Read The Lonesome Young for Free Online Page A

lots trying to scare girls, either.
    A perky redhead wearing jeans and a Wildcats T-shirt intercepted me in the hallway and took the schedule right out of my hand. She had a tan that was a little too dark and a little too orange to be natural, and her hair needed its own zip code, but her eyes were friendly, and I liked her on sight.
    “I thought so. We have English together. Come on, you can walk with me,” she said, flashing a warm smile. “I’m Denise. You can like me even though I’m a cheerleader, or maybe because I’m a cheerleader, because this is Small Town, USA, and high school football is king.”
    I blinked at this outpouring of words, which had the opposite effect of what she’d probably intended, because my shyness kicked in and my tongue got tangled up in my mouth. “Um, hi. I’m—”
    “Victoria Whitfield. Yeah, I know. The whole county is kind of named after you.” She rolled her eyes, but not in a mocking way. More like duh . “And you were talking to Mick Rhodale, in spite of everything!”
    She stopped propelling me along the hallway by sheer force of personality and sucked in a breath. “Oh, no! It wasn’t because of everything, was it? I’m just saying that if you have some weird kind of thing for violent guys, you need to move on, don’t you think?”
    It took me a second to process this, but by then she’d dragged me to English, and the ultimate cruel teacher sport of “stand at the front of the room and tell us about yourself, New Girl” blasted everything else out of my head.
    During second period, French III, while Madame Thierry showed us a PowerPoint presentation of her summer trip to Paris, complete with soundtrack (“La Vie en Rose”), Denise filled me in on who was who in class, which guys were available, and why it would be dangerous to have anything to do with Mickey or any of the Rhodale boys. She was all too clear on details. Mickey’s older brother Ethan evidently ranked somewhere between Satan and Osama bin Laden on the evil scale; Jeb, the middle boy, was stupid and horny, or maybe stupidly horny; and Mickey was a train wreck.
    “He jumped five guys for no reason, I heard, and put four of them into the hospital,” she whispered. “Or was it all five? I think one of them got away.”
    I turned my head to stare at her. The Mickey who’d picked me up last night was certainly strong enough to kick ass in a fight. But five guys? For no reason?
    It didn’t track.
    By third period, and the third “Whitfield like the county Whitfield?” question, I was able to stand there with a straight face and say “no relation.”
    This earned me a laugh and maybe a little goodwill from the rest of the class, most of whom were now thoroughly sick of hearing me mutter a few basic facts about myself. It also earned me a slow clap from the direction of the doorway, where Mickey stood, leaning against the wall.
    “Take your seat, Mr. Rhodale,” Mr. Gerard said, waving toward the only empty seat in the room.
    The seat next to mine.
    Naturally.
    A slow, sexy grin spread across Mickey’s face as he sat down, sprawled his long legs out in the aisle, and stared up at me. “You were saying?”
    My cheeks caught fire, and I stared right back at him, completely unable to remember what I’d been saying before he’d walked in.
    “You were telling the history teacher that your family isn’t related to the Whitfields who founded the county, I think,” he drawled, and I wanted to punch him right in the middle of his perfectly straight nose.
    “That’s enough from you, Mr. Rhodale,” Mr. Gerard said. “If you recall my class from last year, Miss Whitfield isn’t the only one in this classroom whose family dates back to Kentucky statehood in 1792 and even prior to that, when we were still part of the great state of Virginia.”
    I glanced over at the teacher and noticed the University of Virginia flag hanging behind his desk. Ah. College loyalty was evidently as much of a cult in