Ruined: An Ethan Frost Novel; A Loveswept New Adult Romance by Tracy Wolff

I say, stopping in front of the Mini Cooper I bought used when I got to UCSD three years ago. I call her Phoebe, after Lisa Kudrow’s character in
Friends
, because she’s fun and cute and loaded with eccentricities. Unlike the real Phoebe, however, not all of my Phoebe’s oddities are endearing. Like her propensity to break down at the least convenient moment. Or the way her air-conditioning only works in the winter. I’m a pretty decent mechanic and have managed to fix a bunch of her problems myself, but some of them refuse to be fixed. She’s stubborn that way.
    Tori is after me to get a new car, but I love Phoebe. She’s the first thing I’ve owned that’s really mine. Bought with my own money and with my name only on the registration papers. It was an important step for me, helped me create the distance from my parents that I so desperately needed when I was eighteen. And the fact that my father can’t just take her from me—when he needs the money, when he’s in a mood, when he wants to punish me for some real or imagined slight—means even more.
    Plus, she’s already paid for, which is very important to me. With tuition at UCSD as expensive as it is, plus living expenses, making ends meet is always a challenge. Doing it in the summer, when all I’ve got is a nonpaying internship, is even worse. Like the free rent I’m getting at Tori’s, no car payment makes this current dream job of mine possible.
    “This is me,” I say, popping the trunk and loading my briefcase into it.
    Ethan doesn’t look impressed. He doesn’t say anything, though, which is all that matters. After the day I’ve had, I’m not really in the mood for another argument. And we would have one, because I always defend Phoebe from the naysayers. Always.
    “Go out with me tomorrow,” he says after I close the trunk and walk around to the driver’s-side door.
    Shit. Why did I think he wasn’t going to push this? Just because he took tonight’s plans gracefully—once he realized I was planning on hanging with Tori—doesn’t mean that he’s willing to back off. But that’s what I need him to do. What I want him to do. My stomach clenches sickly, and to be honest, I don’t know whether it’s because I think he’ll take my refusal well…or because I think he won’t. Either way, I’m not going out with him.
    “I can’t,” I tell him after a long, uncomfortable silence—at least on my part. I make sure I’m not looking him in the eye when I speak to him, afraid he’ll do his Jedi mind trick on me again and have me agreeing to something I have no intention of doing.
    I pull open my car door, try to get in. But Ethan isn’t going to let me off the hook that easily. He takes my hand in his, bumps the car door shut with his hip—he’s way too tall to use his shoulder. At six foot four, he looks like a giant standing next to my little car, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find his size intimidating. Sexy, too, but mostly intimidating. At least until I think of how perfectly he fit between my legs earlier. Then it’s just plain hot.
    “More plans with the roommate?” he asks.
    “No.” Why, oh why, can’t I lie to this man? In self-defense, I’ve spent the past five years lying about nearly everything important, yet now, when I need the ability most, it’s totally deserted me.
    “Plans with someone else?”
    “No.”
    I can feel his eyes on me, know he’s willing me to look at him. But this time I refuse to give in. I can’t. Not if I have any hope of maintaining my distance, my sanity, and my ability to say no.
    I’m stubborn, more than strong-willed enough that I can usually outlast the best of them—it’s how I made it through high school with my sanity intact—but Ethan has me beat. While I’m struggling with a way to fill the sudden awkwardness between us, one that doesn’t involve looking at him, he just leans against the door of my car.
    And waits.
    And waits.
    And waits.
    Silence stretches