Page 49 of Campus Crush
“I told her about Liam’s idea,” Drew interrupted my thoughts, “and she agreed it’s not a bad one, especially because hockey is so hot right now.”
Gordy and I both looked at him. “What do you mean hockey’s hot right now?”
His smile grew like a Cheshire cat grin. “You know, there’s all these girls reading, like, hockey romances. Getting hot over the exercises we do and shit like that. How do you think Liam and I get as many chicks lately as we do? We tell them we play hockey, and their panties practically fall to the floor. They want to live one of their book romances, and we give them a night they’ll never forget.”
Gordy and I glanced at each other.
“Hockeyromance?” he asked, the disbelief clear in his voice.
Liam walked back into the room and handed each of us a beer. “What did I miss?” he asked as he sat down heavily.
I shook my head, silently telling him it didn’t matter. I could not believe I was about to say what I was about to say. “Looks like your idea isn’t so stupid after all. How do you feel about being bachelor number one?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Tell me again why we’re hiding in the bushes at eleven o’clock at night?” I whispered, crouching lower as a pair of students walked by on the sidewalk. The branches scratched at my arms, and I was pretty sure I’d just gotten a spider web in my hair.
Drew was beside me, his eyes gleaming with mischievous intensity in the darkness. “Because Harper Tinsley is a demon spawn who needs to be taught a lesson.”
I sighed, glancing at Gordy and Liam, who were similarly hunched in the shrubbery that separated the hockey house from the music house next door. We’d been out here for twenty minutes already, waiting for Drew’s signal to execute what he called “Operation Tinsley Takedown.”
“Aren’t we a little old for pranks?” I asked, shifting my weight to relieve the cramp forming in my calf. “I mean, we’re in college, not high school freshmen.”
Drew’s head whipped around, his expression deadly serious. “There is no age limit on justice, Kane.”
Gordy cleared his throat. “Didn’t Harper organize that collection and meal train for those three local families thatlost their homes in the fire last month? The ones over on Seventh Street?”
I raised an eyebrow. Gordy had a point. I remembered seeing flyers around campus about the fundraiser. It had been pretty successful too—raised something like ten thousand dollars plus clothing, furniture, and other essentials.
“Don’t get him started—” Liam warned, but it was too late.
Drew’s face flushed even in the dim light from the streetlamps. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! It’s all a front. A carefully crafted public image to hide her true nature. You think she actually cares about those families? Please. The Tinsleys have been pulling this kind of PR stunt for decades.”
“Don’t argue,” Liam said, resigned. “The Tinsley/Dumontier feud goes back like three generations,” he explained. “There’s no reasoning with him on this topic.”
Drew was still going. “And now she’s here, at our university, living next door, playing her violin at six in the morning like some kind of psychopath.”
I had to admit, the early morning violin wasn’t my favorite thing either, but it wasn’t exactly a capital offense.
“So what exactly is the plan here?” I asked, trying to redirect Drew’s increasingly passionate rant. “Because I’ve got an eight a.m. class tomorrow, and I’d rather not spend the whole night in these bushes.”
Drew’s focus returned to the mission at hand. He reached into his backpack and pulled out what looked like several packages of plastic wrap.
“When she comes home and goes to sleep, we’re going to plastic wrap her car.”
Gordy arched a brow. “That’s your master plan?”
I frowned. “Drew, man, I don’t think?—”
“Relax,” he cut me off. “It won’t cause any permanent damage, but it will mess with her perfectly composed schedule that she never deviates from.”
Liam sighed. “This seems childish, even for you.”
“You don’t understand,” Drew insisted. “Last week, she reported our house to campus security for noise violations. Three times. We got a formal warning from housing and we didn’t even have any parties! I can’t let that go without retaliating.”
I was starting to wonder if Drew had built this rivalry up in his head a bit too much. I’d seen Harper Tinsley around campus a few times—a slender, curly-haired redhead who was a music major and mostly kept to herself from what I could tell. She didn’t exactly scream “evil nemesis.”
“There she is,” Drew hissed suddenly, ducking lower into the bushes.
