21. Waverly
21
WAVERLY
L ife as a minor campus celebrity was strange, but not as strange as being Jax Palmer’s girlfriend. For the first time in my life I had love on demand from someone who wasn’t family, or my overzealous roommate.
Who was still overzealous and still bouncy as all get out, and I loved her for it.
More, I loved her for the fact that, despite that I knew she didn't actually like Jax for the way he abandoned me at the hospital. She knew he made me happy, and she shut up about it, though I caught her death glaring at him on no less than four occasions before lunch.
What more could a girl ask?
“Used to having your ass hanging out on an album cover yet?” Celia teased me, swinging her leg over the edge of the sofa in the Kingsman house where I passed out thanks to Napoleon Lancaster’s little brother.
I still hadn’t had words with him, nor had Jax, to my knowledge. But it was coming. I sensed his irritation with not closing off that loose thread like a pending eruption. His fingers twitched against my shoulder while Xoan tried to sit still, managing to almost conceal his dislike of being around people.
“I'm not sure I’ll ever be used to it,” I said honestly, smiling at the rockstar.
I still wasn't used to being around the campus superstar either, and fangirled at least a dozen times alongside Celia though I kept my efforts muted when I understood his fear of contact with others. Crush did us a favor and set Celia up as promised on campus accommodations.
Or more correctly, Nash did.
I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that. He organized her new digs in a less commonly used bell tower at the edge of campus, but on campus her room was and that mattered right now.
“You snore.” Jax murmured, flicking the full album cover around in his fingers.
It wasn't just his wall art and my butt on the cover that made it into the collection. The entire album cover and all his graphic design was clearly visible in the cover art enhanced with little tiny bee trails darting all over it.
Even my bees were famous.
His gothic-looking girlfriend dropped in earlier in the day with a bunch of swag for an event at the next Allstars game that we all agreed to wear and promote for him.
That wasn't exactly the hard part.
Crush pulled out a pair of hot pants and wrinkled his nose. “I'm not sure my ass will fit in these.”
Sylvie, Beau Bennett's girlfriend, pranced into the room already wearing a pair with Xoan Kennedy and Lullaby emblazoned right on the seat in glittery letters. She shook her behind in our direction.
"They fit just fine right here,” she announced without an inkling of shame whatsoever.
I might have expected her to come down with a little more sobering attitude from the thunderous look on Beau’s face when he followed her in that said they’d had a tiff, but from the three finger marks imprinted her skin that peeked from beneath the pink spandex I wondered he hadn't been there already.
I smirked and snuggled into Jax’s leather jacket, curling on his lap. "Maybe I should try a pair on.”
He glanced down at me, the corner of his lip twitching. “You want a pair of matching handprints?” His eyebrows waggled with no small dose of humor. His eyes darkened. “Have you got exhibitionist streak in there along with humiliation, bee girl?”
Sylvia let out a giggle before she clapped a hand over her mouth. Beau rolled his eyes at her double indiscretion and dragged her out of the room, though she didn’t seem to be protesting that much…or that hard.
In the darkest corner of the small living area of the Kingman house we had seconded, Nash and Crush were going at it as both brothers and frat president. It turned out that nothing happened with him after what happened in this same room the day he gave me a drink as there was no proof he actually took me to father. It appeared he just intended to get me drunk watch me pass out for shits and giggles. According to the security footage, Nash never made a move on me, and the evidence said that he never did anything untoward.
A while after he left the room and I was asleep, someone wearing a leather jacket that strangely matched Jax's picked me up nearly an hour later and took me out of the house. The camera caught everything. That was impossible because at the time Jax was getting the shit beaten out of himself, and then afterwards he was off with Crush talking to my brother and then looking for me.
None of the timing seemed to work out, and I couldn’t get the day–days–straight in my own head. But the camera said Nash wasn’t involved, hadn’t even roofied me. That didn't make me feel any more comfortable around him, and I got the impression that Jax felt the same way. Even BeauBennett shared a few heated words with the younger man who watched them passively, seeming to sponge in all of their aggression and return none of it.
He freaked me out.
The worst part was he seem to have taken a liking to Celia who couldn't see any of the bad traits I did. Her eyes followed his path across the room as he refilled his glass, nodding in time with Crush’s berating, and then ignored his brother completely in lieu of returning Celia’s gaze with interest.
His eyes met hers, and she shimmed on the sofa at my side.
I let out a feral little sound. “Don't stare. It's rude.”
“Why not?” She tossed her golden hair back. “He’s staring at me.”
“Then don't return it,” I snapped. “He’s toxic.”
“Pot. Kettle.” She pointed at me then over my head and back at me, waving a finger between us.
I sighed and let it go. Jax and I might have started out as toxic for each other but now we had something more in between, something a whole lot more that was, well– everything. This man would break before he let me be hurt again. He did so much to protect me and I knew I’d do the same for him. Not that I hadn’t offered to repay him for his efforts. I just spent half an hour upstairs in the attic room involving a leather belt, and me on my knees on the floor with his cock down my throat.
I raised a finger and swiped my eyes, wondering if my mascara had run more than I thought at the time.
Beneath me, Jax let out a huff of a laugh at the memory into the crook of my neck.
“I'm ready to go again when you are,” he muttered into my shoulder.
Squeezing his fingers laced around mine I rubbed my cheek to his, arching back for a deep kiss. Celia huffed and got off the sofa, leaving us alone.
A sigh left me. “I don't think she quite approves of you.”
“It’s not her choice,” Jax said softly, shooting a hard glance at Nash who sipped his drink and followed her from the room.
“She tried to save me from you. I suppose I get to return the favor now.” I shrugged.
Crush apparently gave up on his brother, throwing up his hands and stormed out of the room in the opposite direction.
Jax threw his head onto the back of the sofa and let out a long, controlled breath. “I should probably go and fix that.”
“Give him time,” I murmured, only a touch selfish, knowing all the boys needed to calm before something came to a head.
The entire Kingsman house felt like something brewed beneath the floorboards, something big. But I didn’t know all the intricacies of house politics yet to understand exactly what that pattern looked like yet.
“If my queen wishes.” Jax caught my chin and tipped my head further back.
I stayed lost, staring into his fathomless gaze, knowing that every time I stayed there I fell away from the grasp of gravity a little further. “But that man's got my back. I'll always have his, too.”
And the world ceased to exist as he kissed me deeply. Long fingers curled into knots in my hair, controlling the angle of the kiss, turning it into something more as he pushed me harder into the back of the sofa. I might have protested in the crowded room, if I could think. But when Jax let me up for air, I didn’t get the chance to think at all.
“I love you,” he murmured, right in front of everybody, brushing his lips against the corner of my mouth. Hooded eyes stared into mine as I wound myself around him.
A whistle went up somewhere in the room, and I didn’t even care.
At some point I managed to respond, whispering those three little words back too, the ones I thought I’d never ever say again, the ones that broke me so long ago. But with Jax it was all different. New starts, a different sort of twisted torture.
A lullaby, one of our own making.