Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(8)
“You don’t,” Nathan said, throwing a French fry at Luka.
“Mind your business.” Luka returned the fry and it landed in Nathan’s shirt. “You don’t even know what we’re talking about, *.”
“Ha. Amber Thomas.” Nathan’s laugh was low and it came out around the nuggets in his mouth. “You’ve been whining about her for two days.”
“More like a week,” Brian said.
Kona thought Luka really was a dumbass sometimes. Everyone with eyes and a small attention span knew Amber Thomas’ game. She liked players, specifically first string players. Both Lu and Kona were linebackers, sophomores, sure, but they’d been courted by the CPU scouts since they dominated the sport in middle school and were signed by high school. They worked hard and earned their time on the field.
The girls on campus were pretty much the same to Kona. Beautiful, yeah, sure; he’d discovered a long time ago that southern girls were something special, but most had one agenda: find a man with potential. And Amber saw a lot of potential in Kona two weeks back. She potentialed him hard right after practice one night and then gave Nathan the same treatment just two days later. He didn’t want his brother messed up with her. Lu was too soft, still hanging on to the fat kid he’d been at ten. He was always surprised when girls wanted to get with him, despite how he’d grown, despite the fact that the weight he carried now was all muscle. That fat kid was long gone and Luka still hadn’t realized it.
“Whatever.” Kona hoped his insult would make his brother disinterested, at least make him second guess the attention Amber gave him. “If you want your dick to fall off then that’s your problem.”
Across the table Nathan and Brian laughed between bites of French fries. When Luka didn’t join in with the laughter, Kona tried to defuse his temper, scanning the dining hall for an easy target. He smiled at Bethany Johnson, sitting next to her friends, just two tables over. “Hey.” He knocked his knuckles against Luka’s arm and moved his chin in Bethany’s direction. “Sophomore. Chem major. She likes big boys.” Luka moved his eyes, gave a long look at Bethany and then returned Kona’s smile. “See? That one’s clean, trust me.”
“You do her too?”
“No, brah.” He shrugged, leaning back against his chair. “Brian tried to at the KA party, but she turned him down flat. Said she doesn’t like horny blondes.” Luka laughed when Brian shot him a middle finger and Kona knew why. It wasn’t often that Brian got turned down and when he did, it was usually by good girls. Kona thought that was what Lu needed. A good girl.
He was convinced his brother was going to make his move. He thought the quick smiles he’d exchanged with Bethany had been encouragement enough to get Luka on his feet to walk over to her table, but then his twin’s face lost all expression and he frowned at something behind Kona. “You piss off anybody lately?”
“Not today, I don’t think,” Kona said to his brother.
“What about you two?” Luka asked Nathan and Brian, getting a quick head shakes from both of them. “Well, head’s up. Some girl is coming this way and she’s glaring at you like you pissed in her coffee or something.”
Instantly, Kona bent his knees, tried to make his body relax. He ran through his interactions, the girls he’d talked to lately and the last time he pissed off anyone.
Susan Decker, three weeks ago got mad at him because he didn’t want to take her to her family’s barbeque out in Covington. But Kona, ever the peacemaker, sent Dougie Michaels to her dorm with a dozen roses and made sure the guy told Susan how much he liked barbeque and being out of the city. Dougie thanked him two days later for the hook up. He didn’t know who the girl behind him could be. Most of the girls he was with knew how he rolled. Casual hookups and nothing more. He just didn’t have time for the bullshit games that came along with being with a girl more than twice.
Luka’s eyes went wide, slipped up and down before Kona looked to his right and up at the girl that glared down at him.
Kona had to squint, look at the smooth contours of her face, the bright blue eyes, the high cheekbones and the creamy skin before realization hit him. This was the girl from his English class.
Kona remembered, as she stared down at him—looking like she wanted those slim fingers of hers choking his neck—that he’d missed their meeting for the project. She wasn’t dressed in her usual hide-me-from-the-world clothes. She mentioned being on the cross country team and so the tight running shorts she wore and a CPU track t-shirt tied at the hem made sense to him. But he’d never seen her when she wasn’t huddled under jackets and hoodies that were too big for her. Moving his gaze down her body, over those nice, high tits and flat stomach, that plump, luscious ass, Kona realized she’d been way under his radar. Her hair was pulled up in one of those high messy buns girls always seem to make look good and sweat dotted along her collarbone. It was her expression, though, that had Kona trying to keep the smile off his face.
She was pissed.
Those big, bright eyes of hers were stern, shining with anger as she glared at him and her thick, pink lips were curled up. God, he couldn’t remember her name but if she’d looked like that in class, he’d have paid more attention to her.
“You,” she said, voice little more than a growl.