Full Summary: Katie Carlton, a college freshman on a full-ride scholarship for her academic prowess, has more than just classes on her mind. This is the first time, the very first time in forever, that she's been out from under the thumb of her overprotective parents with high expectations for their youngest daughter. All her life, she's been trained to fix her older sister Miranda's mistakes. But it's hard to break from the fabric of which you've been cut, and she thinks that she's doomed, forever, to be the one hitting the books. That is, until attractive sophomore Jack Stanton steps into her life. He's nothing like she could imagine – funny, sarcastic, witty, living. And besides that, there's something special about Jack, something that she can't quite put her finger on….
NOTICE: Once again, I'm experimenting with a different view of things. I don't want you to be privy to all of my secrets just yet, but you'll be sure to notice them eventually. Besides that, dear readers, this is a planned novella, a spin-off of my completed story Words of the Heart. I don't plan on you needing to have read WOTH for this to make sense, but of course it helps. Plus, I always like for people to read my writings (and review them!), duh. :P
This is told in multiple POV's. Every chapter will be in one POV. They probably won't go back and forth on a perfect pattern, because I don't do so well with expectations, so make sure you know who's talking! (:
This is rated T for TEEN, since the characters are at college, and this is a romance story. There will be in the mention of parties and alcohol, maybe some language, as well as PDA. You've been forewarned.
** All translations are from Google Translate. I only speak English and a tad of Spanish, so forgive me if the languages aren't particularly correct.**
The Significance Series belongs to Shelly Crane.
Dangerous Love
1: Wow, That Was Awkward
Katie
This is what dying feels like.
Okay, maybe I don't know that for sure, but it's what I imagine that it feels like. I put my hands on my stomach as my roommate, fashion extraordinaire and quick-witted education major, Demi, pulled hard on the ties of the corset. Neither of us knew how to tie one really, but she was doing her best, yanking me several feet across the floor as she did. I had the feeling, though, that if she tied it any tighter I would pass about before we even reached the frat house.
"There," Demi huffed, putting her hands on her hips. "Look in the mirror now." I did as she said, turning to look into the full-length mirror she'd hung up on her side of the room. The edges were pink with turquoise spots, framed with a feathery pink boa, the sides of the mirror covered in stickers of Disney princesses, hearts, and stars. In the very center was me.
I tilted my head at my reflection. I didn't look like myself in the tight black corset and ridiculously short orange and black tulle skirt. I was trying to ignore the fact that I thought I had knobby knees, not to mention hideously pale legs spotted with raised red welts from my fight with my razor earlier today. My shoulders were bare, smattered with tiny freckles just like my cheeks and the bridge of my nose. I had always had eyes that were unnaturally large and a weird hazel that almost looked like the muddied skin of a pear; green-yellow, rimmed with brown lashes. My hair was auburn, so in the sun it almost had a coppery look to it. Inside, it looked brown. Boring, hopeless brown.
Next to Demi, I looked like the girl that got invited to the party because everyone else pitied her. My roommate was someone that I didn't think I'd get along with when we first met after I moved into Wharton Dorm. I'd moved in days earlier than she did, determined to make sure that the room was cockroach-free and ultimately clean. After spending a morning disinfecting the entire room, I set up my corner with my floral bedspread. I'd even straightened up my new desk, putting things away in their rightful places, hanging up posters and photos, and stuffing my clothes into a miniature closet. And then she'd walked in, all loud and perky and completely opposite of what I'd specified that I'd wanted in a roommate.
Not to mention the fact that she was drop dead gorgeous, with her naturally blonde curly hair and her bright blue eyes. Demi had a quick smile and even quicker wit. She was funny and amiable and people loved her. She was also smart, incredibly smart, which is something that I wouldn't have originally thought. She was just so different from me, a free spirit that had always had the sense of being in control of her life. Demi wasn't scared of anything except her mother's hard-as-a-rock cookies. It was thanks to her that I had started to come out of my shell, over the walls that I'd built around myself. At least, that's what I liked to think.
She still insisted that I was a homebody and that I needed to get out more. I wouldn't dare tell her that this was me getting out more.
"You, chickadee, are hot. I'd want to take you home." She offered up, priming her hair in the mirror. Thanks to her naturally curly locks, she'd decided to go to the party as Taylor Swift. Standing next to her in a sequin dress and a pair of cowboy boots that she'd picked up from the local store and had promptly fallen in love with, I could imagine myself with Taylor Swift. Or, at least, a Taylor Swift wannabe.
Outwardly I scoffed, smoothing out the tulle of the skirt. Inwardly, I cringed, my cheeks blushing at the implication. I was, for a college coed, embarrassingly inexperienced in the boy department. Not that I hadn't had any boyfriends, I had, but where Demi had stories of making out on the beach or sneaking out late to go party, my stories were about my longtime boyfriend, now an ex, who stayed indoors with me and watched reruns on the History Channel. He was off at Stanford, the reason for our breakup. He said that it made sense, that it was the logical choice since we were so far away from each other. Garrett had always been logical like that. It was one reason that my parents allowed him to date me – if there was anyone else that was going to be higher in class rank than me it was going to be him.
"You promise you're not going to ditch me?" I asked, ignoring her compliment. That was one of my biggest fears; I was going to be left alone in a frat, trying to find my way back to my dorm while fielding guys that had too much to drink. Besides, I'd signed an agreement with my parents that I wasn't going to go to any wild parties. It was part of our deal. I wasn't exactly breaking the rules, I was just stretching them. I'd made Demi promise me that she was never going to leave me alone, especially at a frat party. She'd agreed easily, but since this was the first party that she was forcibly dragging me to, I had yet to see if she was actually going to uphold to it.
"Pinky swear," she replied, holding up the finger. She waited long enough for me to sigh and reach over to wrap my pinky around hers. We shook once, sealing the deal, and she flounced away from the mirror. She was going for more red lipstick. The color was a little off on her, but in my opinion, it was off on Taylor Swift, too. Nobody really agreed with me there. But whatever.
I looked down at my key and tried to figure out how I was going to carry it with me. I didn't own any small clutches like the ones that Demi had brought to school with her. And it wasn't like this corset – which was currently squeezing the life out of me – had any pockets. As I stood in front of the mirror, I debated telling Demi that I'd changed my mind, that I wanted to stay here. We'd promised that we'd use the buddy system at all parties, just to be on the safe side, but I knew that Demi had plenty of friends that wouldn't mind being her wing woman. Besides, I had a research paper due in two weeks that could be worked on.
Right when I opened my mouth to tell Demi that I was going to stay home, she said, "You know, I'm really glad that you're coming with me. You need to live life, not be locked away in your study carousel at all hours. Besides, what kind of best friend would you be if you didn't come with me?" She asked.
I swallowed hard. Of course, she would think of something to say that made my words get strangled in my throat. Demi threw around the term "best friends" too loosely, I thought, but I'd never heard her call anyone else but me that. Maybe she did think of me as her best friend and not just her quiet, controlled roommate. I was always willing to help her with her schoolwork and she was always trying to drag me away from the library. Maybe she really did have my best interests at heart. But I couldn't be for sure, because I'd never known any different.
I'd told Demi my entire sob story one night. I couldn't really remember why I'd told her everything I did, but we'd been sitting on our smaller-than-twin-sized beds across the room from one another with only her psychedelic hot pink lava lamp as a light source. I think it had something to do with the fact that Demi had discovered that her boyfriend of three months had been cheating on her since the moment we moved into our dorms. She'd been more broken up about it than I had been about Garrett after we called off one and a half years of dating. But I'd learned early on that Demi was emotionally sensitive. As she'd pointed out, three months was a third of a pregnancy (she'd signed up for child development for the semester) and she'd truly been hurt by it.
And, in the moment, I found myself telling her about Garrett. She'd listened with shiny, puffy red eyes. As we continued to talk, I found myself telling her all about me and my family. I told her about my older sister, Miranda, who was the bane of my parents' existences. My sister was smart, she just didn't apply herself. My sister had a sense of right and wrong, but she tended to throw caution to the wind and do first, ask later. Miranda was anything but a homebody. She wanted to go out, experience life, see if for what it was and live in the moment. Her best friend got married and had a baby right out high school, which was like a slap in the face to my parents, who had tried to cultivate her as well. Miranda skipped class and chose to party and nearly flunked out of her first semester of college before finally dropping out after her sophomore year and heading to beauty school. After that, she'd told our parents one day that she was leaving for a "trip," and the next she was gone to go backpacking around the world. She was the rebel of the family, the one that purposely did everything opposite of what my parents wanted.
My mother was born and raised in France and still had a little bit of a French lilt to her voice. She'd married my father after they met while he was studying abroad. They'd moved to the states, which my mom had always found dreamy. She wanted Miranda and me to find our own American dream, and that meant working hard. That meant studying and making good grades. It meant keeping ourselves safe and shooting towards our goals. My mom would have honestly been happy with anything.
But then there was my dad. My mom was a romanticist, and my dad liked to look at the world in black and white. He thought anything short of a bachelor's degree was failure, and he thought that a good reputation was the key to the world. He'd often reminded Miranda in their blow-up arguments that her future could be compromised because of her actions today. But Miranda had just ignored him, and it was up to me to be the star daughter of the Carlton family. I had to succeed.
My dad hadn't said it in so many words, but it was an unspoken agreement between us. While my dad was slightly ashamed whenever someone brought up Miranda and he had to say that she was off learning how to braid hair or paint toenails, he could say that I was off pursuing a pre-med degree. I was salutatorian of my graduating year, I had a full-ride scholarship, I worked hard and studied and never went against the rules. Even my boyfriend for the remainder of my high school years was hardworking, heading towards pre-law. I'd done well for myself, and that made both of us proud. It wasn't like my dad was a heartless machine. He wanted the best for his daughters, he just couldn't stand it when Miranda took every opportunity that he gave her and shoved it back in his face, because that was something that my older sister had done on a daily basis. And Miranda hated it when dad breathed down her neck, watching her every move, which he did often.
Overprotective didn't even begin to describe it.
I loved my sister, and I loved my dad, but the two of them could drive a person insane. That was why it was a good thing that I had my mom. She'd insisted on Miranda and me learning French as a second language, her native tongue, and she'd introduced it alongside English when I was preschool. Now, I spoke fluent French and was acing my language classes. Miranda had given up that part of our heritage, using it only when the high school required her to have foreign language classes. But my mom and I would sit outside and talk quietly in French, pretty words rolling off my tongue as I stared at her flowers that she had planted in the front garden. But even though she was a breath of fresh air from my sister and my dad, she was still hard on me to do well. She had never gone to college and had instead worked in a florist's shop, where she always came home smelling like gardenias. She wanted me to do better for myself, too, she just didn't push as hard as my dad did.
"Vous respirez, Katelyn," I told myself quietly, looking into the mirror and wondering, for the millionth time, what exactly my Halloween costume was. Breathe. It was something my mom used to tell me when I would get worked up. Vous respirez. I took a deep breath, looking at myself in Demi's ridiculous mirror.
"What?" Demi asked as she worked to pin her hair up, speaking around the bobby pins she held with her teeth. The girl had brought at least two other mirrors with her – besides the full-length one I stood in front of, she also had a double-sided one that she used for makeup and a handheld one that was a little larger than my entire hand. She stood in front of the double-sided one, squinting at her reflection. I could see, in the harsh light that came from it, the powder that she'd swiped across her nose and the smearing of her mascara under her eyes. Even though she looked it, Demi wasn't perfect. I knew that, and it made me love her all the more. Because even though we'd virtually been strangers when we unloaded everything on the other, she'd trusted me with her deepest, darkest secrets, the ones that she hadn't told anybody. Nobody but me.
"Nothing," I replied, blinking at my reflection. I knew that Demi didn't just ask me to go to the party because she wanted me to come out of my shell and spend a little time away from the library. She had her own reasons for asking me to be her wing woman. And despite the fact that I was scared to death of leaving my dorm room and entering the place of everything my parents had warned me about, I needed to do it because of Demi. Because she trusted me. Because she needed me.
Strengthening my resolve, I turned around and said, "What am I supposed to be again?"
Demi, her mouth in an O as she reapplied her mascara, turned around to face me. Her eyes traveled down the tight corset and the short skirt, all the way to the calf-high boots that she'd loaned me. "I think Marcie has a witch's hat. Go grab that and carry around that nasty broom from the supply closet and you're a witch."
"Thanks, but I could do without the broom," I replied. Stepping carefully in the heels, I moved across our tiny dorm room and to the hallway door. The dorm was for coeds, a move that my dad hadn't been particularly happy about. He wanted me in an all-girls dorm, the closest one to the library. But this one was very nearly in the center of all the dorms, close to the majority of my classes and within walking distance from the library, so eventually he consented. The hallway was decorated in smiling jack-o-lanterns and ghost cutouts, courtesy of our RA, Sara. Some of the others left their doors wide open for guests. Some blared their music too loudly. Some of them had whiteboards tacked to their doors, which were prone to receiving crude drawings, usually of the immature type.
Marcie's room was right across the hall. She was rooming with another one of our friends, Julia, who had a sweet, girl-next-door demeanor on the surface but chased it away with her spoiled brat routine and her party-girl mode that clicked on Friday evenings and didn't disappear until Sunday morning, when she was nursing a hangover and struggling to finish her homework for the week. Marcie herself was nice, a girl from the south, where they liked fried food and big hair. At least, I assumed.
I paused in the hallway, feeling incredibly naked. I never wore anything like this, not even to go to sleep in. Not like I would wear a corset to sleep, but it was less modest than the tank top and sleep shorts that I wore. And I never really went out in those – only if I was padding to the restroom in the wee hours of the morning, which almost never happened. I wasn't like Demi or Marcie or Julia. I was a jeans-and-T-shirt type of girl; I always had been. I wobbled for a second, stretching out my arms to catch myself. I nearly fell, too, right when Julia opened the door. She reached out and caught my arm.
Like I'd imagined, Julia had found the least modest Halloween costume in the entire town. It looked like she was wearing a body-hugging gymnastics leotard. Cat ears pushed her strawberry blonde hair out of her face, and her eyeliner was thicker than usual, winging out at the corners. "Hey, Katie," she said with a grin. Stepping back, I realized that she had a tail attached to the back of her leotard. Classy. "You look cute. What is it?" I blinked a few times. She'd used cute. As in, little girl scout cute. Or puppy cute. But then again, if she thought she looked great, I was probably lucky to be considered cute.
Instantly, I chastised myself. Julia had always been nice to me… for the most part. I had the feeling that when she insulted someone, she didn't really mean it the majority of the time. She was sort of clueless as to how she came off. "A witch. Demi said that Marcie had a witch hat that I could probably borrow."
"I do!" Marcie came up behind Julia. Apparently, she'd had the thing sitting out because she waved it back and forth in the air. She was wearing a short dress that looked like it was made of some sort of velvet. Her hair was curled over her shoulders, and it looked like she had vampire fangs in her mouth. "Here. Demi texted me and said that you might need it."
"Thanks," I said, taking the flimsy thing from her. "I've got to figure out how to put this in my hair."
"I'll help," Demi said from behind me. She beckoned me back into our room. Marcie and Julia left open their door and we left open ours, so we could call across the hall to each other. It was normal dorm stuff, aside from the type of crap the guys pulled. More than once I'd caught them racing down the hallways in the big rolling laundry baskets, and they often decided to have mattress wrestling, where they took their tiny, thin mattresses and ran down the hall towards each other at full force, trying to knock the other one down. I'd seen plenty of people go down to the nurse's station because they'd broken a nose or a finger doing that.
Even in college, boys were less immature than their female counterparts.
Demi pinned the hat onto my head and then helped Marcie paint her fingernails a shade of blood red. After another thirty minutes, night had fallen and it was agreed that the party should be in full swing. As a newbie to a frat party, I wasn't really sure what to expect beside frat guys and kegs. I was also expecting a lot of skimpy Halloween costumes. But I didn't complain or say anything negative as Demi looped her arm through mine and said, "Come on, sexy. We've got a party to crash."
# # #
The party was everything that I expected. And worse. I didn't know how Miranda or Julia managed to enjoy this. It was so crowded that sweat was dripping down my back, plastering my hair to my head. I was thirsty but had to spend thirty minutes searching for a water bottle. There were people that were already smashed and there were plenty of people that were just naturally crazy. People "danced" with each other in one of the center rooms as music shook the entire foundation of the frat house. Freshman ran around and made sure that everything was running smoothly, hardly pausing to enjoy the party. Not that I believed that anyone could enjoy this.
It hadn't taken long for us to get separated from Julia and Marcie. Julia had found her boyfriend, a beefy guy that was on the football team, Marc. He and Julia had slipped into the crowd easily, disappearing from view within seconds. Marcie had hung around with us. I had acted like a balloon attracted to static, or half a piece of Velcro. Sticking to Demi's side, I had to force down the urge to grab onto the back of her sequined dress so I didn't lose her.
I'd told myself that it was virtually impossible to lose her, that I would always be able to find the bright lights flashing off of her costume. I could always text her to find her. And if it came to the worst case scenario, I would fight my way to the front door and slip back to Wharton Dorm. I'd eventually shoved my dorm key into my left boot, and I could feel it pressing up against my skin with every step that I took. It wasn't like I was going to be forever lost in this crowd or anything, even if I felt like it right now.
But as we moved from friend to friend, visiting and laughing and ignoring the guys that had had way too much to drink, I lost her. One minute she was there next to me and the next she was gone. Panic seized in my chest as I searched the room frantically from her. The frat house was in an old building that, from the outside, looked old and creepy, and not because of the crappy Halloween decorations that the guys had put up. They hadn't even put up the fake cobwebs correctly. It was just old, which meant that it wasn't very big. I mean, big enough to be considered a mansion back in the 1700s, but with the bedrooms roped off, the communal rooms weren't a large amount of space.
But even though I thought logically, my brain was swamped with panic. What happened to the freaking buddy system? My first frat party, my first college party, and my roommate and other friends had disappeared into the fray, leaving me all alone with a bunch of people that I didn't know and, at this point in time, didn't care to know. "Vous respirez." I told myself with conviction. Breathe. Demi had to be around here somewhere. She hadn't abandoned me on purpose. We'd just gotten separated in the crowd, that was it. In fact, she was probably looking for me, wondering where the heck I had gone.
I took a deep breath, ignoring the smell of alcohol and sweat. A little calmer than I initially was, I searched the room for a silver sequined dress, or Marcie's high hair, or even Julia's ridiculous furry cat ears. The problem was that Julia hadn't been the only one who had decided to come to the party in an animal costume. I caught dog ears, bunny ears, cat ears, mouse ears… even bug antennas. But I couldn't find any familiar cat ears in the crowd. Marcie's hair height was lost around football players and basketball players, which left me dependent on Demi's dress.
And, of course, glitter and sequins were apparently in for this Halloween season. I was pretty sure that every girl had some sort of shiny metallic surface on her, from a bit of shimmering eye shadow to the girl dressed like a fairy that looked like she'd taken a bath in body glitter. After several minutes of looking, becoming more and more frantic every time I scanned the room, I finally saw her. She was the only one, I thought, that was wearing a full sequined dress.
Kicking off from the wall where I'd harbored myself, I headed towards her, pushing through the crowds and trying to keep her in sight. I had almost reached her, too, when someone stepped in front of me. Determined to not run fully into them, I tried to side-step them. But in Demi's boots I wasn't as agile as I usually was and lost my balance. Like an idiot, my arms pinwheeled in the air as I struggled to find my footing. Right when I was about to lose my balance, someone reached out and steadied me with a warm hand on my arm.
"Whoa," he called out, having to yell to be heard because of the thumping of the music. I regained my balance and quickly pulled away from whoever it was, my cheeks burning with embarrassment. I knew there was a reason that I wanted to stay in my dorm room instead of coming to this party. You came for Demi, I reminded myself, but it didn't help as I looked up into the face of one of the most handsome guys I'd ever met.
I wouldn't be lying if I said that the choice of guys was better on a college campus than on a high school one. I had no idea why it was true, but it was. The pick of guys was just better here. Maybe it was because some of the older ones were more mature and didn't make the kind of jokes that first graders still thought was funny. Maybe it was because they looked older, more rugged. Or maybe it really was because, for the first time in a year and a half, I was a single woman, and as such, guys were just something that I noticed subconsciously.
But this guy was still different than any of the others I'd ever met. I wasn't sure what it was, but there was something about him that I felt deep down inside. I'd always been a good judge of character, the kind of person that got feelings that said whether or not a person could be trusted. My mom always said that I was intuitive, that it was some sort of French sixth sense. Miranda had just scoffed and said that I was paranoid. But it had never been wrong for me, so I stuck to it, even though I didn't call it the woo-woo like my sister was prone to.
I knew that there was something about this guy, something different, but instead of being cautious I just found myself being more interested. I had no idea why. That had never happened before. Maybe my sixth sense was out of whack. Throwing me into an indifferent and unknown world had put it on the fritz. "I, um," I sputtered out. I couldn't believe it. I'd been reduced to stuttering! Incomplete sentences! "Sorry."
The guy leaned forward, obviously having not heard what I said. I blinked a few times as his ear came closer to my face. I couldn't help but notice the slight shadow of stubble across his jaw, something that, by morning, would need to be shaved. For some reason, my breath caught in my throat again. "Uh," I said, struggling to grab onto any train of thought. "I'm trying to find my friend. She looks like Taylor Swift."
Oh. My. God. My cheeks flushed bright red as the guy took a step back and eyed me. I had the feeling that he was checking to see if I was just another tipsy coed that needed an escort back to her dorm room. But I wasn't. I was coherent. Idiotic, but coherent.
"Taylor Swift?" He echoed.
"Yeah," I called back, adding in a nod for good measure. I felt like an idiot. A stupid, insipid, meaningless idiot. "It's a Halloween party," I added, as if that clarified anything. Who knows? Maybe it did.
The guy just nodded again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bright flash of silver. That had to be Demi. I took a step in that direction, having no hard feelings about purposely thinking about ditching the guy that had just saved me from falling on my butt in the middle of a frat party, when I tripped over a cluster of discarded purses.
And, to my horror, the guy reached out and caught me again. "Whoa," he said again, steadying me for a second time. "Did you have too much to drink or something?"
I shook my head. "I don't drink!" I called back. It was true. I didn't need to suffer from early liver failure. Not to mention that it was a clause on the agreement that I signed with my dad. I pointed down to the purses, as if that would explain everything. Who had decided to put all those purses there in the first place? And even if you did want to make a collection of purses, you didn't put it in the middle of the floor, for Christ's sake.
I opened my mouth to say that when someone bumped into me from behind, throwing me towards the guy that had saved me twice. I rammed right into him, jostling the red plastic cup that he held. It spilled all down the front of his gray T-shirt, and my stomach dropped. Seriously? So a cute guy pays a sliver of attention to me, and the whole universe decides to play on giant joke on me? Where was the fairness in that?
"Oh, my God. I'm so sorry!" I exclaimed, looking around for a napkin or something. But these were college guys, the type that ordered a pizza and left out the box for the cockroaches to nest in for a week or so before throwing it out in the trash. I didn't think that they were actually napkin-using citizens.
The guy shook out his hand, spraying me with whatever he was drinking. "It's okay." He called back. "It was just a soda."
"Still, I'm so sorry!" I bit down on my lip as I continued to search for a napkin. Finally, I found the edge of a paper towel. It looked like it might have been used in the microwave for a piece of leftover pizza or something, but it was better than nothing. Wadding it up, I reached out and pressed it to his shirt, trying to soak up all the soda that I could. I bit down on my lip as the guy stood there, watching me hold a crumpled, possibly grease-covered paper towel to his chest. And suddenly, I had the audacity to introduce myself. "Um, I'm Katie." I sputtered out.
The guy just flashed me an easy, crooked grin. "Jack," he replied.
What do you think? As usual, I'm going to give you my usual spiel. It's pretty much a must-do at the end of every single chapter that I write.
First off, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read this. Like seriously, thank you. A lot.
And then I'm going to ask that each and every one of you take a sliver of your day to leave me a review in the box below. I don't care if it's just something that says "cool" or even "sup dude, rite mor." Though I don't prefer the latter. Basic English, my dear readers, is your friend. BUT ANYWAY. Enough of the grammar lesson, let's just get the point. I really, really like reviews because I'm a crazy reviewaholic that thrives off of strangers telling me what they think. You know, virtual support and all that. So I'm going to beg of you, in the nicest way possible, that you take a minute to write something to me. And, bonus, you don't need a FanFiction account to do so. (Nudge, nudge, wink wink.)
And, since this is the first chapter, I'm going to echo a twitter sentiment and say "Follow me! Favorite my story!" Lol. (: Well, it's late, which might pertain to my slight craziness (there is a method to my madness. I'm not sure what it is yet, but I know that there is one.) and so I bid you adieu. Peace (: