The acceptance letter burned in my hands, I watched as the sun cast an afternoon glow upon the embossed university seal. I felt my heart racing as I held the envelope to my chest picturing Jayce's face when I announced the news.
We'd done it. We were both admitted to Westfield University.
Four years together and we'd have four more on the same campus. I could already see us walking hand in hand on the quad, hunkered down together in the library, and building our life with one another. My boyfriend, my first love.
I practically skipped up the stone path to the Jones' estate, a sprawling mansion that I was still largely afraid to be in even though it had been three years of dating Jayce. The front door was open, Mrs. Jones had told me I was always welcome so I let myself in, clinging to my precious letter.
"Jayce?" I shouted, my voice rebounding around the marble foyer. "Baby, where are you? I have the best news!"
Silence.
That was odd. His Maserati was in the driveway, and he had texted me an hour ago that he was home. I looked in the living room, the kitchen, even in the game room where he typically played Call of Duty with his friends.
Nothing.
Then I heard it. A shriek that chilled my blood right down to the soles of my feet.
A moan. Female. Coming from upstairs.
My hands started trembling. No. No, it couldn't be. Jayce wouldn't—
Another moan, sounding closer this time, and now a deep throaty masculine groan I'd recognize anywhere. I'd heard that sound hushed against my neck, breathed into my ear during our most private times.
The acceptance letter slipped from my fingers, fluttering to the floor like a wounded bird.
My legs automatically carried me up the grand staircase, as my brain screamed at me to turn around, to run, not to look at what I knew was going to happen. With every step I took, it got harder and felt like i was walking on sand, now my heart was hitting against my ribcage so hard that I thought it would pop out of the flesh.
The sounds grew louder. More explicit.
Jayce's bedroom door was slightly ajar.
Just enough to wreck my world.
I opened it, and time shattered into a thousand brittle shards, each one sharper than the next.
There, nestled between the sheets we'd shared chaste kisses between us on during movie nights, lay Jayce. My Jayce. His perfectly sculpted back muscles flexing, his hands gripping…
"Oh, God Jayce please right there don't stop—"
The voice sent bile up my throat.
Scarlett.
My stepsister Scarlett, her long auburn hair spread across Jayce's pillows, and her nails perfectly manicured, raked down his back as he pounded against her in a way I'd never seen him show me. Her legs were slicked around his waist, and the little designer dress she'd shared at breakfast this morning was lying on the bedroom floor with his clothes.
"Feels so much better than her." Jayce groaned, sounding as if he had a mouthful of pleasure. "Brook's so... So boring. But you, Scarlett … damn, you're amazing."
And the words hit me like blows.
Scarlett's eyes suddenly met mine across the top of Jayce's head. I caught a flicker of surprise on her face for a split second. Then it twisted into something far more worse, a grin. Smiling in triumph and satisfaction, she moaned louder, arching her back, posing for the cameras.
For me.
"Jayce," she cooed, all the while staring me straight in the eyes. "You're amazing. A lot better than I ever dreamed."
Jayce caught her look then. He looked away, and the color left his face.
"Brook —" He swung himself off the bed, getting tangled in the sheets. "Baby, wait, this isn't—"
I didn't stop to listen to one of his pathetic stories. I turned and ran.
"Brooklyn!" His voice following me down the hallway. "Please, let me explain!"
I ran out the front door, tears streaming down my face, my vision fogged. I could hear him behind me, still calling my name, but I kept going. I couldn't stop. If I paused, I would come completely apart.
I ran and ran, until my lungs scorched, until I could no longer hear his voice, until the Jones estate was nothing more than a smear behind me.
I sank onto a bench three blocks away, gasping and sobbing. How could he? How could she? My own stepsister. That girl who'd come to live in my home two years ago when my late-proud dad married her mother. The girl who smiled at me over breakfast, borrowed my clothes and whose friendship I had tried so hard to earn irrespective of her cold behavior.
She'd been sleeping with my boyfriend.
And Jayce —sweet Jesus, the things he'd said. "Vanilla." "Boring." As if our three years together had meant nothing. Like I meant nothing.
I have no idea how long I sat there, what did it matter, crying my eyes out. The bronze-haired-son's eyes narrowed as the sun started to drop, turning more horrifying shades of pink and orange—too lovely a sky for such an ugly day.
At last, I got up on wobbly legs. I couldn't go home. Not yet. I didn't want to face my dad and stepmother's questions, I couldn't risk running into Scarlett.
I had to stay out of sight for a bit. To forget. Not to feel this terrible weight crushing my chest.
My feet took me downtown, to the only place I knew would serve as blessed oblivion, if only temporarily: The Velvet Room, a swank adult bar that never made too much of an issue about checking IDs in the middle of a weeknight.
The Velvet Room was shrouded in darkness and half full, just what I wanted. I planted myself on a barstool and ordered a vodka cranberry, then another, then another. The alcohol stung as it went down, but it was a good kind of pain, something I could control, unlike the wreckage that was my love life.
"Rough day?"
That voice was deep, rich and it threw a charge down my spine for the surprise of it. I turned to see a man slipping onto the stool beside me, and my breath caught.
He was... devastating.
He was older than me—probably early thirties, with dark hair that swept down enough over his forehead to be across on kept separate by furry mandibles, a strong jawbone shadowed with commanded grow exactly booths rankered buck's stubble, compelling blue eyes that glowed under the bar's low lights. He looked more expensive than my car, dressed in an impeccably tailored black suit with the top button of his crisp white shirt open enough to hint at the column of his throat.
But it was the look he gave me that made my stomach do a flip. Like he could see right through me, through the smudged makeup and red-rimmed eyes, into something beyond.
"Maybe so," I garbled, taking another drink.
His lips twitched to a half smile that managed to look both pitying and dangerously sexy. "You want to talk about it, or do you want a distraction?"
"Distraction," I said immediately. "Definitely a distraction."
He signaled the bartender. "Two shots of Patrón, please." He turned those electric blue eyes back to me. "I'm Daniel."
"Brooklyn." I don't know why I gave him my real name. It was the booze, most likely, letting my tongue prattle on, but there was something in that look of his — like I was the only thing in the world.
"Pretty name for a pretty girl." The tenor of his voice lowered, became more intimate. "Despite looking as if you've been crying. What an idiot to who ever made you cry."
The shots came in, and he slid one over to me. "To idiots and the brilliant they lose."
We toasted, and I slammed the tequila. It burned so much more than the vodka, but I didn't mind.
Daniel pressed closer, his knee against my own. The touch sent electricity zapping through my body. "So, Brooklyn. What are you doing by yourself in a bar on a Tuesday night?"
"Found my boyfriend cheating," I told him, booze pushing me to be bold. "With my stepsister. In his bed."
His jaw clenched, something dark passing through his eyes. "Then he's not just an idiot. He's a fool." His hand landed on top of my knee, warm and firm. "His loss is my gain, though. I'm going to spend the night with the most beautiful woman I've seen in decades."
The way Daniel looked at me — hungry, appreciative, like I was something precious made me feel wanted in a way Jayce never had.
You're a charmer," I said, taken aback by the flirtatious sound of my voice.
"Only when it's true." His thumb moved in small circles on my knee, each contact setting a pool of warmth low in my belly. "Brooklyn, can I buy you a drink?"
I should have said no.
Well, instead I said, "Only if you agree to stay with me."
His smile was pure sin. "I wouldn't dream of leaving."
Hours blurred together. Between cocktails and shots, Daniel's hand had worked its way up my thigh and I'd tilted into it, inhaling his heady smell, something rich and masculine that made me dizzy.
"You know what I think?" Daniel whispered, his lips a whisper away from my ear. "I believe you're going to have to let go of that boy who didn't know a good thing when he had it."
"And how should I go about that?" There was no question: I was drunk as hell now, inhibitions and angst swirling in the gyre of alcohol.
His eyes darkened with unmistakable desire. "Come with me."
It was reckless of me, but I still followed him.
That night dissolved into a blur of hot kisses and frantic touches. Daniel had made me feel things I'd never felt with Jayce, hadn't even known possible. And when I opened my eyes in the morning, with an empty bed and a note that only declared "You were extraordinary. D, not once did I feel cheap or used." with a smiling emoji.
I felt powerful.
Over the next week, Jayce begged forgiveness. He sent flowers, showed up at my door, swore that it meant nothing with Scarlett. And part of me, the part that had entertained an unforgettable night with a stranger, felt vindicated. We were even now.
"One chance," I finally told him. "You do this again and we are finished."
Two weeks later, I attended my first college class: Introduction to Psychology.
The professor walked through the door, and my heart stopped.
Those blue eyes met mine in the lecture hall.
Daniel.
"Good morning, everyone," he said, his words reaching through the room. I'm Professor Anderson and this is Introduction to Psychology.