Jett raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow as he looked at me in question. What the hell was I going to say?
“Speak!” the professor demanded.
“I . . .” I swallowed past my building fury and turned to the professor, my hands raised in supplication. “I thought I saw a rat.” Technically speaking, I wasn’t lying.
Several answering squeals and the sounds of shuffles as many students raised their feet from the floor ensued, and it took several minutes for the professor to regain control of the class. The whole time, I sat rigidly in the seat that the girl’sbodyhad been in, while Jett sat smugly beside me, his smirk in place as his shoulders shook in silent laughter.
How had this turned into my afternoon? Ash, Leitch, and now Jett. Where was Gray? They might as well have just thrown them all at me and gotten it over with.
“Have you all calmed down?” Professor Matson asked sternly while she glared at me. When she heard enough mumbles of assent, she motioned to the TA to dim the lights. “As I was saying,” she said as she turned back to the screen.
“You owe me a finish.” Jett’s smooth voice caused my jaw to clench and my hand to curl into a fist.
“Don’t be a pig,” I whispered back furiously. “You’re disgusting.”
“Didn’t stop you looking,” he said smugly as he leaned back in his seat.
I opened my mouth to reply and snapped it shut again. Angling away from him, I tried my best to focus on the lecture, but the presence ofhimsitting next to me was distracting.
The mounting horror that he may recognize me was making me nervous. How would the conversation even go?Hey, I’m the girl you slept with, you took my virginity, and I then hurled inyour bathroom for an hour. Wanna grab a coffee and tell me how we hooked up in the first place?
No, thank you.
And look at him, in History of Writing class, and he had a girl giving him a blow job. What a complete asshole. I couldn’t believe I fell for his shit. If there was shit to fall for, which I still wasn’t clear on . . . either way, he was an asshole.
I was never drinking again.
Ever.
I always knew he was a dick. He proved it on Saturday morning, and he hammered the fact home just now. They were the Devils; they were the complete antithesis of not only their own last names but also the school they played for. They didn’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves and football. They broke rules, they partied where they shouldn’t, and they took what they wanted. They had an almost cult-like following, and they pissed me off.
In high school, our football team was also made up of the popular kids, but here, the Santo boys took it to the next level. They were considered gods on the field, and they were considered gods off of it. All three of them were free with who they slept with, and I’d heard the rumors; they were apparently not lacking in skill in the bedroom either. The fact that they all had the smarts to be here rubbed salt in the wound even more.
I detested them and had done so long before I got my scholarship here. Their high school team played mine once in junior year. Gray had caught every pass Jett had thrown, and then Ash had scored the winning touchdown. Then, when our team was commiserating our loss, the three of them and their teammates had torched a devil sign into the front lawn of my school.
No one could prove it. The fact that it had been a devil’s trident meant nothing. It could be someone trying to make trouble for them, the authorities said.
Bullshit.
I’d been told that, when our team had asked if anyone had actually asked either the Santos or the rest of their team, no one had been able to answer them.
This afternoon only confirmed what I already knew: Jett Santo would never know what I gave him on Friday night, and if I never spoke to him again, it would be too soon. As my resolve strengthened, I started paying attention to class. As my focus became more about Romeo Montague and less about Jett Santo, I felt my inner calm settle.
One night didn’t mean anything. I made a mistake. I was a nineteen-year-old girl in college. It wouldn’t be my last mistake, but I knew as I got lost in the greatest tragedy ever told, thathewas a mistake that wasn’t worth getting worked up over.
As the lecture finished and the lights turned back up, I stood and gathered my bag. A large hand encircled my wrist, preventing me from leaving. The tingles running up my arm caused me to hesitate fractionally before I jerked out of his grip.
“What?” I snapped at him.
“Wait,” he told me as his eyes ran over my jeans and T-shirt.
“Why?” I scoffed as I put my book bag over my shoulder. “Not interested in the second take of your live porn show.”
“I haven’t seen you in this class before,” Jett said as he stood, and I had to take a step back to look up at him.
“Given what you were doing during class, I can understand why.”
“Judgmental,” he murmured as he stepped into my space, and I instinctively stepped backward. His head tilted as he studied me. “Uptight little thing, aren’t you?”
