by Tijan
“Now!” he barked before he took her shoulders and pushed her away. “I mean it. And tell my father I have no wish for his attendance at my game.”
“You don’t mean that—”
“I do! Leave.”
She hesitated again, but when he turned back to me, she didn’t linger long. As she left, a ragged breath left me. ‘Some high school friend’s dead parents…’ The old numb feeling came back as I realized who that meant. His coach and his father were having dinner with my parents. It was all about Jesse, all about Ethan, all about the two of them and their friendship. No one else mattered.
He cursed again before he cupped my face in his hands. “Alex, talk to me.”
And then I’d had enough. My parents had left me. The numbness was filled with a different emotion, one that I didn’t want to acknowledge. I didn’t want to feel. I didn’t know if I could contain it.
“Hey, guys,” Cord spoke up, apologetic.
Jesse cursed again, but looked up. “Yeah?”
He gestured behind him. “Uh, your girl showed up. Things aren’t going so well.”
“My girl?” Jesse was clueless.
Cord’s eyes slid to me. “Her girl.”
Her girl? Oh—Marissa. Shit. I shoved past both of them. I was in time to see both of my friends in a corner. Angie raised her arm and swung at Marissa, who ducked to deliver one of her own. I cursed again and hurried towards them, but Jesse’s arm went around me. He held me back. I tried to break free, but he wrapped his other one around me too. Then he yelled in my ear, “Look.”
Eric was holding Marissa in the air. She was kicking and yelling over his shoulder while Justin held Angie in the same manner as Jesse did with me. Angie’s face was twisted with rage. She tried to leap for Marissa again, but Justin ducked his head, swung her around, and barreled towards us. He grunted as he swept past us, “How do we get out of here? These girls are nuts.”
Angie was still glaring and gritting her teeth as she looked at me. The ends of her hair were wet from sweat and she blew out a puff of air so the thin hair over her forehead lifted up. I reached over to move her hair aside so she could cool down. She gave me a sloppy grin and grumbled, “I’m done with that girl. She can be your friend, but she’s no longer my best friend. She’s shady as hell. I’m done with her, Alex. I’m sorry, but I am.”
A pang of regret hit me in the chest. “I’ll talk to her.”
“It won’t do any good. She’s lost it. She’s crazy. I swear. Good luck to Eric. She came here reeking like sex and look at him now.”
We both looked over. He had her pinned against a corner in the box with his hands on her hips. His head was bent low, whispering something to her, as she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from Cord. A look passed between the two and a shiver went over me. Cord had been lying to me. I knew it then. I felt it in my gut. She’d been with him during the day, or he had known where she was. He had played clueless with us, but when her eyes darkened in lust and his answered back, a snarl came over me. If she hadn’t cheated on Eric already, she was going to. It was only a matter of time before she was in Cord’s bed again. And then it was my turn to be disgusted by a friend.
Angie was right. Marissa didn’t want our help, but then I stopped. I had never cared before, why now? Even when she went after Jesse or Eric, I had let both of them go without much of a fight. With Eric, there’d been no fight and now I was ready to rip into her because she cheated on him?
What was my life coming to? Why was I caring again?
“Hey.” Jesse’s arm tightened around my waist. He bent forward and asked in my ear, “You ready to go back? Justin can’t hear my directions so we’ll have to lead them out of here. The guys are ready to go too. We need our sleep for the game tomorrow.”
I jerked my head in a nod.
“Are you sleeping with me?”
I jerked my head in another nod. I sure as hell wasn’t staying with Marissa tonight.
After that, we left quickly. Most of the guys had already left. Camden had stayed behind, but he got some signal from Jesse, so we followed him. I could hear Angie whispering to Justin as he was behind us. He kept hushing her. In the back were Cord, Eric, and Marissa. He still had his arms around her waist and refused to let her go, even after I heard her shriek at him a few times. They waited for a different taxi, but I called out, “Cord, come with us.”
Marissa swung her head around. She glared at me before she narrowed her eyes, but she kept quiet. I stared back. I didn’t care. Eric was a good guy. He didn’t deserve to ride in the same taxi with the guy she was going to cheat on him with.
When we got back to the hotel, Jesse let go of me. He followed us as we went back to Angie’s room for my bag and then took my hand in his as we went to his room. When we got off the elevator, all the doors were shut, but we could hear the guys’ voices inside their rooms. And then, as Jesse was opening his door, his coach came out into the hallway. He ran a tired hand over his face and fought back a yawn. He pulled his robe tighter around him while his bare feet peeked out from the ends.
“Do I want to ask where you’ve been tonight, Hunt?”
Jesse’s hand curled around my waist and pushed me into the room. “No, you don’t, Coach.”
He grunted, but replied, “I met your dad tonight.”
Jesse stiffened.
“He’s an asshole.”
“I know, Coach.”
“Alright. Well, good night. I expect all of the guys in tip-top shape tomorrow and since it’s eleven now, you’ve all made your curfew. Is that girl going to be a problem?”
I stiffened this time.
“No, Coach, she won’t.”
“You promise, Jesse? I’ve never seen you attached to a female. This one doesn’t bode well with me.”
“Coach, I believe you met her parents tonight as well. And they haven’t been the best ones to her.”
“Oh.” All the gruffness was gone from his tone. “Well, alright then. Good night to you both.”
“Night, Coach.”
“Night, girl.”
I stuck a hand out the door and waved. Jesse rolled his eyes, but his coach barked out a quiet laugh before I was pulled inside the room. Then, as the door closed behind us, Jesse turned and regarded me for a moment.
I held my breath. Everything changed now. We were alone. There were no friend dramatics, no other guys or teammates around us, and his coach had left us alone. It was only me and him. Jesse dropped his hands from the door and walked to me, quietly. A shiver went up my back as I watched him come. He moved with a gracefulness that was sensual and dangerous at the same time. His eyes had darkened. The same desire leapt inside of me. It burst into flame and I gasped when I felt his fingertips against my skin. They trailed around my neck and he turned my mouth to his. My heart was pounding. It wanted to burst out of me, but then everything went away. Jesse lifted me in his arms. My lips gasped against his; they were cemented to each other. I felt the bed sheets underneath me. All I wanted was him. All I needed was him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jesse was gone when I woke the next morning for the second time. He had slipped out of the bed earlier, but pressed a kiss to my forehead before he left. So when I woke again, it was to the annoying sound of the phone. Angie sounded bright and perky on the other end. Apparently my cell phone wasn’t doing the job, so she had asked around and found where the Golden Boy’s room was. I was supposed to be thankful she hadn’t come in person. I growled back. I wasn’t ready for her that morning. I wanted to curl back up in bed and never move. It smelled like Jesse. Everything did – the pillows, the bed sheets, even the towel he had left on the other bed.
But Angie was insistent, so an hour later I met her in the lobby for breakfast. She looked refreshed in a blue dress with her hair in braids on top of her head. Ugh. She looked gorgeous. I touched the ends of my hair and knew my messy ponytail would never look sexy on me, not when I stood next to her.
“Hey, my only bes
t friend now. What are you hankering for?”
“Jesse,” I grunted.
She froze for a second. The bright smile slipped a bit, but she rolled her eyes. “Okay. I got that, you stupid girl-who’s-going-to-be-destroyed-later-by-him, but I was talking about food.”
I opened my mouth.
“And not in the way of what you want to taste right now, but actual food that we can sit down, order, digest, and take home in a doggy bag. That kind, you wanton woman, not anything that has to do with sex.”
I closed my mouth. I had another smartass comment on the tip of my tongue, but I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m still pissed from last night, I think.”
“You think?” She arched an eyebrow high as the hostess led us to a table in the hotel’s restaurant. As we slid into our seats with the pool as our backdrop, Angie frowned when she opened her menu. “I’ve moved onto being angry.”
I opened mine as well. “But why are we so angry? She didn’t do anything to us last night.”
“Uh,” she choked out, shocked. “Are you kidding me? You don’t even know what she said to me last night.”
“What’d she say?”
“Well, she called me a bitch when she realized I had been the one on Cord’s phone. Then I called her a backstabbing bitch, both to her boyfriends and to her friends. I called her a bunch of other names too, not appropriate for here.”
When the waitress approached, we both ordered coffee. As she left, I glowered over my menu. They all looked the same: skinny, gorgeous, blonde hair, with very full lips. I growled as I remembered Sabrina from the night before, and the club’s hostess as well. Both could trip on a box of doughnuts and get fat, for all I cared.
“Okay.” Angie snapped my menu out of my hands and snapped her fingers in front of me. “Where’d you go? I was here ranting about our lost friend, but you went somewhere else. I know you, Alex, and I know you don’t have it in you to be that angry at Marissa.”
Oh, right. Marissa.
I shrugged. I was beyond caring now. “I don’t know. I was pretty upset with her last night too. She doesn’t treat Eric right at all.”
“Hmmm mmm.”
“What?”
She gave me a knowing grin. “And that has nothing to do with you and Jesse, right? You’re not equating him and Marissa together? She cheats on Eric. He’ll cheat on you. You see where I’m going?”
“No.” We weren’t in an exclusive relationship. He could do whatever he wanted. So could I.
“Oh. Okay, well, you’re mad that she’ll cheat on Eric?”
“If she hasn’t already.” I leaned forward. “Her and Cord were giving each other the bedroom look last night.”
“Really?”
“You didn’t catch it?”
“No.” She was surprised, but the waitress returned with our drinks. After the coffee was set down, we both ordered toast and fruit. The waitress seemed disappointed when she left. “I’m surprised that I didn’t catch that.”
“You were distracted by wanting to scratch her eyeballs out.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” Angie grinned as she took her coffee black. I poured a creamer in mine as she asked, “So the game is tonight, at six. You’re still going with us?”
I shook my head.
“What? Why?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to open a conversation about how my parents would be there and there’d be a memorial dedicated to Ethan. I couldn’t handle that conversation right then and there. “You think Marissa is still going?”
She rolled her eyes. “I suppose. She’s the one with the tickets. Crap. I didn’t think about that until now.”
I laughed. “Wouldn’t that suck? You confront her about ditching us and she gets you back by giving your tickets away to someone else?”
She slumped back in her chair. “Man, that sucks, but I’d respect her a bit more if she did that. It’s something I would do.”
I laughed harder.
Angie grinned at me. “What the hell am I going to do? You can’t ask Jesse for tickets?”
I shook my head. No way was I going to risk that the seats he’d give us would be next to my parents. He’d do that without thinking, although his comment last night had surprised me. It’d been the first real one he had made that told me he was aware of what my parents were doing, or that I might be hurting because of them.
I swallowed that painful thought away.
She’d been watching me as I pondered all of that. Her eyes were too knowing as she sat back. “Oookay. We’re not going down that road, apparently.” Then she smirked. “Maybe we could call that captain on their team? He seemed like a nice guy, what’s his name, Ryan or—”
“Reed,” I supplied. “And that’d be worse. It wouldn’t be right if we asked him for tickets; besides, I think it might be too late.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Disappointment filled both of us when our bill came and we paid at the table. As we walked out, I asked, “So what’s on the agenda for you and Justin today?”
Her eyes sparkled in humor. “Can I make a comment like you did? Instead of Jesse, can I say Justin? Would you be okay if I disappeared for the day with my man? We had a crazy dirty night last night. I was worked up. I got him worked up.” She pretended to shiver from excitement. “He scratched me right and I scratched him back.”
“Okay,” I laughed and hit her arm. “Shut up. I got it. I won’t bring up Jesse in that way anymore.”
She tipped her head back as a carefree laugh came out of her, but it ended on a sour note. We stopped in our tracks when we saw Eric in the lobby. He was on a couch in a far corner with two of his bags packed at his feet. His head hung low as he was hunched over his knees.
She sighed, “That doesn’t look good.”
I touched her arm. “Let me, okay?”
“Have at it. Hopefully she didn’t railroad him like she does all her guys.”
“What?” I mocked her. “What about the ones who leave her in the dust?”
Angie grinned and waved at the same time. “Listen to us; we’ve turned into the mean girls. Good luck over there.”
As she went back to her room and I headed to Eric, regret filling me for a moment. I was being mean to Marissa. I had flinched as I heard the bitterness in my tone as well, but I also knew that everything would work out with her. It always did, even though it might take awhile this time. For some reason, I couldn’t turn my back as easily as I did before. For some reason, her betrayals hurt more than they normally did.
“Hey.” I sank onto the couch beside him and tapped the bags beside him. “What’s up with those?”
Eric’s head snapped up. His eyes widened, but then a depleted look filled them. His shoulders sagged forward. “I had a great lie to tell you, in case I saw any of you guys, but screw it. She’s not worth it.”
A foreboding sense filled me. I asked quietly, “What’d she do?”
“Besides spending the night in Cord Tatum’s room last night?” He shook his head. His mouth was strained at the corners. “She screwed him all night long, and they were loud enough that his roommate had to bunk somewhere else. She loved telling me that this morning.”
“I’m sorry, Eric.” I reached up to pat his arm.
A harsh laugh ripped from him. “There’s more.”
“Oh.” My hand fell back to my lap.
“Yeah, and I guess this morning he told her to take a hike.”
“What?”
“Yep. He told her that she should go back to her boyfriend because he’d be out with the guys tonight. I guess they party hard after their games, and he said he’d be getting other ass tonight. He told her not to wait for him and that she should patch things up with her boyfriend. I guess he thinks I’m a nice guy.”
The anger rolled off of him in waves, but he was tired too. I saw the exhaustion in his depths. Then he continued, “None of that went over with her. She came back to the room, screamed at me for an hour that I was a horrible boyf
riend because I still had feelings for you and she knew it.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. His hands formed into fists. Then he bit out, “She blamed me for everything. She said I wasn’t good enough for her in bed, that I was too nice to her. She liked having guys treat her like shit. She said Cord had been liberating in bed, that’d she do him anytime he called her.” He