You Don't Know Me: A Stand-Alone New Adult Romance by Faleena Hopkins Page B

wave to a camera-phone a shorthaired girl is pointing at me as I pass her. “Hi friend!! Hi new friend!” She waves back, her hand leaving a trail of peach behind it. “Whoa!” Almost-Sean shares a look with someone a couple people over. Bouncing over some guy’s shoulder, I follow his look and call out to Jenna, “Doesn’t that look like Alec?!”
    “That is Alec, Rue!” she laughs back to me.
    Alec and I lock eyes as I bounce in the arms of the only person left in their little circle. Jack. Jack must be carrying me. Jack must have seen me kissing Hercules. Absolutely mortified, I glance back to Alec and see golden embers of anger glow from his eyes, his jaw tight, his lips flattened. He looks away, unable to look at me anymore, and suddenly I feel sick to my stomach. “Uh-oh. Uh-OH!!!”
    “She’s going to throw up,” Jenna yells over the music, pointing to my hands over my mouth.
    It can’t be Alec.
    It can’t be Sean.
    And it certainly can’t be Jack.
    It’s not possible!
    The room swivels. I’m going to puke. It’s too late. It’s coming. A door is slammed open and a bathroom sink magically appears in front of me. I lean over it and hurl. “Ugh! So gross.” Another round comes up and Jenna holds my hair as Susan turns on the sink to wash it down. “You guys are real friends,” I murmur into the porcelain. Wiping my mouth, I look up at the mirror. Jack, Alec, Sean, Jenna, and Susan, plus a couple strangers, are all in the reflection. “Oh no.”
    “Oh yes,” Jenna says, dryly. “Oh yes, girl.”
    Sean mutters to Jack. “See? You are related.”
    “Shut it,” Jack growls.
    During this mysterious brotherly exchange, Jenna has produced from her purse a travel toothbrush with a glob of fresh toothpaste on it, wrapped in plastic wrap.
    I stare at the miracle. “I love you.”
    “I love you, too.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Rue
    “ T here’s a mob .” “We have to get out of here now.” “I told you she would do something like this.”
    Sean and Jack are on my left side and Alec on my right, with Jenna and Susan right behind us. I’m physically better now that I got rid of most of the poison, but I’m completely embarrassed. As we approach the exit of the Hyatt, I see out what’s waiting for us outside on East 42 nd Street. “Holy crap!”
    Security guards are holding fans back outside, behind insufficiently skinny, black ropes. There’s a limo waiting for us, but he’s surrounded. The second we’re spotted, the fans break through the ropes like a swarm of bees set free from a jar. “Oh my God! What are we gonna do?!”
    My bothers and Alec tighten in around me, their faces numbed blank from experience. Together, we push through the crowd, assaulted by screams. Each of their names is yelled over and over. SEAN! JACK! ALEC! Again and again and again. Cell phones are held high, recording everything, and the awareness hits me that all of this will be on the Internet in a matter of minutes. Every grimace I make. Every smile I don’t give. But how do you smile when people are grabbing at you? So many hands. So many bodies slamming us together and all we want to do is get to the car where it’s safe.
    “Jenna!” I scream, craning my head to see if she’s okay.
    She and Susan are pushing through. “We’re okay! Keep going!”
    I shut down, my face going dead. I disappear inside myself. We all have the same self-protect shield up now. I hear someone scream my name and reflexively I look, locking eyes with a young girl who can’t be older than fifteen. She’s dressed to the nines, Latisse eyelashes and all, and she reaches out for me. I reach out, too, and we touch fingers. “Thank you!” she mouths, tears forming in her eyes. I frown and the guys propel me forward. We’re a locomotive of six driving through the crowd.
    “Hey!” Jenna yells as I feel myself grabbed from behind, and my body tugged backward, hard, and lurching from force. Alec whacks the guy’s feverish fingers off