Boyfriend Bargain (Hawthorne University #1)(71)

“I see.” He stops next to me and gives me a critical eye. I know what he thinks he sees: talent and money, his team’s investment.

But…

My heart picks up a notch and that clammy feeling starts a slow rise from my feet to my scalp. My stomach lurches a little, and I feel sweat beading on my face.

I nod as he talks about where I want to eat dinner, but my head isn’t with him. It’s taking all my mental concentration to just…to just…

“…Z?”

I blink.

“Son?”

I lift my hand and wipe at my mouth, pretending like I’m fine, trying to come up with some kind of normal mannerism or response to whatever he’s asking.

His hand is on my shoulder and his brow is furrowed as he looks at me. “Son, you’re shaking.”

I am?

I blink and look down. I look okay. I look fine.

But…

My chest hurts.

I rub at it. “I’m good, sir.”

I don’t know how I get the words out, and I must not do a very good job because he guides me until I’m sitting on a chair. He’s pushing my head down between my legs and barking out orders.

Fuck—ah fuck. Tears, fucking tears get clogged up in my throat, and I make this weird sound. Why is this happening to me?

I hear people running around me. I hear Coach and Eric and Reece.

I’m coming apart, falling down a deep hole of not being in control of my body.

It’s not working. None of that shit I did is working.

Why is my brain jacked up?

I have everything.

I have her.

Yet guilt eats at me. Dark thoughts hammer inside my head, telling me I don’t deserve happiness.

I put my hands to my face. No matter what I do to make myself better, there’s a flaw so cavernous, so deep in the recesses of my mind that nothing will ever be able to repair it.

Her body on the rocks.

My baby inside her.

My fault.

My face is wet, but I can’t stop, can’t stop, can’t stop, can’t stop.





32





Sugar





I keep checking my phone hoping to hear from Z, but he hasn’t texted or called all day. He’s at the game, I reassure myself again. He said he’d call you when it’s over.

Fine. I feel off, but Taylor’s giggle brings me back.

I’m curled up in my bed while he braids my hair and Poppy paints her fingernails at my desk. An empty box of pizza sits on top of the TV, an empty bottle of Prosecco beside it.

“Girl. You look like a Viking princess with this crown braid,” Taylor says, handing me a small mirror so I can see his handiwork. I twist and turn my head. “Just right for a big old strapping Viking warrior,” he adds with a grin.

Poppy wails. “I want a Viking warrior.”

Taylor stands up in his bright red skinny jeans and Sex Pistols T-shirt and does a pirouette. “Just tell me which hockey player you want, and I’ll put a bug in his ear, love. I’ll go to one of those games and hold up a big sign for you and pay someone to put it on the jumbotron. Call Poppy. She’s a goody two-shoes but wants some stick. She might clutch her pearls, but she’ll love every minute.” He gives her a smirk. “By the way, what happened with you and Boone?”

She turns beet red. “Nothing. We kissed and that was it.”

“Come on,” I say. “Really?”

She shrugs. “Actually the hockey guys kind of scare me. I need a nice, quiet Viking.”

Taylor points a finger at her. “No, you need someone who isn’t like you at all. You need someone to teach you the mighty ways of the sword, grasshopper, and by sword, I mean stick, and by stick, I mean dick.”

Laughing, I get up off the bed to dig around for another bottle of Prosecco in the closet. “Girls, girls, stop bickering. Obviously, we need more alcohol.”

Before long, I’m pouring us all new glasses of wine as I retell the story of Frat Boy and Pixie Girl. Taylor has started what he calls his FBPG Watch where he takes random photos of students on campus and then texts them to me, hoping he’s found them. They are nowhere.

“I wonder if he got rid of the clap,” Poppy muses, and we burst out laughing just as Julia walks in the door, still wearing her silver corset and tight bikini bottoms—with no coat. Shit. Her hair is sticking up in crazy directions, and she looks like she’s been mauled.

My eyes widen from my side of the room and I stand up. “Hey. Uh, is everything okay?”

“No.” With a tight headshake, she tries to keep her face averted from us, but I see dried tear tracks on her cheeks.

I frown. It takes a lot to get her to cry.

Taylor and Poppy have both come out of their slouched positions, and I quickly reintroduce them. Julia and I have become…well, maybe a little bit closer since she started working at BB’s.

“Gah, I look horrible,” she says breathlessly, her voice a bit shaky as she looks in the mirror and wipes at the mascara under her eyes. “I don’t even care.” Her shoulders slump.

“What happened?” I ask.

She yanks a cheap tiara off her head. “Football team came in tonight and the guy I hooked up with at the Kappa party saw me—” She shakes her head and bites her lip. “He called me a slut then got into a fight with one of the suits who was sticking money in my bikini.”