Winter (Four Seasons #1) Read Free Page B

it.”
    But I honestly
don’t know if I can. Having Luke in my life here is like bringing a
piece of Breakwater into the relatively safe, happy world I’ve
built for myself at Columbia. It could ruin everything. When I
speak to him later, I know what I am going to do. I’m going tell
him the truth. He’ll have to understand that I want to put my past
behind me. Surely no one in the world could begrudge me
that.
     
    ******
     
    My last class
of the day is Media Law and Ethics, one of my favorite subjects,
but I bolt out of the building as soon as Professor Lang excuses
us. Usually I hang back to catch him after class. He doesn’t seem
to mind that I have an exhaustive list of questions that always
needs answering. Today, though, all I want to do is get back to my
place and check my phone to see if Luke has called. I need to get
this over with. The calm that I’ve found in being utterly
inconspicuous here is going to be ruined until I tell him I don’t
want to meet with him anymore.
    I take the low
steps outside my building at a jog and race up the four flights of
stairs to my apartment, hoping Leslie won’t be there. She spends a
lot of time studying in the library, especially after class, so
there’s a possibility that I’m going to have some privacy. When I
burst through the door, my heart sinks in my chest. Leslie sits on
the sofa with her headphones in, tapping her bare foot on the worn
leather as she types on her laptop. She glances up at me, cropped
brunette hair all over the place as usual, and gives me a half
smile, pulling out one of the earphones.
    “ Good run this
morning?”
    I wasn’t the
only person Morgan had woken up by banging on the apartment door at
five-thirty this morning. I pull a sour face and throw my bag on
the table. “Sorry about that. She’s incredibly pushy
sometimes.”
    Leslie shrugs
a shoulder. “S’okay. I got up right after you left and squeezed
some study in. Everything worked out for the best.”
    Leslie is a
New Yorker through and through. Her parents are internet business
gurus who set up a dot com company back in the early nineties. They
sold up about five years ago and have been comfortably living off
the interest of their amassed fortune ever since. Leslie’s studying
business in the hope that one day she’ll have a fortune of her own,
but in the meantime she’s okay with accepting the healthy amounts
of cash her mom and dad throws at her. She’s like me in some ways;
her bank account is always full but her parents barely know who she
is. At least she has two parents. And one of them isn’t Max Breslin.
    I kick off my
sneakers and flop back onto the sofa, reaching my cell on the
coffee table where I’d left it earlier before classes started. I
normally take it with me, but I knew I’d be looking at it every
five minutes if I had it on me today. I didn’t need that kind of
distraction.
    My heart
speeds up as I hit the start button. Nothing. No texts. No missed
calls. Nothing. I
blow out the breath I’ve been holding and toss my phone back onto
my pillow.
    “ Expecting a
call?” Leslie asks.
    I stare up at
the ceiling. There are sticky marks dotted all over it where
glow-in-the-dark stars were tacked to it when we moved in. I knew I
was going to get along with Leslie the moment she suggested we pull
them down. “Dreading one, more like,” I mutter.
    She hmm s and goes back to her
studies. I set myself up at my desk, placing my phone beside the
keyboard so I can answer it straight away if Luke does call. He
probably knew I had classes all day and he’s waiting until this
evening. That thought makes my stomach roll. I spend half an hour
trying to type up the vague notes I scribbled in class, but they
are less than useless. I give up in the end, and I type in my email
account details and decide to clear out my inbox instead. Two new
messages wait for me.
    The first is
from Amanda St. French. My mom. She filed the paperwork to go back
to her maiden name before