Chapter 27 Mia
When we rejoined the others at the table, I couldn’t meet the eyes of the others.
I knew my face was flushed, and I knew I would be obviously reacting to Ash.
Because how could you not? Six-four of muscle and gorgeousness, and add on that he seemed to actually care about my well-being.
It was hard not to swoon a little when he turned the charm on.
“Bruised?” Gray asked as he took a bite of muffin. The plate for the muffin was beside my refill of coffee.
“Is that for me?” I asked suspiciously as I resumed my seat, Ash pressing in close to me.
Ava, who had her head buried in her backpack, looked up and immediately launched forward, slapping Gray’s hand.
“Dude! No!” she scolded him. “Didn’t I tell you she gets hangry?”
“I don’t get hangry,” I protested as I widened my eyes at Ava to shut her up.
“Yes. You do.” My best friend was intent on ignoring me. “You get all grouchy, and it’s awful.” She squinted at Gray. “Actually, so do you . . .” Looking between the two of us, she stood suddenly. “I’ll get another one.”
“Get me one!” Ash called out as he leaned back in the booth. Jett stood up too, and I was going to say she could manage to get two muffins when I saw him reach into his back pocket for his wallet. He wasn’t crowding her. He was paying so she wouldn’t have to. Maybe I was a grump when I was hungry?
Gray, now free to eat my muffin, polished it off in a few bites, just as Quinn returned from the bathroom. She looked at him, the muffin, and then him again.
“You’ll pay for that,” she told him as she sat down. “Sorry, Mia, that was supposed to be for you.”
“Ava’s replacing it.” We sat in silence. I hated awkward silences. “Well, you all missed your first class, sorry.” I turned my head to look out the window. “What did your brother say?” I asked Gray.
“The guy didn’t show,” Gray told me bluntly. “Which means he either realized he could ask for more if he made a case against Quinn or he’s a shady fucker.”
I watched three girls cross the campus, laughing together, their spirits seemingly light. Behind them were two guys and another girl. They were obviously all together as the girls kept checking behind them to include them in the conversation. I envied them. Their simplicity.
“You okay?”
I looked back at Quinn, who was watching me carefully. “Yeah, are you?”
Tucking her hair behind her ears, she looked down at the table. “I think I’m slightly freaked out,” she admitted as she looked back up at me. “And I feel so bad that you got targeted by him.”
“Onyx is looking into whether he was supposed to be here legitimately.” Gray was speaking to Ash, but he glanced at me briefly. “When he finds out, we’ll know if you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Okay.” My hands clasped together under the table, and when Ash placed his hand on my thigh, I didn’t care how desperate I looked when I leaned into him slightly.
“So moral of the story,” Ash spoke gruffly. “When I tell you that someone will meet you, you stay put.”
“All of you,” Gray added with a pointed look at Quinn to which she nodded.
“How will you stop it?” I asked as Ava and Jett came back with a plate of muffins. My hand shot out and snatched the banana one before anyone else could. “Before anyone else takes it,” I defended myself as I started to unwrap it.
“See?” Ava jabbed Gray with her elbow. “Hangry.”
“Will you stop?” I asked with a groan as I peeled the banana off the top. “He already hates me; do you need to add fuel to the fire?”
Gray smirked but remained quiet. Normal people would defend my accusation. He just reached over and picked up another muffin.
Jett picked one up, too, and pushed it to Ash. “We got you this one,” he told him casually.
My face scrunched up as I looked at his.
“That one looks healthy. You can always tell when they put the thin drizzle on the top.” I pointed to the thin white coating.
“I bet it’s lemon something,” I told him before I pointed to the one with the chocolate chunks.
“You look like that one would float your boat more.”
“I like lemon and poppyseed.” Ash grinned at me as he said thanks to Jett. “And you can’t give me shit about a healthy muffin when you have banana bran in front of you.” He pointed to the three remaining on the plate. “You look more like a berry and white chocolate girl.”
My snort was loud. “Do you know how many calories are in that muffin?” I broke my bran muffin into pieces. “Much more than this one, and it has a higher sugar content too.”
“Mia loves to calorie count,” Ava said to the group, but her tone made me look at her in question. “It’s a good thing,” Ava added hastily. “You’re so disciplined.”
Gray was looking at me with too much interest. Jett said nothing but looked at me and then the muffin as if he were having a conversation with himself. Quinn was peeling her wrapper off, but I saw her nudge Gray with her elbow. Why were they all being weird?
Looking at Ash, I saw his eyes were dancing with amusement, but he merely popped a bit of muffin in his mouth and gave me a wink.
They were all weird.
It was official. Weirdness was afoot.
“So . . . do we go to class?” I asked as I decided to ignore their weirdness and get back to the point.
“Waiting for Onyx,” Jett told me.
“Is he coming here?”
“No, he’s in Nashville. He’s checking the fucker who messed with you girls out,” Jett explained.
“He did it before, but the no-show and then today, well, we’ve made him curious.
” Jett’s smile was tight, and I had a thousand questions, but somehow, I knew these guys were never going to tell me more about Onyx.
“Well, we can’t say we’re sick, we’ve all been seen here.” I took a drink of my coffee. This was my third one in quick succession. I was going to pay for this later.
Ash chuckled beside me as he polished off his muffin. “It’s not high school, Red. We won’t get detention if we don’t show. Our classes are available online.”
“Yours may be,” I told him snippily. “My music ones aren’t.”
“Serious?” he asked me in surprise. “Like none?”
“I sing,” I stressed to him. “Very hard to teach someone’s voice over a laptop.”
“So, do you just all stand about singing?” Jett asked as he slung his arm around the back of Ava’s chair.
“Yes, it’s like a mass choir every day.”
“Really?” Quinn asked.
“No!” I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a giant karaoke convention. Each person has their own assignments. We do smaller group sessions, but most of it is one-on-one teaching.”
“So, no classes?” Jett asked, and he looked genuinely interested.
“Well, we cover things like history of music and music composition and things — they can be online.” I shot Ash a look.
“But the majority of it is practical. I do music performance. There isn’t a set course for my voice to develop further, just that it has to, and that involves practicing as much as possible. ”
“You would need a good ear,” Gray mused.
“Um, yes, it’s important to hear the differences in tone, et cetera.”
“How are you on voices?” Jett asked, leaning forward eagerly.
“No,” Quinn said sharply.
“Queeny, we need a break,” Jett said quietly. “We have a resource we can use.”
Licking my lips, I looked between Jett, who was holding a staring contest with Quinn; Gray, who was looking at me like I suddenly had value; Ava, who was looking as confused as I was; and finally, to Ash, who gave me an encouraging smile.
“It’s actually a great idea,” Ash said to the table, ignoring Quinn’s glare. “And she knows her way around a computer.”
“I changed my mind,” Gray said suddenly. “I like you after all.”
Well, that was just perfect. I went from anxious to scared with just that simple declaration.
* * *
Ava had been talked into attending class, because it was a class she shared with Jett.
Quinn had gone to her class, but Quinn’s classes were all in the sports sciences building, and she didn’t need to come out of the building at all today.
Gray had argued, but Quinn had put her foot down and run through, in specific detail, her classes for the day.
By the time she would be finished, he would have finished practice.
Which left me and Brute. I wasn’t permitted — no, that was harsh — I was advised against going to the theater, and Gray was eager to test my ear, which is how he, Ash, and I were in the football house.
Ash had closed and locked his bedroom door, and I was sitting on his couch nervously while Gray sat on the edge of the bed.
“Is this something weird?” I asked again for the hundredth time.
“No,” Gray answered easily.
“Okay . . . is it legal?” I’d wanted to ask this question many times and had finally worked up the courage.
“Wouldn’t have thought so.” Gray smiled at me.
“You’re very intimidating.”
His grin stretched wider.
Ash huffed out a laugh as he sat beside me. “Okay, Red. Are you squeamish?”
“No.” I thought about it. “Maybe? I don’t want to see bad things with animals or anything.”
Both of them stared at me before Gray turned his head away to hide his laugh, but Ash didn’t care about subtlety as he laughed out loud. “No animals.” He squinted at me. “Has Quinn told you everything?”
I tried not to look at Gray, but I failed and nodded. “Yes.”
“Okay, did she tell you that we have acquired some footage of the fuckers in action?”
Nodding, I rubbed my hand on my jeans. “Yes, she said that’s how you found out that they were shady.” Looking between the two of them, I thought about it. “How did you get it?”
“Also illegal,” Gray replied tersely. “Best not to know.”
“Okay.”
“I need to show you some footage,” Ash said carefully. “It’s the births. Some are worse than others. Can you handle that?”
“Why do I need to see?”
“Because they wear masks in some, and in others, they keep their backs to the camera. We would like to match them, and if you can detect who’s speaking, that would help. The quality of the sound is poor. I’ve cleaned it, but my ear isn’t sharp enough.”