“Yes,” I sighed. “Neither he or his douchebag brother believes me.”
“Well, they wouldn’t.” Mia looked thoughtfully out the window. “I mean, no offense, if I didn’t know you and know this is way out of your comfort zone, I wouldn’t believe you either.”
“Thanks.”
“You understand what I mean,” she replied as she resumed pacing. “What did he do to make you hit him?”
Leaning back onto the sofa, I scrunched up my nose as I considered the best way to tell her. “So, they thought they could bully me. Kind of. I think. Anyway, Jett made me go to his dorm house today, and he was in my space, and then Gray was pressing into me from behind, and I asked them to move, because it was really uncomfortable and intimidating, and neither one of them did, and Gray licked my ear! So . . .”
“So, you lashed out,” Mia finished for me in resignation. “Ava, violence isn’t the answer.”
“They had me pressed between them like one of their whores.”
“Ava!”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t — not really.
Mia gave a light chuckle as she looked at me. “You’re so wonderfully you.” After she filled our glasses again, she handed me mine. “Only you would protest being pressed between the Devils.”
“They’re assholes.”
“I know,” she said as she sipped her drink.
“I had wild sex with the Devil himself. He doesn’t remember. He thinks I drugged him, he doesn’t believe I didn’t, I kneed him in the balls, and that’s not even the worst part.”
Mia hesitated slightly as she put her drink down. “There’s more?”
“I made out with him this afternoon in Ash’s bathroom.”
She was silent for a few moments before her head dropped into her hands. “Ava, I . . . none of this makes sense to me!” she wailed. “How? And more importantly . . .why?”
“I don’t know!” I groaned as I fell to my side on the couch and buried my head under a cushion. “He’s so hot! And I hate him, and he kisses like . . . I don’t even know. And he kissed me, and I was upset, and I just . . . I kissed him back.”
When there was silence, I peeked at her from under my cushion. She was sipping her drink and looking at me in slight amusement. Or exasperation. I wasn’t sure. “Who stopped the kiss?”
“Gray.”
Mia whistled as she sat back down. “Awkward.”
“You have no idea.”
“Girl, you are screwed.”
“Yup.”
“Like I don’t even know how to fix this.”
“Nope.”
“Wanna lock ourselves in so we can’t escape and get drunk?”
“Sounds like a plan.” I reached for the bottle of Jack.
Chapter 25: Jett
Saturday morning, I was livid. It was game day and I wasn’t playing. Coach had offered to let me sit on the bus and accompany my teammates. I had refrained from telling him where he could stick his offer and his bus, but I was pretty confident he wasn’t a stupid man, and it didn’t need to be said.
Sitting in my bedroom, I debated about finding Ava and more or less threatening her until she told me what I wanted to know. I had almost left the house twice to go hunt her down, but then I thought more about it, and I didn’t trust myself to be alone with her. If you asked what I didn’t trust, I wasn’t sure if it was because I would strangle her or fuck her. Maybe both?
