Chapter 5 Gray
She had company? Was she fucking kidding me? Glancing at my watch, I checked the time. It had been three hours. Three fucking hours, and she had company?
“Gray!” Jett’s tone was sharp, and my head jerked up to look at him.
“What?” I snapped as I pulled my hoodie off, tossing it on my bed as I kicked my sneakers off.
“Why are you getting undressed?” Jett asked me curiously. “You’re not listening to me,” he sighed, and I thought about the last few minutes. Nope, I’d heard nothing.
“What?” I asked him again, my impatience seeping through.
Jett raised his arms in front of him in a dismissive gesture. “Forget it, I’ll go myself.”
“Go where?”
“To Ava’s.”
“Okay.” Why the fuck did I need to go with him? He was a big boy. Heading to my bathroom, I stopped at his next words.
“I’ll take her home first.”
She was with company . . . I huffed out a rueful chuckle. My hands on the side of the doorframe, I turned and looked at my brother. “Quinn at Ava’s?”
“Yes,” he answered, exasperation bleeding into his tone. “I told you this.”
“Was thinking of my assignment,” I lied easily. “You taking Ava back here?”
“Yeah, see if she goes for it.”
“You’re falling deep.” He didn’t have time for this. I mean, his girl was nice enough, but personally, I didn’t see the appeal. She did like football, though, so that was something. But I didn’t particularly like his loss of focus. “Can you stall hot and heavy until after the season?”
“No.” My bedroom door had been opened, and Jett closed it behind him as he stepped further into the room. “You want to say something to me?”
“Pretty sure I just did.”
“I’m not fucking up the season, I know what I’m doing with football, with Ava, and with Quinn.” Jett shoved his hands in his front pockets, and I knew it was to stop him from clenching his fists.
“Two of those three things are time sensitive,” I reminded him. The season was short, the window of opportunity that we had on scumbag central was small, and the only thing that didn’t matter at this moment in time was Ava.
“You think my girlfriend doesn’t matter?” Jett asked me with narrowed eyes.
“Not at the moment. If she cares, she’ll hang around, but you have other things to be doing. Other than her.”
“The fact we’re related blows my mind sometimes.” He turned and yanked the door open, closing it hard behind him.
I knew my brother better than anyone, and I knew I should have handled that better.
We were eight games into the season, we were undefeated, we could not fuck this up, and we had four games left.
Grabbing my hoodie, casting a defeated look at my desk where my workbooks were, I headed out of my room to find my asshole brother.
He was already halfway down the block, and I set out in a light jog until I was pulling up alongside him. Jett’s hood was pulled low, and his shoulders were slumped as he walked, straightening when I fell into step beside him. We walked the few blocks to Ava’s dorm in silence until he turned to me.
“I’m not going to let you down on any of it,” he spoke quietly.
“I know.”
“Then what was the shit for?”
“I’m tired, I have an assignment due, we have a lot going on.” None of this was a lie.
“At least tonight’s video wasn’t as bad,” Jett said to me quietly.
“Wasn’t it?” My hands curled into fists in my hoodie as I stared straight ahead. “I see her on that table every damn time.”
He was quiet as we neared the steps for Ava’s place. “I know. Maybe you shouldn’t watch.”
“Maybe you should go fuck yourself.”
Jett grinned at me. “Subtle.” With a hand on my shoulder, he stopped me from climbing the stairs. “Gray, we’ll bring them down,” he promised.
Meeting his stare, I shook my head slightly as I looked over my shoulder to make sure there were no ears nearby. “You don’t understand. I don’t want to make them pay — I want to cut them open, pull their insides out, and fucking feed their intestines to them.”
Jett watched me, and then he smiled widely. “Well then, when you paint such a pretty picture, who am I to deny you?” He ascended the few stairs, and I decided to hang back. The place looked shit small; I felt claustrophobic looking at it.
Leaning against the wall in the dark, I started to think about my assignment.
It was half-done, and as I saw the time was after midnight, I was in for a night of no sleep.
We had practice at six before class and then practice at three for three hours.
I could already feel the weariness drag me down.
The door opened, and I heard Ava call out to her roommate as they left. It made no sense that he was taking her from here to ours — they’d have been better staying here. Quinn came down first.
She hesitated at the foot of the stairs, her senses on alert, before she turned and saw me standing there. Kicking off from the wall, I walked over to the three of them.
“Why are you here?” she asked me.
“Hi to you too,” I snarked. “C’mon, I’m walking you home.”
“I’ll manage.” Quinn’s shoulders were tense, and I saw her look toward Jett, who was pretending he wasn’t listening.
“Manage a hell of a lot more quickly so we can move it along,” I told her as I gestured at Jett to move along so we could get this over with.
“See you tomorrow,” he called to me, and I flicked him the finger as I started walking without Quinn. I hid my smile as I heard her curse and then hurried to catch up with me.
“Why is your brother always so pissed off?” Ava asked Jett, and I didn’t think she knew she could be heard, or maybe she just didn’t care.
I ignored Jett’s reply; no doubt it would be something he thought would be funny. Asshole.
“You don’t need to do this,” Quinn said, breaking our silence as we walked, and I stayed silent. “Gray, you can go.”
“Or you can be quiet, and we can enjoy a quiet walk to your apartment.”
I heard her teeth grind, and I knew she was biting her tongue from whatever heated reply she was going to give me. Instead, she surprised me with her next words.
“Was tonight a success for you?”
“It will never be a success until my hands are wrapped around one of the motherfuckers’ throats.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her head dip, and I hated that the usual fearless Quinn was timid.
“You know most people would say I deserved it.”
“I’m not most people,” I bit out. “And these people ever say that shit to you, you send them my way.”
Quinn said nothing, but I knew her back straightened a little. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out.
Jett: Quinn had trouble at the bar, some douche hit on her and got nasty . . . Ava thinks he hurt her, but Quinn wouldn’t say anything.
My hand snatched her elbow to stop her from walking so I could read the text again. He knew better than to think Quinn would speak to anyone who wasn’t us.
“Booty call?” she asked me as she tried to keep her voice indifferent.
“Sure.” I resumed walking as I put my phone away. “Come on.”
At her apartment door, I didn’t walk away but waited expectantly. It was quite clearly not what Quinn was anticipating as she looked at me pointedly and then the stairs back outside.
“I need to piss.”
“Ever the eloquent gentleman,” she muttered as she led me inside, and I headed to the bathroom. I knew her well: she would have the boots off in seconds, and then she would take off the scarf and, depending on her state of tiredness, her sweater.
Giving her a few more minutes, I flushed the toilet and then exited to find her exactly as I predicted. Bootless, socks off, and in the middle of taking her sweater off. I saw the dark bruises on her upper arm before she had the sense to hide them from me.
“What happened?” I asked her casually as I leaned against the door, watching her face.
“When?” Her look of confusion cleared when she saw me look at her arm, and she immediately tried to hide it.
“Horse has already bolted, bit late to lock the stable door.” My voice was calm, which was unlike me. “Who was it?”
Giving up any pretense, Quinn dropped her hand and shrugged as she sat on her bed. “Not sure. I thought he was hitting on me, and I told him to fuck off.”
“I’m sure you handled him with care and compassion.”
“He called me Queen and said that my Devils weren’t there to save me.”
Pushing off the doorframe, I crossed the room to her, and crouching down to be eye level, I reached out and traced the bruises. “You don’t know him?”
“No. Older than me, sleazy looking, but I guess some people would think he was good-looking,” she said as her eyes tracked my fingers as I gently caressed her skin.
“And you wanted to walk home alone?” I snarled as I stood. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“I can handle myself, Gray.” Quinn looked up at me, her gentleness gone. “I throat punched the asshole, and the bouncers threw him out.”
“Well, that was stupid, now you’re even more on his radar.”
“I’m fine.” Angrily, she stood, her hands on her hips. “You can leave now.” Quinn’s eyes closed for a brief moment as she tried to calm her temper. “Thank you for taking me home, but it wasn’t necessary.”
“Yet again, we agree to disagree.”
“Gray . . .” Quinn tipped her head back before she looked at me. “Let’s just call it a night.”
“Sure.”
I was out the door without another word, but I did wait until I heard the door lock.
The walk home was quick, and I took the stairs two at a time to the top landing where our rooms were.
Hesitating at my brother’s door, I listened for signs of him and Ava going at it.
Hearing nothing, I tapped the wood lightly.
He must have been waiting for me, as the door opened quickly and he followed me into my own room.
“She okay?”
Quickly, I told him what she told me and about the bruises.
“You know what this means?” Jett said to me thoughtfully.
“She needs watched at all times.” I felt the heaviness settle on my shoulders.
“It could be nothing,” Jett tried to reason.
“Yeah, or it could be a whole lot of something.”
“She’s going to resist,” Jett warned me as if I hadn’t known her as long as he had.