8. Waverly
8
WAVERLY
“ H e’s just so…frustrating.” I slammed the pot with its ramen noodles onto our two-burner stove top. Water sloshed over the side onto the back of my hand in a way that really summed up my day. Week. Month. I stared at it in disgust. “Gah.”
“Sounds like you need a break. Come out with me.” Celia folded her arms, leaning on the counter just out of my reach. She sighed, flicking perfect, natural, bombshell blonde fifties-esque curls over her shoulder. “Please. Your stress levels are super high.”
As always.
She didn’t say it. Neither of us had to.
“That’s what happens when you’re paired with the most arrogant, assholic,” I flicked the burner on and threw two extra packets of cheap noodles into the pot, “and mother frustrating person on the planet. I swear he has a brain. He just doesn't use it. Lazy ass,” I added, because lazy was on my hell no list of anyone to socialize with.
Ever.
If I socialized at all beyond my bee hives. Mind, they were a whole lot easier to deal with.
“Come. Out,” Celia repeated. She pried my fingers from the pot handle. “Don’t use all our noodle rations on comfort eating. We can spend our allowance on something fun, like overproof rum, instead. Please?” She gave me puppy eyes.
I shook my head. “Not. Working. Bishy.”
She sighed. “Can’t you see how upset you are?”
Upset? I was seething. I’d ranted in my head the entire way home, hosting full blown conversations that never happened to anyone, even with the one person I shouldn’t have been thinking about on the way to, during and after my final class of the day. What were bees and a thesis again? All over absolutely nothing, and for no reason, which made it twice as bad. Ruminations were apparently my current jam, and I was living the full blown anxiety dream.
And if I was frustrated, I couldn't work. The amount of that piling up, considering there was a few more weeks before my first assignments were due, my outline for my major…tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I blinked, horrified and refused to look at Celia. Instead, my head tipped back and I let out a truly horrendous, heartfelt sound that rattled something in the ceiling above us.
“This place is so not safe,” Celia whispered.
“Nope, but it’s all we can afford.”
“Fine. But answer the last question,” she begged, pulling me back on track.
I blew out a loong breath that refused to quit. “Yes.” One word answers were all I had left after my imaginary conversations with Jax all the way across campus and back. “We need more noodles.”
“No, we don’t,” she corrected gently,” catching the extra packs and placing the back in the small cupboard we used as a pantry. “That sort of stress is so bad for you,” she cooed. “Let off some steam, Wavy.”
I shook my head, adamant on my noodles. “I hate parties.”
“But you came to Rippton to have a college life, right?”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I tried again. “I came to Rippton to ensure I get a solid job and don’t have the old aged care problems my parents will have when they hit my grandparents age.” Or that maybe I can pay for them, so they don’t suffer what I saw.
My grandmother shaking in the cold, no matter how many blankets we put around her. My grandfather unable to afford medication and dying a decade before his time.
Hell, if I got the degrees–plural–I was after, maybe I could help with those things.
Or maybe it was all a pipe dream and I was just another college aged kid with her head in a bee hive.
“Said no college student on party night, ever,” whispered Celia.
I pursed my lips. “Out loud, huh?”
“Yeah.” She hugged me. “I love you, bish. With all my heart. But also, your gran partied. She got drunk and let her hair down.”
“Not. Once.” I poked my noodles.
I still hadn’t told her about drinking with the Allstars, though she did know about the itching jacket incident.
“Sure she did. Or something crazy.” Celia stroked my hair. “And she’d tell you to live , Wavy. Enjoy life. Then come back and study bees and hive life and aged care and be a genius in so many other ways. But also to live.”
I peered at her through narrowed eyes. “Why do I get the feeling you’re funneling me into something?”
Celia’s pretty face broke into a full smile. She drew in a long breath. “Okay, so like I was saying, there’s a party at one of the sorority houses. Just girls night. Hair, makeup and I think we’re doing a clothes swap. No guys. Better?”
“Better?” I managed. That sounded like my worst nightmare personified. “Um, I have assignments. Two of them. Due for upload by midnight.” But not by me. That was another mess I'd walked into all too easily and couldn't extract myself. No. Keep it platonic, and get it done. “I’m good. Noodles are ready. Thank you for the offer.” It came out so robotic Isaac Asimov would have been proud of his creation.
“Mmm. Well, if you change your mind, here’s the address.” She looked around. “Where’s your phone?”
“My phone?” I tipped my noodles into my bowl, already head deep in a math assignment I didn’t take classes for. “Uh–”
“Seriously. Where is it?”
I blinked, scouring our small apartment. “Check my bag?”
Celia wandered over and flicked through the stack of books and jingled my keys. “Not here.”
“Hmm. Probably in my bedroom.” I opened my door and frowned. Had I taken it out in the bathroom? It was communal and full of steam after the shortest of showers–they had to be short as that was all the hot water we got–so I never used it there. “Shit. I have no idea where it is.”
Celia smiled reassuringly. “I’m sure we’ll find it. Where did you see it last?”
“I had it when I…” I hadn’t checked for messages on the way to class or when I got home. I’d thrown my bag on my bed… but a few minutes of lifting covers and crawling beneath my bed and the ratty sofa we shared excavated nothing but a bunch of stale dust bunnies. “Shit, shit, shit. The bees.”
“Was that the last time you used it?” Celia’s brows rose with her incredulous tone.
I faced her defiantly, and my expression drooped almost immediately at her expression. “Yes?”
“Okay. It’s fine. I can call one of the hockey boys I know. They’re sweethearts, I promise. They’ll go and get it for you.”
“No!” I didn’t want anyone near my hives—certainly not a drunken hoard of sports jocks. “No, I’ll go get it. It’s fine. Campus is lit up.”
Celia’s frown matched mine. “I’ll come with you.”
“You’ve got your party. Go, relax.”
Her lips quirked. “I think I just said all this to you.”
“Yeah, well, you know…” I herded her out the door, grabbing my bag and remembered to flick off the burner, giving my cooling noodles a disconsolating look and a mental promise I’d bee back soon. Pun . I had to keep myself occupied or I’d go crazy.
Fat noodles swam in their chicken stock flavored spa bath. Sending myself a real promise I’d eat when I got back, after I got the assignments done and handed them to my jailers, I grabbed my key, pushed Celia into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind me.
I lied flat out to Celia, and to myself. The noodles were never going to be eaten, and the walk across campus wasn’t well lit. Well, in comparison to the pitch black area by the bee hives, the rest of campus was a veritable city. Naturally, the area where I stood? An utter void.
By the time I stumbled over my own beehives for a third time, I had to admit that an inebriated horde of hockey jocks armed with their own phone torches might have stood a better chance of locating my wayward phone after all.
I planted my ass on the wet grass so it matched my damp knees and fought back tears. It seemed like such a small thing, until it wasn’t. Those assignments wouldn't be done and I didn’t have the income to replace it, even with tutoring Jax. And I’d made the sort of deal with the devil no one but the desperate ever made, but then wasn’t that how these things always came about?
The Twins, always capitalized for the pure terror they instilled, lone mode of contact was that phone. I didn’t even have their email–smart on their behalf to control the flow and direction of information, but certainly not on mine. Until this moment it hadn’t seemed important and right now my bee covered phone case was the most critical treasure in the world.
I swallowed my fear. Right. I’ve got this. I clutched my key, the sharp edges biting into my fingers. Pain grounded me, letting me push the tears back. No . I would not crumble over losing a phone that had all my contacts, pictures of my nieces when they were brand new and crinkled before their faces unfurled, pictures and videos of my bees for reference late at night… oh hell .
The first tear threatened.
My hands skated about the grass in a last bid of desperation, but all I came up with was cold palms and a handful of dirt from the garden bed. One of the hives wobbled as I bumped into it, halting my progress altogether.
Releasing the key to the safe haven of my pocket, I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, rubbing the fragile skin though I knew Celia would berate me for it. I forced my legs to take me in the direction of home, ranting in my head the entire trip. Not watching where I was going at all, I left the dark confines of campus and headed along my street.
My building came into sight, and the thought of actually getting some work done, knocking over my to-do list, lifted me despite my missing phone. I pushed that loss aside and refocussed. Planning my night out and knowing Celia wouldn’t be back until the small hours, if she came back at all tonight, gave me the freedom to spread my jobs all over my floor.
Lost in thought, I tripped over a pebble the relative size of my ego and swore creatively about the reproductive process bees utilized within their queen’s harem.
Which was how I managed to run face first into my pair of nemeses without being aware of their presence at all.
The Twins.
Two pairs of pink-gray eyes, so light as to appear pigmentless like dirty snow, stared down at me from a good foot and a bit of height above my duck butt were set in haughty faces that would have put Posh Spice to shame at the top of her game.
Key and Kash Laurent were identical twins born into incredible wealth and blessed with psychotic brains that allowed them the type of social freedom others pretended to crave but never actually wanted. A thin stripe of scarlet rimmed their eyes, leaving each tall, skinny man with a slightly demonic look, though that could have been from drug abuse or simply their brand of evil physically manifesting.
And I was their little toy this evening, a placement I most certainly did not crave.
“Oh, sorry. Good,” I stared, though my heart beat wildly in my chest. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. “Well, not good, because I didn’t mean to run into you. I’ve lost my phone and couldn't contact you. I can get everything for you tonight. Where do you want me to send it?” I rambled on while my stomach sank lower than should have been possible and aimed for an escape route.
“Them.”
“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “Them.” Two assignments. My language skills failed me in the face of ultimate death. Doom.
“Or you know what happens.”
Definitely doom. Why the hell hadn’t I gone with Celia and gotten myself shitfaced? That seemed like a logical decision right now. My heart picked up speed until my face heated like I’d run a marathon, but I hadn’t even started yet.
“Yes.” A dry, cracked whisper left my lips, and I had no idea what I just agreed to.
Anything, to walk away unscathed.
But with Key and Kash, no one left their presence unchanged.
Twin smiles, the creepiest sort possible, stretched their unique, pale lips. They, the predators and me, the small, pathetic thing whimpering at their feet. I might as well roll over right now and let them feast on the sweetmeats of my belly. They already broke me long ago.
“Good.” Key reached out, the tips of his ice-cold fingers grazing my cheek in a disturbingly intimate caress. “We’d hate to have to remind you what you owe us.”
What you took from me, you creepy fucker.
I swallowed, rooted to the spot, though my stomach heaved.
Key’s lips crooked at the corner as he watched me suffer. Enjoyed it.
“Yes.”
“Yes…sir.” Kash touched my other cheek, his strange smile the one of a kind benefactor, not of the man who could ruin my non-existent future on an evening’s whim when everyone else pretended to hide away and see nothing.
I closed my eyes to block them out. My hands fisted in my pockets, fingers closing my key. What would happen if I sliced the blunted metal at one of them? But I knew what they would do, and more. An echo of an unforgettable error of my youth.
A whole semester ago. It seemed like an age.
“Open up, Waverly.”
A whimper escaped my lips. I remembered those words from a very different scene. “Yes–” I opened my mouth to parrot my puppetmaster, but the words that tumbled forth weren’t mine, and they weren’t spoken by me.
“Can’t you two find someone worthwhile to pick on? It’s not like she’s a challenge, for fuck’s sake.” Jax’s voice dripped with derision.
Heat flared over my cheeks as miraculously, the twins’ dual, and unwelcome, touch dropped away. I closed my eyes again and refused to open them again. Brilliant. Both my tormentors in one place.
“My lucky night,” I muttered as their presence retreated and I managed part of a breath before I choked on a vacuum inside my own lungs. Squeezing my eyes tight I tried not to wince, and failed.
Key in my pocket.
My door three buildings up.
Twelve steps or less.
I’ll never make it.
All three of them were ridiculously fit, and built up with their own private home gyms for all I knew. Rippton U students were their own breed of wealthy, the twins–and Jax–no exception.
I risked a peek through squinting eyes, waiting for the next metaphorical blow. Or maybe not so metaphorical. I’d heard rumors the Twins were into some seriously shady stuff, and from their manner tonight, I didn’t doubt the grapevine got it right for once.
“Tonight,” Key and Kash crooned together, their words a far too intimate response.
My stomach lifted, flipping over on itself. It wasn't until they turned and were a few dozen steps away that I managed to squish my hands over my stomach and expel a breath tinged with the bitter seeds of bile.
“The fuck was that about?” Jax stood right next to me, sharing the same damn air I breathed, and I hadn’t seen him move.
His leather and smoke scent wafted possessively around me, sucking away the next breath I secured for myself.
“I can’t deal with you tonight on top of them. Get out of my way,” I snapped with the last remnants of my fading bravado. Adrenaline rush depleted, my energy zapped. The few feet to my apartment building seemed an impossible distance to conquer alone.
“What just happened, Waverly?”
“Glad you can use my name,” I sniped pettily. I tried to push back at him with my words alone, still frozen to the spot though the Twins were long gone, melted into the shadows they preferred, but my snark deserted me.
“Bee girl, I’ll bully you any other time, but right now I'm worried about you.” Jax’s brow dipped as I turned to face him.
His lime highlights stood out in the dim light the neighboring building afforded, leaving us in a halo of haze. He stood close enough that if I tried to raise my hands, I’d touch the black shirt he wore beneath the leather jacket he once draped around my shoulders. It appeared blue in the odd light, and I stupidly drifted my fingers along one sleeve as he sucked in a sharp breath. Yeah, a lot of things were stupid about me tonight.
“I’m fine.” My airway constricted, barely letting the lie escape. “I need to get work done.” My feet finally opted to obey my command and propelled me forward. A hand wrapped around my arm stopped me. Tonight, at some point tonight I would actually get my work done, despite all evidence to the contrary. “Jax–” I started, but one look at his face stalled my breath.
Coal dark eyes, the color of the graphites he preferred to use when he made weird art that suited him just fine, pinned me like prey he wanted to devour.
“Tell me, Waverly.” His voice remained soft, but the command did me in.
I ripped my arm from his grasp and swirled on him. “You don’t own me, have anything to do with me or give me fucking orders, Jax! This,” I waved my hand at the vacant street where Key and Kash disappeared into thin air like the pair of specters they were, “is an utter shitfight and I can’t possibly get anything done out here. I lost my phone. and all my videos—cue more bee jokes from you, I’m sure—and all my personal photos. Family, not sex tapes,” I added in a scathing voice. “Though there’s those too, if you want to pry. Surprised I have a sex life, art boy? Hell, I even have some kinks. I’ve got more work to do than I have hours, and I've barely slept in a week. Now please, fuck off and let me get some goddam work done. ” I stamped my foot, the clomp echoing along the bitumen. My chest heaved as I yelled right in his face.
Blood rushed across my cheeks a second time, and the unshed tears rose to the occasion with the timing of a boxer who walked into his opponent’s fist.
He watched me without reaction or taunt, just watched me.
Jax was beyond unnerving and I had no idea what to do with that.
Finally he broke his silence and maybe me along with it.
“I just wanted to give you this,” Jax spoke softly, not backing off or laughing, or any of a dozen options I might have expected him to take.
Instead, his fingers caught my wrist in a gentle grip, and he pressed something cool and heavy into the palm of my hand.
I looked down at the phone he brought back to me, undamaged, and the dam I barely managed to hold back all day– week, month–shattered. Tears cascaded down my cheeks at the simple kindness he displayed, especially when I just tried to rip him a new one. Clearly a fail right there. He displayed greater humility and class than I did in my abject fear and frustration.
Letting my hair hang over my face, I clutched my phone in one hand, his fingers still curled lightly around my wrist. My key dug into the palm of my other hand and I willed my feet to work.
They didn’t.
Fail one thousand and forty-three of the night.
“Can I walk you up to your room?” Jax gave my wrist a little squeeze, tracing the pad of his thumb against the smooth skin there in an intimate touch that kick-started my heart again.
“What?” I blinked at him, my mouth open. “No. No .” I backed away, flicking a glance to the door. “I have to– I need –” What I had to do and needed completely evaded me, though not him as I made my next mistake in looking up at him.
Despite my attempts to put distance between us, he stood way too close and the moment he saw my tears, his brow creased, and he shrank that space getting right into my personal space bubble like I never had one in the first damn place
Those magic thumbs brushed the base of my jaw, resting lightly over my pulse point. Not restrictive, just gentle. There. “Let me help you.”
“No.” I couldn't. Not after the things we’d said to each other, what he’d done. Trust. It wasn’t there. Not until…now.
Jax breathed slowly, gathering me against his body, cradling me to him like I was precious to him. “Whatever they’ve done, I can get you out of it.”
I stared at him and forgot all about my objections to his proximity. “You can’t make promises like that.”
“Yes, I can. I have resources. If they’re hurting you–”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” I snapped my mouth shut and swallowed, not bothering to brush the tears away. He’d already seen them, so what was the point? “Thank you for my phone.” I stepped back, out of his hold, and he let me, dropping his hands to his sides. Cold air kissed my cheeks, leaving a barrage of gooseflesh in its wake. “I’ll have to rearrange my hours with you this week.”
Jax prowled forward, refusing to give up. “Why? What are they making you do?”
More tears slipped down my cheeks. How much had he heard, what had he put together? This couldn't be happening. Not with my other enemy. Life got complicated fast and all I wanted to do was study bees, learn medicine and geek the fuck out. Was that so much to ask?”
“I can’t reconcile this you with the other you who has tormented me for the better part of a year,” I whispered my confession like he was my midnight priest and I knelt before him to receive my penance for sins committed.
The corner of his beautiful mouth crooked. “I’m complicated.”
“Bullshit.” My blunt outburst surprised us both. “That’s not fair to say. Everyone is complicated or deals with something outside their comfort zone. Just because they don’t share it with you doesn’t mean you suffer whatever you think you can’t deal with alone.”
Jax’s eyes narrowed, focusing directly on me. “Says the girl who’s avoiding an offer of help from a friend.”
My hollow laugh wrapped around us like an empty caress. “You’re not my friend.”
“That’s childish. Let me help you.” He eased another step closer.
“I can’t trust you. Whose fault is that, Jax?” I glared at him, or tried to, calling up the last fragment of my defiant shield I suspected I aimed at the wrong person.
“I brought back your phone.”
“You could have broken into it.”
“True.” His too easy admission gave me pause. “I told you I have resources, Waverly. The Twins are cu— dicks.” He coughed and watched me but I didn't flinch. He raked a hand behind his neck over the ink I’d seen briefly there when he took off his jacket once, though I didn't know what made up the design. “Let me do something to ease whatever it is you’re suffering from for them. Trust me, whatever it is, it’s not worth it.” His empty laugh matched mine of a moment before as those same knuckles he used so roughly on his own skin gently grazed the back of my arm.
I sniffled, and didn’t pull away. “God, I'm pathetic. For the second time, you can’t make promises like that. One day someone will take you up on one, and you’ll find you’re way out of your depth.”
Jax smiled, and my God, did I want to give into him. Just push everything away and believe . “Why don’t you take me up on it then, and find out?”
“Because I can’t trust you,” I whispered.
His arm slipped around my waist, drawing me into him. Unlike before there was no coercion, no strings like a puppet master. This time his gentle touch gave me every chance to push him away, scream right in his face again but I just…didn’t.
His eyes roamed my face like he memorized every inch of me, committing me to memory, puzzling me out. I’d do the same but maybe later. Right now…I yawned into the back of my fist, letting my eyes fall shut. If I was doing this, he’d get the full package.
Resting my head against his shoulder when he cupped the back of my head in his larger hand became too easy. HIs palm transferred heat and security in a single touch. Weight slipped from me, letting gravity steal away what I clung to in desperation and anger. Jax’s arms folded around me, holding me to him. His chin rested on the top of my head while I breathed in the faint scent of acrylic paint mixed with smoke and leather.
“You’re not pathetic, Waverly. But you are intelligent and amazing. You don’t deserve to be tormented by them.”
I shivered at the mention of the twins, twisting to look over his shoulder, but he held me too firmly. I hiccuped a laugh. “Now you’re laying it on thick. You drew on my bees,” I accused softly, the random memory popping up at the most inappropriate time.
“And it made it more…readable. You could see it, am I right?”
I swallowed and released my tight grip on my control a little more, handing it over. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Only it kinda felt like it might not be. This Jax and last semester's bully were not the same person in this moment.
“Yeah. I could. See it, I mean. The movement, and the way they go up. I knew there was a pattern, a correlation, but I couldn't see the direction. You made that clearer,” I admitted.
Jax’s breath hitched and his heart pounded a little harder against my cheek, though his arms softened around me.
Not a cage.
“You could see that?”
Was his voice tinged in wonder? I tilted my head back to read his face, and he let me.
That was a mistake I couldn’t take back. Because the moment my gaze met his, his coal gray eyes darkened impossibly to midnight black, filled with the sort of cold fury that comes from a black flame.
My heart matched his as I tried to step back, but the soft arms that embraced me so gently banded tight. Jax’s lips curled in a sneer I knew well and my next mistake revealed its fresh penance I’d pay here on the street as his head dipped fast, his mouth crashing over mine in a brutal, claiming kiss.