“A New Adult winner for sure.” -Elissa Petruzzi, RT Book Reviews
Awkward girl meets scorching-hot boy…
When Rory Macintosh’s roommates find out that their studious and shy friend has never been with a guy, they decide that, as an act of kindness they’ll help her lose her virginity by hiring confident, tattooed bad boy Tyler Mann to do the job…unbeknownst to Rory.
Tyler knows he’s not good enough for Rory. She’s smart, doctor smart, while he’s barely scraping by at his EMT program, hoping to pull his younger brothers out of the hell their druggy mother has left them in. But he can’t resist taking up her roommates on an opportunity to get to know her better. There’s something about her honesty keeps him coming back when he knows he shouldn’t…
Torn between common sense and desire, the two find themselves caught up in a passionate relationship. But when Tyler’s broken family threatens to destroy his future, and hers, Rory will need to decide whether to cut her ties to his risky world or follow her heart, no matter what the cost…
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~Excerpt~
That was when I realized that was why I’d always been slightly nervous around Tyler. He was what people always accused me of being- there but not present. Easy going, but distant. Smiling, but intense. Maybe it was the alcohol, my ears still buzzing, my insides hot but my skin cold and clammy, but for the first time I didn’t feel uncomfortable around him.
“So are you really a virgin?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious. “Or were you just saying that?”
No longer comfortable. It went away faster than you could say Awkward Moment.
Why he thought I would want to talk about that made no sense to me at all. I was drunk, but I wasn’t insane. If I hadn’t even told my roommates until that night, why the hell would I sit in Tyler’s car and spill my guts? I wasn’t the confessional type. I never had been.
So I just looked at him.
“I’m going to take that as a yes.”
I wanted to tell him to mind his own goddamn business. To stop pressing a girl he didn’t know for intimate details about her sexual experience. That it was rude. But I remembered that he had in fact saved the very virginity he was questioning, so I didn’t want to be a bitch. I just shrugged. Really, what difference did it make? I was already a collegiate abnormality. Likes to study! Hates to Talk! Won’t go tanning! See this freak show exhibit in her natural dorm habitat…
But I actually surprised myself by opening my mouth and saying, “Yes, I am.”
My admission silenced him for a second, but then he drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel as he put the car in PARK in front of my dorm, which was a seventies built tower of glass and steel, the lamp post flooding into his car, showing even more clearly how dirty and ancient it was, a slot for a cassette player crammed full of what looked like parking tickets.
“Do you have a purity ring or whatever?”
Now that I was in, and the beer had loosened my lips, I said the first thing that came into my head. “I prefer to call it my hymen.”
Tyler let out a laugh. “No, I mean one of those rings you wear on your finger…” He looked at me, understanding dawning. “Oh, wait, you’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
Which made him laugh harder. “Rory, you are an interesting chick.”
Interesting wasn’t exactly a riveting compliment, but he hadn’t called me a freak, which was how I felt sometimes. Like I had been assembled in a different way altogether than everyone around me, and while I liked the end result, everyone else was confused as to how to interpret my very existence.
They watched me, suspicious, as if I were a Transformer and they were waiting for metal arms to spring out from my chest cavity.
I didn’t think that I’d ever seen him laugh before, or maybe I had just never noticed, my attention focused on Grant, who I had thought was more likely to fall in with my plan of exploring human mating and relationships. But then again, Jessica and Kylie tended to dominate all conversation in a group setting, so maybe their own perfectly affected laughter had drowned out Tyler’s.
But for some stupid reason, I liked to think that he was laughing just for me.
Which was when I knew I was even more drunk than I realized and I needed to get away from him before I sat there blinking at him like a baby owl indefinitely. Before I put some sort of hero worship onto him that he might deserve, but which didn’t mean a damn thing. Before I substituted one pointless crush out for another.
There was no response and when I struggled to slam the heavy door, which seemed to weigh a million pounds and required more coordination than my icy fingers had, I realized that he was just staring at me. There was a cigarette in his mouth, and he was lifting the car lighter up to it, his hand guiding it to his destination without thought. As he sucked on it to catch the paper and tobacco on fire, his eyes never left mine.
The smile was gone. There was nothing but a cool scrutiny.
I shivered.
Then I walked as fast as I could to my dorm, digging in my bag for my swipe card.
Once inside, I paused at the front desk to check in and I glanced out the front doors.
His car was still there, and I could see the shadow of his outline, the tiny red glow of his cigarette.
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