Free Promise to Keep by Jessica Wood Page B

finally pulled away.
    “And yours, too,” I added.
    “Well, not exactly.” He paused and grinned—that same boyish grin from the first day we met, the same boyish grin I’d come to know so well in the past eleven years, the same boyish grin that made my heart soar with happiness.
    “What do you mean?” I feigned a frown, knowing too well he was being a smart-ass.
    “Well, seeing as I’m eight months older than you, our pact won’t start when I turn thirty.” He chuckled smugly. “So I’m rooting for your thirtieth.”
    I laughed and slapped him gently against his chest.
    As we slowly walked back to the paved pathway and followed it back along the lake, the warm crimson sun began to disappear over the horizon. But instead of feeling the cool night’s air against my skin, the delirious warmth of happiness seemed to spread through my entire body, and I felt more alive and happy than I could ever imagine possible.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    September 2003
    Nineteen Years Old
    JACKSON
     
    “You did not tell her that!” She laughed hysterically on the other end of the line.
    “I was just telling it like it is.” I snickered as I stretched out on top of my bed. It felt nice to hear Chloe’s laughter.
    “So you guys didn’t have sex, then?” There was a hesitation in her question that I found troubling.
    “Hell no!” I scrunched my face in disgust, and then felt a wave of disappointment when I realized that she couldn’t actually see my reaction.
    “But I thought all the guys in your dorm think Megan’s a ten?”
    “She may be hot, but you’ve met her. She’s pretty wild and loves the attention. I’m pretty sure in the past four weeks since classes started¸ she’s slept with half the single guys on the floor and probably countless other guys on the other floors in just this residence hall.”
    Chloe had met Megan—a girl in my freshman class who lived on my dorm floor—when Chloe came to visit me four weeks ago. Her fall semester classes had started a week before mine and on her first weekend, she’d taken the train up to visit me during Harvard’s Welcome Week before our classes officially started. During her visit, we’d bumped into Megan at one of the infamous Welcome Week frat parties. Megan had come up to us to say hi because she said she’d seen me earlier that morning in our dorm. I knew pretty quickly that Chloe didn’t like Megan, and even though I didn’t want to admit to it, I wanted to think that the reason was because Chloe was jealous and threatened by Megan. Of course, she had no reason to feel jealous or threatened—Megan couldn’t hold a candle to Chloe when it came to anything that mattered to me. But still, it was nice to imagine Chloe wanting me more because another girl was showing me interest. So even though I didn’t care for Megan, I secretly enjoyed mentioning girls like Megan to Chloe because I wanted to see how Chloe would react.  liked to see Chloe’s reactions. talking about other girls with Chloe because I enjoyed her reactions.
    “But what if you hurt her feelings when you rejected her like that?”
    I could hear the mixture of curiosity and amusement in Chloe’s voice.
    “Well, I think she had it coming,” I said frankly. “If she’s going to ask me point blank if I want to take her back to my dorm room for a night I won’t forget when we’ve previously only talked briefly maybe three or four times, of course I’m going to tell her she’s right, I won’t forget it because three of the guys on my floor have already told me their nights with her in detail.”
    “Jax, you can be such an ass sometimes!”
    I chuckled. “Touc hé. I’ve never denied that.”
    “So have you met any other girls at Harvard?” she asked. The interest and curiosity in her voice made me smile.
    “Nah. I’m not really interested in any of these girls.”
    “Really? So are you interested in guys, then?” she teased.
    I laughed. I knew she didn’t really think that. “Hell