Chapter 1

Shelby Gonne was a b****. A lying, cheating, sl***y, b****. I wanted nothing to do with her.


That’s what I thought anyway—or at least, I thought I had thought. It was hard to think anything when she was leaning towards me like that, intoxicatingly close.


“Tray.” Her breath was sweet, no trace of alcohol in it, though one hand held an open can of beer. The other hand reached up and smoothed my hair out of my eye. “You seem nervous, Tray.”


I blinked hard, fighting to unscramble my thoughts. “Do I?”


She giggled, her hand traveling down my frame until it found mine. “Yes, very.” She entwined her fingers with my own. “You should relax; this is a party!”


Was it? The screams, the laughter, the blaring music—it all seemed muted, nothing more than an annoying hum in the background. “Yeah, I guess it is.” I wanted to kick myself for the lame response. Why was it so hard to make conversation with her?



She raised one eyebrow, seeming to wonder the same thing. “Always this articulate?”

I opened my mouth to retort, realized I had no idea what to say, and shut it again, feeling stupider than ever.


She laughed again, her laugh more gentle this time, and moved closer still. Her gray eyes smoldered up at me. “You’re so cute.” I could hear her whisper, could make out the slight tremor in it, even above the pounding bass. Her beautiful face drew nearer, and nearer still. In my chest, I felt my heart race.


“Shelby.”


She froze, her eyes half closed and parted lips hovering right above mine. With a resigned sigh, she pulled away. “Yes, Christopher?”


Chris Rickman, varsity hockey player, stormed up to us. Though his eyes, a shocking blue against his dark complexion, bore into me, he spoke only to Shelby. “Where the hell have you been? You said you were going to get a beer ten minutes ago; how long does it take to get one drink?”


She rolled her eyes at me before pasting a ditzy smile on her face and turning to him. “Well, I got my beer,” she said, fluttering her eyes demurely, “and then I ran into Tray!”


“Yeah, I see that,” he said coolly, eyes still trained on me. “How about you say bye-bye to him now though, okay?”


Her eyes flashed dangerously, but he failed to notice, all his attention on me; his glare a warning to stay away from his girl. Shelby turned to me, hand extended. I took it uncertainly, and felt a wave of surprise as I felt something in it. “Bye, Tray!” She released, dropping the object into my hand. I looked down at it curiously. It was a scrap of paper, no bigger than a business card, with ten digits scribbled on it.


No way.


I looked up at her in disbelief. She was now holding hands with Chris, being towed along through the crowd of people. She turned back to me, put her thumb and pinkie next to her ear and mouthed, Call me!


With a wink and one last smile she was gone.


I looked down at the scrap of paper then back to the place where she had just been. My head was still spinning, my thoughts still incoherent. Did that really just happen? Could it really be possible? Was Shelby Gonne, the infamous class b****, after me now?


I sure as hell hoped so.