02 - Party Downstairs

Kassidy's POV

Eli Deering could go straight to hell.

That was what I told myself, anyway, as I pulled my black dress over my hips and stepped back to look at myself in the mirror. I needed to believe it.

The alternative was sitting alone in that room, stewing in the particular kind of smallness that Eli Deering had always been very good at making me feel. I threw a white sweatshirt over the dress, spritzed some perfume on my neck, and walked out of my room into his party, without a single shred of guilt.

Why did that fuckface get to determine what I should or shouldn't do? He wasn't my father, he wasn't my keeper, and he certainly wasn't anyone I had to answer to. I had moved five hundred miles from Wisconsin and unpacked my entire life into a neutral-walled bedroom. I had earned a party.

The noise was so loud before I even reached the bottom of the stairs. Music was thumping through the walls, and there were people everywhere, older students filling every corner of the house with red plastic cups in hand. A girl was sitting on a guy's shoulders near the living room, shrieking with laughter. Two boys were arguing passionately about something on a phone screen. Someone had pushed the furniture aside to make room for dancing, and the dancing was aggressive.

I was a freshman, so I knew nobody. I grabbed a plastic cup from the nearest table and flagged down the guy who seemed to be serving.

"What's in this?" I asked.

He threw his head back and hollered. "PURE FUEL, BABY!"

I stared at the cup skeptically, but then I drank it anyway. Then I wandered through the crowd alone, trying to look like I belonged there.

I ended up drifting toward the kitchen, mostly because it was less crowded, and that was when I saw Eli.

He had a girl pressed against the kitchen counter, one hand on her waist and the other resting against the wall beside her head. He was kissing her slowly, and there was a gentleness in his face that stopped me completely. I had never seen Eli Deering look like that.

Something in me cracked into tiny pieces anyway.

I wanted him to look at me like that. I had wanted it for years, longer than I was willing to admit, and standing there watching him give it so freely to someone who wasn't me felt like salt on a wound.

Quickly, I turned around and walked away before the burning behind my eyes could turn into tears. In my haste, I collided with someone.

"Watch where you're going!" The person snapped at me.

"Sorry." I stepped back and looked up. The college student was looking down at me with his hands on my shoulders.

"I said sorry, you can let go now!" I grumbled, trying to shrug him off.

He chortled. "You look like someone just ran over your cat!"

"I don't have a cat. Let go."

He released me but didn't move out of my way. "Chin up, freshman. Whatever it is you're going through, it's not that serious."

"How do you know I'm a freshman?"

"Because you're standing alone at a party full of people and you look mildly terrified." He pointed out.

Seeing Eli had already ruined my night, and I was not willing to battle it with this student. "I am not terrified." I replied impatiently. "I am just selectively antisocial. There's a difference."

To that, the boy burst into loud laughter. He had completely lost his mind, because what exactly was funny about what I had just said?

"I'm Luca Reynolds." He introduced himself as he quieted down, extending his hand.

I recognized that name. Even me, a freshman who had been on campus for approximately forty-eight hours, knew that name. Luca Reynolds was the assistant captain of the hockey team, from a family that gave large donations to the school.

"My name is Kassidy," I replied, shaking his hand briefly.

"Kassidy." He repeated it slowly. "Nice name. You need another drink, Kassidy."

"Oh, I really don't."

"Yes, you do." He was already steering me toward the drinks table, one hand on my back, moving with the casual certainty of someone who was used to people going along with whatever he suggested. "It'll help with the moping."

"I'm not moping!"

"You were absolutely moping."

Somehow, and I am still not entirely sure how it happened, I ended up with a full cup of "pure fuel" in my hand. Luca Reynolds was standing next to me, and somehow we both had gotten the attention of half the room. People gathered around us, and before I knew it, they were chanting.

"Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!"

I drank the whole cup, thinking about how crazy peer pressure was while people hollered. The drink was very warm as it went down, and it made my head feel like it was gently floating a few inches above my neck. Luca was grinning at me.

"See?" He said. "That's better, huh?"

"I feel weird," I told him honestly.

"That means it's working." He was already handing me another cup, and I was already reaching for it, because the floating feeling was actually quite nice and it was doing an excellent job of replacing the image of Eli's face in that kitchen.

I got halfway through the second cup when I suddenly felt a hand close around my wrist, and the cup was pulled clean out of my grip.

"Hey!" I turned around. "Who the hell are you?!"

It was Eli. His eyes were filled with a stormy anger, and he was already walking, pulling me behind him through the crowd before I could get a single word out. The crowd had gone quiet and was watching us curiously.

The grip on my wrist was firm but not rough, which was the thing that confused me most. A man who hated me had crossed a crowded room to pull me out of it, and I couldn't decide if I was furious or undone by it. Both, probably. Mostly furious.

"Let go of me!" I yanked at my wrist. "Don't touch me, don't you dare tell me what to do!"

But he didn't stop walking until we were upstairs, outside my bedroom door. He pushed it open, and I stumbled in, wheeling around to face him.

"You had no right!" I screamed in his face.

"Luca Reynolds is twenty-one years old, and he was getting a freshman drunk at a party," Eli spoke with such controlled calm that it pissed me off even more. "That's what those guys do. Fresh faces like yours show up and they try their luck. I told you to stay in your room. I told you, and you walked straight down there anyway!"

"I'm not Piper." I yelled back. "I'm not someone you need to protect. I'm not your responsibility, and I'm not a child, and you need to stop treating me like one!"

"You think I was protecting you?" He asked.

"Weren't you?"

He stepped into the room, and I stumbled back. The back of my knees hit the bed, and I stopped.

"Go to sleep, Kassidy." He said it quietly. "I don't want to argue with you."

"Make me." I don't know why I said it. The drink, probably, or maybe I was tired of all the years of him looking through me. Or the image of his face in that kitchen, with a girl who couldn't even bring herself to hold him back.

He moved toward me, and my body reacted before my brain could catch up. I stood on my toes and plastered my lips against his. Everything around us stopped. 

To my greatest surprise, he didn't push me away. Instead, he kissed me.

It was not a gentle kiss. It immediately knocked the sense out of me, his hands framing my face and mine gripping his shirt and the whole world narrowing down to that one point of contact. I forgot every single thing I was angry about.

And with an aroused grunt, Eli pulled back and pushed me onto the bed.