Page 93 of Princes of Hollywood

Oh hell, Holden Jamison is talking to me. I probably have stars in my eyes. Fuck, I promised Mason I wouldn’t get starstruck. I draw in a breath to still some of the butterflies running race circuits inside me. He’s just another guy at this party.

“No, I grew up here.” See, I can speak to the hot guy in front of me without giggling like a teenager.

“Yeah? What part?”

Zoe gives me a look that I’m not quite sure how to take. Is she trying to warn me not to say something, or encouraging me to say more? I suck at this part of girl world.

“I moved around a lot.” I don’t hide my past, but I don’t lead with I’m a foster kid. It puts different labels on me depending on the person.

“That’s cool.” Holden looks to Zoe.

“Yeah, figured this would be a me thing.” Zoe leans against a chair. “Introverts. So Greer here has to work tonight to keep Aiden on the straight and sober, but maybe sometime this week, we can get together and hang out.”

“Sure, that sounds good.” Holden glances from me to Aiden. He rubs the back of his neck. “If that’s cool. It’s hard to meet people who don’t want something from you in this town. Zoe says you’re cool.”

My chest expands, and I almost preen. Zoe thinks I’m cool. I don’t want to let her down. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Holden’s eyes meet mine, and he smiles like he’s the shy one, meeting me. It can’t hurt anything to hang out. He won’t want to date a nobody like me. Besides, it would be nice to meet more people in town, especially when I’m going to be at things like this with Aiden. I may have had a crush on Holden until I was fifteen, but that’s long gone now.

It’s still weird to meet him. But I’m also very conscious of the hand resting on my back and the man attached to it. Holden might be my age, but I’m taken for as long as these guys will have me. Very happily taken, currently.

“Me and my boy usually just play games or watch movies when we hang out.” Holden scans the party. “He’s more into the club scene, but he’s down to chill.”

“Yeah, you should totally bring him too.” Zoe smiles at me with a wink. “We could play pool, or Roarke has all the latest video games. There’s the swimming pool.”

“Oh, there he is.” Holden holds up his hand and a dark-haired guy starts our way.

Aiden rubs his hand on my back. When I glance at him, he smiles and leans down close to my ear.

“It’s cute that you’re excited to meet Holden.”

My cheeks burn again. I whisper, “Teenage crush.”

He lifts his head and his blue eyes crinkle with laughter. The sound of the guys greeting each other reaches my ears. The hair raises on the back of my neck.

When I turn to face them, Holden has his arm around a guy who’s as tall as Aiden, with dark hair and green eyes. “Aiden, I’d like you to meet my boy, Tripp Carter.”

The world stops as Aiden talks with Tripp. I freeze as everything in me says to run, to step back, to get away from him. My heart pounds in my ears, covering the voice I haven’t heard since I was sixteen.

“This is Zoe,” Holden says. “And this is—”

“Greer Morrow.” Tripp’s tone is smug, and his eyes take in every inch of me until I feel like I need a shower. I’ve never been able to scrub him off me. “It’s been, what? Five years. Look at you all grown up.”

I force a smile to my lips and let all the noise in my head fade into the background. “Five years.”

Not long enough.

“You know each other?” Zoe looks from me to Tripp and back again.

“My mother went through a foster phase. Wanted to help other teens in need.” Tripp smiles as his gaze falls to my cleavage, what little is showing. I resist the urge to cover it. “Greer was our one and only. You were with us a year, I think.”

I nod. “A year.”

A year of nightmares and hell. A year I don’t like to remember, and even now, I’m fighting to push all that back into the box it belongs in. I’m not that girl anymore.

Tripp rubs his fingers over his lips as his eyes meet mine.

Someone taps a bell somewhere.

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