Chapter 17 #2
And here I thought I was just a desperate girl with okay feet. I pulled the skin-tight shirt over my boobs, then took a seat beside her to put on my skates.
“He said I was gross,” I admitted, tying off the ratty lace and sitting up.
“Again, and? Who cares what Wolf Brookes thinks?” She straightened, rolling a little on her skates as she gave me a judgmental glare. “Unless, of course, you sleeping in his bed did, in fact, mean something, and you’re into him again.”
I wasn’t admitting to anything. Not even to myself. “One word,” I said. “Rogue.”
“I’m not into him. I’m punishing him. It’s different.”
“I’ve seen no punishment since you moved the rats in. And?—”
Her smile could not have been more proud. “I put itching powder in his clothes this morning.”
“So, your punishment consists of pranks twelve-year-olds pull on each other? When he’s putting you in an auction … Like, an actual human being sale…”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah, well, I have a plan for that. This afternoon, while I was doing the dishes, he asked us to recruit some auctionees…”
The thought of recruiting women for that…“What are you going to do? ‘Rent a crowd’ and pay them to revolt?”
“Just you wait, Jade. By the time I’m done with Rogue, he’ll be a broken man.” The slight, unhinged tone in her voice worried me. Because if she pushed Rogue over the edge, she was taking me with her.
I pushed up on the skates and tucked my sneakers into the locker. “Be careful with him, Cassie.”
“It’s him who needs to be careful. Anyway, have you found anything in Wolf’s room yet? Anything we can use?”
“No.” I felt like shit for lying. Although, technically, I hadn’t found the penguins in his room. There was no telling what kind of bomb Cassie would set off if I armed her with that penguin, and I was still too conflicted to know if I wanted a bomb at all.
“What about the charity? It’s a scam, right?”
“Yeah. But it has a registered charity number with minimal donations going to some conservation program for the penguins.” Like, ten bucks a month.
I’d looked it up the day we’d seen them on the concourse selling those stupid toys.
With cash donations and “overhead,” it would be nearly impossible to prove what they were or weren’t doing.
“Dammit.” Cassie whirled in a circle on her skates. “I’ll give it to Rogue, he’s smart.”
Not smart enough not to leave his pills in a bathroom vent and tell Cassie where they were. Or not hide a box of drug-stuffed penguins in the hallway closet.
She grunted. “I can’t even find any drugs in the house. He’s moved his stash,” she said. Then again, Cassie hadn’t found the penguin drug mules, so maybe I wasn’t giving him enough credit.
“They’ll slip up at some point,” I said, skating toward the door. “There’s bound to be pills at that auction.” Not a lie. “In the meantime, tips aren’t making themselves.”
“No.” She adjusted her boobs in her push-up bra. “These are.”
We skated outside into the muggy night air, rounding the side of the building. The scent of cooking grease smacked me in the face when we reached the hatch.
“Hey, I was thinking. You know how I told you about Aunt Betty and her gambling…”
“Yeah.”
“Well, she also used to get scratch cards all the time. She won like a hundred bucks a month on them. We should go to Georgia this weekend. Grab a few ourselves.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Wolf was going to help me, and there was no need to risk driving all the way to Atlanta for nothing.
“You know it’s called gambling for a reason, Cass. You might lose money.”
“Fine, I’ll front the money. If we win, give me a cut. If I lose…well, I’ll just use Rogue’s credit card for food for the rest of the month.”
Rogue would love that. She was trying to help me, though.
The cook tossed a ticket onto my tray, followed by a wrapped burger, fries, and a drink.
“I’m in Dayton this weekend.”
“Fine, one night next week then?” Another burger landed on her tray.
At least it would get me out of the house and away from the guy who thought I was gross. “Okay.” I wheeled toward the waiting car, vaguely recognizing the beaten-up Toyota I’d only seen once. I didn’t put it together in time, though.
The window lowered, and Brent’s bloodshot gaze met mine, his right eye swollen, and a deep-purple bruise covered the bridge of his nose. I assumed that was Wolf’s doing. I might have pitied him if he wasn’t such a cheating asshole.
“Are you stalking me now?” I clipped the tray to his car door and rolled back, folding my arms across my chest while I waited for him to take his food. As if he were diseased.
“No.” He stared at me for a long moment.. “Look, I know you’re mad, but Jade, please talk to me. I’m trying here. I helped with your car…” Like that entitled him to any of my time.
“Thank you for your help, but did I not make myself clear the other night when I punched you? Just take your food, Brent, so I can get back to work.”
His hand rested on his steering wheel instead of reaching for his burger. I was two-point-five seconds away from dumping it in his lap.
“Are you with Brookes now?” A line sunk between his brows. “You know he did this to me.” He leaned forward, into the red glow of the Roller Burger sign, and pointed at his eye, not that I needed the light to see that shiner. “He’s an asshole.”
I wasn’t sure why it pissed me off so much. “If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe you deserved that punch, Brent.” Because if he was the one who had blocked Wolf’s number…
“How did I deserve?—”
“Did you change his number in my phone?”
I caught his face blanch before he half managed to control his expression. “What?”
“That summer after I broke up with Wolf and you offered for me to spend the summer in South Carolina with you… Someone changed Wolf’s number in my phone. Was it you?”
Cassie wouldn’t lie. Monroe never wanted us to break up in the first place, so that only left Brent.
“I…” His mouth closed. A frown crumpled his features before he opened it again.
My heart thrummed out an erratic pulse as I waited for his answer. If he would even tell the truth.
“I was helping you! Wolf was bad for you, Jade.”
It felt like the world came crashing down around me.
Everything was a lie. Brent, Wolf…everything I thought I knew and felt about them both had been a twisted image created by Brent.
Anger bubbled through me, blending with a crippling sense of betrayal and sadness.
I hadn’t wanted to believe Wolf’s suspicions, and now I realized why.
Because it hurt. The self-inflicted purgatory I’d spent the past eighteen months living in was, in fact, caused by a man who had claimed to love me.
A man I had tried to love back, just so I could escape the pain of losing Wolf.
And all along, Brent was the reason I had lost him. I couldn’t even speak.
“You had to know Wolf was fucking around on you,” Brent said, like I was stupid.
“He’s Wolf Brookes. All those parties you never wanted to go to, all those games you couldn’t make because you were working so much…
You really think he was loyal to you? That he loved you?
He’ll never love anybody more than he loves himself. ”
“You don’t know the first thing about him,” I snapped, pissed off that he was using my own insecurities against me. Things I had cried on his shoulder about when I thought he was a friend.
“I love you, Jade. More than he ever will.”
Whatever Brent felt for me, it wasn’t love. It was selfish. He’d gone to extreme lengths to get me, and I’d made it so easy. I’d enabled his manipulation when all I had to do was ask Wolf.
“I know I hurt you?—”
“Stay the fuck away from me, Brent.” The fact that he still thought I’d ever go near him again… He disgusted me. “And I suggest you stay away from Wolf. Because when I tell him what you did…”
The color drained from his face.
I rolled forward and grabbed the edge of the tray. “Now take your food.”
He didn’t move. “No?—”
“Fine.” I unclipped it, then upended the whole thing—drink included—onto his lap.
“Fuck!”
I didn’t hang around to see his reaction beyond that. I spun on my skates and glided across the lot.
“He’s just using you, Jade!” he shouted after me. “You were always just a placeholder. Someone he could easily cheat on.” Even the anger couldn’t override old wounds. Those words picked, picked, picked away at that old, festering scab of self-doubt.
The words “charity case” and “gross” rang through my mind like one of my affirmations. Words that had come from Wolf’s own lips.