Gray grunted but said nothing.
“What is it?” I asked him as I ate my own dinner, carefully pushing the asparagus to the side. I growled when my brother reached over and pushed it back into my food.
“Eat your greens,” he told me.
“Fuck you. I hate asparagus.”
“Eat it,” both he and Ash told me.
“It tastes like fucking feet,” I muttered, biting into the spear on my fork and forcing myself to chew and swallow.
“Why would you know what feet taste like?” Ash asked with a quick grin to Gray, who huffed out a laugh.
“You ain’t been laid in over a week,” Gray said slyly. “You been tamed?”
Ash snickered as he drank his water. “You caught the feelings?” he mocked me.
“You’re both assholes,” I said to them as I kept my eyes on my food.
“This will help,” Gray said as he pushed his phone across the table at me.
I stared at it and then looked at both him and my cousin. “What the fuck is this?”
“Told you before,” Gray said as he ate more of his supper. “Motive.”
“It could be nothing,” Ash said quietly. Gray huffed in contempt, and I studied the phone again.
“She played us?” I asked. “All of us? We already settled this.”
“Wasn’t Coach who questioned her,” Gray said. “Izzy’s soft.” He looked over at Ash. “She’s given him more hand jobs than he can count.”
Ash swatted the back of Gray’s head. “Hey, she massages the ache. It’s for medicinal purposes.”
Gray rolled his eyes as he finished his dinner. He took the phone from me as he stood. “Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture,” he reminded me as he took his plate to the sink.
I opened my own Instagram and looked at the pic and the caption. Dante Spence had posted a pic of a blonde girl, her face turned away from the camera, wearing a Lions shirt, and the caption readobject of my desirewith the hashtagUptightKickedYourAss.
It was hard to tell if it was Ava, but the message was clear: Spence was making a move on her.
I remembered her red-haired friend challenging him when he said he wanted to talk to Ava. The friend knew immediately he had no intention of being there for Ava until I was in the same space as her. When she demanded he tell Ava he knew her name, his epic fail had been funny as fuck to witness, but Ihadregistered the brief look of hurt on Ava’s face.
It was one of the reasons I went to see her later. I had no intention of putting my lips on her body, any part of her body, nor did I expect her to wrap her perfect lips around any part of mine.
When I was in the same room with her, sometimes I forgot what my goal was, and I ended up either kissing her or playing with her sweet body.
“What you going to do?” Ash asked me quietly as he set his fork down.
I swallowed as I looked at the picture again. With a slight shake of my head, I rubbed my lips together. “Nothing,” I told him as I closed it down.
“No retaliation?” Ash looked over his shoulder at Gray, who stood facing me, his hands resting on the sink behind him.
“I’m cleared, Coach believes me, and even if he didn’t, it was fixed.” I ate the last bite of my chicken, ignoring the remaining asparagus that lay on my plate. “As for her part, she cemented the fact to Coach I was duped.”
“That’s it?” Ash looked skeptical.
“Pussy is pussy,” I told him as I schooled my features. “He won’t beat me on the field, and this?” I tossed the phone onto the table. “This tells me he’s desperate.”
“Okay.” Ash looked unconvinced.
