Traitors.
“You really want to play with this fire, Shay?”
“I’d love to see you try to burn me,” she replied, still smiling. I’d be lying if I said her alpha side wasn’t a tad bit sexy. My jeans grew a bit tighter as she stood close, and I didn’t even try to hide the fact that she’d made that happen. Making my cock hard wasn’t the challenge, though. Making my heart soft was.
Hank rubbed his hands together. “Now, that’s a challenge I can get behind. Two sworn enemies in a battle of love, and the winner—”
“Has bragging rights for the rest of our lives.” Shay kept her chocolate eyes locked with mine, not backing down, and hell, I wasn’t going to back down either.
“What if no one falls in love?” Hank asked.
“Then, at the end of the school year, the bet is off. We have four and a half months to make it happen,” Shay explained.
I stepped in closer to her. “You sure you want to put yourself in this position, Chick?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Because once you love me, every other man you ever date will be an utter disappointment.”
“And once you love me, you’ll never be able to get me out of your head,” she said, stepping even closer. We were so close that her chest almost pressed against mine. At six-feet-two, I towered over her by quite a few inches. Yet she still kept her head held high.
If I hadn’t hated her so much, I would’ve thought it was cute, how she believed in her words, how she was so certain I’d lose the bet. But what she didn’t know about me was that there wasn’t much room in my life for love. My mind didn’t welcome such things. So, this win for me? Easy. Effortless. Pain-free.
“Please.” I smirked, lowering my head down toward her face. My lips were centimeters from hers. “I’m going to love every second of owning your body and your heart.”
“Whatever.” She stood on her tiptoes, and her lips moved in closer. I felt her hot breaths brushing against my skin. “I can make you fall in love with me without you even tasting my lips.”
“I can make you love me while still treating you like shit.”
“I double-dog dare you, Satan.” She held out her hand.
“Bet, Chick.”
Bet, bet, bet, bet.
I shook her hand, giving it a bit of a tight grip, and she matched the intensity. It was probably the first time we’d touched since she came into my room a year earlier and held me.
For a second, I thought about holding on for a while longer. My hands were always ice cold while hers felt like the sun.
“Shit.” Reggie whistled low before turning to the guys. “Are we sure they aren’t already screwing?”
“Honestly, it’s hard to tell,” Eric commented, but we both ignored them. I was already forming ideas for all the things I could do to make Shay fall in love with me. I was coming up with ways to get under her skin, to drive her crazy, to make myself irresistible. This felt like the task I’d been waiting for, the challenge I needed to keep my mind busy in the upcoming weeks.
Making Shay Gable fall in love with me was going to be a perfect distraction.
People continued getting shitfaced and being louder than they should’ve been, and I was surprised the neighbors hadn’t called the cops already. A few things got broken, and I couldn’t wait to tell my parents about the damage because that was my favorite pastime—figuring out what would piss them off enough for them to snap at me. Would it be the good china? The stained carpets? A few expensive vases? Who knew.
I knew it was immature and ridiculous, but I had this twisted need to piss my parents off. More so, my father. When he was pissed off, then he was at least talking to me. Correction: yelling at me.
Sometimes, my screw-ups were enough to bring Mom back to town. She worried about me and my well-being. Dad claimed I was merely seeking attention.
Both were right.
“Let’s play spin seven,” someone shouted from the living room. A few people groaned while a few others applauded the idea.
I thought the game was a bit childish, but it seemed to be popular at all the parties lately. Spin seven was a mix of spin the bottle and seven minutes in heaven. A group of people sat in a circle, and one person spun the bottle. Whoever it landed on was the person who would be led to the closet for seven minutes.
The infamous chant started each time a couple was chosen and led to the closet. “Touch a tit, suck a dick, suck a tit, touch a dick.” It was wild how mature us high schoolers were. It was great knowing, someday, we’d be the world’s leaders. Though, based on the current politicians, a lot of suck a dick, touch a tit was still being played on the regular.
I never really engaged in the game, but when I saw Reggie ask Shay if she was playing, and she shook her head, I took it as a chance to get her to look my way.
“Why aren’t you playing, Chick? Too scared?” I asked. Every time she looked at me, she seemed a bit shocked that I had enough nerve to speak to her.
Then she puffed her chest out. “Trust me, I’m not scared. I just don’t want to,” she argued, shrugging her shoulders.
“Cluck…cluck…cluck…” I whispered for only her to hear, and I knew it was getting under her skin. It always got under her skin when I made the noises.
“I don’t see you sitting down in the circle,” she said, running her hands through her hair before grabbing the elastic from her wrist and making a messy bun.
Sounded like a dare.
I sat right down and gestured toward the circle.
She rolled her eyes at me. “Whatever, Landon. I don’t have anything to prove to you.”
My blue eyes stayed attached to her browns as I parted my lips, and mouthed, “Cluck, cluck, cluck.”
She wanted to resist. She wanted to shrug it off again and walk away, but that wasn’t how things worked between us. When one pushed, the other pushed back harder.
She sat, gave me a wicked “screw you” grin and joined the game.
A few people crashed into the closet for the seven-minute timeslot, and when they came out, they always looked dazed and confused, giggling like the idiotic teenagers they were.
When it was my turn, I reached out to the bottle with no concern about whether or not it would land exactly where I wanted it to go. At fourteen years old, I’d learned how to perfect my spin-seven skills in order to kiss the girl I wanted.
Though, this time, I knew there wasn’t going to be a lot of kissing going on. More like yelling.
The bottle spun and spun, around and around. Shay’s eyes stayed glued to the glass beer bottle. The moment it started to slow down, I watched her lips part as she quietly muttered, “No, no, no,” before it stopped directly in front of her.
The circle began oohing and aahing at the idea that the two sworn enemies were on their way to the closet together for seven minutes straight. They were all here for that show, and I knew the moment we stepped into that closet, the door would be surrounded with people whispering and pressing their ear against it from the outside, trying to catch a snippet of what was going on behind closed doors.
I stood from the circle and gestured toward Shay. “Please,” I offered. “Chickens first.”
She grimaced, her thick, full eyebrows lowering a hair before she pushed herself up from the floor and headed toward the closet in haste. We both stepped inside and stood nose to nose.
“Okay, friends, you know the rules,” Eric said, grabbing the handle of the door. “Seven minutes in heaven—or, in your case, hell. Have fun!” He slammed the door shut, and the moment it happened, Shay whined with irritation.
“I can’t believe I’m locked in here with you for seven minutes. I could think of a million things I’d rather be doing,” she grumbled, probably with a pout.
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know…watching paint dry.”
“Well, since we’re here, we should probably spend our time wisely,” I joked, moving to unbuckle my jeans, knowing it would bother her. I wished I could see the anno
yance on her face. I loved when I got under her skin enough to make her nostrils flare.
“Oh my gosh, remove that idea from your mind, Landon, and stop messing with your belt, because there’s no way in hell I’m touching you.”
“I’ve thought about it before,” I said, my voice low and tame.
“Thought about what?”
“Kissing you.”
She huffed sarcastically. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“You’re right, it’s not.”
“I know.”
It was true, though. It’d happened once—and only once—after Lance’s funeral. I had spent a lot of weeks being out of it, using alcohol to cope with the shitstorm raging inside my head, and I was a bit unstable. If my friends hadn’t been looking out for me, I would’ve probably gone overboard. I remembered walking into school one day and seeing Shay standing there at her locker with a few of her friends. She was laughing and tossing her head back in such a genuine way, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
I kept thinking about how she’d held me weeks prior and stayed with me during the lowest point of my life. She had been there—my enemy—taking care of my scars. And as I’d stared at her in the hallway, I’d thought about thanking her—walking over to her, parting my lips, and giving her my gratitude. I wasn’t used to people doing shit for me with no hope of anything in return, and Shay had done it without any expectations.
I remembered looking at her eyes, and then moving down to her slender nose, and then her cheeks, then those juicy lips.
I wondered how those lips would taste if I used mine against them to thank her. I wondered if she tasted like the candy she was always popping into her mouth. I wondered if she dripped of the angelic sin I always claimed her to be. I wondered for a split second…considered it for a blink in time…and then she slammed her locker, walked away, and I sobered up.
Still, I had considered it.
We both went quiet for a few moments before I cleared my throat again. I didn’t like silence. Silence and I didn’t get along too well. “Just one kiss, Chick. I can keep it a secret.”
“You keep secrets the same way you keep girls. AKA, you don’t—other than Monica.”
“Monica’s not mine.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that she thinks you’re hers.”
I smirked a little. “You jealous of her?”
“Jealous of her having to deal with a guy like you? Never in my life.”
“Whatever you say, Chick.”
“I wish you’d stop calling me Chick,” she snapped. “I hate it.”
“You want a new nickname, sweet cheeks? I can give you a new nickname, sweet cheeks.”
She shivered in disgust. Good. There was nothing I enjoyed more than getting on her nerves. “Not that either.”
“I’ll keep working on it.”
“Or you could just call me by my name.”
“Nah, Shay’s too ugly a name to leave my lips.”
“I hate you.”
“I hate you more.”
“Yeah, but I hate you the most.”
I snickered. “You really think you can get a guy like me to fall in love with you?”
“Yes. I’m positive, actually. People are the easiest to read, and that includes you.”
“You can’t read me, Shay.”
“I can, like an open book.”
“Okay.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out my cell phone, and turned on the flashlight, lighting up the small space. “Read me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You sure you want me to do this? Reading people is kind of my gift, and you might not like what I have to say.”
“I never like what you have to say, so this time shouldn’t be any different. Go for it.”
She rolled her shoulders back and stretched out her arms as if she was about to deadlift me. “Okay. You’re fake, Landon.”
That was it? That was the big reveal? “What the hell do you mean I’m fake?”
“I mean exactly that. You. Are. Fake. F-A-K-E. Fake. There is nothing real about you. You’re a walking lie.”
I laughed. No joke, I actually laughed out loud, which didn’t happen often for me. It was a deep-rooted, belly laugh.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I questioned. “Everything about me is real. I’m the realist damn person you’ll come across in our town.”
“No,” she disagreed with a shake of her head. “You are the fakest. You’re even faker than the new boobs Carly Patrick got for her eighteenth birthday.”
“What?!” I breathed out, stunned by her words. “I’m not fake, Shay.”
“It’s not a big deal, Landon.” She shrugged her shoulders and went to picking at her nails. “People seem to love your fakeness.”
“I’m not fake,” I argued again, my blood boiling at this point. “Plus, I’ve seen Carly’s boobs up close and personal. Those are straight in-your-face, nips-don’t-flick fake. There is no way in this world I’m more fake than those silicone watermelons. I’m a lot of shitty things, but fake isn’t one of them.”
“Okay then, can you answer a question for me?”
“Anything.”
“How many people know you’re sad?”
“The hell kind of question is that?” I barked.
“A very straightforward one,” she replied. She seemed so cool, calm, and collected—one of the many things I despised about her. It was as if her life was always so solid. I wished for that kind of stable structure, and seeing that she had it annoyed the living hell out of me.
“How long have you been sad, Landon?”
I glanced at my watch. “About a solid three minutes now, because being trapped inside this closet with you is complete hell.”
“Aren’t you the one who wanted to come in here with me?”
“Bad call. A lapse in judgment. I forgot how annoying you are.”
She smiled. She freaking smiled at me, pleased by my annoyance. “Are you going to answer me about your sadness?”
“Are you going to suck my dick?” I replied.
“Do you always do that?” she asked, tilting her head to the left as she studied my expressions. She was doing that thing she did—reading me. Taking note of my movements and the tightness of my jaw, taking in every inch of me.
Don’t let her read your pages, Landon. She couldn’t have even handled my prologue.
All my walls were up, and I wasn’t going to let her knock them down.
“Do what?” I questioned.
“Use sarcasm to shield your hurting.”
“There’s nothing hurting here. Look at this life. I have money, badass parties, and girls throwing themselves at me—why would I have anything to hurt about?”
“Maybe because money, girls, and parties don’t make a person happy. I see how miserable you are in your eyes.”
I grimaced and whisper-hissed, “You don’t know shit about me, Shay.”
“Then how am I able to get under your skin so easily? If that wasn’t true, if you weren’t sad, why would my saying that bother you so much?”
“You don’t,” I calmly replied.
She did.
She was pushing me, making me uncomfortable with the fact that she did seem able to see the parts of me no one else could. Anger was building in my chest, and I needed to defuse it before it became too big.
“Maybe it’s best if we shut up for the rest of the time,” I told her.
“For the second time in my life, I agree with you.”
Shay sat down on the floor of the closet, and I did the same, leaning back against some coats that were hanging. How did seven minutes feel like seventy? Was time moving at all? This was hell.
Then came the silence. The silence that brought out heavy thoughts. Shay could read my mind somehow, and so, when the silence became too much, I cleared my throat and tried to make small talk in hopes of shutting my own brain up. “A chicken and Satan walk into a closet—stop me if you’ve heard this one.”
It was quiet and low, and dammit, I’d never heard Shay laugh at anything I’d ever said before, so that was new. What was also new was the small part of me that enjoyed hearing her sound.
“Landon?” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Just shut up, all right?”
Yeah, okay.
“One more minute, you horny hatebirds!” Eric called out.
We both stood, and I took a step closer toward her. “I get you not wanting to kiss. That’s intimate and personal, but if you want, this is your last chance to touch my cock while no one’s looking. I won’t stop you.”
“No thanks. I’m allergic to peanuts,” she said so effortlessly and loudly, causing the crowd on the other side of the door to burst into laughter.
Shay smirked again, feeling proud of her little dig at me. That beautiful, annoying smirk I loved to hate.
Shay: 1
Landon: 0
I wasn’t worried, though. The game was just getting started. She might’ve scored one point, but I wasn’t going to let it happen again. We were playing on my field, and Shay didn’t know what she was up against.
The moment time was up, we opened the door and stepped outside to a crowd. Leading that crowd was Monica, and she had crazy eyes. The last thing I wanted to do was deal with Monica and her crazy. She always had that reaction whenever she saw me talking to another girl even though she was out there screwing a million guys herself.
I rolled my shoulders back and parted my lips to speak, but it didn’t matter much at all because smack.
Monica’s palm landed on my cheek, sending a stinging sensation through my system. God, it’d been almost two months since Monica slapped me last—that had to be a new record.
“Really, Landon? Spin seven with another girl? With my friend?!” she yelled breathlessly, her eyes watering over as the crowd kept watching. If there were two things you could always count on, it was Monica’s dramatics and the nosy people of our town eavesdropping on her hysterics.
I found it hilarious that based on the amount of shit Monica talked about Shay behind her back, she would call her a friend. I figured she hated Shay even more than I did. It seemed Monica was actually jealous of the hate I gave to Shay, which only deepened her disgust for the girl. Sometimes, I got so annoyed at the crap she’d say about Shay and how low she’d stoop to trash-talk the girl I hated. I’d call her out on it, too, being oddly protective of the girl I wasn’t supposed to care anything about. How did one have enough nerve to stand up for their enemy in private but treat them like crap in public? I was that level of asshole.
Landon & Shay - Part One: (The L&S Duet Book 1) Page 5