CHAPTER FIVE
He’d been smiling at her, but the moment he saw her face—and the fact that she’d obviously been about to lose it—his smile fell away. “Serena, what’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, but before she could manage to get any words out, his hands were already moving over her. Not in a deliberately sexy way, but with concern.
“No,” she finally said, although given how his touch was making her feel, the word sounded like it had at least two syllables. “You didn’t hurt me.”
His hands finally stopped at her waist again, and he was still frowning at her. “But you’re upset.” His frown deepened as he asked, “Did another jerk bother you for a picture?”
“No.” Although in many ways, her professor seemed way worse than any of those guys who hadn’t even bothered to hide their dirty thoughts about her.
“Then what happened?”
“It’s nothing,” she said automatically.
“I doubt that,” he said softly, and from the way he was looking into her eyes, she knew he could see he was right.
Sisters, she reminded herself. He’d told her last week during his apology that he had sisters. She could guess that he’d probably spent plenty of time soothing them when they’d skinned their knees or had their feelings hurt.
Still…she didn’t know him, so it felt risky to trust him. Besides, how would it sound if she told him how much her professor creeped her out? Or how lonely she felt in her crowded dorm even though she was surrounded by a hundred other people? Or how she wished she could just be normal for one day of her life?
“Sorry about barreling into you like that.” She made herself step out of his arms. Arms that were, amazingly, just as comforting as they were arousing. “The dining hall will be closing soon and since I missed lunch I should get go—”
“Come grab some pizza with me.”
He didn’t reach for her again or try to keep her from fleeing, but his abrupt suggestion had the same effect. “You want to go get pizza with me?”
She could still see the concern in his eyes, but he was doing his best to mask it with a grin. “Have you eaten at Pizza My Heart on University yet?”
“No.” She hadn’t ventured too far off campus yet. Barely beyond the library, in fact.
“Then someone’s got to introduce you to the best pizza place on the West Coast.”
She’d made herself walk away from him so many times already. But right now, she just didn’t have it in her to do it again. “Okay. I’d like that.”
He reached for her bag and had it off her shoulder and onto his before she could think to protest. “I know why you looked so upset,” he said as he shifted her bag over his back.
She’d been walking beside him as they headed down from the path to Palm Drive and into downtown Palo Alto, but now she stopped cold. “How could you possibly know?”
His brows lowered as he stopped and faced her. “I was making a joke about how the load of bricks you’re carrying around in this bag is practically making me cry.” He reached out for her again, put his hand on her arm. “Serena, what the hell happened today?”
Sympathy was the worst thing of all, she realized, because it brought up all the emotions again. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Belatedly, realizing how cold her response must have sounded when he’d been nothing but awesome today, she added, “I mean, you’ve been so nice about it, but—”
“You don’t know me.”
She blinked up at him, surprised that he’d understood. Sisters, she thought again. Something told her he’d been a good brother to them.
“Given what I do—” She stopped to correct herself. “I mean, what I used to do—”
Ugh, she didn’t want to sound like a prima donna, or as if she thought she was such a big star that she couldn’t say anything to anyone for fear that it would end up in People magazine. But the problem was, sometimes it did. It was the same reason why she hadn’t really hung around her dorm room much since the frat party the week before. Of course Abi would want to know what had ended up happening with the guy Serena had been making out with. On the one hand, Serena desperately wanted a girlfriend to confide in. But on the other, what if it turned out that Abi wasn’t trustworthy?
“I get it,” Sean said easily as he walked beside her. “My brother Drew has a band that’s getting pretty big. He’s into it for the music, not the fame, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way for him to escape the spotlight.”
“Wait a minute,” she said as she suddenly put two and two together, “Drew Morrison is your brother?” When he nodded, she said, “I love his music.”
“It’s pretty good,” Sean agreed with another heart-stoppingly gorgeous grin. “We’re all proud of him.”
From the way Sean talked about his brother, she could see that he really was. There was no jealousy over Drew being one of the biggest up-and-coming rock stars on the planet. Only good-natured ribbing from one sibling to another.
“You mentioned sisters before. How many of you are there?”
“Six.”
“Wow. I’ve always thought it would be cool to have siblings, but I always imagined one or two. Not growing up with five other people always around. Do you like having such a big family?”
“I do. Most of the time, anyway. Everyone’s got their weird quirks, but you learn pretty quickly how to avoid the rough spots...or use them to your advantage if you need to.”
She laughed, realizing with no little surprise just how easy he was to talk to. And to kiss, a little voice inside her head reminded her. But she shouldn’t be thinking about kissing Sean right now. Not when she was enjoying their conversation so much that it no longer seemed completely impossible that she might actually be making a friend.
A really hot friend.
“I’d love to hear about the rest of them.”
“Grant is twenty-five, and never lets any of us forget he’s the oldest. His office is actually not far from where we’re having pizza, near a bunch of other high-tech companies.”
“That must be nice that he’s still in the area.”
“It is, though we haven’t seen much of him since he founded Collide.”
“He started Collide? The social networking company with the tagline When Worlds Collide?”
“Yup, that’s Grant’s company.”
She knew she was sounding like a dork, first with how she’d goggled over his rock-star brother, and now how stunned she was to learn that Sean’s oldest brother had founded one of the fastest-rising social networking companies in the world.
“That’s amazing.”
“It is. But,” he said with another grin, “if you tell him I said that, he’d probably have shirts printed up with the word amazing and his face on them. So let’s just keep that between us, okay?”
Since she seriously doubted she’d ever get the chance to meet Grant Morrison, she wasn’t particularly worried about breaking Sean’s confidence.
“Drew is the next oldest, and then my sister Olivia. She’s a senior here, majoring in Education.”
“Are you all geniuses?”
“Olivia definitely is,” he said with a fondness that told Serena just how much he admired his older sister. “Although my brother Justin’s brains pretty much put all of us in the dust. He’s also on campus, doing a double major in Biology and Robotic Engineering. He got all the brains in our twin cave, but I’m okay with that.”
“Twins?” Her mind reeled trying to imagine a second guy who looked as good as Sean walking around campus. No doubt just seeing them together in one place would make a girl’s brain melt out her ears. “Are you two close the way they say twins are?”
“Yup, we get along pretty well, probably because we’re so different and rarely compete for the same stuff. Although, he’s one hell of a baseball player.”
In the week since she’d met—and kissed—Sean at the frat party, Serena had learned that Sean was a junior and the star first baseman and hitter on the Stanford baseball team. Funny, she thought as they crossed at a traffic light, he spoke so easily about his family but hadn’t yet mentioned anything about his own achievements. Wouldn’t most guys have bragged about themselves by now?
“Does Justin also play on the Stanford team?”
Sean raised an eyebrow at her also, as if to say, So you do know something about me, huh?
She blushed in confirmation as he told her, “Nope. He’d rather spend hours geeking out in a lab than standing in the outfield waiting for someone to hit a fly ball in his direction.”
“Do you guys have that twin sense you hear about in movies? You know, where one of you cuts himself and the other feels it?”
Sean laughed. “No, thank God. Although, sometimes I do feel like I can read his mind. Especially when it comes to this girl, Taylor, that he’s been friends with forever and is secretly in love with. He’s so frustrated, it’s sad.”
“If he’s in love with her, why doesn’t he let her know how he feels?” She was surprised to find herself asking such a personal question, but Sean made it so easy. “Is it because he’s afraid to ruin their friendship just in case it doesn’t work out?”
“Maybe. Or maybe she’s made it clear that she’s just not interested.”
“Do you think she’s not interested?”
He thought about it for a second. “Taylor is a cute girl, but all up in her head like Justin. She’s pretty nervous around guys.” He shrugged again. “Heck, who knows if she’s even been on a date before.”
Serena tucked her head down just in case Sean might guess from just looking at her reaction that she’d never been on a date before, either. Maybe she’d have to go look this Taylor up and the two of them could bond over their utter cluelessness around men.
Especially the Morrison twins.
“And then there’s my sister, Maddie. She’s still in high school, graduating this year.” He shook his head. “She’s a little spitfire. Not to mention too smart, too talented, and too pretty for her own good. We all try to watch out for her to make sure she doesn’t get into trouble, but it’s hard now that we’re not at home with her anymore.”
Sean opened the door to the small pizza place and they stepped into what had to be the best smelling restaurant on the planet. “What do you like on your pizza?”
Pizza was one of the many menu items at the top of her mother’s Do Not Ever Eat list. But, what the heck? If Serena was going to eat pizza, she might as well do it right. “Everything.”
He looked momentarily surprised and then pleased as he said, “Two slices with everything. And two Cokes.”
The restaurant was small, with only a handful of scratched-up Formica tables. A couple of minutes later when they were sitting down with the biggest pieces of pizza she could have imagined in front of them, she said, “Your brothers and sisters all sound amazing. I’ll bet your parents are great, too, aren’t they?”
Suddenly, that same pain she’d seen in his eyes on the dance floor at the party flashed through them again.
She instinctively reached out to him. “Sean?” His arm was warm beneath her hand. “What happened?”
His expression had already shuttered, but he told her, “You’re right, my parents are great.” He swallowed before amending it to, “Were great. My dad is still around,” he clarified. “He works in real estate, gives out loans to people. It’s my mom.” He inhaled a breath that she could see shook him. “She passed away three months ago from breast cancer.”
“Oh Sean, I’m so sorry.”
“I am, too. She was great. A schoolteacher. Third grade. Everyone misses her.”
Serena had never come face-to-face with such grief. “She sounds like she was an amazing mother.”
“She was.” But it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “What about your family? You said you’re an only child, right?”
“It’s always been just me and my mom.” She wasn’t telling him anything he couldn’t have read online if he wanted to look her up, but it still wasn’t easy to admit, “I never met my father.”
“That sucks.”
She looked up at Sean, surprised by his bluntness. But somehow, it helped settle her down a bit. “Yeah, it does. But I’ve never known anything else.”
“Must have been hard for your mom to let her only kid go away to school.”
“You have no idea.” Her mouth felt so dry that she picked up her Coke and gulped down half the bottle.
Soda was another thing she’d very rarely had due to the empty calories and potential bloating from the sodium and carbonation. But as she licked her lips to savor every last drop…wow, all those bubbles and sugar and caffeine tasted so good. No wonder people got addicted to it.
Sean had already eaten half his slice by the time she took her first bite. And when the mingling tastes of the pepperoni and mushrooms and onions and peppers and sauce and cheese all hit her tongue at once, she couldn’t keep her eyes from closing or a low moan of pleasure from leaving her throat.
“Good?”
Sean was clearly amused, but she didn’t have it in her to be embarrassed, not when this pizza was the very best thing she’d eaten in her whole life. Ever.
“So good,” she managed to get out between bites as she concentrated her entire being on her meal for a few minutes. Each new taste was as big a revelation as the one that came before it, and washing it down with Coke felt so deliciously sinful. In fact, it took several minutes for her to resurface and remember that she was sitting in a pizza joint with a gorgeous guy from school. Who just happened to be grinning at her.
“I take it you agree that it’s the best pizza on the West Coast?”
“I’ve never eaten pizza anywhere else, but it’s so amazing I’m sure you’re right.”
His eyebrows went up. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”
She was momentarily confused. “About what?”
“You’ve never eaten pizza before?”
Ugh, her and her stupid mouth. Between feeling increasingly comfortable talking with Sean and the food coma she was quickly slipping into, she’d said more than she should have.
Knowing there was no point in trying to laugh off her comment, she simply said, “My life has been pretty weird up until now. I haven’t done a lot of normal stuff. Especially,” she added, “when it comes to junk food. It’s not exactly true that I’ve never eaten pizza before, just that I was really little the last time I did. My mom would freak out if she saw this.”
“You mean because of your modeling career?”
Serena nodded, hoping he would drop it. She didn’t want to talk about her mom or the career she’d left behind. Not when, for a few precious moments, she’d actually managed to forget all about them.
“So,” he said as he toed her bag on the floor and it didn’t budge, “what’s in all the books you’ve got crammed into this bag?”
Relieved that he’d decided to change subjects, she said, “Nearly everything ever written about the Brontë sisters and their books. I’m in love with the way they use language, with how their books can make people feel so much, from hope to despair, laughter and tears.” On a roll, she told him, “I love that I can learn almost anything from a book—how to build a boat, or speak a new language, or probably even fly a plane. I even love the way books smell. If I were locked inside a library or a bookstore for weeks on end, I’m certain that I would never run out of interesting things to discover.”
She finally realized she was rambling, but fortunately he didn’t look like he minded and his eyes weren’t glazing over.
“Do you want to write?”
“Maybe. Or teach. Or study the origins of language. Or work in a library. Or—” She cut herself off before she went zooming again. “That’s why I’m so excited to be at Stanford. Everything seems possible.”
“Most people would have thought you already had everything.”
She didn’t want to sound ungrateful for her success. And since she still didn’t know him well enough to know if she could totally trust him, she simply said, “My career was great. I worked with a lot of wonderful people.”
“But you didn’t get to live in a library all day.”
Again, he surprised her with how quickly he boiled everything down to the heart of the matter. And how well he understood what she was feeling without her having to say much at all.
“No, I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time in libraries. But now I do.” Which reminded her… “I should actually be heading back to campus. I have a lot of reading to get through tonight.”
“On a Friday night?”
“I’ve agreed to help one of my professors with some new class material he’s working on, so my load has gotten a little heavier.” As they stood up and he slung both their bags over his broad shoulders, she said, “Thank you for the pizza. It was great.”
“You’re not done with me yet,” he said with a grin. “We’ve still got to make the walk back to your dorm.”
“Actually, I think I’ll head to the library to work there until it closes.” Just as she had every Friday night since she’d been on campus.
“Something tells me,” he said as they headed out onto the sidewalk and started walking back toward campus, “that hanging out with you would be good for my GPA.”
“What’s your major?”
“Baseball.” He laughed. “With a degree in Economics on the side.”
“As you might have already guessed, I’ve heard a few things about how great you are at baseball. Are you really going to go pro at the end of this year?”
“I could.” He didn’t say anything else for a little while, and she let him take the time to get his thoughts together. “But—” When he turned to look at her, his eyes were even darker than usual. “—my mom was pretty big on all of us getting a college degree. I can’t help but think if I go pro before graduating, and maybe don’t end up coming back to finish one day, that she’d be disappointed.”
“I very much doubt,” Serena said in a gentle voice, “that there’s anything you could do that would disappoint her.”
He stopped walking and reached for her hand. “The way I acted with you last weekend...she would have been disappointed with that.”
“You’ve already apologized, Sean.”
“But I shouldn’t have treated you like—”
“How about,” she interrupted, “we agree to forget what happened last Friday night? We were both in a weird space and nothing really bad ended up happening, so I’d hate to ruin today by going back to that again.”
He searched her face for several long moments. Finally, he agreed, “Okay, I’ll try to forget the bad stuff, like what a dick I was. But I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to forget everything.” He moved closer, close enough that she could have easily pressed her lips to his before taking her next breath. “Because I really, really liked kissing you, Serena. And I’m really glad you agreed to come get pizza with me today.”
She knew she was blushing as she said, “I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with you today, too. You made a bad day so much better. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me for anything, Serena. I’m just glad I was able to be there for you when you needed me. And if you ever want to talk about what happened this afternoon, I’m here.”
Could anyone be sweeter? Not to mention that the way his low voice sizzled through her veins made it hard to think about anything other than her desperate need to kiss him again.
And yet, it was that very desperation that scared her enough to need to take a step away from him. Of course she wanted to experience magic and passion, but at the same time she didn’t have any experience with these kinds of intense feelings. Feelings that had all come on so suddenly…ones that felt like they could zoom ahead really fast. She needed a little time to think, to process, to try to figure out if she could actually manage to do well in school and date, too. Especially given that any guy she was dating was sure to find his face in a tabloid photo pretty darn fast, which also meant that her mother would find out, too.
“I wasn’t trying to blow you off last Friday when I said I needed to study,” she tried to explain. “It’s just that I really need to do well this quarter. That’s why I’ve got to work so hard all the time, even tonight.”
“If I kissed you again now, something tells me you might change your mind about studying tonight.”
Oh God, when he looked at her like that, with so much heat and desire, she couldn’t look away from him, couldn’t move. All she could do was wait for his mouth to cover hers, and for everything else to fade away beneath the inevitable persuasion of his kiss.
Only, right when she could almost feel his lips against hers, he was the one suddenly taking a step back and letting go of her hand. “Damn it, I’m doing it again. Trying to convince you to do something you don’t want to do.” He cursed again, clearly pissed off at himself. “I have no right to ask you to forgive me again—”
“There’s nothing to forgive.” Because the truth was that she’d wanted his kiss just as much. “Any other girl would have been dying for you to kiss her. And,” she added with a small smile that she hoped would soften the blow, “I can say from personal experience that they would have liked it very much.” She took a deep breath and made herself add, “Maybe one day I won’t always have to study quite so hard.”
She hoped he knew that was her way of trying not to close the door forever, and thankfully a few seconds later, he smiled again. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his normal easy smile, because he was clearly still upset with himself. And when he dropped her off at the library a short while later, he was careful not to do anything that could be misconstrued as hitting on her again.
So then, Serena wondered as she headed to her usual spot on the third floor, if he’d just given her exactly the space she’d told him she needed by not kissing or even hugging her, why did her little corner of the library suddenly feel lonelier than ever?