Chapter 14 Jett
I’d been walking out of my morning class when my phone beeped with a text, and I had almost not read it when I saw who it was from.
Elise: Hey baby, I found your thief
Me: Who?
Elise: What will you give me for my knowledge?
Me: Tell me what I want to know
Elise: So demanding when I have the cards
Me: Cards? Don’t piss me off, who is she?
Elise: Come over later tonight and I’ll tell you
Me: You want sex?
Elise: So blunt
Me: Name? Now
Elise: Always so dominant . . . I love it when you’re angry
Elise: She’s no one btw
Me: Name
Elise: Ava Bryant. Trust me, she isn’t anyone, what time will you come over?
I’d shown Gray the texts and been surprised when he had started laughing.
“Why is this funny?”
Gray shook his head as he looked at the name and then at me, the humor gone. “Because you know her.”
“I don’t,” I corrected him. “Apart from Friday, I don’t know her. And even then, it doesn’t count until I actually remember.”
“Yeah?” Gray saw Quinn approaching and gave her his usual dip of his head. “Ben bounced a ball off her head earlier this week at your request.”
I stared at him with my jaw slack. “No,” was my automatic reply.
“When she spilled her purse, I picked up her wallet, checked the ID out of habit. It’s her.”
“She’s been in my face since Monday, acting all pissed off and angry,” I told him in bemusement. “Who the fuck is she?”
“Send the name and the address of her dorm to Ash. He’s in class right now, he’ll find out everything you need to know.”
“Hey, what’s up with you two? You look like you just got told you can’t be assholes anymore,” Quinn greeted us.
“We found who the girl is,” Gray told her bluntly.
Quinn lost her teasing smile and met my glare. “Before me? Ugh, coffee and strategy,” Quinn ordered.
We’d just sat down when I looked up and she was standing there, staring at me.
Looking so fucking innocent . . . I wanted to rip her head from her shoulders.
When she saw all three of us, her eyes widened, and then she practically ran out of the coffee shop.
I’d been chasing her before she could get far, with no idea what I was going to say when I caught her.
I couldn’t believe that the girl who drugged me in order for me to fail a drug test, and fucked me on top of that, was her.
Sure, she was annoying from what I had met of her, and self-righteous, but she still didn’t seem to fit.
I had recognized her derisive look on Monday when she caught the girl with my dick in her mouth.
I thought she was merely uptight; I didn’t think it was because my dick had been in her a few days before.
Some people needed to get laid to loosen up, and she seemed to tick all the boxes. I thought she was one of those people. She was an uptight, judgmental woman who needed to take the stick out of her ass.
How well she’d played me.
Gray was silent beside me as I walked away from the classroom I had left her in. Wide green eyes flashed in my head, and I struggled between my need to go back and make her tell me what I needed to know or to keep walking away from her.
I saw Gray pull his phone out, but I couldn’t hear what he said to whoever he called over the roaring in my ears. I’d been nice to her. Everywhere I turned since Friday, she was there. I had never seen her in my class before, and she just happened to need to sit beside me on Monday?
Suddenly, every encounter with the snake felt contrived. I had helped her. No fucking wonder she looked scared to see me on Monday night, she must have thought I was coming for her. Fucking bitch.
“You need to rein it in, brother,” Gray murmured beside me as he placed his shades on. “Put your shades on.”
“I can see fine,” I snapped at him.
“Yeah, and everyone can see you. Hide the rage and remember you’re injured, even though Coach let you practice yesterday.”
“Fucking bullshit.”
“I know, but let’s play the game.” His tight smile held warning, and I looked in the direction he flicked his eyes. The three Elises were heading my way.
“I don’t have time for this,” I said as I turned my head from them and slipped my Ray-Bans on.
“Let’s hear what more they found,” he said to me quietly. “Where the hell is Ash when you need him?” he grumbled as I watched him brace for the impending arrival of Elise and her clones, as I thought about this morning.
“Hey, baby,” Elise greeted me with a wide smile. “We’ve been digging.” She gestured half-heartedly to Two and Three beside her. Elise looked over my white T-shirt. “What happened?”
Her fake smile was grating on my last nerve.
“Nothing you need to be concerned about,” I snapped.
“You got anything for me?” When I saw her eyes widen with excitement and her lips pout, I barely held my temper in check.
“On the girl,” I stressed, cutting off whatever goddamn innuendo she was going to spout.
“She’s no one,” Elise said. It was pissing me off that she kept repeating herself. “She does English or creative writing or something, has absolutely no social life, parties now and again. I think she dates some guy in a band.”
Gray had been watching Quinn walk toward us, but his eyes flicked to Elise and then me when Elise said Ava partied now and again. Well, something told me that information was shit.
“What band?” I asked as Quinn met us and wordlessly handed me a black T-shirt. Ignoring three pairs of eyes basically eye fuck me in the middle of the campus, I tossed the ruined shirt in the trash before I put on the new one.
“It’s some country thing. She promotes them or something,” Wendy spoke up. She was Three, but she was actually the more tolerable one.
“You know any more about them?” Gray asked as I straightened the T-shirt.
“Main band guy is Wade . . . something. Think he’s her boyfriend.”
“Wade?” Gray asked as I let out a low chuckle. The Wade in my phone from Friday? There really were no coincidences.
“Anything else?” Quinn asked the three of them with no effort to hide her dislike. They had all slept with Ash on the same night after all.
“No,” Elise answered with a saccharine sweet smile.
“Then fuck off,” Quinn told her, mirroring her fake smile before she turned her back on them.
Elise’s glare at Quinn’s back was full of hate, but when she saw I had seen her, she paled. “So, baby . . . later?”
“No.”
The three of us walked away from them as Quinn muttered inaudibly beside me.
“What did she say?” Quinn asked when we were far enough away.
“Nothing,” Gray answered. “But . . . Ash pulled her records; he’ll meet us at the house. Seems she’s a scholarship student,” he added with a sly look.
I looked at him in surprise. “Is that right? What kind?” I asked as we headed toward the house. “I just love how fragile those things are, don’t you, Queeny?”
Gray smirked as Quinn laughed while we walked along the tree-canopied paths. Scholarships were few and far between for this college. They had strict rules, firm guidelines, and a stern no fuck-ups policy.
She’d talk. She’d tell me everything I needed to know, or she was gone. She was a conniving bitch, but when it came down to it, what was more important to her? Her loyalty to whoever gave her the drug or the scholarship that she worked hard for?
I would bet money it was the latter, and that . . . that I could use.
* * *
Ash came into my room with a spring in his step until he saw Quinn, his good mood vanishing as their eyes clashed. “We just letting anyone in now?” he muttered as he took a place on my bed, our previous conversation obviously forgotten.
Gray was sitting on the couch with Quinn. Their heads had been bent over her phone as they researched the infamous Wade. I looked between the three of them and suppressed my sigh. I had more important things to worry about than his hurt feelings and his ex.
“What’d you get?” I asked him instead.
“More than I ever need to know about her,” Ash replied dryly. Pulling out his laptop, he flipped it open and turned it toward me. Her high school records were in front of me, as well as her information and academic record from freshman year, too.
“Nice,” I complimented him as I looked through it all. “Ava Bryant, nineteen, from Knoxville, only child, parents divorced, lives with mom . . .” I trailed off as I read more about her boring life. “Fuck, she’s dull. Good grades,” I mused.
“She’s in Professor Leitch’s class, and he does not like her,” Ash told me as he kicked off his shoes. “I sat beside her on Monday, and he was ripping into her when I arrived and held her back when class was over.”
“Which is why she was late for the class I have with her.” I looked back at her record thoughtfully.
“Yeah, the speed she was trying to leave Leitch, she probably gets to the next class before you would from macroeconomics.” Ash gestured to the laptop.
“She’s been in all of our classes either this year or last, we just haven’t noticed her.
He was on her again this morning. Seriously, I actually felt sorry for her; the guy’s brutal, more so to her. ”
Quinn snorted as she sat listening. When three pairs of eyes looked at her, she shrugged with casual indifference.
“I still don’t know how she ended up being fucked in my bed.”
“Charming,” Quinn deadpanned as she leaned back on the couch. “Is she in any of my classes?”
Scanning the records quickly, I shook my head in answer. “No.” I flicked through her admin record. Her roommate was Mia Davis, same town, same school, same dorm here. “Roommate’s her best friend?”
Ash nodded as he reached forward. “Yeah, to be fair, that struck me as curious, but they don’t seem to have pulled any strings. Friend is a music major, and she’s in two of my computer science classes.”
“She’s a music major with a side helping of geek?” Gray asked curiously. “How does that work?”
“Means they both have brains if not money,” Quinn spoke from the couch. “Is the friend on a scholarship too?”
Recognizing Quinn’s angle, I checked and shook my head. “No, she’s paying her way.”