August, 1997
Claiborne-Prosper University, New Orleans
“If you insist on being stubborn, Keira, then perhaps your father and I will rethink you living on campus.”
Keira tried to withhold her temper, fingers tight on her phone as her mother’s biting voice whined sharp. She withheld the small wish that her mother had never bought the damn thing for her. Everyone else had beepers. But Keira, and the well-funded sports teams at her private university, all got phones. She hated hers. Especially when her mother used it to pick a fight with her at 8:00 a.m.
“Mother, Steven is your husband, not my father.” She heard the heavy sigh and knew by the clicking of her mother’s tongue, that her comment wouldn’t be overlooked. “And I didn’t say no…exactly,” she hurried to say, hoping to forego a truly heated fight so early in the morning. “You don’t need to threaten me.”
“Surely you see that I am only trying to look after you.”
Keira walked past two girls standing in the middle of the hallway and tried to bite back the sarcastic retort itching to leave her mouth. Her mother always thought she knew what was best for Keira, and if the girl didn’t agree, a quick slap changed her mind. Her mother picked out her clothes, had final approval over the classes she took— hell, she’d even insisted that Keira major in something “less frivolous” than music. Keira had agreed. She always agreed, because that’s what good daughters did. She would not, however, easily agree to a date with Mark Burke.
“I don’t see how dating your canasta partner’s son is for my own good.” The same hall-blocking girls barged in front of Keira like she wasn’t there at all. She had to step back quickly when one of them flung her purse over her shoulder, narrowly missing Keira. Keira managed to avoid her, maneuvering around the blonde, who still glared at her when Keira apparently came too close.
Still, her mother yammered in her ear. “…decent boy from a good family, and you’re eighteen now, Keira. It’s time you begin thinking about settling down.”
That had her coming to a stop just three doors from her English classroom. “Are you serious? I’m a freshman, Mother.” Behind her, Keira heard the two girls’ laughter moving along the dull beige walls, straight toward her. She stared right at their too perfect, overly made up faces, but they just rolled their eyes, dismissing her. Her gaze still trained on their retreating forms, Keira continued her argument. She felt pathetic. She could mean mug some stupid sorority bitches, but she couldn’t stand up to her mother. “I’ve been in college a total of two months, and you’re already nagging about me settling down?”
Her mother’s voice was tense, and Keira could hear the exaggerated sigh she blew right into the phone. “I just believe it would behoove you to make smart connections now. Mark is pre-med at Tulane. He’s mature and has a bright future ahead of him. You’ll want to snag him up before someone else does.”
Keira wanted to scream. Her mother had antiquated, ancient ideas about how Keira should live her life. Cora Michaels had managed at least one successful marriage, to a heart surgeon no less, and had considered that some great accomplishment. The woman liked to pretend she’d never been married to Keira’s father—a handsome musician with stage fright. She expected Keira to marry well. She expected Keira to be her clone. She expected a lot of things from Keira that the girl would never manage to live up to.
Taking a breath, Keira leaned against the wall, her attention distracted by a janitor mopping up a spill someone had discarded on the gray tile floors. “I don’t want to snag anyone, Mother.”
“But Keira, he’s so fit and handsome, and his parents…”
She knew all about Mark Burke’s parents and ignored her mother’s recap. They were the same as all her mother’s friends—wealthy, connected, and the height of proper North Shore society. They fit among the elite, the disgustingly rich, the groups and gaggles of the affluent that looked down their noses at anyone who wasn’t just like them. She didn’t know Mark, but if he was anything like his parents, Keira knew they’d only clash. As her mother always said— usually when she was angry at Keira—she was too much like her father. The woman had never known that Keira didn’t consider that an insult.
Already tired of her nagging, Keira interrupted her mother and whatever ridiculous thing she was saying. “Mother, I have to go. My class is about to start.” She didn’t wait for a dismissal. She knew the rudeness bothered her mother; she’d mentioned once or twice that Keira had changed since she began living on campus. Since her move, the bullying had become particularly venomous. But the idle threat of making Keira return to their lake house, forty-five minutes from the city, was weak at best.
Keira deposited her red Nokia in her pocket, glaring at the backs of the two girls who’d walked in front of her, when she noticed one of them intentionally bumping the janitor’s full mop bucket. The dirty yellow contraption tittered on its wheels before it toppled over, spilling murky, brown water over the floor.
“Stupid bitch,” Keira said to the girl's back before she stepped next to the janitor to set the bucket right. “Can I help?”
The old man blinked at her, a wry smile pulling across his face when he registered her offer. “No, cher, don’t you trouble yourself.”
She squatted down next to him, caught the mop before it fell to the floor. “I feel like I should apologize.” She nodded toward the end of the hallway where the blonde had disappeared. “I don’t hold out much hope for my generation. There are too many like her running around campus like they own it.”
The old man laughed, and the sound had Keira returning his smile.
“I’ll give you that, darlin’. Not many good sort that I’ve seen.” He took the mop from Keira and they both stood straight. “But pretty little things like you give me hope.” At his wink, Keira felt her cheeks warm. “Thank you for the offer, but I think you best be off to your studies.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, wiping her damp hands on the leg of her jeans.
She put her mother and the janitor out of her mind as she walked into the classroom. Keira loved this room. She loved the large, wooden desks, lined in a semi-circle around Professor Miller’s larger cherry table. It felt homey, almost cozy, and she smiled when she entered the room, taking her seat right at the front.
Arthurian Studies.
Just the roll of the class name off her tongue made Keira giddy. She loved the legends; she loved the melodrama, the purpose behind each journey, every damn Campbell cliché that was born from the study of a might-have-been-real king who reigned centuries before. She loved this class, and Keira suspected that her classmates did as well. For the most part, anyway.
There were, however, three exceptions: Skylar Williams and her boyfriend Dylan Collins were two. Skylar seemed unable to release high school habits and spent a huge portion of the class doodling over her notebook. She wasn’t an artist. Keira thought she was vapid. She thought anyone who drew “Skylar loves Dylan” a hundred times, on perfectly usable paper, was vapid. “Skylar loves Dylan” or “Mrs. Dylan Collins” covered today’s page, alongside hearts and clouds and geometric shapes. Dylan slept through every class.
The third exception was the tall linebacker who sat two rows away from her, hiding in the back of the classroom. Keira knew him. Not personally, but certainly by reputation. Kona Hale and his twin brother Luka were the proverbial golden duo. Their presence on the football team ensured that CPU was headed straight to the Sugar Bowl.
Keira had never been to a single football game. She didn’t care about football. She didn’t care about vapid girls and their snoring boyfriends. She especially did not care about massive football players with wide shoulders and dark eyes who tuned out Professor Miller for fifty minutes straight.
Today, though, she cared a little about all three of them.
Her cousin Leann had missed another class. That was two in a row, and since Professor Miller was handing out partner assignments—and Leann was the only other person in the class Keira ever felt comfortable enough talking to—she was worried about those three exceptions.
She hated group projects. They seemed so pointless. There was never a measure of real participation, because despite the number in each group, there was always one person that did the majority of the work. Usually, it ended up being her, even if Leann was in her group. Blood didn’t overrule her cousin’s incessant need to slack.
This was an early class, 8:00 a.m. on the nose, and so Keira didn’t bother with fixing herself up; she was always too pressed for time, coming straight from her early morning cross country practice. If her mother saw her today, or any day, really, that she didn’t bother with more than a hoodie and a ball cap with her long ponytail sticking out the back, Keira knew she’d get a lecture. But her mother was forty-five minutes away, in Mandeville, so Keira dressed how she wanted in New Orleans. It wasn’t like she was trying to impress anyone, anyway.
She was always the girl in the front of the class that teachers seemed to call on. Her hand usually shot up first, and there was generally a book, usually poetry, in front of her face before class started. It was natural that the others in a group project would gravitate toward her, because they knew she’d take on most of the work.
A group, she could handle.
A group, she didn’t mind.
But partners? Well. No.
Skylar and Dylan were isolated near the door; him drooling on his desk, her drawing hearts and “I love Skylar” in looping script on the back of his hand. There may have been a few bubbles, possibly a “4-eva.” Skylar seemed like the “4-eva” type.
Keira’s gaze landed on Kona Hale.
He had his ball cap lowered over his eyes and the hood of his sweatshirt covering his head. Occasionally, he’d bob to whatever funneled through his headphones, but mostly he sat upright with his eyes closed, as though Professor Miller couldn’t tell he was completely tuned out.
Kona was massive, even at twenty, and Keira would be a liar and a blind idiot if she denied how beautiful he was. She’d heard rumors, mostly from the girls on the cross country team and a few in her dorm who had screamed like banshees when she casually mentioned she had a class with him. Kona Hale was a stereotypical jock—hot-tempered, eager to party, ready for a good time. Mostly, the rumors Keira had heard trailed along the “will screw anything” variety.
They acted like he was a rock star. Of course, this was southeastern Louisiana. Football players, even college football players, were treated like gods. Especially if their performances produced bowl trophies and good SEC rankings.
She could see the appeal. He was exactly the kind of guy most girls her age fell over themselves for. Keira guessed he was inching toward 6’4, and he had a typical linebacker’s frame: large, wide shoulders; thick, sculpted arms like a marble statue; thighs that reminded her of tree trunks. It was bad enough that his body looked like something out of a Muscle and Fitness magazine—that certainly would give him reason enough to strut around campus like he usually did, with a cluster of stupid groupies chasing after him. But no, to make matters worse, Kona had a flawless, exotic face: a dark, gorgeous complexion that reflected his Hawaiian heritage; strong, high cheekbones that offset his deep, penetrating black eyes; a small cleft in his chin that saved his face from being too perfect. He carried himself with a confidence and swagger that made him even more intimidating. Not that Keira had ever tried approaching him.
Of course, his good looks didn’t make up for his arrogant, full-of-himself attitude. She’d seen that firsthand in his indifferent presence during class—and that time during the first week of the semester when the girls on her cross country team thought it would be funny to push Keira into the football locker room.
She hadn’t expected anyone to be there—maybe a coach or two, maybe a water boy, but as she banged on the door and then walked away from it, trying to find another exit, Keira heard a low grunt spilling out from the showers. Instinct told her to ignore it. She knew better than to walk around the lockers and peek into the open shower. But the room was fogging, and she had Poli Sci homework; she needed out of that locker room. And so she followed the groan and the billowing steam, and stopped short finding Kona Hale standing in the middle of the shower, water pouring over his head, down his large shoulders, onto those massive arms, and dripping off the fingers that were threaded in the wet, blonde hair of the girl on her knees in front of him.
Keira’s little yelp of surprise had his eyes open and staring right at her. The jackass didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. An easy smirk and lick of his lips, and then Kona muttered, “Come get wet with us or fuck off,” and Keira darted through the locker room until she found an open door.
The boosters and coaching staff and the rest of the entire university adored Kona. Keira thought he was an egotistical jackass. An egotistical jackass that she’d probably be partnered with in her favorite class.
Keira stared a bit longer than she had intended, and Kona’s gaze slid to the right, directly at her face. Before a full blush could completely take over her face, Professor Miller called her name, and she spun around in her seat to answer him.
“Yes, sir?” She said a small prayer under her breath that Kona’s name wouldn’t leave Miller’s mouth. Please not him, she thought. Please, please not Kona Hale.
“You and Mr. Hale will be partnered together since Ms. Marquette has dropped the class.”
What?! When had her cousin decided that? She was going to kill Leann. Murder her between snores tonight after lights out.
“Um…okay.” Keira dismissed Miller’s smile and shifted her eyes across the classroom again, back to Kona. He wasn’t even paying attention. She could see his profile, eyes closed once again, head still bobbing. She didn’t understand why he was even in this class. Keira assumed since he was first string on the football team that Kona’s major was something soft like basket weaving or pigskin studies. She was sure that Arthurian Legends wasn’t a requirement for his major.
She didn’t need this. She already had a full plate with her track practices and the double load of classes she was taking. Besides, this project was a big one; one she knew she couldn’t handle on her own.
“Okay, guys, I’d like you to meet with your partners. Set up your schedules and delegate tasks. I expect a full outline by next week, so use your time wisely.”
The class broke apart after Miller’s instructions, desks sliding against the tile floor, backpacks falling down in thumps.
Kona didn’t move.
Keira hated this—the approach, the awkward dance of silence that always followed speaking to someone she didn’t know. She was introverted by nature, kept to herself because most of her peers thought she was a music nerd who spent way too much time writing songs or playing her Gibson Hummingbird behind her closed dorm door. Maybe she was. But being an introvert didn’t mean she’d cower under whatever glare Kona gave her when she spoke to him. Being introverted was one thing. Being a doormat was something altogether different, and Keira had no intention of letting this human Volkswagen walk all over her. Mainly, she prayed he didn’t recognize her from the locker room.
When Keira approached, Kona’s eyes remained closed, his head still in that stupid bob. She stood in front of him and waited. A full minute passed, and he still hadn’t moved. Finally Keira bumped his desk.
Kona’s eyes opened slowly, and he exhaled, as though annoyed by the disturbance. “What?” His voice was loud as he spoke over the music still pulsing in his ears.
She glared at him, expectant, staring at his headphones. Professor Miller walked up the row of desks, and finally Kona silenced the music.
“You need something?”
“You and I are partnered for the Elements in Modern Versions presentation.”
He looked around the classroom as though trying to confirm Keira’s claim. “Why?”
“Um…I don’t…” She couldn’t even finish, instead offered him a weak shrug. She swallowed down her nerves, reminded herself about this class, how badly she wanted to excel in it, and tried to settle the annoyance bubbling in her stomach at Kona’s flippant attitude. She pulled a desk next to him and brought out her notebook and black pen. “Let’s get a few things straight. I’m not doing this by myself. It’s going to be a hard project, and it requires a lot of research.”
“I got practice.”
“So do I.”
“For what?”
“Cross country. We’ve got four meets in the next month.”
Kona’s lips bounced against each other when he tutted. “Track? Come on. I’m sure running doesn’t require a lot of effort.” He sat up, pushing his book sack under his large chest before he rested on it. “We do five miles a day, and that’s just a warm up. Besides, we’ve got two away games. That requires a little more work than your little meets.”
Keira closed her eyes, trying to tamp back the instant desire to knock Kona across his head, hoping that she could hold her temper in check. Bitch. That was another name she’d earned in the short duration of her first semester at CPU. She knew she could be bitchy. She knew that her buttons were easy to push, but she hadn’t meant to make enemies. The girls in her dorm had labeled her a bitch when she refused to join in with them every Tuesday night to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and again when she showed no interest in pledging a sorority. Looking at Kona Hale, seeing the way his eyes slipped over her face, dismissing any interest at all, told Keira he was probably going to think the same thing about her. Nerdy bitch. She was fine with that, but she didn’t need Professor Miller to see it. If college was the afterlife, then the professors were gods and the eternal reward was a high GPA. She wasn’t going to let Kona threaten her 4.0 glory.
“When do you practice?”
“Every damn day.”
“Yes, well, me too.” She looked across the classroom, trying to think of the best time to work Kona and this stupid project into her schedule. “I’m through by seven. Can you meet after that?”
“I guess. Except for Wednesday nights. I got shit on Wednesdays.”
“It’s just for a month. You can’t do your shit another time?”
Kona’s gaze moved over Keira’s face then down, making her lean back against her desk. She didn’t know what he was looking at or why she felt underdressed in her jeans and oversized hoodie, but the way Kona’s gaze took her in had Keira feeling the sudden urge to shower.
“Listen, sweetheart, maybe there’s something we can work out.”
“What do you mean?”
Kona scooted closer to her and pulled on the ties of her hoodie. Keira felt instantly hot, as though the temperature in the classroom had increased by twenty degrees. She didn’t like the way Kona stared at her mouth, or how he kept running the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip.
“I know this project is going to be a pain in the ass, and I’ve been watching you in here. This is your kind of thing.” He pulled on the string again, wrapping it around his large finger. There were ridges on his clean fingernails; Keira stared at them, trying to avoid the intensity of Kona’s gaze, trying to ignore the deep lull of his voice. “You’re always answering Miller’s questions, always debating him about all this shit.” He wrapped the tie tighter around his finger, pulling Keira toward him. “You get off on this stuff.”
“And?” Keira cleared her throat before she pulled the string from Kona’s hand and tugged on the ends of her hair, trying her best to keep the warm flush on her face out of his view.
“And, Guinevere, I told you. I got practice and other shit I need to take care of. You help me out on this project and, well, I can help you out too.”
When his tongue flicked out again and his eyes went back to Keira’s mouth, she felt her entire neck heat and knew her face had colored close to pink, as always. She wanted to kick him, hard. The insinuation was there, right in the smug grin on his face and the warm blaze of his eyes. He can’t be serious, she thought.
She didn’t mean for her laugh to echo around the classroom. She didn’t mean to draw the attention of Professor Miller, who frowned at her like she was some sort of thug, but Kona Hale was more of an entitled asshole than she thought if he expected her to take his bait.
“Let me see if I get you. You want me to work on this project, a project that’s worth 40 percent of our grade, in exchange for what? You lowering yourself to fuck me?”
Kona seemed surprised by her crude language. He even looked around the classroom, a small chink in his cool composure fracturing just a bit. “Knew you wouldn’t be down.”
“Yeah, you got that right.” Her awkwardness vanished under the weight of her anger— something that tended to happen when Keira’s temper flared. She inched forward to invade Kona’s personal space. He didn’t flinch at all. “It might shock you, but not every girl on campus is impressed by you.” She was unsurprised when Kona lifted his eyebrows. “And not all of us want to fuck you.”
“Oh…okay. If you say so.”
“I do, and I don’t care what you offer. I’m not doing this on my own.” Keira scribbled down a time and date and shoved it at Kona’s chest. “Be at the library tomorrow night at eight.”
He didn’t bother to look at the paper she’d given him. Kona just pulled his headphones back on, acting as though Keira wasn’t there at all. But as she packed her bag and moved her desk back, she felt him watching her.
“That bitch is nasty. Stay away from her.”
Luka’s smile disappeared from his face, and Kona knew he’d dashed his twin’s hopes of seeing more of Amber Thomas. Luka sat back in his chair, pushed his plate away, and let his gaze move over Kona’s face. He recognized the look. That was Luka sizing him up, trying to guess if Kona was lying. “How do you know? You didn’t hit that.” He looked behind him before he whispered to Kona. “Did you?”
“Brah, please.”
When Kona smiled, shrugging like he wasn’t confirming anything, Luka hit him on the shoulder. “Shut up, man.” His brother tried to deflect his unease, dropping his shoulder once when their teammates Nathan and Brian slammed into the seats across from them. “You think I don’t know what’s up with her?”
“You don’t,” Nathan said, throwing a french fry at Luka.
“Mind your business.” Luka returned the fry, and it landed in Nathan’s shirt. “You don’t even know what we’re talking about, asshole.”
“Ha. Amber Thomas.” Nathan’s laugh was low, and it came out around the nuggets in his mouth. “You’ve been whining about her for two days.”
“More like a week,” Brian said.
Kona thought Luka really was a dumbass sometimes. Everyone with eyes and a small attention span knew Amber Thomas’ game. She liked players, specifically first string players. Both Lu and Kona were linebackers—sophomores, sure, but they’d been courted by the CPU scouts since they dominated the sport in middle school and were signed by high school. They worked hard and earned their time on the field.
The girls on campus were pretty much the same to Kona. Beautiful, yeah, sure—he’d discovered a long time ago that southern girls were something special, but most had one agenda: find a man with potential. And Amber saw a lot of potential in Kona two weeks ago. She potentialed him hard after practice one night, and then gave Nathan the same treatment just two days later. He didn’t want his brother messed up with her. Lu was too soft, still hanging on to the fat kid he’d been at ten. He was always surprised when girls wanted to get with him, despite how he’d grown, despite the fact that the weight he carried now was all muscle. That fat kid was long gone, and Luka still hadn’t realized it.
“Whatever.” Kona hoped his insult would make his brother disinterested, at least make him second guess the attention Amber gave him. “If you want your dick to fall off then that’s your problem.”
Across the table, Nathan and Brian laughed between bites of french fries. When Luka didn’t join in with the laughter, Kona tried to defuse his twin’s temper, scanning the dining hall for an easy target. He smiled at Bethany Johnson, sitting next to her friends, just two tables over. “Hey.” He knocked his knuckles against Luka’s arm and moved his chin in Bethany’s direction. “Sophomore. Chem major. She likes big boys.” Luka moved his eyes, gave a long look at Bethany and then returned Kona’s smile. “See? That one’s clean, trust me.”
“You do her too?”
“No, brah.” He shrugged, leaning back against his chair. “Brian tried at the KA party, but she turned him down flat. Said she doesn’t like horny blonds.” Luka laughed when Brian shot him a middle finger, and Kona knew why. It wasn’t often that Brian got turned down and when he did, it was usually by good girls. Kona thought that was what Lu needed. A good girl.
He was convinced his brother was going to make his move. He thought the quick smiles he’d exchanged with Bethany had been encouragement enough to get Luka on his feet to walk over to her table, but then his twin’s face lost all expression, and he frowned at something behind Kona. “You piss off anybody lately?”
“Not today, I don’t think,” Kona said to his brother.
“What about you two?” Luka asked Nathan and Brian, getting quick head shakes from both of them. “Well, heads up. Some girl is coming this way, and she’s glaring at you like you pissed in her coffee or something.”
Instantly, Kona bent his knees, tried to make his body relax. He ran through his interactions: the girls he’d talked to lately and the last time he pissed off anyone.
Susan Decker, three weeks ago, got mad at him because he didn’t want to take her to her family’s barbeque out in Covington. But Kona, ever the peacemaker, sent Dougie Michaels to her dorm with a dozen roses and made sure the guy told Susan how much he liked barbeque and being out of the city. Dougie thanked him two days later for the hookup. He didn’t know who the girl behind him could be. Most of the girls he was with knew how he rolled. Casual hookups and nothing more. He just didn’t have time for the bullshit games that came along with being with a girl more than twice.
Luka’s eyes went wide and slipped up and down before Kona looked to his right and up at the girl that scowled down at him.
Kona had to squint, look at the smooth contours of her face, the bright blue eyes, the high cheekbones and the creamy skin, before realization hit him. This was the girl from his English class.
Kona remembered, as she stared down at him—looking like she wanted those slim fingers of hers wrapped around his neck—that he’d missed their meeting for the project. She wasn’t dressed in her usual hide-me-from-the-world clothes. She mentioned being on the track team, and so the tight running shorts she wore and a CPU track T-shirt tied in a knot at the hem made sense to him. But he’d never seen her when she wasn’t huddled under jackets and hoodies that were too big for her. Moving his gaze down her body, over those nice, high tits and flat stomach, that plump, luscious ass, Kona realized she’d been way under his radar. Her hair was pulled up in one of those high, messy buns girls always seemed to make look good, and sweat dotted along her collarbone. It was her expression, though, that had Kona trying to keep the smile off his face.
She was pissed.
Those big, bright eyes of hers were stern, shining with anger as she glared at him, and her thick, pink lips were curled up. God, he couldn’t remember her name, but if she’d looked like that in class, he’d have paid more attention to her.
“You,” she said, voice little more than a growl.
“Me.” He earned a nudge and laughs from his friends around him.
“You’re an asshole; you know that, right?”
“Hey, calm down. I missed one meeting.”
“It was the first, dumbass.”
Kona would put up with most of the shit girls gave him. He took their whining, their constant complaints of him being a player. Hell, he could even handle the teasing his friends gave him when he couldn’t shake an attached female following after him. He could even handle his mother’s bitching about working harder on his GPA. What he wouldn’t take, not from anyone, was being called dumb. That was below the belt.
This girl didn’t know him, and she made assumptions. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let her treat him like shit in the middle of the cafeteria. Not when his classmates and friends were all watching. He looked down at her when he stood, hands relaxed at his side, but he widened his stance, just in case this girl was the dramatic sort and thought she could get away with slapping him.
“You might wanna watch what you say.”
She didn’t blink, didn’t move back like most would do when they heard that hint of warning in his voice. Normally, people found him imposing and a little intimidating. Especially girls. But this chick didn’t seem bothered by his height or size. She seemed, in fact, too pissed off to care about anything but insulting him.
“Don’t you threaten me, Kona Hale. I don’t give a shit if you’re on the football team or weigh as much as a Volkswagen. You’re messing with my grade.” She took a step closer and jabbed her finger into Kona’s chest and suddenly he wasn’t so relaxed. “No one screws with my grades.”
Around them, people were staring, leaning back and over each other to watch the small outburst, so Kona attempted calm, to keep things light, to keep this uptight chick from making more of a deal about him missing their meeting than she already had. “I’m not threatening anything. You just need to calm down.”
The girl closed her eyes, rubbed her fingers over the bridge of her nose as though she needed a moment to cool her simmering fury. Finally, she looked back at him, but the anger was still there and her expression remained tense. “Let me make this as simple as possible…and you’ll have to forgive me since it’s been a long damn time since I had to speak idiot.”
He took a step toward her, not threatening really, but just on the edge of a notice that he knew would seem like a warning.
“Carry your ass to the library tomorrow night at eight, or I tell Miller about what a slacker you are and you’ll fail. You need to keep a certain GPA to play, don’t you?”
He didn’t know why she was asking and he didn’t like that she was. “What of it?”
The girl—damn, Kona wished he could remember her name— lost the tension in her face and looked smug, calculating. “My cousin works in the office of the Dean of the English Department, and she has no problem changing grades.”
“You wouldn’t,” he said, crossing his arms. “You don’t have it in you.”
That seemed to set her off. She mirrored his stance, moved her arms together over her chest before she stepped right up to him. “You have no idea what I have in me, and I promise you, you don’t want to find out.”
The way her cheeks colored, from anger, maybe from the run she clearly taken, had Kona’s mind reeling. He liked her anger, it did something to him he didn’t recognize, something that had his stomach clenching. “I don’t know, sweetheart, I think I might.”
“Tough shit. You’re not going to.” Next to them, Luka laughed, joined by the smart-assed little comments Nathan made about this girl kicking Kona’s ass. She was put off by both of them, whipped her gaze to the table and leveled a frown at Kona’s brother. “Something funny?” They were immediately quiet, eyes on anything but the scowling face of the girl in front of them. “I mean it,” she told Kona, returning her attention to him. “Tomorrow night. Library. Eight o’clock.”
He couldn’t even manage to respond, to open his mouth before she walked away, arms swinging as she ignored the stares she drew as she slammed open the dining hall door. When she marched away from him, Kona’s eyes trained onto her long, muscular legs and that lush, round ass that bounced with each stomp she made. He had to adjust himself, just watching her body move.
“Who the hell was that?” Luka asked, standing next to Kona.
“Dude, I have no clue, but I’m sure as hell gonna find out.”