The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) by Julianne MacLean Read Free Book Online Page A

adolescence and the complicated politics of high school. Add to that my struggles with anxiety—a feeling of always needing to rush through things to get them done—and maybe because of that, it makes sense that I didn’t have it all together.
    Without a doubt, I was one of the nerdy girls—with braces, acne, straight A’s and glasses. But the summer after graduation, just before I moved into residence at Princeton with a full academic scholarship, I decided I’d had enough of the life I was living, being reined in, and it was time for a fresh start. I went a little wild and got highlights in my hair. I watched What Not To Wear on TLC and figured out how to dress better. The braces finally came off, and I got contact lenses.
    Being blond and pretty, for the first time in my life, boosted my confidence as I moved in at Princeton, but it wasn’t easy to live up to the way I looked, because deep down, I was still a nerd at heart, anxious a lot of the time and definitely not one of the cool, laid-back girls.
    I was brainy and uptight about my studies. Loud music in the dorm made me cranky and confrontational on a Friday night, and I often found myself storming out of my room to ask the offender to lower the volume. As a result, I spent most Friday nights in the library, because I could never be content with any grade less than an A.
    That’s not to say that the idea of going out wasn’t a constant temptation. The girls on my floor were always trying to convince me to ditch the books and go out with them to parties or clubs. Occasionally I did, because I knew the importance of life experience outside of the classroom. I didn’t want to be one of those “book-smart” people who had no idea how to survive in the real world.
    And that’s how I met Kyle—in the “real world” of college parties. He was impossibly handsome and popular, and didn’t give a fig about his grades. A grade of C- was just fine with him.
    Basically, he was the kind of guy I never imagined I would ever date.
    As it turned out, I learned more from Kyle that year than I’d learned in any other year in my life, up to that point, so I can’t regret it, no matter how disastrous it turned out to be.
    o0o
    I’d never had a boyfriend in high school, and maybe that’s why I was so easily seduced by Kyle—although that sounds like something out of a steamy romance novel. Maybe “insecure” more accurately describes the kind of person I was when I met Kyle at a dorm party during my third year.
    I’ll be honest and confess that I’d had too many beers that night. When he flirted with me, I was flattered, reckless, and uncharacteristically wild—and having been such a good girl all my life, I wanted to let loose, forget the worries for once, and have an adventure.
    Kyle had dark hair and a muscular build, and I was bowled over by the power of my attraction to him. He also lived in a frat house, which all sounds terribly cliché, and sadly, it was. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. The fact that a guy like that wanted me was astounding. How was it possible that the geeky girl from Boise, Idaho had snagged one of the hottest guys at Princeton? I was privately high-fiving myself for weeks. That’s how geeky I was.
    Needless to say, while I fell head over heels in lust for the first time in my life, and actually started acting like a wild college girl, my grades went straight down the toilet—which wasn’t a good thing for a female student trying to prove herself in the male-dominated mechanical engineering class. Before Kyle, I’d had no problem with that. I had the highest grades, well above all the guys.
    But after six months of parties and pretending to be something I wasn’t, I had reached the end of the school year, barely hanging on to a B- average.
    Heading into exams, I was completely stressed out.
    That’s when I came to my senses. It happened one night when Kyle dragged me out with his friends, and they all got drunk and wanted