Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

P resent

This Is Why I Am Still a Virgin

Ruby

I’m rinsing the conditioner out of my hair and singing my favorite tune in the shower, grateful I have a brother who lives on campus. I remember getting my offer to Westfall U and thinking what a great opportunity it would be to run on their track team when Abuela reminded me it was always good to have family close by. Riverside U has just as good of a reputation, but I had wanted to leave Michigan. This morning was a good reminder as to why I made the right choice. When the sprinkler system went off in Campbell Hall because of a burst pipe this morning and my dorm room flooded, all hell broke loose. By the time me and my bestie, Charlie, got our things out of the building, I was a sweaty mess and my anxiety had shot through the roof. Thankfully, my older brother, Hayden, gave me his house key. He saved my ass once again. Just thinking of all the students trying to save their belongings from getting ruined by the water and how we had to lift our suitcases down the stairs since the elevators weren’t working exhausts me. At least I had a few minutes to take a shower before class this morning.

I leave the shower and wrap a towel around me. I’m humming a tune as I leave the bathroom upstairs and head to my brother’s room. He isn’t home. None of the guys are. Hayden lives in the hockey house and all the guys are either in morning skate or on their way to class. I trudge barefoot down the hall. I didn’t have it in me to lift my suitcases up the stairs, so I opened one of them up downstairs and took some clean clothes for today. Unfortunately, I forgot all my hair supplies back in the dorm and we were told we won’t be able to enter the building for a while. I’m almost at my brother’s bedroom door when Macklin Dombrovsky comes up the stairs. I freeze, my heart skipping a beat. I’ve crushed on Macklin since we were teenagers. He’d grown up living across the hall from us. I haven’t seen him much since coming to Riverside. He’s busy with the team like my brother, but he is also being weird since I arrived. I don’t know what I expected from him, but we were super close growing up. It was Hayden, Macklin, and me against the world. I was disappointed when Macklin barely gave me the time of day my freshman year. When his cold silence continued into my sophomore year, I was heartbroken, but I didn’t want to stir up any trouble. He was still Hayden’s best friend. He was still like family since he always came back home with Hayden for the holidays. He just has a problem that he never looks me in the eyes. Sometimes I want to ask him if I did something wrong, but then I drop it because he’s too important to Hayden and so am I. Besides, I hate conflict.

“Periwinkle?” Macklin asks wide-eyed. He’s only called me that when we were alone in the past. It was a little secret we shared, and it made my stomach flip. The last time he called me that was before arriving here after high school.

“Sorry, my dorm flooded. I had nowhere to go,” I explain, holding the top of my towel so it doesn’t drop.

“Shit, that’s crazy,” he replies, his eyes sweeping over my body. “I should go. I’m late for class.” He inches past me in the narrow hallway. I take in the scent of his mountain fresh body wash. Our chests brush, my hand moves, and my towel slips before I can catch it and pools on the floor, exposing every naked inch of me.

“Holy shit,” I curse, bending to get it.

“Sorry, it was my fault,” he says, bending to help me too. Our eyes meet and I see heat in his eyes when he checks me out, but it doesn’t make sense as the heat morphs into panic. Our foreheads smash together as we stand.

I howl in pain. Macklin curses.

“Please, let me just pick it up,” I plead as my head throbs. I can’t believe I am wet and buck naked in front of my teenage crush.

He takes a step back and turns around, so he isn’t ogling me. “I didn’t see anything,” he says awkwardly, but he fully saw every inch of me.

“Like I believe you,” I mutter.

“Shit, I’m so sorry, Rubes.” Is he apologizing for barely speaking to me for two years, for knocking my towel off me, or for colliding with my head?

“It’s fine, Mack. I’ll just slip into the room and cry from shame,” I reply, feeling mortified. I will be traumatized from this moment forever. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic but this is completely horrible. The first guy to see me buck naked is my brother’s best friend, and it wasn’t intentional. This is why I am still a virgin in my junior year of college.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of, and please don’t cry,” he answers, facing the other way.

“Yeah, well, I disagree with that,” I mumble. I head into my brother’s room and close the door behind me. I can never look Macklin in the eyes again, and it’s a bloody shame because the guy has the most stunning shade of gray eyes I’ve ever seen.

I melt against the door, squeezing my eyes shut and trying to get my bearings. So what if he was the first guy to see you naked? It wasn’t on purpose. He didn’t seem to be flustered. I think he cared more about respecting me than anything else. He probably also doesn’t want Hayden to beat his ass. Hayden loves him like a brother, but my brother is seriously overprotective of me.

I take a few slow breaths. I have to get my shit together and get to class. I hate missing class and I have an elective this morning. It’s a kinesiology class and there is this hot guy I’ve been checking out. I make sure the door is locked before I drop the towel and get dressed. I put on a pair of jean shorts and a pink cropped T-shirt. I use my brother’s hairbrush and then put my hair up in a high ponytail since it’s hot outside, and my hair is long and sometimes makes me hot. I slip on my socks and sneakers and check myself in my brother’s body-length mirror. I need to speak to Hayden because Charlie and I need a place to stay tonight. I’d rather not have to pay for an Airbnb. I shoot Hayden a quick text. telling him what happened. Within seconds, my brother is responding that I should take Shane Stalkhouse’s room, and Charlie is welcome to stay with me. Hayden knows Charlie, which is short for Charlotte, and I have been besties since my first week on campus and we are always together.

I head back downstairs, not realizing Macklin is still home.

“Oh, hi,” I say awkwardly. It’s not like I can say, “So what do you think of what you saw? Maybe you’d be interested in taking my V-card?”

I blink, washing my mind of the thought I’ve had much too often.

His right hand rubs the back of his neck. “Are you okay?”

Being near him and not having him ignore me causes a rush of memories from the past to flow through my mind. Macklin was always the sweetest, most caring guy. Having him practically ignore me never sat right with me. Abuela thinks he just has a lot on his mind when he goes back home and that’s why he’s quiet, but I’m not so sure that is the case. Abuela has been living with her boyfriend in a home for the past year, and Macklin doesn’t have to revisit his memories in the crummy apartment. Macklin was never the type of guy to share what his life was like before coming to live with Leila, but then again, Hayden and I didn’t like talking about our pasts either. Life was good with Abuela and we all tried to live in the moment. What I did know was Leila was an alcoholic who treated Macklin poorly. It was Hayden who got Macklin involved with hockey. However, it was Abuela who paid for his skating classes and, eventually, hockey because she didn’t feel like it was right that he had no one to support him, and he was naturally talented.

“Periwinkle?” he asks with concern, and I realize it’s because I haven’t answered the question because I sadly got used to him ignoring me.

I blink. “Besides the bump forming on my head, yes,” I reply, giving him a small smile.

“Shit, can I get you ice?” he offers, moving toward the kitchen.

“I’m fine, Mack. I was joking. If anything, my ego is bruised more than anything,” I confess.

“Why bruised?” he asks, looking thoroughly confused.

“Oh, come on, Mr. Womanizer. You’ve seen tons of naked woman and. . .” What the hell am I doing? Shut up, Ruby.

“What were you going to say?” He smirks.

“Nothing.” I clear my throat. “I have to get to class.”

I duck past him and grab my backpack.

“I can lock up,” he says after me.

“Okay,” I say without looking back. I head onto the street, walking quickly toward campus.

Staying in the hockey house tonight is going to be super embarrassing. I just have to put Macklin out of my mind and act like it never happened. I make it to my kinesiology class a few minutes before the lecture starts. Two bad things happened this morning, and I am just waiting for number three to strike. When the hot guy I’ve been checking out walks into class and takes a seat two seats away from me, I worry how I will embarrass myself next.

“Have you heard good things about the prof? I kind of felt like she was monotone,” he asks, leaning over and looking at me.

I turn around to make sure he isn’t talking to someone else and he isn’t. “No, I’m not a kinesiology major. I just took the course for interest,” I say nervously. The guy is hot. I do not have the best social skills around guys like him. He looks like an Abercrombie model with blond hair and blue eyes and muscles that are so defined he looks like he was cut from stone.

“Cool. I’m Knox, by the way,” he says with a perfect smile.

“Ruby, nice to meet you,” I reply.

“That’s a pretty name.” He smiles.

I blush. “Thanks.”

The prof starts to lecture, and we stop talking. The lecture is fifty minutes long and I feel his presence beside me the whole time. I wonder if he’ll ask me out, but I know it’s wishful thinking.

When the class is over, I am slipping my laptop in my bag when Knox moves in closer to me. “Would you like to grab a coffee or a bite to eat sometime?” he asks.

Yay , my inner self cheers. He wants coffee, which means he is interested in talking. I find most guys don’t care what you have to say. They just want to get in my pants, and I can’t bring myself to go out with some horny guy I care nothing about.

“Sure,” I return, unsure of what should happen next.

“Can I get your number?” he asks.

“Yup,” I reply, and I give him my number.

“Are you free tonight?” he continues.

“I don’t think so. I have to get settled into my brother’s house. My dorm flooded,” I explain.

“Oh crap, do you live in Campbell?” he asks.

“Yeah.” I frown. “It was a rude awakening.”

“I heard. I have a friend who lives there. He has nowhere to crash tonight,” he says.

“I have my brother, thankfully.”

“Nice. So maybe tomorrow?” he asks. For someone so good-looking he seems sincere.

“Sure,” I agree.

“Cool, I’ll be in touch then, Ruby.” He grins and walks off. He’s giving a young Brad Pitt vibe with that smile.

I nod and smile back and head out of class with him following behind, but he heads in another direction.

For the rest of the day, I try to focus on Knox and not on the horrible interaction I had with Macklin this morning, but it doesn’t work because I can’t get the way Macklin looked at my naked body out of my mind.