He lowered his mouth as if he was going to kiss her again, but the more he tried to convince her to come upstairs to sleep with him, the colder every part of her grew.
Too late, she realized that she’d been so stupid and needy that she’d mistaken the heat of his drunken kisses for something more, for something bigger. For something she’d been waiting her whole life to feel.
Suddenly she could see that all he wanted was to take her up to his room to have sex with her, even though he couldn’t possibly know anything at all about her apart from the fact that she was famous…and that she obviously loved kissing him.
Angry with him—but also with herself for being stupid enough to think it could ever have been a good idea to go to a frat party—she put both of her hands on his chest and shoved him away. So hard that, for the first time since he’d spun her into his arms out on the dance floor, he didn’t try to kiss her again.
“What’s wrong?”
“I know you’ve probably seen my pictures in magazines and think I’m easy—”
God, she couldn’t believe her voice was starting to break. She needed to get out of here before she made an even bigger fool of herself. But she couldn’t leave without letting him know that whatever he’d assumed about her just because she was famous was wrong. Completely wrong.
“I shouldn’t have come here tonight and I definitely shouldn’t have kissed you back,” she told him. “But I still can’t believe you would actually think that I’d want to sleep with you when I only just met you five minutes ago. I would never do that.” She made sure to look him straight in the eye. “Never.”
Then she reached deep for the poise she’d used on hundreds of runways, and walked away.
* * *
What the hell had just happened?
Sean stood frozen in the spot where the girl had shoved him away and then called him out for acting like a total jerk. One second he’d been buzzing from the alcohol, the next he’d been kissing the prettiest girl in the world. And then, just minutes later, everything had gone horribly wrong.
What the hell had he just done?
The girl was gone, but he could still see the expressions that had raced across her face right before she left. First, she’d been stunned. Then, she’d been angry. But by the end, she’d simply looked hurt. And so incredibly disappointed, as if she couldn’t believe he would treat her the way he had, like nothing more than a piece of meat.
What the hell was wrong with him lately?
Any buzz the alcohol had given him, any numbness he’d managed to attain, immediately disappeared in the wake of her disappointment in him. When she’d shoved him away, when she’d looked at him like he was scum and then laid out the really good reasons why he actually was scum, it had been like having a huge bucket of ice water dumped over him.
Sean felt like he was finally waking up from a long, bad dream.
Especially given what she’d said to him when they were on the dance floor: “Whatever happened, I’m sorry.” It was as though she’d seen straight through to his heart, everything he’d been trying to hold back, to hold inside, to ignore and forget. And when she’d reached up to touch his cheek, it had been the first time he’d felt alive, truly alive, in months.
When Sean was a little kid and got into his first fight on the playground at school, his mother and father had taught him how to apologize. Tonight, though, he didn’t need his mother’s voice in his head telling him the right thing to do. He knew it already. Because he’d been a dirtbag.
An epic dirtbag.
Sean pushed through the crowd and out the door in hopes that she’d still be outside talking to friends, telling them what a total ass he was. But she wasn’t out there and he hated the thought of her heading back to her dorm alone at night, even though the campus was usually safe.
Plus, since he didn’t even know her name, how was he going to let her know how sorry he was?
“Damn,” Kurt said, shaking his head as he walked up. “I never thought the day would come when you’d strike out. Big time, too. I guess that’s what happens when you try to put the moves on a supermodel; they’re not that easily impressed.”
“What did you just say? You know who she is?”
“Seriously?” Kurt looked at Sean over the rim of his beer cup. “You didn’t know you were putting the moves on one of the hottest supermodels in the world? Everyone has been talking about Serena Britten being a freshman this year. People have been trying to spot her, but she’s been pretty elusive until tonight. I couldn’t believe it when I saw that she was here dancing. Of course, that was right when you swooped in to make your move.”
When she’d been dancing with her eyes closed, her hands raised as she moved to the beat, her long hair falling in waves over her shoulders and her legs going on forever, she hadn’t looked as young as the other girls. Sean had wondered if she could be a sophomore or junior, and had thought there was something familiar about her. But he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Now, though, he could totally picture Serena’s face on the cover of the magazines his sister Maddie pored over.
Suddenly, what she’d said right after she’d shoved him away made perfect sense: “I know you’ve probably seen my pictures in magazines and think I’m easy.”
Damn it, no. He didn’t think that. He hadn’t even known she was famous. And if he wasn’t absolutely sure that showing up at her dorm room tonight to apologize would only freak her out more, Sean would already have been halfway across campus to tell her all this.
When he headed back inside, it wasn’t to party or to drink any more, but to change into his shorts and running shoes. Already he knew that the only chance he’d have of getting any sleep tonight would be through pure exhaustion.
Especially when the disappointment in Serena’s eyes wouldn’t stop haunting him.
CHAPTER THREE
After baseball practice early Saturday morning, Sean headed on foot to the freshman dorms. Now that he knew who Serena was, he must have heard her name at least a dozen times since last night. Clearly, the only reason he’d missed the news of her being on campus was because he’d been so deep in his numbed-out haze of drinking every night and then trying to keep his shit together out on the field and in class during the day that he hadn’t paid attention to anything else.
As he pushed through the front doors of her dorm, though he hadn’t been nervous around a girl since his early teens, his heart was pounding hard. He had just jogged up the stairs to the second floor when one of the doors opened and someone stepped into the hall.