28. Violet
VIOLET
“What are you going to wear?” Jane asks.
She and Dahlia are sitting on my bed while I stand in front of the mirror on the back of my closet door, combing out my wet hair. I took the world’s fastest shower after Gavin dropped me off after our date and changed into more comfortable clothes.
“I don’t know.” I look down at my cut-off shorts. “This?”
Neither of them says anything.
“We aren’t going back out. I’m just going over there to sleep.” I pull on the hem of the frayed jean material. “Is this not okay?”
“You look great. You always look great,” Dahlia says.
I look to Jane for confirmation.
“I mean, yeah, you look hot, but for a sleepover? How about a sexy slip or a bralette with some tiny cotton shorts?”
“You want me to walk over to The White House in a bra and booty shorts?”
“Oooh. Oooh.” She bounces and waves her hands around. “Do you have one of his jerseys or a T-shirt with his name on the back?”
“No.”
“Oh well.” She shrugs and sits back down. “It was just an idea.”
I go to the bed and sit between them, then fall onto my back. “Why am I so nervous?!”
“You are going to be fine.” Dahlia shakes my leg. “He’s crazy about you. We could all see it when he was here the other night. Couldn’t we?”
Jane nods. “Yeah. It’s true. I’d still go for sexier loungewear, though.”
I’m more nervous now than I was all night. Twenty minutes later, I walk to The White House. Gavin meets me at the door.
“Hey, you made it.” He steps back to let me in while running a hand through his wet hair.
Sweatpants hang low on his hips and the white T-shirt clings to his damp body.
“Vi?”
“Yeah? What?”
He chuckles. “Are you coming in?”
I glance down at my outfit. I’m going to kill Jane. I ended up in the same dress I wore earlier because I couldn’t figure out how to do comfy/sexy in a way that didn’t feel presumptuous or overeager.
“Should I go change? I was going to wear something more casual, but then I wasn’t sure. This is too much. Nobody sleeps in a dress. I’ll be right back.”
I turn, but his fingers wrap around my wrist to keep me from fleeing. “Get your gorgeous ass in here. You can borrow some of my clothes later.”
His grip loosens and falls to my hand. He laces his fingers through mine and leads me to the theater room.
Noah and Tommy sit in the front row, kicked back while staring at the screen.
When they see us, they both lift a hand to wave.
“Hey, Violet,” Noah says.
“Hi.”
Gavin and I take seats in the row behind them.
“Are you guys cool with this or want me to put something else on?” Tommy asks.
“I don’t care what’s on the TV,” Gavin says, looking at me as he reclines his chair and crosses one ankle over the other.
“See this is the problem with a dress,” I say as I try to mimic him, tucking my dress tightly around my legs, so I don’t accidentally flash his friends.
“I got you.” Gavin lifts the arm rest between us and brings my legs over onto his lap. I’m only flashing the wall now, and maybe him, but he does a good job of keeping his eyes on the big screen at the front of the room.
We don’t make it two minutes before Gavin and I start whispering and kissing instead of paying attention. To be fair, it’s hard to concentrate with Gavin’s fingers stroking my legs.
“We’re out of here,” Noah says, sometime later.
I break away from Gavin’s mouth, long enough to give Noah an embarrassed smile and wave.
“See you later.” Gavin angles his body closer. His chest rests on top of my thighs and his thumb traces circles around a tiny scar on my knee. “How’d you get this?”
“Roller skating with Daisy. It was late summer, just before the school year started. I think we were going into sixth grade. We only saw each other a couple of times a year usually, but that summer her parents were traveling for work and she stayed with us for two weeks. I was showing off and crashed into a guardrail. I was lucky I didn’t go over and end up in the creek below. ”
Gavin smiles.
“Daisy always made me want to do crazy things I wouldn’t normally.”
“Daisy?” He lifts both brows. “Really? She is not the kind of girl I would have expected to be a bad influence on you. More like the other way around.”
“She wasn’t. Not exactly. She was shy and quiet, just like she is now, but I could tell she looked up to me.
She thought I was brave and exciting because I was more outgoing than her.
I liked that she thought that about me, because the truth was, I wasn’t really that interesting or popular when I was a kid.
” I shrugged. “I leaned into being that person she thought I was. Eventually, it made me realize I was capable of doing big and exciting things all on my own. I just needed a little push.”
“That’s kind of beautiful.” He presses his lips to the tiny scar. “And you have a little reminder in case you forget.”
“What about you? Any interesting scar stories?”
He shakes his head and holds up his hand. There’s a faint line above the knuckle of his left ring finger. “This one is from a knife.”
“A knife?!”
“Yeah. Me and my buddies were doing that thing where you spread your fingers out on the table and try to quickly stab the knife between each finger. I missed.”
“Boys are so weird.”
He chuckles. “No doubt.”
We fall quiet and I run my finger along the numbers of his tattoo. “Are you nervous about the games this weekend?”
“No, not really. I think we have a good shot at going far this year, and I want to make the most of it, in case we don’t get back next year, but I feel like we’ve put in the work. Now it’s just time to find out how we measure up.”
“I heard Tommy talking about all the media and scouts that will be there. Pretty intense.”
“That’s all just noise to me. I’m not interested in impressing anyone.”
I don’t understand Gavin’s relationship with basketball.
I know what it means to him, how much he loves it, but as long as I’ve known him, he hasn’t entertained the idea of continuing to play.
And from what everyone says, he could get drafted today if he wanted.
His dad certainly seems to think so, and I assume he’d know.
I’d like to say his disinterest in the NBA has something to do with his dad, but I can’t quite make sense of that either, since he followed in his father’s footsteps coming to Valley U, his dad’s alma mater.
Gavin even wears number 31. His dad was 13, and they retired it. That can’t be a coincidence.
“You don’t think you’ll change your mind when you’re closer to graduation?”
“No,” he says definitively. “This is it for me.”
My chest is tight with the pain that radiates off him. I don’t understand it, but I can feel it.
“Come on.” Gavin stands and pulls me to my feet. “I’ve been looking forward to having you in my bed again since you left the last time.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” Gavin lies on the bed with one arm crooked behind his head.
“What happened between you and your dad?”
His brows lift.
“I’m just trying to understand you. Were you ever close with him?”
“We were in our own way. He was gone a lot when I was young. It wasn’t just the games.
Those guys spend hours training and practicing, even in the off-season.
But we had a lot of equipment at home, too, and a court downstairs.
I’d sit on the sideline and play or do homework while he was in there.
I looked up to him, even if we weren’t super close.
” Gavin turns on his side and drags a finger along my calf.
“Did you ever want to follow in his footsteps?”
“Of course. There were moments I was up in the crowd and people were screaming his name that I thought, I want that. Or the time they won the NBA championship. You should have seen it. Grown men were sobbing.” He has a faraway look on his face, like he’s remembering it all.
Then the smile on his face falls. “I know my dad is this famous guy that people love, but he was just Dad to me. I had a few friends, guys on the team had kids about my age, and my life didn’t seem any different than theirs.
I guess I thought everything was as it should be. ”
His hand moves up and his long fingers splay out on my thigh.
“When the rumors started about him cheating on my mom, I didn’t want to believe it.
It wouldn’t have been the first time the media had run with something that wasn’t true.
There used to be this thing I’d read about how my dad woke up every morning and ate a dozen raw eggs. It was in all kinds of articles.”
“It wasn’t true?” I ask, shuddering a little at the thought of eating raw eggs.
“No. Dad said he had no idea where they’d gotten it.”
We laugh a little and then Gavin falls quiet again.
“He’d been retired for years. He stayed on with the team as an ambassador, which basically meant he made special appearances in the community, but as far as I could tell, things were good between him and my mom.
I was getting ready to leave for college, so admittedly, I was caught up in my own stuff and didn’t give it a lot of weight.
I thought it was all just more bullshit, but then women started coming forward—too many to discount. ”
“I’m sorry. That must have been an awful way to find out.”
“Yeah.” He lets out a quiet chuckle. “The worst part was, I even asked him once. The day before I left for Valley U. Not outright, but I sort of danced around it. I think I said something like, ‘Must be a slow week for real news.’ And he gave me some line about the importance of family and honesty. A week later, he was on TV apologizing to the world.”
My heart squeezes in my chest. “You didn’t know the truth until then?”
He shakes his head, without meeting my gaze. “Nope. Jenkins and I were playing Xbox with Jordan and Liam. Remember our dorm rooms were right across the hall from each other?”
I nod. “How could I forget? We did some scandalous things in that room.”
“Yeah, we did.” He rolls onto his back and takes me with him.
“What did you do when you found out?” I stare down at his brown eyes. They swirl with an unresolved hurt that he tries so hard to mask with anger.
“I got really, really drunk.”
I wrap myself around his big frame the best I can. “I’m so sorry.”
I hold on for a few moments longer. He kisses me, slow at first, and then with more need like he’s channeling all his pain and frustration. I can feel it. Taste it. I take all of it that he gives me. He nips at my bottom lip as he pulls back.
“Do you want to go in the gym and slam basketballs against the wall really, really hard?” I ask as I catch my breath.
Low laughter rumbles in his chest. “Is that what you do when you’re pissed off?”
“Oh no. I’m much more likely to angry-sew an entire dress or write a mean letter that I’ll never send.” I remember seeing a pen on the nightstand and I reach for it, then hold it up in front of him. “Want to write a mean letter?”
“Dear Dad, you suck. Signed, your disappointment of a son,” he says without making a move for the pen.
I click it three times, take one of his hands, and glide the pen across his skin. He watches me with a smirk, not trying to see what I’m writing until I stop.
He brings his hand up and reads my words silently, then says, “I think you’re pretty awesome too.”
I go for his forearm next, writing, And super hot.
“Right back at ya, baby.”
He lets me mark up his body with sweet and silly words, all the while stroking my back and tangling his fingers in my hair. I scribble, Property of Vi, just above the waistband of his sweatpants.
“That one is at least true.” His dark stare softens. “I’m all yours, Vi.”
I wriggle down and place a kiss next to my mark. The muscles tighten under my lips. When I glance up, Gavin’s eyes widen.
“Vi,” he rasps, “don’t you dare bring that pen near my di?—”
The sentence is cut off when I slide my hand under his pants and wrap my fingers around him. He lets out a strangled sound that makes my heart gallop.
I stroke him lazily a few times before pushing his sweats down. He helps me and we toss them to the floor. He’s so handsome. So big.
I bring the end of the pen to my mouth and bite it gently. His gaze goes molten. “Be gentle.”
Lightly, I draw a tiny heart with my initials in it on the side of his dick and then toss the pen.
His breathing is shallow, and his fingers take up residence in my hair. “I survived.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, and bring my lips to the head of his dick. That first, light touch sets off a string of curses from him.
I keep going, covering him completely with my mouth.
“Fuck, Violet.”
He praises me with more throaty noises and gentle pulls of my hair along with saying my name over and over again.
When he’s close, he pulls me up to his mouth and kisses me hard.
“Come here.”
“I am here.”
He hums against my lips. “Turn around.”
“What?”
Instead of repeating himself, he picks me up and sets me on his chest so that I’m facing the wall. I only have two seconds to wonder what he’s up to before he flips up the skirt of my dress, guides my hips back, and presses his mouth, over my panties, to my center.
I’m lost in the heat of him and the sensations that zap through me. I don’t even realize he has the pen, until I feel the cool tip dragging over my skin. I guess fair is fair, but he’s writing on my ass and I can’t see what it says.
“What did you write?” I ask.
He dives back in without answering, sucking my clit through the material and then moving my damp panties out of the way, so there’s nothing between us.
“Oooh.” The word is a plea as much as an understanding.
His fingers spread me open. I feel like I should be embarrassed how on display I am like this, but I’m too desperate for more, more of him and his mouth.
Leaning down, I wrap my fingers around him and take him into my mouth. I try to draw it out, tease him, but as my orgasm builds, so does the tempo in which I glide over him.
He groans against my sensitive flesh and the sensation sends me over the edge. I suck hard as he comes, loving every shudder and sound that it draws out of him.
My body is like jelly as the adrenaline starts to wear off, but my heart feels like it’s just waking up. He smacks my ass playfully, and I fall onto the mattress next to him in a sweaty, exhausted heap. I curl around him, so I can see his contented grin.
“You’re so beautiful.” He reaches for me and runs a thumb along my bottom lip. “Lips swollen and hair messy.” He smacks my ass. “Mine. That’s what I wrote.”