Chapter 7
Seven
Jade
“Stupid Gucci shit,” Cassie mumbled, tossing Rogue’s expensive white shirt into the washer along with all the others.
As well as trash, apparently, he’d been hoarding his laundry.
The fact that Rogue trusted Cassie with his clothes blew my mind, for very good reason.
She took a bright-red thong from a Wal-E-Mart bag full of bright-red thongs and tossed it in the machine.
The irony that she’d bought those with his money…
Her antics were at least distracting me from my earlier encounter with Wolf.
I hadn’t expected anything from him except a cold shoulder.
Certainly nothing that deep and definitely not that soon.
The look on his face when he’d mentioned his dad’s funeral kept playing through my mind on repeat.
It made no sense. I was the last person he should have wanted there, and the idea that he had, that maybe he’d needed me, cut deeper than I thought possible.
I had loved Wolf since the first morning I had woken in his bed, unable to remember anything of the night before, with him on the floor right beside me.
I’d been drugged by a guy at a party, and, well, Wolf hadn’t quite managed to save me, but he’d tried.
Wolf had been out of my circle until Monroe dated his best friend, not to mention out of my league.
The next few weeks were a dark place for me, and he was by my side the entire time, like a self-appointed guardian.
He was a good friend until I asked him to have sex with me.
Before the drugging, I’d been a virgin, and I wanted him to give me a first time I remembered.
I wanted it with someone I trusted, someone I felt safe with.
No one made me feel safer than Wolf. And for the next year of high school and my first year of college, no one had made me feel more loved.
Then he’d given up a scholarship to his school of choice to come to State to be with me.
I thought we were the fairy tale, but I quickly learned there was no such thing.
Life had a way of throwing curveballs that push people apart.
And push it did, until everything became too much.
The pressure, the attention, the distance that grew, even though we were living in the same town, on the same campus.
So, I asked for a break. Just a break, not a break-up.
He changed his number, and two months later, he started dating Nora Locke.
Peppy. Skinny. A cheerleader. Someone who looked like she belonged with a guy like Wolf.
Not a charity case. That crippling lack of self-worth I’d been battling for as long as I could remember began to creep back in. If this was day one, the other twenty-nine were going to be a joy.
“Hey. You okay?” Cassie touched my shoulder.
“Yeah.” I lied. “Fine.”
Tossing another shirt into the washer, she flashed me a knowing look. “You can’t fool me. I’m the queen of guy problems.”
“I know.” Not these kinds of guy problems, though. Wolf was an old wound that had no business still hurting. I certainly didn’t need to pick at it.
Cassie dropped the empty hamper onto the floor. “Wonder how many death threats Monroe has sent Wolf by now?”
“At least five…” I had called Monroe on our way to this hellhole, explaining the shitshow we were in. At first, she lectured me on how stupid it was to steal those drugs. Then she’d turned her fury on Wolf. The last thing she’d said before I’d hung up was that she was going to castrate him.
Cassie plucked another bright-red thong from the Wal-E-Mart bag. “Just for good measure.” She dropped it in with the rest of the clothes, then slammed the metal top down with a bang. “Treat me like a damn maid…”
At least the thought of Rogue’s face when he realized half of his clothes looked like Barbie’s wardrobe cheered me up.
An hour later, I sat on the dryer, watching Cassie proudly fold one of Rogue’s now baby-pink shirts.
Her phone rattled across the top of the dryer. I handed it to her, seeing the message ribbon from Rogue:
You’re sleeping in my bed tonight.
“You’ve been summoned…”
She stared down at the screen like it had personally offended her. “Fuck him. I am not sleeping with him.”
I took one of the clean, flamingo pink shirts and folded it on my lap. “I mean, let’s be honest, you’d usually be falling back into his bed right about now, anyway.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“I’m here with you, aren’t I?”
“Yeah.” She put a hand on her hip. “Calling me a whore.”
“My apologies. I’m sure this time is different from the other fifty.” I tossed the folded shirt into the hamper. “What with him blackmailing you…”
“Exactly.” She didn’t look convinced, though.
If Monroe were here, I’d put ten bucks on Cassie screwing that asshole within twenty-four hours.
Her phone buzzed three more times.
“You know what, if he wants me in his bed, I’ll be in his bed.” A slow smile pulled at her lips before she shoved the device into her back pocket. “I’m going to give him hell.”
“You know giving him hell is not giving him head, right?”
One of her blond brows arched. “It is if there are teeth involved.”
“No, it isn’t. You said he likes that shit.” And my scarred mind would never recover.
“Nope. He’s not getting so much as a kiss goodnight from me.” She crisscrossed her chest. “Cross my heart.”
If I were her, I wouldn’t be messing with bad juju where her weak cooch was concerned.
“Uh-huh.”
“Night, Jade,” she said, grinning as she pranced out of the room.
Cassie was weak where Rogue was concerned, but if there was one thing that took priority over getting laid, it was getting revenge. I almost felt sorry for Rogue. Almost.
I hopped off the dryer and cut the lights.
None of the guys had discussed my sleeping arrangements with me, but if they thought I was sleeping on their ratty, body fluid-covered sofa, they were sorely wrong.
Knowing Rogue, there would be half-naked pictures of me circulating campus before I’d even woken up.
Or I’d get a Sharpie mustache, shaved eyebrows…
the immature possibilities were endless.
I opened the hall closet in the vain hope of finding a spare blanket. The second I opened it, a cardboard box tumbled out, an army of rubber penguins spilling around my feet.
Either the dog was really destructive, or he really, really liked his penguin toys.
I righted the box, tossed the penguins back inside, and crammed it back onto the top shelf beside a blanket.
The one Wolf’s dad used to keep on the back of their sofa.
I’d spent many nights wrapped up with Wolf in that blanket, fooling around beneath it.
That was then, though. And this—I glanced around the frat house, reminding myself that that version of Wolf no longer existed—was now.
I took the blanket and quietly snuck through the front door to my car, where I changed into sleep shorts and a tank top.
If Wolf said anything about my needing to be on “frat ground,” I’d park on the damn lawn.
The fading scent of Wolf’s laundry detergent wafted off the blanket when I lay down on the backseat. It annoyed me that, after all this time, something as simple as a smell could make my heart feel like it was in a vice grip.
Through the window, I could just see the Omega Dicksolon sign hung over the front door of the house. That was who Wolf was now. A blackmailing frat boy. One who was willing to ruin my life. Fuck his laundry detergent, and fuck him.
I turned over so I couldn’t look at it, then closed my eyes.
I tried to find sleep but failed. I was too irritated over the fact that I was sleeping in my car when I had a perfectly good apartment.
Eventually, I gave up and grabbed my phone to text Monroe.
Halfway through my tirade, a Lonely Fans notification popped onto the screen.
You have one new subscriber!
I clicked on the pop-up, and it took me to a message from PussyHunter69.
Lovely toes. Would you be willing to chat privately for twenty dollars?
I stared at the screen for long seconds, feeling uncomfortable as hell. A private chat seemed a lot more sordid than uploading pictures and videos to a public forum. Still, it was twenty bucks…
I typed out a response, agreeing, and received a twenty-dollar tip less than a minute later.
Now I had to actually message the guy. I felt like a person who had lied on their CV—vastly underqualified to sext a stranger.
A tap on the back window had me bolting upright and launching my phone like it had burned me. I looked at the window. Wolf’s frowning face peered at me from the darkness. No doubt he was about to bitch at me for not being in the house, as per his stupid terms, but at least he wasn’t a murderer.
I sat up and rolled down the squeaky window. “You scared the shit out of me!”
“Why are you in your car?”
“Why are you creeping around out here in the middle of the night?”
A chirpy whine came from his feet. I leaned forward, peering down at the fox-like dog sitting by Wolf’s side. The dog was cute, I’d give him that.
“You know you have a yard your dog can pee in?”
“Get out of the car, Jade.”
“Um, no?”
Headlights bounced over the interior of my car, and Wolf’s attention snapped toward an approaching vehicle. “Stay here,” he said, then started across the street.
“Get out of the car. Stay in the car,” I mocked in his stupid, gruff voice, watching him drag the dog, a full leash length behind, across the street.
An old Cadillac slowed to a stop beside Wolf before there was a discreet exchange. One I’d seen Wolf make a hundred times back in high school. Dammit, that was my chance to get my loaded gun, and I was just sitting there like an idiot.
I scrambled to find my phone in the dark, cursing when it hit the floorboard with a thud. By the time I had it in hand, camera open, the car was already pulling off. If I were going to outsmart Rogue and Wolf, I’d need to be more on the ball.