~ 2 ~
DALTON
“And he just moved this other girl in? Just like that?”
Fallon nodded as I slid the eggs onto her plate. “Just like that,” she confirmed. “He did it so casually, too. Like he was bringing home a puppy or something.”
“Fuck,” Emerson swore. “I wish I had balls that big.”
I watched her reaction to the callousness of his statement, but she didn’t seem bothered by it. Still, I frowned at him anyway. The last thing I wanted to do was upset her again.
“That asshole’s definitely got something,” I countered. “But it sure ain’t balls.”
The eggs were fluffy and scrambled, exactly the way she liked them. I hadn’t made breakfast for Fallon since… well, since freshman year. But I’d eaten breakfast with her dozens of times, in places on and off campus.
Last night she’d shown up lost and cold, both mentally and physically numb. Today, she looked a thousand times better. As the morning light streamed through our cracked kitchen window, Fallon looked recharged and refreshed. Not to mention cute, blonde, and extra gorgeous in one of my favorite T-shirts.
“Thank you so much for last night,” she said, picking up her fork. “All of you.” Turning in such a way that her golden hair shimmered in the sunlight, she smiled at me. “And you really didn’t have to give up your bed.”
“Forget about it,” I told her. “The couch isn’t so bad. I’ve passed out on it plenty of times.”
“Haven’t we all,” said Trey, folding a pancake in half.
The kitchen, like the rest of the old Delta Tau house, was a complete shambles. But since it was the room we used most frequently, we’d started our renovations here. We’d spent the entire first week peeling away decades of neglect, and replacing it with new walls, cabinets, and temporary appliances. Nothing was perfect yet, but it was functional. Just like us.
“I’ll be out of your hair hopefully by tonight,” Fallon added, while eating hungrily. “And please, let me clean up breakfast. I know you boys need to get to practice, so—”
“Practice?” Emerson laughed, and Trey laughed with him.
“Honey, we already had our morning practice.”
She glanced down at her phone, her mouth all pouty and cute. “But it’s not even seven o’clock.”
“We run every day at four-thirty,” I told her. “Five miles, before drills.”
“Three for this guy,” Emerson jerked a thumb at Trey. “He walked the other two.”
“After that, we lift,” Trey said, proudly flexing an arm. His biceps and triceps, all swollen and full, leapt in opposite directions. “And now, we eat!”
He bit into the folded pancake, which was more of a makeshift taco loaded with eggs and bacon in the middle. A full third of it disappeared in an instant.
“So what exactly did this asshole say? ” Emerson pressed. “I really have to know. I need to get into the head of the guy who just brings home a new girlfriend before breaking up with his existing one.”
Again, I shot him a warning glance. But Fallon only shook her pretty head.
“You really want to understand how Blaine operates?” she challenged. “That’s easy: he’s focused solely on himself. If it benefits him, he does it. If there’s an advantage to be gained, he takes it without even considering what his choices might do to those around him.”
“So he never loved you, then?” I asked carefully, regarding Fallon over my coffee.
“Oh, he did,” she said, maybe a bit too hastily. “In his own Blaine way, of course. And he probably loves her too,” she added honestly. “The way you love a new pet when you first get it home, without thinking about how the old pet might feel.”
The fingers clenching my mug tightened, involuntarily. It was going to be hard not to rip this guy’s face off.
“And I really was his pet,” Fallon sighed unhappily. “I can see that now. He wasn’t so much proud of me, as he was proud of how I made him look. For Blaine, appearances always matter. Under some circumstances, they mean everything.”
Trey finished his pancake taco and had already started on a stack of toast. He paused in the buttering process. “So if you know all this, why did you stay with him?”
“Because I thought I could change him,” Fallon admitted sadly. “Or maybe I thought he might grow up and grow out of it. I can’t even begin to tell you how stupid he always made me feel. Like everything I did was just under par. The clothes I wore, the grades I got. The conversations I made with his family, and his friends.”
“He sounds like a real winner,” Trey grunted.
“He was so disapproving, too,” Fallon added. “Even when he threw me a rare compliment, it was always a backhanded one.” She dropped her fork in disgust. “Jesus, I’m so stupid. He’d always run off and do whatever the hell he wanted, then call me a prude all the time. And I am not prude.”
“Oh no, wallflower?” Emerson laughed.
“No!”
“Fine. Prove it.”
“Prove it…” she repeated, rolling her pretty brown eyes. “Yeah, sure. How?”
“Hmmm… let’s see. Have you ever had sex in public?”
Emerson casually chewed a strip of bacon while awaiting her answer. I could see Fallon’s wheels turning.
“Well, no.”
“Ever been tied up? Spanked? Played strip poker?”
She folded her arms. After a brief moment, she shook her head.
“Are you in the mile high club?” asked Trey, happily joining in.
“Of course not!” she cried. “And I’ll bet none of you three are, either. Have you seen the size of those bathrooms?”
“Ever had sex in a hot tub?” I asked, giving her a sideways wink.
Fallon neglected to answer that one. She returned my look with a secret glance of her own, and shifted in her seat.
“Ever had a threesome?” Emerson challenged.
“Actually, yes.”
All three of us whipped our heads around to look at her so fast, you could almost hear our necks crack. The sudden attention turned her skin two shades pinker almost immediately.
“You have? ” Emerson and I swore at the same time. “Really?”
“Yes, once,” she confirmed. “It was Blaine’s birthday, and he’d been hinting at it for so long. Almost begging me, practically. I finally gave in and set it up for him, with one of the cute girls from Kappa Delta, who I knew had the hots for me.”
I couldn’t picture it any more than Emerson could; shy, reserved little Fallon doing something so radical. But I had to give her credit.
“So how was it?”
“It was interesting, actually,” she shrugged, picking up her fork again. “I didn’t hate it. Of course, I did it entirely for him. We were in kind of a rut, and I thought somehow it would bring us closer together.” She laughed bitterly, and leaned back in her chair. “If you could believe that shit.”
She kicked one leg up, and I fixated on the shape of her smooth, tan thigh. I tried summoning the recollection of those beautiful thighs, wrapped around me. But the memory was vague and hazy and way too long ago; lost amidst a whole sea of other thighs I’d enjoyed since then.
“I want you to forget that moron,” I instructed her. “You’re here now. My room is your room, and there’s plenty of fresh towels in the upstairs bath.”
Fallon beamed at me gratefully, her smattering of tiny freckles dancing as she scrunched her nose against the sunlight.
“And you’re staying for as long as you need to,” I added firmly. “And not a minute less.”