Beautiful Broken Rules (Broken, Series #1)(34)

“You’re playing with fire,” I mumbled to him trying to extricate myself.

Jax popped his head out of the huddle, pointed his finger directly at Jace and glared harshly. Jace raised his hands in surrender laughing and someone smacked Jaxon in the head to get him to focus. The crowd laughed at the drama of the Riley twins.

By the time it was halftime, the other team was up fourteen points. The guys walked off the field to head to the locker rooms. Cole looked frustrated and Jaxon just looked pissed. As I had suspected, Dalton wasn’t throwing to Jaxon at all and Cole was constantly being outnumbered, so it was hard for him to connect with the ball. Jace had stopped paying attention to the girls around him and had leaned forward in his seat the majority of the game. Even though he claimed he didn’t miss it, I could see the wheels spinning in his head. His hand would move every once in a while to indicate a throw or fight off a block.

“I’m guessing if you were out there as quarterback, you would have handled that differently?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Either Dalton is blind or he’s just an *,” he ground out.

“It’s the latter.”

Quinn stood up in her seat and pulled on her shorts. “Come on guys; let’s go get something to drink.”

We both got up and followed her out. As we walked underneath the stands, we could hear the coaches yelling all the way in the locker rooms. You couldn’t pay me to be those guys right now. Jace bought Quinn and me a soda and himself water. We hung out under the stands talking to other classmates. Quinn and I had found Sophia and some of the other girls that Quinn works out with. Some people were talking about where the parties were after the game. All the Frat and Sorority houses were on a three-week party ban. The school wanted them to prove that they could study and maintain decent GPAs. I didn’t understand the point. So what, they would behave for a couple weeks then go right back to having parties every other night?

Quinn started saying that maybe we could have people over to our place. I just shrugged. Every once in a while, we’d have people over; it always got over crowded and someone was always trying to get into our rooms to have sex.

“I don’t care, but I’m locking my door.”

“You can lock the door with you and me inside it, babe,” Micah said, putting his arm around my shoulders and I watched as Sophia’s eyes locked on his arm.

“Not a chance, unless you want to watch that new Channing Tatum movie with me,” I laughed.

He leaned in to whisper in my ear, “Come on, Em, I could do that thing that makes you scream real loud.” I know I looked flustered; I couldn’t help it. Micah was good, but it wasn’t happening. I started shaking my head.

Jace slipped his hands, followed by the rest of his body, in between the two of us, forcing Micah to take a wide step back away from him. “Come on, Em and Q; let’s get back to our seats.” He looped my arm through his elbow and walked off with Quinn following on the other side of him.

“Real smooth. I don’t need someone intervening for Jaxon, he does that enough. You know we aren’t together, right? I can talk to whoever I want about whatever I want.” Although I was glad he rescued me away from Micah, I didn’t want him to think that I was Jaxon’s. I don’t need someone trying to maneuver me away from guys when Jaxon wasn’t around to do it himself.

“I know that Jax cares about you a lot.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll never be together, like that.”

He gave me a confused look. “Why wouldn’t you?” he asked. “You’re perfect for each other.” Quinn stepped up next to us with a beaming smile, looking victorious.