Chapter 15 #3
“Rogue let you guys off breakfast duty again?” A small smile pulled at his lips, and the sight of it had a knot of guilt tightening in my gut. “I can’t understand why…”
My gaze strayed to my backpack on the table. That penguin felt like a hand grenade about to explode at any second. I wasn’t using it, though, just keeping it in case I needed to. After all, Wolf was still blackmailing me last I’d checked.
I forced my focus back to him. Food… breakfast…
“Maybe I did you a favor poisoning you that one time,” I said. “It was survival training.”
He moved around me and grabbed the box of Cocoa Puffs from the counter. “I had E.coli, Jade.” When he said it like that, I sounded like a dick for joking about it.
“Yeah… Sorry about that.”
He turned the box up, but nothing came out. “Dammit, Rogue.” He tossed the empty cardboard to the counter. “Want to go to Waffle Hut before class?”
“Uh…” That meant riding with him. I thought about us pulling up together in the school parking lot.
It was on the tip of my tongue to turn him down and get a lift with Cassie, to keep a safe distance.
But I recognized the flicker of hope in his eyes.
The same hope I’d been denying myself since I’d opened my eyes that morning.
Maybe I wasn’t the only one at risk. “Sure.”
The bell over the door of Waffle Hut tinkled when we stepped inside.
A thick cloud of bacon-scented smoke welcomed us, along with the god-awful music on the jukebox.
It looked exactly like the Waffle Hut in Dayton, and a wave of déjà-vu washed through me when Wolf headed to the booth that mimicked the one we’d always sat in back home.
He grabbed two of the grease-covered plastic menus, passing one to me as I tucked my backpack to the side. “Still like the Big Timer’s Breakfast? Covered, smothered, chunked, with extra cheese? Diet Coke?” he said from behind his menu.
He’d remembered my exact Waffle Hut order, and that was enough to have butterflies erupting in my stomach. The order I still liked, but it was ten bucks. Ten bucks I didn’t have to spend on one meal. “Yeah, but I’m not that hungry.” My stomach betrayed me by growling.
He lifted a brow, and I ducked my face behind the menu. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off him for long. I’d been starved of the opportunity to look at him, and my gaze tracked the way his chest and arms strained against the material of his gray shirt.
My ogling was interrupted when a waitress with bouffant blond hair and way too much blue eyeshadow stopped beside the booth. “What can I get you, sweetheart?” She winked at Wolf.
I’d seen it a hundred times when we’d dated.
Wolf was hot, and I wasn’t enough of a threat to deter them.
He didn’t seem to have it in him to be rude or unkind.
I’d loved that about him but also hated it because those polite smiles encouraged them.
It never failed to make me feel invisible.
He wasn’t my boyfriend anymore, though. I had no business feeling any kind of way about a waitress only addressing him.
However, Wolf didn’t smile politely back at her. He barely even looked at her.
“An All-America Breakfast, a Big Timer’s Breakfast, covered, smothered, chunked, with extra cheese. Coke and Diet Coke,” he said, without lifting his gaze from the menu.
Unless he was eating all that, and suddenly didn’t find diet soda repulsive, he’d just ordered my breakfast for me.
Wolf tucked the plastic cards back into the metal caddy, then spared her a cursory smile. “Please, ma’am.”
She looked at me with a sour expression. “And for you?”
“Uh,” I waved across the booth. “Pretty sure he covered it.”
She shoved her notepad into her apron, then walked away, smacking her gum.
The song on the jukebox changed. “You used to be nicer.”
Wolf’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“When you were dashing their hopes…you used to be nicer.” I let out a half-hearted laugh, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.
The past felt like a touchy subject. Or, judging by his blank gaze and lack of response, he just had no clue what I was talking about. Long moments of silence passed, filled only by the hiss of sizzling meat, low chatter, and the jukebox. Not awkward at all.
“ So , I was thinking…” I clasped my hands on the table, quickly regretting it when they stuck to the surface. “You’re helping me, so I’m going to help you get your grades up.” It was the least I could do, and nothing really compared to him risking jail with me.
No matter what had transpired between us, I wanted Wolf to make it to the NFL. If he didn’t, well, it would feel like dreams weren’t possible for people like us. And I needed them to be possible. Every kid who’d grown up like we had needed them to be possible.
“Fair trade.” He eased back in the booth when the waitress reappeared.
She plopped our drinks on the table, mine with way more ice than Wolf’s. He took two straws from the caddy, unwrapped them, and stuck them into our drinks.
I took a big gulp of my drink. “Which are your problem classes?”
Snorting, he threw one arm along the back of the booth, looking like he was advertising the damn thing. “All of them.”
“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “The worst ones? Algebra, obviously.”
“Yeah, and biology.” He took a sip of his Coke. “I don’t even know why I have to take those classes. I’m in counseling. When am I going to be asked to do an equation or talk about mito…” His brows wrinkled in that way I’d always found stupidly endearing. “Whatever DNA?”
“Mitochondrial. And you never know. You might have an epiphany, mid-life crisis, give up football, and get a second career as an architect, or a…pharmacist?” I tried to picture Wolf behind the counter at a pharmacy, white coat and all.
“Not that you’ll need a second career after said mid-life crisis, because you’ll be filthy rich after your pro-football career.
” It was a good thing I was sitting down because the grin he sent my way made my knees weak.
“You’ll just have to buy a Ferrari and knock up a stripper like everyone else. ”
Disgust rippled across his face. “I’m not fucking a stripper…”
“That’s what they all say.” I sucked on my straw, struggling not to laugh at the grumpy look on his face, at least until I noticed his gaze drop to my lips. I quickly put down my drink.
“You do remember when you tried to help me with chemistry in high school?” he said.
He’d had the attention span of a heroin-addicted chihuahua, so I’d had to come up with weird acronyms for the entire periodic table.
“But if you’re up for it…fine.” He picked up his drink, his bicep bulging as he lifted it to his face. “And thanks.” His gaze held mine for a moment before the waitress broke it by leaning over the plastic divider.
She placed our plates on the table, and I swear, she had loosened an extra button on her blouse since she’d dropped off our drinks. “Anything else I can get you, sugar?” She was looking at Wolf again. Obviously.
“Some mayonnaise. Please.”
He didn’t eat mayonnaise. He’d always said it looked like jizz. But I loved it…
I glanced down at the enormous pile of food in front of me. Money had been tight in all areas. I’d pretty much been living on toast and ramen for the last six months. I wasn’t sure how I didn’t have rickets. Or wasn’t yet the perfect size four my mother aspired for me to be.
In the grand scheme of gestures, buying me a Waffle Hut breakfast would probably be considered small to most people.
To me, it might as well have been a seven-course Michelin Star meal.
I had to wonder why he was suddenly being so nice to me when, only a week ago, he’d literally blackmailed me into being his maid.
Maybe he felt sorry for me. Or maybe it was just that Wolf was nice, and in my pitiful state last night, I’d pulled on his heartstrings and crossed back over the line from enemy to friend.
But a tiny voice in the back of my mind said I had hurt him, and this could just be an elaborate plot to lure me closer and break me.
“So,” he said, drowning his plate in ketchup. “As far as criminal activity, where do you think your stronghold is?”
“You mean my strong suit?” I glanced around the restaurant, making sure no one was close enough to hear him casually chatting about committing felonies.
“Yeah, whatever it is. We know it’s not robbing houses.” He shoveled hash browns into his mouth on a smirk. “Or stealing drugs.”
“I’ve gotten okay at…” I leaned across my plate to whisper, “Pick-pocketing.”
One of his dark brows lifted. “Really?” He picked up his fork and scooped a pile of eggs onto it.
“I mean, Cassie helps. And I freak out every time. But we got a hundred bucks the other night at The Platinum Club.” I speared some eggs and took a bite. God, how did they make them taste so good?
“That’s what you were doing there?” Wolf chuckled before shoveling more food into his mouth. “Jesus… If pick-pocketing horny, drunk men freaks you out, I think it will be easier for you to teach me nuclear physics than me teaching you how to be a criminal.”
I didn’t want to say it, but getting his grades up was going to take a lot of work. Getting me up to criminal speed wasn’t exactly going to be easy, but I wasn’t totally useless… I stabbed a piece of bacon. “Well, I’m sure Harold and his missing wallet don’t think I’m a terrible criminal.”
“Harold?”
“The guy I pick-pocketed…” I put the greasy bacon into my mouth, savoring the salty, slightly charred flavor.
“Right…” He couldn’t look less impressed if he tried.
“Fine. Maybe I should have paid more attention when you and the guys were doing this stuff.” Most of the time, I’d looked the other way, literally, so I had plausible deniability to my mother.
And Jesus, when she had inevitably found out what Wolf really was, she marched me to church for hanging out with “bad boys.”
“To think, this whole time I was studying algebra, when I really needed to learn life skills like hot wiring.”
Wolf grinned again before digging into his eggs. He needed to stop smiling like that, and I needed to get a grip. Really? Who got butterflies over a damn smile? “Tell me it’s not a bad skill to have?” The way he did it, absolutely not. Skilled fingers…
My face heated, and I dropped my gaze to my plate like the mess of cheese and mayonnaise-covered potato was the most fascinating thing in the world.
I didn’t know if I could be friends with him. He couldn’t even smile without setting off some kind of chain reaction between my brain and heart.
Sooner or later, I was bound to get hurt.