Chapter 13
Emery
“So, are you going to open it?” Oakley asks from her spot next to me on my bed.
She’d returned about an hour ago, popped her head into my room to see if I needed anything, then disappeared for a shower.
She came back to camp out on my bed beside me in what was Xavier’s old spot, dressed in sweats and a hoodie, with a turban-towel thingy wrapped around her still-wet blonde hair.
“Open what?” I murmured, focused on this pixel-shooting game she got me addicted to. The first ten levels were my bitch, but now I’m on a randomly hard level, and this is my third attempt to clear the screen, and I only have two lives left.
“The gift that arrived this morning. You know, white box, big bow?”
I pretend I don’t hear the exasperation in her voice. “Nope.”
“Can I ask why not?”
Oh shit, I’m almost out of slots. Quickly, I start hammering at the screen with my index finger, trying to clear slots faster than the shooters can get back to base. “Uh, because I told them to leave me alone. I’m going to dump it on Derek’s desk tomorrow before class so he can take it back.”
There is a notable silence from the other side of the bed, but it takes me until I’m finished with the level to truly notice it.
Rotating my head, I look at her. “What?”
Oakley lifts herself up, fully repositioning herself onto her side, and stares at me with a face full of implorement. Imploring? Whatever, her eyes are wide, and she looks very serious while somehow coming across as gentle. It’s impressive, to be honest.
“Ems, you didn’t get to see them at the hospital.
I’ve never seen four grown men so…I don’t know.
Agitated. Worried. The only one who managed to stay in his seat, well, I wouldn’t say patiently, but at least he wasn’t roaming the room, was Derek.
” Oakley bites her lip before reaching out to take my hand from my phone and giving it a squeeze.
“They were worried about you, Ems. Seriously worried. And before that, when they came to look for you here at the dorm, they were all take-charge and ‘we’re going to save her.’”
For that last part, she attempts a He-Man male voice, then she heaves a sigh.
“I know that whatever happened before that was bad, but the way they showed up for you…I think they deserve a second chance. Or at least a conversation, whatever you are willing to give them.”
Her words sound awfully close to Derek’s, and I stare at her, irritation building in my stomach.
She is supposed to be on my side. “I saw them at the sex club they are members of with other women draped all over them. Did they tell you that? Darcy had his ropes out and was showing this sexy-as-fuck blonde woman how to wrap them around her arm. Dylan, Derek’s ex, was kneeling by his feet, holding his drink above her head.
And if you are wondering how I know she’s his ex, she works at a restaurant he owns, which they took me to on that first weekend.
Hudson had a totally different woman kneeling at his feet.
And finally, some woman was sitting on the armrest of Xavier’s seat, practically falling into his lap.
I’m good on the second chance, Oaks. I just want to move on. ”
“Kneeling…” Her mouth opens and closes several times, eyes doing some sort of weird, shocked-but-intrigued thing. Shaking her head, she refocuses. “Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like? Those four men, Ems, they care about you. I saw it. They—”
I shoot her a glare. “I thought you were supposed to be on my side.”
“I am! But maybe there’s an explanation? Each of those things sounds like it could be innocent.”
“Oaks, we were in a sex club. I literally walked past people fucking right there in the open area. The possibility of all four of them being in completely innocent situations is so ridiculously low, I’m not even going to try to do the math.”
“Okay, yeah, I can see how that would have looked—” she starts, but I cut her off by removing my hand from her hold.
The anger in my stomach starts to feel hot and twisty, so I sit up and shove my pillows behind my back.
“And if it was all innocent, why the hell were they even at the club? Derek mentioned something about talking to Newton’s dean and getting the okay to be with me, but why the hell did that have to occur at the club and not in his fucking office?
We’d already waited three weeks, what was one more weekend?
And besides, the line between teacher and student was definitely crossed, with all of them. ”
Oakley nods cautiously, eyes wide. “That’s true.”
“If they had fucking talked to me instead of acting like big babies behind the fucking coffee shop when everything went to shit, we could have worked this out together. We are all freaking adults. I am sure we could have spent time together without losing our clothes along the way. If they couldn’t keep their dicks in their pants around me, that says more about them than it does anyone else.
But no”—I slash a hand through the air, thumping the blankets over my lap—“they didn’t even bother asking for my opinion about my own freaking life.
My entire existence has been about handing over my autonomy to the authority figures in my life, and it was the one thing I asked of them from the very beginning—let me make my own choices.
Instead, they took all my choices away and tossed them in the trash. ”
“Ems, I—”
“So, no. I’m not going to give them another chance.
They didn’t give me a single fucking second to explain or try to work things out.
They were supposed to be mine, and I was supposed to be theirs.
But then they left me behind the coffee shop, alone.
Discarded. And after I worked my ass off to get them back, I find out about this secret plan to deliberately keep me away but on the hook, like they were doing me some sort of favor after fucking with my feelings for weeks?
Fuck that. No. I’m done being their little plaything.
They can all go to hell for all I care.”
Once all my steam is gone, the resounding silence is heavy and thick. My cheek tickles, and I reach up to rub at it, only to find it is wet.
Fuck. Great. Now I’m crying over the assholes.
And, yep, Oakley has a look of concern on her face.
I glare at her. Again. “Don’t look at me like that.”
She immediately looks away and readjusts to sit up, mimicking my pose as we both stare at my dresser, me crying and her just being there.
The sound of the dorm’s door opening captures both of our attention. I snap my head toward Oakley, and I have no idea what expression is on my face, but she immediately starts to scramble out of bed.
“I’m on it.”
Through my open door, I see Xavier enter our dorm, a brown paper bag nursed in one hand. His blond curls are a little messier than usual, but other than that, he looks like the place I want to rest my head at night.
My heart pangs in my chest like I’m a heroine in a historical romance novel.
Oakley gets to my bedroom door and slips out as Xavier glances my way. Our connection is severed when Oakley pulls the door shut behind her. Murmuring comes through the door, but I couldn’t give two shits about what they’re saying, as long as he doesn’t come in here.
He’ll get the memo, eventually.
Slumping down, I roll over onto my side, back to the door, and try to go to sleep.
When I wake up an hour later, my pillow is wet beneath my cheek, the white gift box with the pale peach polka dot bow, the yellow envelope, and two of my bears are on the bed next to me, and there is a bowl of food with a drink on my desk.
Fucking Xavier.