Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

fades into the chilly water.
    I’ve just stood up again and am about to duck into my sopping wet shirt when I collide with someone.
    Oh, no. No.  This isn’t happening.  It’s not happening.
    Jake Armadice. What are the odds? Seriously, what are they?
    Why is he here?  Why is he here at the same exact college party out of all the possible parties going on in Tempe, which couldn’t be farther from Surprise if it tried?
    I duck into my shirt before he can produce a cell phone and capture the moment for Instagram or, even worse, You Tube. 
    “You want to swim, Crunchy?” he asks, releasing an unholy cloud of booze breath on me. Already grossed out by my barfed on shirt, I nearly make a new patch on the water, myself. And I haven’t even been drinking.
    “Nope,” I say, brushing past him.
    He catches my wrist. I don’t struggle. Yet. He’s drunk and stupid and if I wait for the right moment, I can free myself and leave him in the dust. “You’re built better than you look under those baggy shirts you wear. I could tell when I got you in the library,” he grins lecherously, and my skin erupts in goosebumps.
    “Gee, thanks,” I say sweetly, and tug at my wrist. For a drunk guy, he’s stronger and better coordinated than I would have hoped. He isn’t thrown off balance in the slightest. I start to feel just a little uneasy here, on the dark side of the pool.
    I tug again, and when that doesn’t work, I try to use my other hand to pry his fingers off of me. This is my big mistake. He seizes that hand, too, and shoves me backward, further into the shadows until I am pressed against the wall of a tool shed.
    I can’t escape the fumes on his breath, though I twist my head to the side. The night becomes a Lifetime channel movie about why high school kids shouldn’t go to college parties. Or maybe it is about why drunk girls shouldn’t ditch their friends to make out with random guys at college parties, leaving the friends to fall victim to unwanted attention.
    This is how I try to distance myself from the weight of Jake’s body pressing into mine, pinning me to the wall of the shed so that I can’t twist out from under him. I try to see it as a movie, something that’s happening to someone else when really it is his hands groping at my breasts while his full crotch bumps against mine. That poor girl is screaming as his hands move on to her waistband, but the other partygoers can’t hear her over the music, can’t see her in the shadowy back corner of the yard because of the stupid, weak red lightbulbs. She’s begging, pleading, scratching, clawing, and no one notices. Or maybe no one cares.  They don’t know her, after all, have never met her before. She’s just some kid at a college party.
    “Get off of me!” I hear her say, silently cheering for her as she manages to shove him backward. Finally he acts like the drunk idiot that he is and stumbles.
    And then, when it is no longer quite as desperate, I’m me again. I bolt for the side of the house where I hope there’s a gate leading to the front yard. I don’t look back, but I’m certain Jake must be in pursuit.
    With a triumphant cry, I find the gate I’m looking for and my fingers fumble with the latch. I thrust it upward, the gate pops open, and then I’m wading at a dead run through seriously overgrown weeds at the side of the house.
    I don’t notice whether there are people out front. I barrel straight for my car, which is around the corner, parked halfway down the other side of the street. As I sprint away from the light and noise of the party, I check behind myself several times to see if anyone is in pursuit. When I look forward again, I stop so quickly I almost fall backward.
    You have got to be freaking kidding me!
    Shadow Man.
    He’s barely more than one yard away, bathed in a cone of light from one of the only working streetlights on the block. He makes no move toward me and doesn’t speak. It’s almost as if he, like me, is