Because time is running out.
“What is that key for?” she demands again.
I shake out the pants again, dusting off any dirt from the floor. “It’s to a party.”
“When?”
“It’s kind of a pop-up.” My eyes go to the ceiling, trying to act casual.
“And you need a key to get in?”
“I guess so.”
She snatches the sweats out of my hands, approaching me in her pants and sports bra. “And who will be at this party? Anyone I know?”
I laugh under my breath. What would she do if I told her right now? She’d believe it. Clay isn’t stupid.
I narrow my eyes. I don’t want to tell her yet, though.
“Megan Martelle?” she asks, inching in. “Is that who you’re partying with?”
She’s especially obsessed with our coach’s assistant. Why?
When I say nothing, she backs away, a gleam in her eyes as she holds mine and digs in her duffel bag. Pulling out her phone, she starts tapping away. “Olivia Jaeger has a key to earn her A,” she recites as she types. “To Martelle’s apartment, so Teach can tongue her cunt all day…”
I take a step toward her. My enjoyment is gone.
She looks up, cocking her head. “That’s only a hundred characters,” she muses. “Still so much space.”
A tweet has two-hundred-eighty. I tense. She’s not going to tweet that. She wouldn’t.
“What rhymes with strap-on?” she inquires, an innocent pinch between her brows.
I lunge for the phone, ready to show her exactly how well she’d fare on my side of the tracks.
“Just because I don’t fucking punch you doesn’t mean I wasn’t taught how,” I growl. “Knock it off.”
But she slips back, holding her phone. “Drop your bra,” she tells me instead.
I lift my chin. What the hell is wrong with her?
“Drop your bra!” she bellows.
I startle, wincing. “Drop your phone.”
I’ll drop my bra for her, but no pictures.
She sets it down but grabs a Sharpie off the table, instead. Walking slowly, she stops in front of me, and I keep my eyes locked on hers as I reach behind me, unhook my black sports bra, and let it fall to the floor.
I hold back my flinch at the goddamn amusement written all over her face.
Let her make fun of me. Let her say what she’s going to say. She doesn’t want to send that tweet. Not really. This is what she wants. Me humiliated.
She doesn’t do anything for several moments, almost as if she’s trying to decide what to do at all, but then…
She lowers her gaze.
She stares at me, unblinking, and everything is hot under the scrutiny of her eyes. Her lips fall apart, and I don’t think she breathes.
Chills spread over my skin.
“I didn’t…” she trails off, and then clears her throat. “I didn’t realize your hips were wide enough to birth a full-grown linebacker.” She uncaps the marker. “Your skirt hides it well.”
Fuck you.
She sinks to her knees, watching me the whole time. “Should I let you keep your panties on?”
“Do you want me to take them off?”
Dare me. I stare at her, willing her to have the fucking guts.
But she draws in a deep breath, instead. “Your brother…” she says. “He was looking at me the other morning when he dropped you off, wasn’t he?”
I clench my jaw.
“I didn’t mind it. You want to take a picture of me for him?” She tsks. “Those Jaeger men… Definitely not the kind you marry, but that’s kind of what’s so hot about them.”
What the hell is she talking about?
“Something hot about being used for something that feels so good?”
I study her, waiting for the fucking point.
“But Iron isn’t in charge of the family. It’s Macon, right?” She peers up at me. “Your oldest brother?”
I almost laugh. Messing with Macon will take a hell of a lot more than she has.
Her eyes fall down my legs and back up over my panties and up my breasts. “What would you do if I came out of his room one morning?” she nearly whispers. “Would you be angry? Would you warn him against me?”
Her wet hair clings to her shoulders, her soft lips and glowing skin so much more beautiful without makeup.
And an image of her sneaking out of my brother’s room in a towel, after being in his bed, hits me, and I look away.
“Or would you wish I was in your room, instead?” she murmurs.
My chest caves a little, a picture of her nestled in my sheets coming unbidden to my thoughts.
I glare back. “I’d wish you well,” I say calmly. “I have brothers to spare, and it looks like you need one.”
Anger blazes in her eyes, her chest rising and falling in heavy breaths all of a sudden.
Take what you want from me, and do it in the next three months, bitch.
She yanks my panties down my legs, and I stumble with the force, feeling her strip them from my feet in moments.
I gasp, my hands going to cover myself, but I stop, begging her to remind me that I hate her and this school and need to get out of here. Let her push me until I’m running for the state line.
“Oh, exquisite,” she coos.
Tears well in my chest. I can feel them rising to my eyes as the Sharpie digs into my skin. I look anywhere but at her.
“Just a few suggestions,” she says, writing on me, “because poor or not, these things can be fixed.”
She starts circling areas of my stomach, my inner thighs, and making notes on my calves and toes.
Nudging me around, she pushes me until I’m damn-near prostrating over the table, but I take it, even as the bile rises up my throat and I’m dying to just kick her teeth in.
She won’t get in trouble. She never did, so I stopped telling anyone, especially my brothers, because they would only get arrested for retaliating for me.
No. I will deal with this. When I know I can’t get expelled.
She writes under my ass. “Some squats will take care of this.”
Rising, she lifts each arm, shaking it to see if there’s fat, and then circles the offending bits in marker, so I can take note.
She marks the area under my belly button and my bikini line, and circles whatever muffin-top she imagines is at my hips. She writes words I refuse to look down and read and inspects me with her hands, trailing and squeezing, accompanied by laughs here and there.
“I just can’t get over the state of you,” she gripes. “Jesus, you’re an athlete. There’s no excuse.”
A golf ball swells in my throat, stretching it so painfully I can barely hold back the tears.
But even as the hurt grows and grows, so do the bricks inside me.
Keep going, Clay. Please keep going.
She rises, caps her marker, and looks me dead in the eye, an inch between us. “You should thank me,” she whispers. “Surviving me will give you all the tools you need when you leave me.”
I look at her through the water in my own eyes, faltering. Leave her?
“Just like your mother left you,” she says.
Excuse me? If she thinks she knows shit about my mother…
But she just shakes her head. “Trysta, right? Trysta Jaeger and her six kids that she left when she hung herself in her fucking bathroom.”