Chapter 30
Cam
We wait until we’re sure the girls are upstairs. Damon takes out his phone and pulls up the feed to Evan’s room. Evan laughs at something Mia says and shows her the room and her closet. Mia goes nuts over the clothes, and they start talking about what Evan should wear tonight.
“Is this smart?” I ask what we’re all thinking. Girls like Mia don’t really change.
“Evan wants a friend.” Damon’s eyes soften. It’s odd to see on Damon, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. He needs someone soft in his life. Someone like Evan.
“Her assistant director, Keira, seems like a better option than Mia.” Hawk runs his hand through his hair. “I guess we just see if she decides to test us again.”
None of us believes she was testing us. She wants to fuck us. She doesn’t care who we belong to.
“Do you think she slept with Chase? She’s blond. She could have been the girl in the car.” Will Damon want to get revenge on the girl? It made sense with Evan because she was dating Chase, and her gold-digging mother was moving in with Damon’s dad.
He hasn’t really mentioned the mother in a while. Hurting Evan isn’t the plan anymore.
And while her mother might be a gold-digger, pushing her out now would hurt Evan.
“She might have.” Damon drags his fingers across his lips as he watches the two of them in Evan’s room.
“We’re not hurting Evan.” Standing, I glare at Damon. “I don’t give a shit if she was the girl in the car or Olivia was. I’m not giving up Evan for your revenge.”
Damon lifts confused eyes to me. “Why would we give up Evan?”
Hawk grunts. “You wanted Annie because she was the girl in the car. It’s not unreasonable to think you might want to fuck over the girl who was actually in the car since we know it was never Annie.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Damon looks down at the screen. “Evan is ours. If we get our revenge, it won’t be by giving her up.”
Hawk meets my eyes. We haven’t talked about Evan’s mother. Now isn’t the time to bring it up though. Not when Evan might accidentally overhear us. I don’t know how Evan feels about her mom, but she might not like that part of our seduction plan was to get her and her mother kicked out.
“Olivia talked about drugging Evan so I could fucking rape her.” Damon raises hard eyes to us. “Olivia doesn’t get close to Evan or her drinks. Evan needs a drink, we provide it. It sounds like Olivia has some sort of rape drug she got from Mia’s brother.”
“Does that make us trust Mia less?” Hawk asks. “It’s possible she doesn’t know about the drugs or that she uses them too. Do we trust her with Evan?”
I glance at the camera where Evan sits on her bed with a smile as she chats with Mia.
It’s hard to imagine anyone being malicious to Evan, but then again, we didn’t have the best intentions at the beginning.
But we don’t spread our shit, so the only ones who know about the plan to get rid of Evan’s mother are us.
“Fuck.” I run my hand through my hair. “Can we just claim our girl and be done with it?”
“Soon.” Damon lifts his gaze to me and then Hawk. “Tonight, Chase doesn’t get a chance to draw her off on her own. Evan is ours.”
“Good.” I glance toward the stairs. “What about the other plan?”
Hawk nods. “She’s keeping him on the hook. When we’re ready to pull the trigger, all we have to do is say when and where.”
“We need to make sure Evan is safe when it happens.” Damon glances down at his phone again.
I stand. “I’ve gotta run home and grab my books. I’ll study while you guys work on your project.”
Hawk nods. I head out. The ride home is quiet, and when I get there, I worry this is a mistake. That Dad will try to make me stay home. I’m supposed to be on lockdown, but my parents aren’t really helicopter parents who know everything I’m doing.
As I pass the living room, Dad says, “Cam?”
I blow out a breath and stop. I hoped he was out.
“How was the scrimmage?” He gets up from the couch and puts his book down.
“Good.” I lean against the doorjamb. “I’m heading over to Damon’s to study.”
My dad chuckles. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Actually, yes.” I straighten. “EvanAnn’s mother is Damon’s dad’s girlfriend. Evan will be there to make sure I stay on task.”
Dad’s gaze narrows on me, suspiciously. “She’s a cute girl.”
“Most girls who go to our school are cute or downright gorgeous. Just par for the course.” I shake my head. “I really want to get my work done.”
“If your grades improve, I’ll thank the girl myself.” Dad clicks his tongue.
“Don’t worry, they will.” I turn and walk up to my room. It’s not like my grades are in the tank, but the partying did make it hard to compete with my classmates. I grab my schoolbag and head back downstairs.
“Your mother and I are going out tonight.” Dad calls after me when I pass the doorway.
I backtrack. “Okay.”
They don’t usually tell me where they’re going or when they’ll be home. But I’ve also never been on lockdown before.
“You’ll be here tonight?” He tries to make it a statement, but it comes out as a question.
“Where else would I go?” I smirk, but fuck that shit. “Oh, wait, I’m eighteen, and it’s a weekend, so I think I’ll go hang out with my friends.”
“Cam.” His tone is a warning.
“Look, we have this year left to hang out. It’s my senior year, and sure, we’ll keep in touch after graduation, but I doubt we’ll even be in the same state next year, so cut me some slack.
I’m studying on a fucking Saturday. My friends will only give me sodas because they don’t want me to get in an accident because I drank too much. ”
Dad’s eyes widened during my speech. “Fine. But only if your homework is done.”
“On it.”
EvanAnn
We work on our history project while Cam does some of his homework. Before Cam heads out, he puts a red paper flower next to me. I put it with the others on my desk.
Mia helped me pick out an outfit for tonight. It’s not as revealing as the outfit Damon picked out last weekend, but it’s still showing a lot more skin than I normally do.
I didn’t tell her the whole plan, and neither did the guys, but she knows to distract Jackson if he actually shows up. I hope he doesn’t. It will just complicate things. My nerves are frayed by the time she leaves, and she’ll be back after dinner to do my makeup.
I don’t know what to think about Mia. The things she said and knew and didn’t tell me. Testing the guys? My boyfriend? I knew she wasn’t really my speed of person, but I do believe in second chances. She hasn’t hurt me.
Yet.
I don’t plan on giving her enough trust to actually hurt me.
“Evan,” Damon says from the bathroom doorway. He has on jeans and a black t-shirt that hugs his body.
My insides flip as I meet his blue eyes. I can’t imagine not being here. Not sleeping in Damon’s bed. Not fucking the Devil’s trio. It’s hard to remember what my life was before they stormed into it.
“Dinner?”
“Yeah.” I stand and run my hands over my jeans and straighten his sweatshirt on me.
He closes the distance between us. Will I ever not get a rush when he touches me? Will I get used to having all three of them? Will they grow tired of me?
He takes my hand and leads me through the bathroom to his room. He grabs the sweatshirt and pulls it off over my head, leaving me in only my bra. His finger trails over the lacy edge, making me bite my lip.
“No time.” He goes to his drawers and pulls out a t-shirt.
His obsession with dressing me in his clothes is odd. I don’t think I even wore one of Chase’s sweatshirts while we were dating. I can’t say I don’t love it though as he helps me put it on.
“I am capable of dressing myself.” I give him a small smile.
“Far less fun.” He smirks and lifts my chin. He searches my eyes. “How’s your pussy?”
I arch an eyebrow. “A little worse for wear. How’s your dick?”
He chuckles. “Hard, aching. I want my cum inside you at that party. I want to smell me when I get close to you.”
My panties grow damp just thinking about it. I press my thighs together at the ache.
“We’re meeting the guys out to eat.” Damon takes my hand and leads me down the back stairs and out to the garage. Riding with him on his bike is almost second nature now.
We ride to an Indian restaurant. When we stop, he asks, “This is good, right?”
“Yeah, this is good.” It’s perfect, but I’d make anything work for what appears to be a date.
When we enter the restaurant, Cam and Hawk already have a booth for us near the back. Of course they’re sitting across from each other, making me choose who to sit beside.
I slide in next to Cam, and he throws his arm around my shoulders and kisses me. My cheeks flush with heat as I pull back and look around.
“No one we know is here, little devil.” Damon reaches across the table with his palm up, and I put my hand in his.
“This feels really weird. Like I shouldn’t be here with you guys.” I glance around the small restaurant, but there are only some random people. We’re still not out as anything. Not even friends. Though they do interact with me at school and parties occasionally.
“How else are we going to treat our girlfriend?” Hawk winks. Happiness floods my insides, but I don’t know how this can work long-term.
“Is that seriously what we’re going with?” I tuck my hair behind my ear and meet each of their eyes. “I’m your girlfriend and you all are my boyfriends?”
“We’re basically already that, right?” Damon leans back in the booth and looks at me with hooded eyes. “We spend all our free time together. Eat together. Fuck together.”
“Blackmail me with videos to get me to sleep with you. Force me to stay with my ex to punish him.” I arch an eyebrow. It hasn’t all been fun and games.
Damon smirks, Hawk laughs, and Cam squeezes my shoulders.
“You liked it, little devil.” Damon’s blue eyes lock on mine.
He’s not wrong. I enjoy every moment of being theirs. So I give up my little defiance. Besides, they all know I’ll give them what they want in the end. I always do and I’m okay with that.
We chat about classes a little while we wait for the food to arrive.
“There’s got to be more to you than your classes, Annie.” Hawk pauses while the server puts our meals in front of us. “What kind of movies do you like?”
“Oh,” I pause with a bite of turmeric rice on my fork. I set it down. “I love all kinds of movies. My dad had this long list of movies he wanted me to see. I used to watch them with him.”
I haven’t thought about that list in a while. I couldn’t make myself look at the incomplete list after he passed. All the things we didn’t get to, because we ran out of time. And then everything seemed to move so fast.
“What kind of movies?” Cam asks.
“Movies from the 80s and 90s mostly, but some classics as well. He wanted to encourage my acting, since I was being typecast as the serious kid even at ten. He was determined for me to watch them all.” I straighten and meet Damon’s eyes.
“Most of the time he’d fall asleep during them, but I still stayed and watched the whole thing.
He’d wake up at the end, and we’d talk about them for a little while before he got tired again. ”
My heart still aches when I talk about him.
Damon doesn’t look away, and I know he understands.
That he sat beside his mother’s bedside the same way I sat beside my dad’s.
How would our lives be different if they hadn’t died?
Would he have ever looked at me twice? Would I have ever dated Chase?
I shake it off. What ifs don’t matter now.
“We didn’t get to his favorite genre though.” I smile, remembering the list and the section labeled for when I’m older. “Mostly horror movies or movies that weren’t appropriate for a ten-year-old.”
There’s a box that list was in. I saw it when I was in my closet with Mia.
It was obviously memorabilia, so whoever unpacked my room didn’t unpack that.
Pictures of my family when it was whole.
A necklace Dad gave me when I was little with a broken chain.
Cards he gave me, birthday and encouragement. Letters from when I was at camp.
I rub at the ache growing in my chest. It’s been so long since I let myself think about him. I was too busy taking care of myself and Mom.
“We could watch them.” Cam leans forward. “I mean, I like movies and I’m always on board for horror or R-rated movies.”
My mouth opens and closes. Ready to tell them no, that’s not necessary.
Hawk and Damon nod, and warmth bursts in my chest.
“I’d like that.” Even my cheeks are warm. I can’t believe I’m blushing at this.
“I don’t like to know about a movie before I watch it.” Hawk draws my attention. “Trailers too often spoil shit or make the movie seem like it’s something it’s not.”
“I’ve done that. Though there were a few movies I wished I’d watched the trailer for first.” I smile and eat as we discuss movies and TV shows.
And for a moment, I forget we’re in public and really shouldn’t be.
That tonight we’re going to take down the queen bee or at least put her in her place. And gather more evidence on my ex.
After Damon pays for our dinner, he takes my hand to lead me outside to his bike. It hits me that there’s a lot that can go wrong tonight. But dinner was perfect, and this was the best date I’ve ever been on.