Page 84 of Make Me Mean It

I should tell him to fuck off.

Instead, I look at him and find one dark brow already raised, a challenge sitting in his eyes waiting to see what I’ll do.

My pulse thuds against my throat.

I take it from him, narrowly avoiding his fingers, although somehow that doesn’t make putting something that was just in Theo’s mouth between my own teeth feel any less stupid. The taste of strawberry floods my tongue as I bite down, along with the immediate awareness of exactly where it’s been.

I turn back to my notebook and start writing again before Theo can see how thoroughly he’s managed to derail me.

“You ready?” Marcus asks.

I glance up automatically and find him looking past me at Theo, who answers with a lazy lift of his brow.

My stomach pulls uncomfortably, and I turn back to my notes, although whatever train of thought I had before the Twizzler incident is long gone.

“You coming?” Marcus’s eyes flick to me.

“Where?” I ask.

Marcus pushes himself off the couch, stretching as he slips his phone into his pocket. Theo stays exactly where he is beside me, and irritatingly, I’m aware of that before anything else.

“The new bar that opened in town,” Marcus says, as if this is information I should already have.

“No,” I huff, shaking my head. “Absolutely not.”

A crowded bar full of sticky floors, drunk people bumping into me and music loud enough to make conversation impossible sounds considerably less appealing than spending the rest of the night with my textbook.

Marcus snorts. “Yeah, didn’t think so.”

He reaches across me to clap Theo on the shoulder, trying to haul him up, and takes the opportunity to ruffle my hair on his way past.

“Fuck off.” I slap his hand away and smooth everything back into place.

By then, Theo is getting to his feet, stretching his arms above his head, and the movement pulls his already mostly useless shirt wider, exposing another strip of tattooed stomach as his back arches.

I follow the hard lines of his stomach for entirely too long before the creeping curve of his mouth finally drags my attention upwards.

“Shame,” Theo murmurs.

That’s all he says, but the word still slips beneath my ribs as he steps forward and, despite having an entire room to walk through, chooses the narrow space directly between my legs.

I stiffen and tip my head back to glare at him, but Theo’s eyes sweep slowly over me before he gives a quiet laugh and moves past.

Asshole.

He grabs his keys from the bowl beside the door and follows Marcus out.

My eyes follow him

I realise what I’m doing somewhere around the doorway, when there’s nothing left to look at except the empty space where he disappeared.

He’s going out.

Fine.

Theo goes out all the time. I know that. I’ve heard enough stories from Marcus to know exactly what those nights usually look like too, and I’ve certainly seen enough people hanging around this house afterwards.

None of which has anything to do with me.