“Okay?” I parrot back to him, searching his face for clues. What does that mean? Okay, we’re cool? Okay, I accept your apology? Okay, please jump off the face of the earth?
Ryne stands up on the bench and I take a step back when he jumps down to the ground. He lands in front of me and a puff of dust from the gravel floats up into the air around us.
He holds my gaze, unblinking. “Okay,” he repeats in a low, husky voice. With that completely unclear parting word, he turns and walks away.
14
Ryne
Between work, homework, and practice, the first six weeks of school are over in the blink of an eye. It’s a Friday afternoon with just two classes left, and I’m exhausted. We had another soccer game earlier this week and it was brutal. We won, but they were supposedly our easiest match of the season, so the rest I expect will be particularly hellish. The guys are going to the football game tonight, but there’s a high likelihood I’ll dip out after tailgating. Thinking about tailgating reminds me of the conversation I’d overheard earlier between Tyler and Dacen. And that makes me think about the last real conversation Dacen and I had, when he’d apologized for being a nosy bastard—I’m obviously paraphrasing here. I tap Tyler on the shoulder and he turns around.
“So are you actually into the hipster dweeb or what?”
He stares at me like he’s looking into my brain and sees some truth even I don’t know. “Would it bother you if I were?”
My gaze flits off to the side and I chew on the inside of my cheek for a moment. “He’s annoying. They don’t need to sit with us at the game tonight. Why’d you have to suggest it?”
Yet another reason I plan on leaving before the game starts. And yes, he’s annoying, but I can’t stop thinking about the way he’d licked my ear at the lake. Bit it. Sucked it. Very briefly, but damn it’s been replaying practically nonstop in my mind ever since. Along with every other interaction, good or bad, between us since then, not to mention everything from camp.
“They heard me talking about it to someone else so it seemed rude not to. Also, to clarify, the only thing that bothers you about the thought of me and Dacen together is you find him annoying. Not much of an objection then, good to know.”
“Like, together-together?” My chest tightens and I reach up and rub it absentmindedly.
Tyler shrugs. “Yeah, why not? He has an exceptionally hot ass, and the finest set of abs I’ve seen around here lately.” He punctuates the statement by making the perfect sign with one hand.
“So you ARE into him?” My mouth becomes dryer than the Sahara and I choke out the words.
His top lip curls and he cocks an eyebrow. “It’s not like you have a reason to care, right?”
Before I can confirm or deny anything, he turns to face forward again as Mr. Archer enters the classroom. I crumple up a sheet of notebook paper and toss it at the back of his head. He reaches behind his neck as if to scratch an itch, and flips me off. Irritation bubbles beneath my skin, and frustratingly there’s also a whole helluva lot of jealousy mixed in there as well. I lower my head onto my arms, then let my forehead thump lightly onto the desk. What happened this summer, and at the senior bash, I can’t stop thinking about. I can’t get Dacen out of my head. I haven’t even messed around with anyone else in ages because I can’t get him off my mind.
I wake up, dick in hand, to thoughts of him. Throughout the day I waver back and forth between wanting to strangle him and wanting to shove him up against the nearest locker and own that sassy mouth of his. We push each other at practice, and then I fall asleep to thoughts of him. Wondering when he’s going to get his so-called payback on me, half dreading it and half looking forward to it, whatever it is. I thump my head against the desk again. Hell, maybe he’s forgotten by now.
“Mr. Sutton.” I shoot up in my seat at the nearness of Mr. Archer’s voice. He stands beside my desk, looking down at me with his nose scrunched up. “Everything okay?” Everyone else has pulled out their textbooks and begun to work. I glance up at the board and see the assignment written on it, then back at Mr. Archer.
“Yeah, everything’s cool. I spaced a minute, is all. I’ll get started now.” He nods and I slump down in my seat as soon as his back is turned.
Tyler peeks over his shoulder and raises an eyebrow. I shrug and pull out my stuff. I need to focus. I can’t let Dacen keep distracting me like this. It’s got to stop. But how? No fucking clue. And do I really want it to? No. And why that is, is the million-dollar question. Ever since he apologized for talking about me, it’s like, I don’t know, he’s less annoying now. I don’t know why. What I do know is if Tyler’s not just messing around with me, if he actually is into Dacen… My competitive streak flares alive. Tyler’s my boy, but I met Dacen first, and, well, I don’t even know how to finish that thought. So I don’t. I pop open my textbook, flip to the page noted on the board, and get started on my work.
* * *
A few hoursafter class ends I pull my truck back into the high school parking lot, in a spot next to Tyler’s Jeep. Evan scrambles out of the way. He’d been saving the spot by sitting in the middle of it in a lawn chair. I call out my open window, “Dude, you gotta stop doing that. You’re gonna get plowed into one of these days.”
He gestures down his body. “You’d just bounce right off all this muscle.”
Despite myself, I grin. “Yeah, pretty sure that’s not how it works, one hundred eighty pounds of man versus six thousand pounds of vehicle, but okay.”
“One hundred eighty-five, thank you very much.”
He hands me a drink once I jump down and clanks his can against mine. There’s a fuck-ton of people in the parking lot and the grassy area behind the football field. Nearly everyone in town turns up for this shit even though the team sucks. It’s more just something to do for a lot of these people, rather than hoping the team will go very far this season. I can take it or leave it most of the time, which is yet another reason why I plan to leave early tonight. I walk around the back of my truck, pop the tailgate down, then hop up on it. Roman tosses a Bluetooth speaker playing some old Drowning Pool up beside me and climbs in after it. He lies back and after a minute sits up again. I shove my drink in his hands, hop up, and go pull a couple of old blankets out of my truck’s toolbox and toss them over to him.
“Here, princess. Make yourself comfortable.”
Roman smirks at me and spreads them out one-handed, then pats the spot beside him. In an overly high voice, he calls out to me, “Thanks, babycakes.”
I squat back down and sit next to him, taking my can back. “Where’s Grimm?”
Evan, who’d been digging around behind the driver’s seat, pops his head out. “He’s around somewhere.”
