Chapter 14 #3
Another ignored curious look passed between us as Trey got into the backseat of the SUV.
I followed him in. The moment the door shut, the driver slid behind the wheel and pulled the SUV away from the curb.
Trey powered on his phone. Notifications came in, one after another, setting the phone to buzzing incessantly. The vibrations were near continuous.
“Someone’s popular,” I said through a laugh.
He nodded, then locked the screen with a sigh. “Team captain. Only child. Puck bunnies. Between those three things it never stops. Add in alerts for school, ESPN, and social media: it’s unreal. Most of it is just noise I swipe away without really reading it fully.”
“Then why have it?”
Trey looked at me, and the look on his face told me all I needed to know. He’d never considered not having all that constantly filling his head with noise.
Trey’s phone continued buzzing throughout the drive to the airport. I commented no further, but only just. The craziness coming out of that fucking device had to be causing neuropathy in the kid’s hands. We pulled into the airport just as the leash on my filter pulled tight.
SUVs lined up side-by-side when we pulled to a stop in the parking lot next to the others. Why people who wanted to go unseen used these huge-ass, sleek, black monsters, I’d never understand. They were the furthest thing from inconspicuous as something could get.
The driver slipped from the vehicle and stood nearby.
Out the tinted glass, Ewen and the guys from Trey’s team strolled out of the terminal toward the Holt Enterprises plane.
I watched for several minutes. The younger guys laughed and cut up, and though Ewen joined their jocular mood, his eyes scanned the tarmac. Once a Marine and all that shit.
At the foot of the stairs up to the sleek plane, Ewen turned, and even though dark lenses hid his gaze, I knew he looked for me. I sighed.
The idyllic had come to an end.
I opened the door and stepped out of the sleek black vehicle. Checking our surroundings, I beckoned Trey toward me. He slid out into the tiny space left for him between where my body filled the gap between the door and the side of the vehicle, blocking anyone from seeing who stepped out.
“I’m going to do this here.”
“What—”
My mouth slanted across his. His tongue met mine as eagerly as his hand gripped my waist, pulling our bodies together. Time slowed. Focus narrowed.
Until the driver cleared his throat.
“Apologies, gentlemen, but if you want to make it home, the pilot says you must board. Ten minutes ago, really.”
We parted, Trey’s eyes blown wide. Mine mirrored them, if I had to guess. Everything seemed brighter. Sighing, I said, “We should go.”
The way he tongued his lips as if he wanted to savor the taste of me…us. Fuck, I’m screwed.
“Gentlemen?”
I nodded, turned from the distraction of Trey motherfucking Malachek, and grabbed my bag from the driver.
My palm itched to take his, but I held myself back.
The boy needed to make this choice for himself.
But if he ever did, I would lay claim to him whenever and however he would let me.
I wanted the world to know his worth, and that he was mine.
As we tramped toward the terminal, I said, “Think about what I offered. Then call me.”
His phone rang, but he silenced it without looking at it.
“I will.”
The phone rang again, only this time Trey picked up.
A man’s voice yelled through the phone. I wasn’t close enough to hear what they said or even know who it was, but I had a decent idea given what Trey told me about his piece of shit sperm donor of a father.
He confirmed it a moment later when he said, “Dad, there’s a storm—”
Then I heard him, “You wouldn’t be racing back to campus trying to beat a storm if you’d kept your lazy, ungrateful, stupid ass where it belonged instead of flitting around the fucking country like a fucking humongous disappointment dead set on ruining your life and this family’s legacy.”
His voice dropped back to where it was when Trey first answered the phone, meaning I could no longer hear what was being said. Not that I needed to. The man had said enough.
I stayed by Trey’s side all the way through the terminal, check-in, and across the tarmac to the foot of the plane’s stairs. He paused there, took a deep breath, and said, “I gotta board. I’ll talk to you when I’m back in Manchester,” and with that he hung up.
Rage pulsed visibly under his skin like blood through veins after a hard workout.
If that hadn’t had me pissed enough, the tears that glistened in his eyes pushed me into a rage of my own.
Trey never said a word. Instead, he held his tongue, boarded the plane in front of me, and cut up with his teammates, but whatever that Donnie Malachek said hurt Trey badly, and it made me want to hurt the man.
I wanted to unleash the fury I felt on him until I exacted a pound of flesh for every hateful, hurtful, tear-inducing word he uttered.