says, his playful blue eyes urging me on. “It’s not that bad.”

I take a tentative sip. Then another. Zander’s right, it’s tolerable.

I guzzle down a hearty swig and hand it back to him.

Not long after, I’m dancing with everyone else, not caring about the bruise the guy next to me will leave on my shoulder.

And I’m barely aware of the blood stain under the stage.

Liv finds me and gives me a sweaty hug. “See?!” she shouts over the music. “I told you you’d be fine.”

Zander asks me, “Why wouldn’t you be fine?”

Liv answers, “You know—because of the other night—the dude—” She makes a dead-person face, eyes rolled back and tongue hanging out .

“Oh that ,” Zanders snorts. He turns to me. “What’s that got to do with you?”

“Nothing.” I hand Liv the nearly empty Dasani bottle. “Try this. It’s pretty good.”

She finishes it off and declares it’s time to go to the ladies’ room.

There’s no such thing in a frat house, of course, it’s just the name we give the one bathroom, on the top floor, that’s less disgusting than all the others.

We sneak upstairs where we trade off using the toilet and checking ourselves in the smudgy mirror.

Thanks to the heat and alcohol, my freckles are practically glowing.

I follow Liv back downstairs, the music growing louder and the air getting hotter as we approach the first floor.

At the bottom of the steps we part ways, Liv for the backyard and me for the basement.

But before I turn the corner, I see him.

Mr. Brown Eyes. He’s in the kitchen again, arms folded and back against the counter, intently watching the crowd. Like he’s looking for someone.

And I have a weird feeling the someone he’s looking for is me.

Buzzed enough to act on this suspicion, I take a few steps toward him, gauging his reaction. And sure enough, when his eyes meet mine, they widen. As I approach him around the breakfast bar, he straightens to his full height. Good god, he’s handsome. Why isn’t he surrounded by a harem of girls?

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi.”

“Do I know you?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Does anybody know you?”

I know what I mean by this question, but apparently he doesn’t. He smiles with one side of his mouth and lets out an awkward little laugh. “Sure, there are people who know me.”

“I mean here . Are there people here who know you?”

He trains those beautiful eyes on me. “ You know me.”

“I recognize you, but that’s not the same thing. I can’t say I know you if I don’t even know your name. ”

“Leo. Leo Hawthorn.” He holds out a hand and I take it. It’s warm and grounding, just like his eyes, and I don’t want to let it go.

“Leo as in Leonard or Leon?”

“No. Just Leo.” His voice is deep and soft, like distant thunder. “And you are…?”

“Betts. I mean Elizabeth.” I tuck my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, not sure what to do with them. “My name’s Elizabeth but everyone calls me Betts.”

“Okay, Betts.”

“And you’re a student?”

He nods. “A senior.”

“I’m a sophomore.” God, I sound like one of those little kids who comes up to you and starts telling you a bunch of random stuff about herself. I’m Elizabeth and I like butterflies. My cat’s name is Snowball, and my big brother can play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the recorder.

Leo props his elbow on the counter behind him. “What’s your major?”

“English. How about you?”

“History.”

I joke, “So we’re both planning to be unemployable?”

He bursts into a broad smile and dammit, my heart flutters. Hello Betts, your boyfriend is downstairs.

I ask, “How come I’ve never seen you before?

” Brownhill is a small school, only about five thousand students.

And of those five thousand, only a few hundred are foolish enough to major in the humanities.

Day after day I see the same faces wandering around Tayler Hall, the building the English, history, and philosophy departments share, and Leo Hawthorn’s has never been among them.

Believe me, if I’d seen his face, I’d remember.

He shrugs. “I guess I’m just someone most people don’t notice.”