Good Grades & Mystery Games (North University Series Book 2)

She’s wearing the dress.

She hasn’t seen me yet, but she’s wearing it. The same dress she wore the first time she came to my house, only to tell me she’s wearing it for someone else. The same one she wore when I carried her through the muddy forest. The same dress she wore when she put her legs in my lap in the car ride home.

The fucking dress.

We’ve hardly seen each other in the last few weeks, and it’s been harder and harder to resist her. I don’t want to approach her first and I don’t want to scare her off. Since winter break, most classes have gone by in a blur. We listen to whatever Anderson has to say, she texts me what I should do for the project, and I do it. We’re going to have to get together soon to work on our presentation, but I was planning on waiting until then to see if we could talk.

What I wasn’t planning was seeing her tonight. Especially not dressed like that.

The Bailey Foundation is one of the most prestigious and popular nights for businessmen and their families. It’s a night filled with good food, expensive drinks, decent music, and obnoxious men hoping to expand their businesses or create greater trading links. My dad told me to stay by his side tonight, but it’s hard to do when I can see Scarlett, Wren and Kennedy walking around and I’m itching to be near her again.

My dad has kept us busy, talking with boring businessmen about stocks and shit I couldn’t give a damn about. Maybe another time, but not when she’s here. Especially not when she’s looking like that. She’s not got a ribbon in tonight, so her hair rests angelically on her shoulders, her natural wavy style, not straightened.

I realise I’ve been looking at her for too long when my dad elbows me in the ribs. Hard. “Isn’t that Catherine?”

The words take a while for my brain to process. Catherine Fables, my ex-girlfriend, and the reason I was banished from the company. Okay, that wasn’t her fault. We weren’t addressing the unhappiness in our relationship for a long time, so it was my fault too. When she called it quits, it felt like a piece of me had been torn out. It was bound to happen, yet I was so stupidly confident that it wouldn’t.

We were friends before we got together and good ones at that. But after her mom passed away, we started to drift, and I realised that I couldn’t be what she needed, and she needed to take a step back. I was fighting for something I knew I’d never get back. Both of us being in the public eye just made that harder.

Still, it feels like the wind is knocked out of me when I see her after following my dad’s line of vision. She’s just as gorgeous as she was the last time I saw her. Her dark brown skin glows in the lighting of the venue, her curly hair flowing down her back against the midnight blue dress she’s wearing as she smiles at the tall brunette who is talking to her.

She must have felt my eyes on her because she turns around and her smile falters a little. She whispers something to the boy who nods and kisses her on the cheek before she makes her way over to me.

‘Evan,’ she says simply as her mouth twitches into a small smile. ‘It’s nice to see you.’

I clear my throat, trying to smooth out my voice as I say, ‘You too.’

She nods a little before turning over to the corner where Scarlett stands. I haven’t been able to take my eyes off her all night. ‘Is that your girlfriend?’ she asks.

‘No, uh.. Not yet, anyway,’ I reply. One way or another, I’m going to get her to come back to me and saying it out loud only solidifies that fact. I redirect. ‘Is that your boyfriend?’

I nod over to where the brunette is standing as he watches our conversation. ‘Connor?’ she laughs. I shrug, not remembering much from my time at Drayton Hills. He looks oddly familiar, though. ‘He’s Nora’s brother, remember? My friends who are twins?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ I say, trying to put my finger on the twins she used to hang out with. ‘He’s a football player, right?’

‘That’s the one,’ she says, looking back at him and only him.

He’s got a medal around his neck, the ones they give out to the kids at these events, so they don’t feel left out. He gives her a double thumbs up and she snorts, turning back to me, that knowing grin on her face. Weird.

‘Anyway, good luck getting the girl. You really deserve it, Evan. I know things were hard between us, but I think it was for the better. You’re happy now, right?’

I look back to Scarlett as she laughs, throwing her head back as Kennedy and Wren’s faces turn red with laughter. ‘The happiest.’

Cat turns to me, resting her hand on my shoulder. ‘Perfect. I’ll see you around, Evan. It was really nice to see you, seriously.’

‘You too, Catherine,’ I reply.

And then she’s gone. I feel all the tension evaporate from my body as she walks over to the guy she still didn’t confirm if he was her boyfriend or not – not that it’s any of my business anymore. But she seems happy, that’s all that matters.

My dad appears back at my side after a few minutes as my gaze settles on Scarlett once again, sudden nerves running through my body.

“Are you going to try to look happy, son?” he asks once one of the most boring people I’ve ever met leaves the conversation. “You’re scaring people off.”

“This is me trying,” I say, painting my face into a fake smile, baring my teeth and everything. I really couldn’t care less about tonight if I tried. He glares at me. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to act like you’re happy to be a part of B&Co,” he replies.

I scoff. “Am I happy, though? I’m hardly a part of it anymore, remember?

“Maybe if you clean up this ‘woe is me’ act, I’ll reconsider it”

“Seriously?”

“Yes,” he replies. He nods towards the bar where Scarlett is standing, wedged between a married couple and an older man. “Now go talk to that girl before you lose your mind.” This time I glare at him. “Sorry, Scarlett’s her name, right?”

“Yes,” I reply, basically beaming. “That is her name.”

I rub my sweaty hands against my trousers as I make my way over to her.

Fuck. I shouldn’t be this nervous.

Maybe I should have taken Miles’ advice, but Scarlett doesn’t seem like the type to appreciate me pestering her, so I left her alone and we worked on our project through emails and text messages. Grovelling didn’t seem like her vibe. I gave her the space she needed to figure things out, even if that meant making me overthink every single decision I’ve made up until now.

The second I’m within her proximity again, I feel my whole body come alive. Just the smell of her drives me crazy — fresh, clean, and just rich. Everything about her screams ‘I have money’ and I love it. But not as much as I love her mind and the way she sees the world. The way she managed to constantly keep up with competing with me in classes, shoving her intelligence down my throat.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to come over,” is the first thing she says to me. She turns around at the bar.

God, she looks so pretty. It’s hard to even look at her. Yet it’s all I want to do. I want to memorise her, burn it into my memory for days to come. She looks like she’s wearing a little bit of makeup because her cheeks are a new shade of red and her lips are glossier than usual.

“So, you knew I was here the whole time?” I ask playfully.

“Come on, Branson. You and your dad have been brooding in the corner the whole night. It’s kinda hard to ignore you two,” she says, rolling her eyes lightly. I look over to where my dad stood and she’s right. He’s brooding.

“I’m guessing you want to talk?” I say, shifting my weight on my feet. I shove my hands in my pockets.

“I do,” she says, holding her chin up to me, showing me that beautiful confidence that I love. “You lied to me, Evan.”

Jesus. I knew this was coming, but…I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t predict the way the words would roll out of her mouth so easily. The fresh glint of betrayal in her eyes as she tells me exactly what I did.

“I know and I’m sorry and I don’t deserve you to forgive me, but you have to understand the position I was in. It was my family. We didn’t find out anything anyway. Even if we did, I’d never let them do anything to purposefully harm your family,” I explain.

The words come out of my mouth in a rush, as if they’re competing with my brain. I probably sound stupid. She looks at me curiously, trying to understand me and I let her. I’d lay my soul bare to her if it would get her to trust me again.

“My dad is fighting for his life in the hospital right now, so don’t bullshit me about how important family is. I know you don’t have the greatest one, but you could have tried to get that back in any other way. If you wanted to tell me the truth, you could have. If you knew more than you were letting on, you could’ve told me before it got too far, but you didn’t,” she says, her voice levelled and calm. Her voice cracks a little as she says, ‘I would have listened to you. I would have understood you if you just told me.’

“I’m sorry, Scar. I’m so fucking sorry,” I say again, really meaning it. If I was smart enough, I would have told her from the beginning. I would have told her the truth and we wouldn’t be caught in shit shitstorm.

“I don’t want you to be sorry, Evan. I want you to stay, to listen, to do this fucking project so we can get on with our lives.” She steps in closer to me now, still holding her head high.

“So, that’s what we’re gonna do?” I ask. I need something more than that. I need her more than that. More than just existing in each other’s presence. “We’re just going to get on with our lives? I know you don’t do serious and I’m not asking for that, but we…You know…”

She knows exactly what I’m talking about because her face flushes as she remembers the series of hot, angry kisses and everything that led up to her whimpering my name inside the library.

“This is such a fucking mess right now,” she says, running her hands through the ends of hair, quickly. “Usually, I go with the flow. But with you, I need to know what we’re doing. This isn’t like what I usually do. You know that.”

I swallow, trying to think. I don’t want to scare her off, but I don’t want to lose her either. “I don’t know what this is either, Scarlett. If I did, you’d be the first to know. I just want to be close to you. I don’t want to lose you after all this.”

“So what? We’re dating now?” she asks. Her face scrunches up at the idea and she looks adorable. She’s pretending again. I thought I knew it before, but I now know for sure that she’s forcing herself to act like I repulse her, which only makes me smile harder.

“Do you want to date me?”

“I don’t know,” she says through a sigh, shrugging. “I hardly like you, Ev.”

That fucking nickname is going to kill me, I swear.

“Yeah, sure you don’t,” I say laughing. “Look. If you want to date me, you tell me that, Scarlett, and I’ll be the best boyfriend you’ve ever had. If you want to fool around, pretend you hate me, I’m cool with that too. You like me. I really like you. It’s that simple.”

“Is it?” she asks, tilting her head to the side playfully, pushing her hair behind her ears.

“It can be if you let it,” I whisper. She smiles then. A real smile. I lean forward to tug on the strand of her hair that I realise is not as long as it used to be. “You cut your hair.”

“Took you a while to figure that one out, genius,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“I like it. A lot,” I reply through a smile, unable to stop myself.

“Okay. But like it from a distance,” she says seriously, swatting my hand away from her.

“Why would I do that, Angel? I just said I want you close to me,” I murmur, slowly wrapping my hands around her waist as I pull her against me.

“I can do that,” she whispers, smiling up at me. Her smile is small; her lips rolled in slightly, but I can see the faint glow of red on her cheeks like she’s happy to be here with me. Finally.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it’s no big deal.” She shrugs again as if she’s too cool for this. Well, she’s already way cooler than me, so maybe she is.

“Dance with me, then.”

“Don’t push it,” she warns, squinting her eyes.

“Come on, Scar. Please?”

As if with perfect timing, the song changes to Turning Page by Sleeping At Last, the perfect song to dance to. I step back from her, letting her come to me. I hold out my hand, still walking backwards. She shakes her head at me, dropping that beautiful smile to the ground before she walks to me, clasping her hand with mine.

I pull her into me, our hands linking as I wrap one arm around her waist, her head resting on my chest. I don’t dance. Neither does she. But this right here, is probably the thing that solidifies how I feel about her. Everything about her fits so perfectly with me. Like no matter how many times we argued or pushed each other away, we were always destined to find our way back to each other.

We sway to the music, and I close my eyes, letting the moment take us away. I’ve needed to be this close to her for weeks. Now that I have her, I’m never letting her go again.

“I want to move on,” she whispers into my shirt. “I want to see wherever this goes, but you hurt me, Evan. What you did really fucking hurt.”

“I know.”

“You can’t keep getting involved with my family anymore, it’s too much. If we’re doing whatever the fuck this is, that doesn’t mean you need to know everything about what’s going on. So, drop it, okay?”

“Already did,” I say thickly. When the words leave my mouth they sound like a lie, because the second I say it, I look up and my dad is staring right at me. I mean it when I say I’m not going to get involved. I don’t want to do anything to hurt her again. I can try to protect her the best I can, lay down my life for her, but that doesn’t mean my dad won’t try.