The Arrangement Read Online Free Page B

arms of another man. She would give their plan time and then tell him who she had decided to date.
    Evie gave a reluctant nod.
    “Okay, so about this break-up…,” Ben began.
    They decided the break-up had to happen that night. Her parents would be waiting for a quick response. Most of the girls in her sorority would be headed back in right before supper, so they were sure to have an audience. Her sorority’s dining room was the only one on campus large enough to seat all 175 members. And most of the girls made a point to be there for Sunday night dinner. Having a large audience would ensure that her parents and everyone else believed their story.
    Evie’s stomach twisted as she pulled into sorority row. A crowd of pretty girls lugged clean laundry and sagging backpacks into the stately buildings around her. She gunned her BMW into the parking lot of Gamma Ray house before screeching to a stop. Ben parked his Honda right behind her, blocking her into her space. She jumped from her car and slammed the door.
    “Get out of here,” she screamed at him. From the corner of her eye she watched her sorority sisters pause to stare at the scene. Her hands shook, and she hoped everyone would read it as a sign of anger, not nervousness.
    “So I’m not good enough for Daddy’s little girl.” Ben sneered, his eyes clouded with anger Evie was almost certain was real.
    If she hadn’t known he was acting, his tone would have genuinely scared her. “Go away,” she yelled in return. “I told you I don’t want to see you anymore. You don’t fit in…don’t you get that?”
    Pain shot through her as he flinched at her last words. She forced herself to focus on the plan and ignore her strong urge to assure him she did not mean the hateful things she said. Evie pushed him away and opened her trunk to yank out her bag of clean laundry and backpack filled with unfinished homework.
    Ben grabbed her bag of laundry from her. “Maybe I’m just good enough to carry your highness’s dirty clothes,” he yelled.
    Evie tried to wrestle it from his grasp. “I told you to leave me alone!”
    He turned the bag upside down and dumped her clean clothes into a heap in the dusty parking lot. She jerked her head toward him. You didn’t have to go that far, she wanted to hiss, but fear of being overheard tied her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Her heart skipped a beat as the head of the sorority rushed from the front door and almost ran to the parking lot where Ben and Evie faced off. The plan was working better than she had imagined.
    “What’s going on here?” The woman in her early thirties considered all the girls her daughters and had no problem interrupting fights with boyfriends.
    “Nothing. He’s leaving.” Evie scowled at Ben, hoping he took his cue to leave before the woman called the campus police. Evie tried to wipe her sweating palms on her now dirty towels as she rescued them from the ground.
    “So that’s it? It’s over, just like that?” Ben threw the laundry bag onto the ground.
    “Yeah.” Evie allowed tears to fall from each eye and drip onto her cheeks. She started to stuff her laundry bag, averting her eyes from the image of the man she loved barking at her.
    “Fine. I’ll be by later to get my stuff,” he informed her, his tone as rough as the gravel mixed with her clothes.
    “What stuff?” She jerked her head to look at him again. “You never gave me anything worth getting back.”
    Evie realized she might have gone too far, but she couldn’t take it back now. Although she knew the break-up was only for show, agony pierced her as he drove away.
    “Come on inside, Evie.” The head of the sorority wrapped one arm around the sobbing girl and picked up her laundry bag with the other arm.
    Once inside Evie hugged the woman and said in a shaking voice, “I really want to lie down.”
    The older woman nodded and handed Evie her bag. Evie kept her eyes downcast as she walked with slow, deliberate steps up to