2. Vaughn
CHAPTER 2
VAUGHN
N ow
She was prettier than I remembered but more damaged than I was, and she still stared at me like I was the devil himself.
Maybe I was.
However, she had no clue the shit I was going through, not one hellish clue. Nobody did. Having to deal with my father and then my coach that morning about my grades and how I needed to get my GPA up or else… And now having little Miss Fucking Sunshine in my face wasn’t helping the anger issues they kept riding my ass for.
“This isn’t going to work,” she stated the obvious.
“No shit.”
“It’s fine. I’ll just request another student.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re not my first tutor, so unless you plan on deep throating my dick, I’m stuck with you.”
She jerked back. “Of course you’d screw your tutors.”
“I wasn’t exactly the one doing the screwing.”
“You make me sick.”
“Feeling’s mutual, sweetheart.” Before she could say another word, I gripped her arm and hauled her ass into the private study room beside us.
“Let go of me!”
I did. “With pleasure.”
Being a football player meant I had my fair share of injuries—the clean break was always the easiest, but the sprain?
The stumbling?
The hit to the head, the knee, the body?
The rough shove against the wall that made you so dizzy you wanted to kill someone. You always remembered the bastard who did it, and then you were always out for blood. But the clean breaks always almost came out as an accident forced by aggression and competitiveness. Those were the hits I respected.
The ones I knew.
Now Tru Remy…
She was my clean break.
I swallowed hard, taking a deep breath while trying to stay focused on the task at hand.
“So Cinderella turned into a tutor?”
Her beady eyes zeroed in on me. She always had that shit-eating stare, especially when looking at me.
The same solemn expression.
The familiar sad smile.
The “I trust no one” composure.
She hadn’t changed, and for some reason I couldn’t for the life of me fathom, it pissed me off for her. There were times with her that used to wreak havoc on my mind. I wanted to yell at the world and use the power my parents had to fix a corrupt system that had fucked over and fucked up so many kids and ruined so many lives.
I couldn’t blame her for hating a world that had been beyond unfair to her. The cards she was dealt weren’t just shitty, they were traumatizing, and if I knew anything about Tru, which wasn’t a lot to begin with, she was as tough as nails.
“So,” she mocked in a patronizing voice, “the football god turned into a bigger dumbass than he was in the past? I mean, how many tutors have you gone through at this point? What am I? The tenth? Twentieth?”
Instead of acknowledging her jab with a response, I sneered, “All we had to do was meet and get our schedules together, alright? I’ll go first. I have practice every night at five unless there’s a game, which typically takes place on Saturdays. As far as scrimmages, I can sometimes work around those. But let’s get something straight, Cinderella. The only reason I need a tutor is to graduate and move on to bigger”—I purposely raised my eyebrows and looked down at her—“and better things.”
She lifted her chin; her jet-black hair hit right at her chin, bringing too much attention to her full lips and crystal-blue eyes. I was always mesmerized by them. I think everyone who met her when she first came to the Hamptons as the new charity case was.
Tiny compared to me, she didn’t even come up to my shoulders. However, she still had curves in all the right places, and her tits were utter perfection while her legs went on for days.
My hand twitched at my side, resisting the urge to spank her plump, luscious ass for being the sassy little minx she obviously would forever be.
“Are we good?” I questioned. “I have somewhere to be.”
Complete and utter silence from her.
“Want me to send my schedule to you via email or text, and you can let me know what works for you?”
Still nothing.
I continued. “How about you give me your Venmo, and I’ll send you the money you painfully deserve for standing in front of me glaring at me like I’m nothing more than a piece of shit to you?”
Finally, she answered, “You really want to do this?”
“I have no choice. It’s either you or I don’t graduate.”
She smiled, cocking her head to the side. “I guess that means I hold your future in my hands?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Cinderella.”
Through a clenched jaw, she demanded, “Stop calling me that.”
“Trust me, you don’t want me to call you what I’m really thinking.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
I snapped, “Don’t act like you don’t need the money.”
She winced, quickly recovering.
It wasn’t like I wanted to be there, and she clearly didn’t either.
“As much as I’d love to stand here and proceed with this foreplay of banter between us…”
She rolled her eyes. “You wish.”
“You want to play hardball, Tru? I can play harder, but for now, I have to go. I’m already late.”
I snatched her cell phone out of her hand, texting mine from hers before tossing it back to her.
She caught it midair as I ordered, “Text me your schedule, and we’ll go from there.”
“I can work around what you have, and?—”
“I. Literally. Do. Not. Care. Just text me.”
“Fine, dickhead.”
“Great, princess.”
“Perfect, asshole.” She nodded. “I have someone to meet anyway.”
I scoffed. “Some things don’t ever change, do they, Trudence? ”
Her head lifted, and her eyes locked on mine. “I guess not, huh, Vaughan? ”
We stood at a standstill, but I was the first to leave this time.
After all, wasn’t that what I was owed when she did it to me the first time?
I sidestepped her and kept walking, refusing to stop until I reached my car. I’d probably not even remember how I got home had I not been so pissed off. And by the time I did, the guy who was supposed to move into the room next to mine in the apartment I leased wasn’t even there.
I’d been lucky enough to grab a steal of a condo with three rooms and invested some money in it, knowing I’d be able to sublet it later. It was in a safe neighborhood, around a mile from campus.
I checked my phone, cut the engine, and walked inside. The only car parked in our reserved spots was Brady’s, but he had to take the week off practice after flying back home to deal with a death in his family. He stayed at his girlfriend’s apartment more than our place. They’d been together for the past year.
Michael, our third roommate, graduated last semester, and we’d been searching for a new one only to come up empty. We resorted to using a leasing agent who found someone in less than a week. Our agent emailed over the contract for our new roommate that morning after they signed a year's lease.
Hopefully, they wouldn’t mind that we didn’t have many kitchen essentials beyond the basic plates and cups. The fridge was always empty or had rotting food in it. There was no in-between.
I jumped in the shower to quickly rinse off, and the doorbell rang. Grabbing the towel off the sink, I wrapped it around my waist and quickly realized it belonged to Brady’s girlfriend, so it didn’t cover much of my lower body.
The doorbell rang two more times, and I hurried toward it instead of trying to find something bigger to cover my cock. My temper was looming. The audacity of this guy, showing up late and then ringing the doorbell like he owned the damn place.
Pissed, I jerked it open. “You know punctuality is—” I stopped dead in my tracks, never expecting to see the person standing on the other side of my door.
“What do you want now?”
Tru stared up at me with wide eyes as I stared down at her.
“Are you stalking me or just lost?”
She checked her phone and then checked it again as she furiously tapped the screen like that was the problem before looking back up at me and slowly turning her phone toward me.
“No,” I scoffed. ”No. Just. Never. No. Never. Ever. The universe isn’t this cruel. Nope. NOPE!” I start to shove her away, pressing my pointer finger against her forehead when she batted me away because no.
This couldn’t be right. I mean, what were the odds? Who hated me enough to do this? WHY?
But. As luck would have it. Absolute damning confirmation that she was our new roommate with the contract attached and our address shown in big, bold lettering.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?”
I didn’t allow her to reply.
Instead, I spewed, “Not a chance in hell, Cinderella.”
Before I slammed the door in Tru’s face.