Running on empty and having absolutely nothing to lose, I nod. “Okay.”
“Yeah?” Brock asks, his expression a mixture of shock and uncertainty.
Another nod.
“Thank you.” A slow smile tilts his mouth, his gentle voice a caress. “You know if I weren’t behind this fence, I’d kiss you, right?”
I quirk a brow. “You know I may or may not let you, right?”
He taps my nose again and picks up his helmet. “I think you’re gonna be the ride of my life.”
“That’s possible,” I call as I make my way toward the bleachers. Rounding the track, I watch Brock jog over to his teammates with a smile worth a million Polaroids.
Nerves a scattered mess, I’m pretty sure the sun is melting the flesh from my bones as I climb the bleachers, finding a spot under an overhang. It offers little reprieve from the heat but will do for now. Considering I won’t get much in the way of studying done for the remainder of the day, I retrieve Paradise Lost from my satchel. Before I can read three words, I hear giggling along with footsteps traipsing their way toward me. I raise my eyes, noticing one of the cheerleaders headed in my direction is the chick who hijacked my spot in Ryder’s lap the day he decided to . . . devour me.
“Great,” I mumble, positive she’s about to start with me. Though Ryder said she was a hit-and-go type of thing, girls can go all Carrie over shit like this.
With a perfect button nose, waist-long chardonnay-hued hair, and full lips any girl would kill to have, the chick could seriously be a supermodel. “Amber?” she says in a Tinker Bell voice, extending a perfectly manicured hand to me. “I’m Hailey Jacobs. I’ve heard . . . a lot about you.”
I take her hand, convinced she’s up to something. I can hear it in her overly sweet tone, see it in the way her periwinkle eyes are slightly narrowed, and feel it in the way she’s gripping my hand a little too tightly.
“Well, hi there, Hailey Jacobs.” My tone is sugar, spice, and everything nice multiplied by a thousand. “I haven’t heard a thing about you. Odd.”
Her eyes narrow further. She’s onto me as much as I am her. She turns and quietly dismisses her redheaded friend, who’s as equally snotty and uppity-looking. Hailey’s accessory casts me a shark’s smile, all teeth, letting me know she’s also hungry for my blood. On a huff, she turns on her heel, swinging her dainty little ass back down to her crew of jock-worshipping followers.
Hailey brings her curious gaze back to me, a fake-as-they-come smile plastered across her glossy lips. “So you’re dating Brock Cunningham?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m taking a ride with him after practice.”
A shadow of a pout darkens her face, just enough to let me know they must have some kind of past. “Brock’s not what he appears to be on the outside.” She snaps her bubblegum inches from my nose. “He wears an overcoat of some of the best charm out there to hide what lies beneath his . . . front. You’ll soon learn what that is. But he knows how to fuck for hours like a pro, and something tells me that’s exactly what you want. You ooze slut.”
She drags her attention out to the field, where Brock’s hauling his duffel bag over his shoulder, heading toward the locker rooms. She rolls her snake eyes back to me, a sneer curling her lips. “He’ll definitely take you for a ride, that’s for sure. And once he’s finished with you, he’ll toss you aside just like the rest.”
“You mean, he’ll toss me aside just like he did you,” I grit out, my mind warped by this bitch’s audacity. “That’s what you’re talking about, right? ’Cause something about you leaks bitter ex-girlfriend. A bitter ex-girlfriend who’s going Fatal Attraction because she lost a freak who can fuck like a pro.”
A muscle twitches in her jaw, a clear indication that I’ve pissed the bitch off.
I continue, not quite finished. “Let me tell you something, Hailey Jacobs. I’m glad Brock knows how to fuck like a pro, because otherwise I’d get bored and toss him aside. Just to be safe, I plan on teaching him a few fresh tricks that you probably couldn’t think of. So while you’re chucking your sparkly pom-poms from one end of the field to the next, just know that I will be fucking the captain of the football team in ways he’s never been fucked before. I doubt that’ll garner me a toss aside.”
Eyes wider than tires, her dot of a nose scrunches up as she surges to her feet. “Fuck you!”
Trying to contain my laughter, I give an unaffected shrug, my eyes pinned to my book. “I go both ways, sweetie. Actually have been told I lick a memorable pussy. Just give me a time and a place.”
Though I have yet to swing to the other side—I like to keep my options open, thank you—that bit of made-up information works its charm. Speechless, Hailey whips around on an aggravated heel and bolts down the stairs without a backward glance. As I watch her join her cult, I can’t help but acknowledge that today is turning out to be far more exciting than I’d pictured.
• • •
“Okay, you have to answer two questions for me,” I say as Brock and I drive west on I-68.
“Anything.”
“The first is where are we going?”
“That’s a secret.”
“Hey,” I pout, “you said you’d answer anything.”
“I changed my mind.” With a smile, he rests his hand on the nape of my neck, massaging my skin. It takes everything in me to keep my eyes from fluttering closed. “What’s your second question?”