Chapter 28
ZETH
Typically, I spent Wednesday nights at Tessa’s place. She lived a half-hour drive from Mount Olympus, and with how busy both our schedules were, it somehow ended up being the best night for both of us to sneak away.
Except the last few weeks I’d found myself leaving after a couple hours to go home. I wanted to sleep in my own bed and be there in the morning for coffee and breakfast with the team. Since the Clik Games had started, the whole mood and vibe of our team had shifted dramatically…for the better, too.
From the minute I got there, I’d recognized I would be leaving early again.
Tessa was grating on my nerves, and I was frustrated as fuck.
We hadn’t had sex in nearly a year, because her manager decided Tess would win more Miss America votes if she was perceived as wholesome, and she was buying into it with her whole fucking bank balance.
“The girls at pageant training have been talking about your team,” she told me casually as she gave me the weakest hand-job of my whole damn life. She wasn’t even into it, and to be honest, neither was I. “About your new guy. Noah. He’s cute.”
Yeah. He was. And that weird sense of familiarity hadn’t gone away. I’d stopped fixating on it because I was driving myself mad trying to figure out where we’d met before, but we’d definitely, without question, met each other before he joined our team.
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, tipping my head back and shutting my eyes.
I really needed to get off, but Tessa seriously wasn’t doing it for me today.
Or for a long time, if I was honest. To be fair, I had tried to leave after dinner and she was the one who insisted on getting my dick out and just for this? Come on.
“Is there something between him and Minho, then? Everyone is saying they seem really close, like—”
“What?” I snapped my eyes open shooting her a frown. “No. Of course not. Min’s affectionate with everyone, and Rocky’s just easy to love, that’s all.”
Her hand stopped mid-stroke—if that was even what it could be called—and she gave me a bewildered look. “Rocky?”
I rolled my eyes. “Noah. They’re just friends who are comfortable enough in their own skin that they’re not afraid to show affection. It’s not a bad thing, and the more people, like you, who try to pretend there’s a sexual undertone, the weirder it gets.”
She sat back, clearly offended. “People like me? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Are you calling me stupid or shallow? Or both?”
I stifled a groan. “I didn’t mean… Ugh, never mind. I should go, anyway.” I started to fix my pants but Tessa batted my hands away with a little mew of protest.
“No, you didn’t finish. Just let me make you feel good, Zeth.
” She slid off the sofa and onto her knees, dropping her hot mouth onto my already deflating erection.
I really wasn’t in the mood. She was determined, though, doubling her efforts in trying to get me hard again, and it was going to cause a whole fucking argument if I rejected her advances now…
So I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes and tried to give her the physical response she seemed to need so badly.
My mind wandered, searching for a sexy memory to revive the moment, but it wasn’t Tessa that eventually filled my mind and hardened my cock.
It was my own personal Cinderella… the girl I’d met at a charity gala two years ago.
The girl I’d drunkenly fucked on top of some random desk at the Rainburst Springs Public Library in an attempt to soothe my own heartbreak over my own cheating girlfriend.
She used to be huge on ClikByte back then, doing the same vapid beauty shit as Tessa was into, but after that night she turned into a phantom, a figment of my imagination, and a hazy one at that, because of how much liquor I’d already consumed that night.
“Mmm, that’s more like it, baby,” Tessa purred as she licked my freshly hardened dick. “I knew you wanted this as much as I did.”
It took everything in me not to verbally disagree. Her newfound wholesome image meant we couldn’t have sex, and I couldn’t get her off, but this was okay? It made no fucking sense but hadn’t actively bothered me until now.
Shut up. I growled it inside my head, and took care of it by pushing her head down on my dick.
If she stopped talking, I could picture that sexy blond from the library.
My eyes squeezed shut tightly as I let my imagination wander.
Blond hair and pillowy lips filled my head, and I fucked my girlfriend’s throat with an edge of desperation as I chased that ghost.
When I came, it was a more intense release than I’d achieved in months, and Tessa choked dramatically, bringing me back to reality. Way to kill a euphoric high, ma’am.
I grimaced and grabbed her a box of tissues so she could clean herself up while I fixed my pants, then stood up to grab my phone and keys from the table.
“You’re leaving?” she asked, blinking up at me with big brown eyes.
Brown…not green. A small pang of disappointment reminded me Tessa wasn’t her.
But even so, I did love Tessa, so it wasn’t fair for me to be such a dickhead.
It wasn’t her fault that things had cooled between us.
We were just growing and changing. “But you only just got here…”
With a small sigh, I forced a smile to my lips. I’d meant to cancel entirely but ended up coming over when family gaming night wrapped up early thanks to Noah falling asleep on the couch.
“Yeah, I have to be up early for a filming segment with the team. I’m sorry.” Feeling guilty, I offered her a hand to bring her to her feet, then kissed her quickly. “I’ll text you.”
Then I was gone, sneaking out the utility entrance to her apartment building and sliding into my car parked in the back alleyway with a sigh.
I was excited to go home, and that probably meant I needed to end things with Tessa.
For real this time. Sneaking around with her against my Olympus contract was no longer fun…
and I definitely didn’t see myself going through with the ten-year plan Tessa’s mom had mapped out for her little girl’s future, so why was I wasting our time?
I’d talk to her about it next time we met up. It wasn’t a phone or text sort of breakup, not when I was well aware she’d already picked out her wedding dress.
Thankfully at such a late hour, the streets were deserted, and I made it home quickly, getting the luck of green traffic lights the whole way. To my surprise, the TV was still on in the living room, and I found Minho sprawled out on the sofa, watching a movie in subtitles without sound.
“Hey, how come you’re still up?” I asked, dropping my ass into the armchair with a heavy sigh. It was nice to be home.
Minho yawned and shifted his gaze my way. “Too many things on my mind,” he admitted in a husky voice.
I nodded my understanding. “Yeah, that shit with Noah was intense, huh?”
He inhaled sharply, sitting up suddenly more alert. “Uh…” The look he gave me was pure bewilderment, and I wondered if I had totally misjudged what he meant about things on his mind. Maybe there was something else going on?
“With Xavi and the pool,” I elaborated. “That’s not what was on your mind? What’s up, bro? You can talk to me.”
His shoulders lowered and he relaxed back into the sofa once more. “No, that’s what it was. I thought for a moment something else had happened, but I’m half asleep. My mind is playing tricks on me.”
“Come on, we both need sleep. Ace said we need to film the reaction segment for round-one results tomorrow.” I stood and offered my roommate a hand up, which he took with a groan.
He smirked when he released my hand, moving away from the sofa to grab the remote. “I just jerked off with that hand, by the way.”
I scoffed, shaking my head. “Uh-huh, sure. I can imagine that watching Snakes on a Train in subtitles really got you in the mood. Fucking weirdo.”
He just laughed, turning off the TV and leading the way up to our shared room. We took turns showering and getting ready for bed, even though it was already two in the morning. We’d shared a room long enough now that it was a comfortable routine.
“I think I need to end shit with Tessa,” I admitted into the darkness once we were both settled in our beds.
“Yeah?” he asked, not sounding all that shocked. “How come?”
I drew a long breath, thinking it over. “I can’t put my finger on it.
I just…lately when I’m with her, I wish I were here at home.
” And it was definitely wanting to be here and not just anywhere else.
So the attraction might be dying—or maybe it was dead and buried and we just needed to have the funeral already—but I didn’t think it was about someone else.
“Aw, it’s because you love us so much,” he teased with a sleepy chuckle. “That’s cute. But maybe not a good enough reason to dump Miss America. You guys have a whole ten-year plan don’t you?”
I sighed. “I don’t, her mom does. But maybe it’s just because of how busy we are with Clik Games. Maybe when this is over, things will go back to normal with Tessa.”
But that idea made me feel even worse. I didn’t want to go back to normal with Tessa.
I wanted to track down my Cinderella and find out whether that spark between us was real or whiskey made.
Did wanting to find some random hookup from a party count as wanting someone else?
Was I “cheating”? Shit. I scrubbed a hand over my face, but the vision of her was just right there, almost laughing at me.
Fucking hell, why was I thinking about her so much all of a sudden? It’d been two years, and she’d never even tried to reach out. It hadn’t bothered me then—cause I didn’t exactly reach out to her—but fuck, did I screw that up? Did she get back with that douchebag boyfriend?
“Go to sleep, Z,” Minho yawned. “All problems become lighter with the sun of a new day.”
I folded my pillow over, tucking it under my head to get just the exact right position.
It didn’t make the ghost of my one-night stand go away.
A fantastic fuck on a desk counted as a one-night stand, right?
Maybe? Stop thinking about her. Grasping for anything that wasn’t a soft, sexy blond who moaned beautifully, I focused on the team. On here. On now.
“Do you think Noah will be okay? He was pretty shaken up about the pool.”
There was a long pause, and I almost thought he’d already fallen asleep. But then he gave a weirdly content sort of sound. “Yeah, I think he’s just fine.”
That was a relief. I worried about our newest member… He seemed so much more breakable than the rest of the team, which was wild considering his area of specialty. Maybe it was just that we all liked him so much, we just wanted to protect him. Yeah, that was probably it.
Rocky was part of this team now, and we all needed to look after each other. Stretching, I worked the pillow into another position. Better. Look after Rocky, help the team, win the games.
That was the plan. For now.