Chapter 4 Mia
“Mia, are you okay?”
Nodding while trying to fight the sigh from escaping made me look like I was swallowing something distasteful; I was sure of it. “Yes, I’m good,” I assured my music professor.
“Your breath support is weak today. Are you coming down with something?” she commented as she came to stand beside me and immediately started to press her fingers under my chin, testing my glands.
“I didn’t sleep well, sorry,” I told her as I pulled out of her grasp.
“But sleep is important for your voice. You need to rest.” Her thick tortoiseshell glasses made her eyes appear wider than they were.
“I know, I’ll do better.” I smiled with what I hoped was an earnest smile before she nodded and went to talk to one of my classmates.
“Who did you stay up late with?” Mindy asked me with a sly look. She was petite and had a mouth like a sailor. The thought of her together with Ava made my ears burn — their combined propensity for swearing would be horrific to hear.
“I was at home, alone.” I gave her a grin as I readied myself to practice my scales.
“Thought you had hooked up with the singer of Atticus Dawn?” Mindy asked as she moved closer to me.
“Alex? No, we’re just friends.” A small white lie.
“What about any of the Saints? Heard your bestie was a Devil’s girl now?”
I liked Mindy, I did. She was usually fun to be around and kept to herself. Why she thought today was the day to get into my business was beyond me. “Why? What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked her curiously.
Mindy huffed out a laugh and looked around before lowering her voice. “Seriously? If my best friend dumped me for a football player, I would either be pissed as hell or be lapping up the singletons of the team, know what I mean?”
Turning to face her, I knew my look was not friendly. “Seriously? You’re that shallow?”
Mindy jerked back as if I’d slapped her, and I wished I had, but the verbal slap was good enough. “Whoa, no need to be a bitch.”
“I wasn’t.” With a sniff, I turned back to the papers in front of me. “Do you have anything else to say?” I challenged as I flicked through the music book.
“Yeah, how about bite me.”
I heard her walk back to her area before I took a small inhale, trying to calm my temper down.
It was silly to react to something so trivial and, quite honestly, harmless.
However, her words stung because Ava had dumped me for Jett, and even though I knew she hadn’t really, it kind of felt like she had.
It was annoying because Ava, being Ava, hadn’t even changed as a person; she’d just changed where she spent most of her time. And she didn’t even realize how horrible it was that she was spending all of her time with Jett and none of her time with me.
I was lonely.
And because I was lonely, I’d been drawn to my best friend’s boyfriend’s cousin. Well, the first time, it wasn’t my fault. They’d caused Mayhem at the party we were at, and I had let go of Alex’s hand and stepped back in the darkness, knowing not to run.
And I hadn’t run. But I had stepped back into a solid wall of muscle and knew instantly it wasn’t my date. Large hands had picked me off the floor effortlessly and placed me in a corner.
“Stay here, little Red. The Devils are hunting, and they can’t bite if you don’t run.” The voice was low in my ear, and his nearness caused my body to react. I was pretty sure which Devil was in front of me.
“What if I want to run?” I asked him softly, and I felt his hand trail over my arm lazily. My skin broke out in goose bumps, exactly as before when he touched me in the bar. A reaction I had pretended hadn’t happened at the time. My nipples hardened, and I felt my body sway into his in invitation.
“You want to start something?” Ash asked me, almost in surprise. “Here?”
Yes. “No, I’m with someone.”
“Are you?” I could hear the humor in his voice. “You think he can stop me?”
His voice was taunting, and I fought the urge to laugh hysterically, because I knew Alex wouldn’t, and more importantly, I knew I wouldn’t want him to. But I wasn’t that girl. “I’m on a date,” I whispered, but I could hear my own lack of conviction.
I felt his lips at the shell of my ear before soft hair brushed over my face as he stooped to nuzzle my neck. “Pity,” Ash murmured as his teeth bit the sensitive spot between my ear and my neck. “I wouldn’t mind a taste.”
My heart was racing. “Didn’t you just take it?”
“Red, you’d know if I’d taken it.”
I knew he had stepped away from me, and when the lights went on minutes later, I saw Alex wrapped around another girl, his tongue down her throat.
His startled look when his eyes met mine as he looked down at the girl in his arms in shock had mine narrowing.
He’d thought she was me? Was he joking? Out of the whole party, a stranger had identified me in the dark, and Alex, my date, couldn’t even tell that the girl he was kissing hadn’t been the same girl he was kissing before?
Needless to say, I didn’t go on another date with him.
Had Ash been the cause of the mix-up, or had he been the one to open my eyes to the fact that Alex was a jerk?
I’d yet to ask him, because when I was in the same room as Ash, I wasn’t capable of logical thought.
He was freaking gorgeous. I’d just accused Mindy of being shallow, but put me in front of Ash Santo, and my brain wanted to just take in his sinful good looks, never mind conversation.
And dear Lord, he knew how to use those looks.
His biceps were huge, his strength obvious in how fit he kept his body.
He had the body of a man older than his years, and yet, there was something angelic about his face, almost boyish, until you looked into his eyes.
And the wicked promise that they held stole my breath every time.
Yes, he was a player. A big one. I knew I wasn’t the first girl to drop to her knees to worship the specimen that was Ash Santo, and I wasn’t such a fool to think I would be the last.
He filled a gap in my life that Ava had left.
Frowning, I stared at my sheet music. That wasn’t fair to Ava.
I was truly happy she was so wrapped up in Jett, and it was obvious he loved her as much as she loved him, despite their rocky start.
I just wish he didn’t take up so much of her time.
I missed her. And now that she had some sort of tight friendship with Quinn, I was feeling more and more left out as I felt my best friend slipping away from me.
In a weird way, this new arrangement of me having to share my space with the mountain that was Ash would maybe bring us all together more.
“Mia, are you okay?” my professor asked me again, and with a shake of my head to clear it, I focused on my scales, my breath support, and making my voice the instrument it should be.
* * *
“What in the heck?” I hurried to my apartment as I saw the delivery van and the door to my dorm suite wide open. After climbing the stairs, I found two men in Ava’s bedroom and stopped dead when I saw them dismantling her bed.
“Who are you?” I demanded as I glared at them.
The two of them were eerily similar in looks, one slightly taller, although that was hard to determine when they were both on their knees. One looked up at me and gave me a careful once-over.
“Delivery,” he grunted.
“Said who?” I asked as my hands landed on my hips. “The college?”
“Says Santo on the order form,” the other one said around a screwdriver as he glanced at me. “Paperwork’s on the kitchen counter.”
I stayed looking at them for a few moments longer before I turned on my heel and marched to the kitchen.
I stopped in shock when I saw that half of the kitchen cupboards were gone and a huge fridge stood in their place.
Facts I hadn’t noticed when I ran into the apartment.
It looked ridiculous in our tiny kitchen, and as I spun to demand who had ordered this, I saw the new sofa.
A corner sofa and a ridiculously large television.
Ash.
Trust fund jerk. That’s what he was.
Digging frantically through my purse, I found my cell and was calling Ava as I studied the paperwork.
“Hi, Mee, you okay?” Ava’s bright and cheery voice automatically made me smile.
“Yeah, Ava, your boyfriend’s cousin is remodeling our apartment.”
“Oh shit, I forgot to tell you, Gray said Ash needed to change my mattress or something.”
Ha.
“Did Gray tell you what else he’s changed?” I asked her as I gave the evil eye to a dude who walked into the apartment whistling as he carried something in a large box.
“No, Gray’s not big on specifics.”
“Uh-huh,” I muttered as I stood back for the old bed frame to be taken past me. “I think you need to come home.”
“Serious?”
“Deadly.”
Thirty minutes later, Ava stood beside me, her mouth hanging open. “What . . .” She turned around to look at the fridge. “Why . . .” I watched her walk down to her room and come to a standstill as she looked into her completely changed bedroom. “How?”
“But they cleared the mattress with you, right?” I asked sarcastically.
Ava was looking around her room and flattened herself against the wall as the delivery guys squeezed past her to go into her room again. With wariness, she approached me as I stood in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, still glaring at anyone who dared look at me.
“When did this happen?” Ava asked me as she eyed the mammoth fridge in wonder. “How did it even fit through the door?”
“Oh, we took out the window,” one guy said to her with a friendly smile.
“See,” I snapped. “They took the window out.”
Ava looked at me with concern. “I’m sorry, MeeMoo.” With a grunt, I snatched a bottle of Coke out of the fridge but kept my words to myself. Ava was studying the delivery note and chewing her bottom lip. “I could talk to him?” Ava suggested.