11. Waverly
11
WAVERLY
J ax was nothing like I expected him to be, but at the same time, he was everything that he should be. No wonder we’d clashed so badly to begin with. Everything he showed the world was an act—not unlike what I put out to cover my scars, though mine looked different to the more visible ones he carried. HIs were covered with art.
Mine were my dirty little secret.
Everything about him was designed as a distraction, with one massive difference to how I viewed myself.
His was the story of a hero, of a person who struggled and grew, small to something courageous and beautiful.
Mine was a story of terror lived daily, one I couldn't escape until I diminished into nothingness, kicked aside like so much trash.
Where I belonged, or so I’d been told enough time I started to believe it.
Until Jax.
He gave me hope and hope was…pure cruelty.
“I did something really stupid, and now the twins hold it over me.”
“The sex tape?” His face remained open but the tension in his fingers where he squeezed my waist flexed with his words.
Of course he guessed. Jax was more perceptive than any other man I let in, and afterward, there hadn't been many. My body ached for the sort of contact offered, and I wondered briefly what his hands would feel like around my ass, pushing me down on him as he filled me.
I sought the distraction, but not was not the time. Maybe, after this, there would never be a time.
Then the easy implication of his words slaps my face like reality yawns before me. I stare at him. “You say it like it’s a daily staple.”
“Well, yeah. Doesn’t everyone have one, or five?” He waggled his eyebrows at me, the one with the scar moving weirdly. It captures my attention for a bit as I trace its path.
“What? No. No . Not in the hands of two people who are determined to fuck with my future because theirs is assured. And they’re bored. They’re evil.”
Jax nodded, his face sobering. “No argument with that, except the ruin your future thing. Why are you letting someone else define who you are?”
“Because a sex tape on a CV doesn’t look that great for a lab technician, unless that job also comes with a stripper’s bikini and a pole in the bar across the road.” I flushed head to toe at the thought of dancing for him, and envisioned myself falling on my ass, thick thighs spread out on the floor before me, cheap carpet digging into my ass. My virtual humiliation didn’t end there, of course. Jax stood in front of me in my mind’s eye, lording right over me. One hand rubbed his crotch, the same hungry look in his eyes there as there was now–
I made a strangled noise and choked softly.
Jax’s look turned speculative as his gaze scoured my body, stripping away the layers of clothing, his thumbs turning circles over my thighs. “Is that your grand plan? Waverly Alloway, lab tech? Come on, honey. You can go higher than that. Stretch out on your own. No limits.” He leaned back, watching me.
“You make it sound so easy but in reality, it’s little jobs like that in an early career that work toward something bigger at the grace of bosses who might not like you and give you a promotion.”
“Still letting others take your power away.”
“I’m a college student. A broke one. The only power I have is over how badly I cook my noodles each night.”
“Ew. Not sexy.”
“I did say that.” I gusted out a breath. Jax offered no further distractions. My time was up, maybe with him forever after what I just fessed up. Boring, slut, and broke? So not sexy. “I went to a party during my first week at Rippton. Like everyone else, I had some drinks, which I’d done before college, at home. I have an older brother who was determined to ensure I was piss fit before I came onto campus. I used to be a jeans and white tee girl. Had blonde hair. All that changed when Key and Kash decided I was their project for the first semester, and it sort of never stopped.” I swallowed.
“What happened at the party?” Jax’s face remained carefully neutral.
“I think I was slipped something. A drug. I’ve never taken anything so I have no idea.” He nodded, and I continued. “I stayed on beer, didn’t do shots or anything. I might be naive but I’m not that stupid. After beer pong, I felt woozy. I barely had to skull anything as Celia is an absolute pro—my housemate—and saved both our tushes. Someone helped me upstairs and I woke up between a pair of men I didn’t know, covered in—” I closed my mouth, swallowing back the taste that never left me no matter how many times I brushed my tongue or drank mouthwash.
“Jesus.” Jax stilled.
“They had clips of us running on the TV in the bedroom on loop, like a never ending porn film. I looked half awake on the screen and did whatever they suggested. It was really obvious that I didn’t object to anything. I had– I hadn’t– It was my first,” I whispered, tucking my chin to stare at my hands that trembled in my lap. “The twins turned up an hour later with a suggestion of a ransom for the night’s…activities. And the recording that was saved everywhere, or it would go out to everyone, with my name all tagged over it.”
It wasn’t just my future work life that was ruined. My father would see that tape. My mother. My brothers had been over protective in some senses and the best I could ask for. Both left for the military before I hit my first year and the back up I'd relied on all my life disappeared. Celia stepped in as best she could but it was too late. Ice cream, tissues and hugs patched me up, and hence the girls night only parties.
“What did you do when you woke up?” Jax stroked my back in long passes with his whole hand, his touch warming and soothing at once.
“I tried to scream the house down, but they were prepared for that. Two tall, strong experienced and apparently genius guys versus one small farm girl coming off a drugged hangover isn’t much of a challenge. I don’t like a hand around my throat, by the way.” In case he did, or in case he cared. Jax hadn’t thrown me on the floor yet in disgust or walked away, and a tiny flicker of hope remained in my heart.
“Noted,” he said seriously. “So they—what, threaten you with exposure?”
I nodded. “The tape’s fairly graphic. And it’s everything you could expect. Everything,” I emphasized, so he was under no delusions. “All the things I never thought a body, my body, could do.” I kept my mind clear of the film that was etched there against my will anyway. While my mind didn’t remember it, my head sure as hell did. Bees were so much safer. “I do their work for them. Assignments, projects…I give it to them and they submit it. Not that they need the help. They’d both be smarter than almost anyone else around.”
“You said you didn’t know the guys in the bed when you woke up,” Jax started thoughtfully.
“No.” I shook my head.
“What about today? Have you seen them around campus? One of the sports jocks?” He watched my face, his brow dipping. Lines tightened around his mouth but he didn't say anything more and it didn't take a genius to figure out where that line of the thought traveled.
He lived with the sports jocks. And though he didn’t know where the party was I attended that night, there was one party frat on campus that outweighed all the others.
The one he lived at with the Rippton Allstars.
The Kingsman frat.
I searched his face, trying to think up the faces that brought bile to the back of my tongue, and came up empty. “No,” I realized. “I haven’t.”
“Okay.” Jax nodded as if he’d made a decision.
“Okay?” I echoed. “Do– do you want me to move so you can leave?” I searched his face, but all I read there was that he was lost somewhere inside his own head. “My story isn’t deep like yours. I’m sorry,” I added in a small voice.
Just a stupid girl who made another statistic on her first week at a college she shouldn’t have gone to, in over her head.
Yup, that was me in all the ways, and now in my second year, I was a full eighteen months into paying my tolls to the devils and completely exhausted.
“What are you sorry for?” Jax stroked light fingertips over my cheek and drew me closer to him, settling my hands over his heart and clasping them there. The regular beat of his heart thrummed beneath my palm.
I blinked, forgetting to pull away. “Why aren’t you throwing me off you and running?”
“My girlfriend just told me she was raped at the hand of two evil dicks, held hostage by others, and feels she has no way out of it. I want to hold you, Waverly. Actually, I’m staying. What do you wear to bed?”
“Boy shorts and a singlet top,” I answered on automatic. “Jax–” My brain jammed. “Go slow for me. Please. That might have gone by a little fast.”
“For a clever girl, you’re behind on this one, honey.” He tucked me into the curve of his shoulder, angling me so I stared up at him. “I want you. If you feel the same as I do—caught in a whirlwind and waiting for the house to drop on a wicked witch or pair of warlocks—then we’re on the same page. Give it a try?” He waited until I nodded, and let out a long breath. “Good, cause I wasn’t sure you wanted what I did. Good,” he repeated, nestling me closer and feeling like he wasn’t about to let me up to get changed at all.
I was kinda okay with that.
“This happened real fast,” I agreed. “And it’s only a little bit terrifying.” And not, all at the same time.
“That it is.” He laughed, dipping his head to kiss me, slow and gentle. I leaned into him and let him whisk everything away for a few more precious minutes.
“I don’t want you caught up with the twins.” Reality offered the coldest slap as the words slipped from my tingling lips between kisses. I tried to pull away but he held me tight, leather and smoke winding around me as he shifted. “No, really. You’ve been through enough.”
“I have. And now I’d like to be able to share that with someone. Someone I trust,” he murmured, hanging onto me tight.
I recognized the degree of desperation in his touch, his voice, because I had that same need. His connotations didn’t slide past me. “I do trust you,” I whispered, my heart aching. “I’m just scared I’ll infect you with my poisoned life. And I have no time. There’s two assignments to get in by later tonight. Like a few hours.”
“Fuck them.”
“What?”
“Fuck. Them.”
“Jax. I’ll lose my scholarship.” That was the other part of the deal. Threat, whatever, I had with the twins. I did this and their pale as fuck mafioso psychosis stopped my scholarship from slipping away.
The best torture of all worlds. This way they got their plaything and could torment me endlessly too.
“No, you won’t. Hear me out.” Jax held up a palm. “But first…will you change into what you sleep in? Then I’m going to put an idea past you, and I want you to tell me what you think you are and aren't comfortable with. Touching, kissing, sex, eating, socially…kinks. I want to cover everything but we can do those another night, bee girl. And I’m going to draw. You.”
“Uh—” This was a bad idea on so many levels. “You’re going to run, far and wide.”
“Trust me.”
I closed my eyes, letting him kiss me again. My heart beating too fast in my chest, I got up and headed into my bedroom, ignoring the pile of books heaped next to my door that didn’t belong to me.
I curled up in the nest of soft nest of blankets Jax made in my bedroom dressed in my lavender singlet top and boy shorts. They were a matching set that I’d kept from my first year, one of the few small indulgences I didn’t hide behind after Key and Kash decided to screw with my life.
When I walked out, my arms wrapped around my curved hips and tummy, Jax’s look froze me on the spot. He clenched his hands on his knees, staring at me as though he was eating for the first time after being starved forever. When he rose and took a few measured steps my way, his golden eyes darkened. My heart paused as he stopped before me, skimming his hands over my arms, drifting to my thighs, sweeping his fingertips along my back.
But other than that, he hadn’t touched me.
I missed the contact almost immediately, and typically, I wore my emotions on my face.
Laughing softly, he leaned down to graze his lips over my ear. “I don’t want to rush you and if I kiss you now…I’m scared I’ll hurt you.”
“What if I want you to?” I whispered back.
He stilled. “Rush you, kiss you, or hurt you, Waverly? Be real fucking specific right now.”
I swallowed, my voice the thinnest whisper, but clear. “All of it.”
He exhaled with purpose, his darkened gaze never releasing mine. “You can wait until I’m done drawing. Then, you choose.” He leaned a little closer, barely grazing his lips across mine. “Or I will.”
Keeping it fair, he stripped down to his boxers. Though he worked out with the hockey captain, his body was all lean, hard muscle, not the built up sort I usually associated with pro athletes, because he wasn’t one. And ink covered a lot of surfaces in patterns that exposed skin in as many artistic spaces as it concealed.
His scars were on display, especially a section of mangled skin at his ribs he touched occasionally that looked like letters were carved there. Despite whatever abuse he’d seen, he exhibited zero shame or self consciousness about his. So, I did my best to return the favor and pose as he asked while he drew, shifting my legs when they went numb, talking when he prompted me.
Unlike my personal idea of portrait posing, he didn’t require me to stay in one position for a long period, letting me wave my arms as I needed to talk. By the time my alarm went off, scaring up both, I’d fallen quiet, had long run out of things to say when talking about myself was my least favorite thing to do. I flicked off the alarm, staring at it. For the first time since I’d started college, I hadn’t done what the twins demanded of me.
Jax smiled at me like he was proud of me.
I was absolutely fucking terrified.
“You’ll be fine. We’ve got this.” Jax wrapped his arms around my stomach and peppered kisses along my shoulders until I lost myself in giggles and soft whimpers.
My body overheated where his bare skin pressed to mine. “I don’t even know what this is.”
“This is me wanting to peel that little top off and suck on your nipples until you’re a hot mess, then do the same to your pretty little pussy.”
“You can’t say things like that,” I gasped as his mouth claimed mine.
“I don’t give a fuck,” he growled, holding me flush to his body that told its own story. “After this morning, I’ll do anything you let me do—but it’s got to be your choice, Waverly. Always your choice. I’ll never force you.” He titled my head back to his shoulder, kissing me fiercely.
“I’m never going to get used to that,” I whispered, covering a yawn. “I’m so sorry. I’m exhausted.”
“And I promised to stay with you. If you want that?” he asked, loosening his hold on me.
“I’ve…never actually fallen asleep with a boyfriend before,” I confessed, biting my lip. “Unless you count…”
“I don’t,” he said firmly. “I want to erase everything they did to you, starting with that dent on your self esteem.”
I nodded, letting him draw me into the nest of blankets.
His arms wound around me, then he froze. “How do you prefer to sleep?”
“Um, on my side.”
“Good.” Jax wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me back into him, covering us both with blankets. “Sweet dreams, little queen.”
I smiled as my eyes drifted shut and didn’t mind the nickname one bit.
I woke up in a pile of blankets and stretched luxuriously across the small single bed Jax had managed to fit in next to me. My eyes flew open in an adrenaline dump.
Jax.
I retracted my arms but he wasn’t there to accidentally hit. Sitting up, I curled in my nest of blankets, trying to reconcile the night before with the rest of my college existence to date. Had I been drinking? Oh, hell. I hadn't sent the twins their assignments! Was any of it actually real? I covered my eyes and fell face forward into the nest of blankets, still lined up where I’d posed for Jax the night before.
Wait.
If that was real then…
“Waverly! You have to see this!” Celia threw open my door still wearing the same jeans and tee she’d been wearing the night before.
“What is it?”
“Get dressed! You– oh.” She stared at me, her eyes wide. “You’re wearing…”
I looked down at my top and boy shorts. “They’re my pajamas.”
“Yeah. And now your pajamas are famous. Put on your skirt or something. Quick!”
I frowned and picked up my skirt, and just as slowly dropped it. Sucking in a deep breath, I dug through my drawers to the two pairs of jeans I loved most and slipped on the larger pair, hoping the button would still do up. It did by some miracle, and I could even breathe in them.
Bonus .
Grabbing a tee and a hoodie, I layered up, knowing the morning air would be crisp, and shoved my phone in my pocket.
“All right.” I ran my fingers through my hair, trying not to think of Jax not being there and what it might mean. “What’s up?”
“Come on, ” Celia broke into a wide smile at my jeans and tee combo, squeezing my hand as she dragged me out of the building and across the lawn to the quad where a hundred students congregated, their phones raised. “You have a lot of explaining to do, young lady,” she admonished me in a faux-stern voice, and surprised me with a tight hug, pride radiating from her glowing cheeks, her curls bouncing around her face. “You have no idea how happy I am for you.”
“What?” Flustered, I stared at her, my feet moving as she propelled me forward.
I turned around to face the backs of the crowd and stopped.
The enormous brick wall that formed one end of the quad had been painted black and white. And on it, dressed in my nightwear combo, nestled in the blankets Jax insisted on, was me, painted larger than life.
Jax did his thing and worked his magic.
The image was both me and not in noir, but I knew in an instant what he had done, the same thing he's done for my bee flight.
He’d taken the motion and our very one sided conversation and incorporated it all .
Me talking, thinking, blushing when he said words I’d never had aimed at me, and thought I never would after what had happened. Even a touch of shame. Every part of me was layered into that painting, there for the whole campus to see.
Motion, fears, and dreams rolled into one.
And above it all, Jax perched on the edge, waving a beer and warbling a drunken love song at the top of his lungs.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I opened it to find a message from an unknown number.
Photos and movies deleted. Treat him well. He deserves it.
Crush. It had to be. Jax’s best friend. I grinned, tears prickling the corners of my eyes as people turned to take photos of me. For the first time, I didn’t care. They could take whatever they wanted. Jax had striped away all the rubbish so I could just be me.
With him.
He waved at me, and, choking on a laugh, I waved back.
And that was all I wanted.