Chapter 2 – Waylon
chapter
two
Waylon
That was my third sober drive of the night.
The freshman I’d dropped off on Ridgeway had spent the whole ride snoring against the passenger window like he was trying to wake the dead with a chest cold. I got his address off Trace’s phone, drove him home, watched him fumble through his door, and turned around.
I wasn’t drinking tonight, and word had gotten around fast. Three sets of keys were handed to me before I’d cracked a Gatorade. Fine by me. I’d rather drive than referee whatever Miller was doing on the back porch with the bug zapper.
Kappa Nu was running hot when I pushed back through the front door.
The bass was deep enough that I felt it in my ribs, and the foyer reeked of spilled Tito’s and somebody’s terrible cologne.
Six Solo cups had been stacked into a pyramid on the entry table by someone with too much focus and not enough life experience, and upstairs, someone was yelling the wrong lyrics to a song I actually liked.
The plan was simple. Find Trace, say good night, cut through the kitchen, and walk twenty yards across the lawn to my cottage.
Aaron had been clear when he signed me last month.
Clean tape, clean schedule, no distractions.
He’d been Trace’s agent first, picked him up junior year, and when he took me on, he’d leaned across the table and said, “Coulter goes first round, and you go with him. So don’t make me a liar, Johnson.
” That was the whole deal. Trace and me, together, or not at all.
I scanned the room for Trace and found Marcus instead.
Kane held court the way he always did, arm slung around some blonde whose name I didn’t know and didn’t care to.
She had her hand pressed flat to his chest with her fingers splayed like she’d staked a claim, and Marcus was talking to three guys from the team while she laughed on cue. Same shit, different Friday.
I was halfway toward the kitchen when I caught something out of the corner of my eye, and I stopped walking.
A girl stood near the entry.
My pulse took off like somebody had lit a fuse under it, and I went hard so fast it ached.
She was small, maybe five-three, with fluffy curls falling down her back and framing her face.
I feel like Lena called that style a twist something or other.
Dark jeans hugged her hips, and the V-neck on her shirt dipped low enough that I could see the golden-brown swell of her tits where they pressed together, the line of a thin gold chain disappearing between them. Her mouth was painted a deep red.
Then she turned her face into the light.
Jesus Christ.
It was her.
Flash.
Earlier, she’d been in a sports bra and leggings with sweat at her temples and her hair scraped up into a bun on the top of her head. She’d more than kept up with me at a dead run. And that challenging smile of hers was a complete fucking turn-on.
Hell, I’d jerked off in the shower twenty minutes after I got home like some sixteen-year-old. I wasn’t proud of it, but I wasn’t sorry, either.
Now she was here, in my house.
Then I tracked back across the room.
Marcus’s face had blanched. His arm slid off the blonde like he’d forgotten it was there. The blonde’s head snapped up at the loss of contact.
Marcus was looking at her, and she was looking at Marcus.
Then it clicked, and my stomach hit the floor.
Of fucking course she was Kane’s.
Kane had a girl like that and still ran half a dozen puck bunnies through his bed in any given week. I’d watched him take two of them upstairs at the last party. He didn’t deserve to breathe near her.
Nothing you can do about it. There are rules.
A teammate’s girl was the one line you didn’t cross. Everybody in that locker room knew it. So did I.
But that little internal voice whispered. You could take her from him.
I watched her cross the room to him and mouth the word “surprise.” Marcus dragged a hand through his hair and put his face back together into something a normal person might mistake for happy.
The blonde he’d been hanging on a minute earlier glared holes into her back, lip curled like she’d smelled something bad.
He said something to her, and she said something back. His jaw worked, and then his hand closed around her elbow.
She flinched, her shoulders lifting a half inch with a breath she caught in her throat, her face shutting down so the room wouldn’t see.
Heat ripped up the back of my neck. My hands closed into fists at my sides, and my teeth ground together hard enough to ache. I could feel my pulse everywhere.
I knew that look. It was too familiar. I’d seen it in my mother’s face for years before she’d finally gotten the fuck away from my useless sperm donor.
I wanted to grab Marcus’s wrist and snap it back off her arm. I wanted to put him on the floor of this house in front of every person in it, and I wanted her to watch me do it.
I was already moving.
Then a body crashed into mine. Fucking Ryder, drunk off his ass, grinning at nothing, one hand on my shoulder and the other holding what was left of a beer. He was saying something I couldn’t hear, something about Miller and the bug zapper. He smelled like whiskey.
I had to stop walking to keep him upright.
By the time I peeled him off me and got my eyes back on the kitchen doorway, Marcus was already steering her down the back hallway. Her shoulders were tight, and her chin was up, and his fingers were still locked around her elbow. They disappeared around the corner.
“Easy,” Trace said, appearing at my elbow with a water bottle in one hand. “Breathe.”
I did not breathe.
I stood at the edge of the kitchen, my mouth dry, watching the hallway. My keys bit into my palm hard enough to leave grooves.
Three minutes later, they came back out.
His arm was around her waist now, and she was smiling. The smile didn’t reach her eyes, though. She’d dimmed since she walked in. I watched her press her free hand against her elbow once, careful, testing it, and the air went out of me.
Marcus pulled her tight against his hip and raised his voice for the room. “Hey. Everybody. This is Josie. My girlfriend. She just moved to Loveland, so the power couple is officially back.”
A couple of the guys whooped. Marcus’s grin widened.
“So y’all heathens be nice to her. That means you too, Miller. Don’t think I didn’t see you checking her out.”
Laughter. Miller flipped him off from near the keg.
Her name was Josie.
“What do you know about her?” I asked, without looking at Trace.
He took a slow pull off his water and narrowed his gaze at me. “Kane’s girl from home. Saw a picture once. No idea how she’s going to take his puck-bunny habit.”
I didn’t answer.
“Way.” His voice held a warning. “You know to leave that alone, right?”
“I know,” I mumbled.
“Good. So we’re leaving.”
“Yeah.” That was probably a good idea.
Across the room, Marcus steered her toward a guy in a backward cap. She moved with him. Her lips were turned up in a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes and for some reason that bothered me.
Notice how she didn’t look in your direction once?
I cut through the kitchen and out the back door before I did something I’d have to live with.
Marcus had her tonight, but he wouldn’t keep her for long.