Page 4
THREE
ELIO
Patrick didn’t speak to me much when he showed up in our room. I didn’t feel the particular need to discuss the day, either. Books were stacked on my desk, notes were scattered on the bed, and my laptop was overheating with the number of open tabs in the browser. To leave all that and talk about a drug dealer, a steroid-riddled teammate, and a queer team captain seemed like a waste of time.
“Coming to the party?” Patrick asked. I was supposed to take this as an olive branch.
It was probably one of those Delta Kappa Phi parties that happened nearly every Saturday. A bunch of Saints were going to be there, and I could imagine the gossip. “I’ll pass.” My evening plans rarely changed. Saturdays were great because the entire campus was busy drinking and screwing around, rendering the gym nearly empty. I had my headphones and a playlist to pump me up; I didn’t need to tell everyone my account of the day.
Too much had happened.
“Suit yourself,” Patrick said as he got ready. He headed out after another thirty minutes, leaving me to stew in my rotten mood. The room was shrinking, walls closing in, and I noticed sweat breaking under my arms.
Why did this keep happening to me?
I grabbed my duffel, stuffed it with clean training clothes, and hurried out.
Bright lights filled the gym’s two floors. The large, floor-to-ceiling windows showed only a couple of people on the treadmills and near the glass. It was going to be a peaceful one. I sent a quiet thanks to whatever higher force allowed for this. The way my day had been going, I would have expected an asteroid to strike the gym down.
I walked in, waving at the willowy girl working at the front desk, and passed through. Stairs led to a basement locker room for guys.
Carrying my stuff in my left hand, I pushed the door of the locker room open. Its first small section only had empty benches, a door leading to the showers, and, after rounding a corner, the lockers and benches. I glanced around and spotted four or five pairs of shoes, breathing a sigh of relief. Likely, everyone I knew was at the party, so I didn’t have to answer any questions everyone had by now.
I opened a locker, tossed my duffel on the bench, and pulled off my T-shirt. After folding it and putting it inside the locker, I turned my back to it and kicked off my shoes, bending over to place them under the bench.
The shower door opened and closed, and a figure stepped out. The towel around his waist was long, reaching well under his knees, but his feet were bare and his lower legs smooth.
I forced my gaze down.
All this nonsense with Easton was getting to me. It sparked that occasional curiosity, pulling it to the forefront of my mind. My instincts were muddled. Normally, I couldn’t care less. I didn’t look, and I didn’t show. My gaze was firmly away from the muscular figures that populated locker rooms. It was the only way to behave if you didn’t want people wrongly assuming things about you.
But my damned eyes betrayed me. The stranger’s towel was thick and white, wrapped tightly around his chiseled waist. My gaze only brushed the muscular torso briefly as I looked up, passing over the ridges between the muscles as if to taunt me. I didn’t know why it made me feel so jittery, perhaps because I risked the very assumptions I wanted to avoid. Why did innocent people pickpocket small items in stores? For the thrill of it. For the sheer naughtiness of it.
My gaze reached the stranger’s face, a perfectly natural thing it would do in a gym, as I straightened.
My heart dropped into the cold pit of my stomach. The light brown eyes looked back, some of the light dying as his face hardened. Whatever had been on his face was gone now, and I took a sudden step back.
“I figured this would happen sooner or later,” Jaxon Mercer said in a dead voice.
I stared at him, not yet believing my eyes. It couldn’t be him. Jaxon was in New Haven, nine hundred miles away from here, yet this person wore his face and spoke with his voice.
“Don’t be so shocked, El,” he said, opening a locker with a wet key he’d brought out of the shower. The door opened, and Jaxon rummaged through it.
“You can’t be here,” I whispered.
Jaxon pulled some things out of his locker and tossed them on the bench, then crossed his arms on his broad chest. “Says who?”
I didn’t offer an answer. My heart pounded so loudly that it drowned out the gym music coming from upstairs. Not drowned, perhaps, but replaced with the same sounds I’d heard two years ago. Music in the background, heartbeat in the foreground, Jaxon standing right in front of me, all alone in a room.
Despite myself, I scanned him, taking his measures. He was bigger than before, muscles bunched, shoulders broad, traps inclined steeply. His eyes were still the same bright brown, framed with long, black eyelashes, and his hair was short, sides faded high. His nose… God, his nose was a little crooked. There was a small bump in the middle of it, pushing his entire, perfect nose out of symmetry.
“I transferred here,” Jaxon said. “I’m a Westmont Hawk.”
“Quarterback?” The word rolled off my lips before I could stop myself. He’d always been a quarterback.
Jaxon nodded stiffly.
“Why?” I asked, biting the word off.
His eyes narrowed. “Not to reconnect, El. Don’t worry about that.”
I snorted. He’d burned all the bridges between us. Even if he wanted to, there was no way back. Some things just couldn’t be fixed. And I seemed to be cursed with friends who led me on and betrayed me in the end. “Of all the universities in the country, you picked Westmont,” I said. “Don’t tell me it never crossed your mind.”
He shrugged, his round shoulders rising casually and dropping quickly. “You don’t exactly factor into my decision-making process.”
“Yeah, but I study here,” I said, taking a step forward in my plain white socks and a pair of black pants I still had on. I wished I hadn’t taken my shirt off, at least. And I wished he would put something on. The sight of that towel loosening around his waist with every breath he took bothered me more than I could put into words. “You just had to come where I was.”
“Someone studies everywhere, dumbass,” Jaxon said, taking a step toward me as if to match my hostile demeanor. “And I saw a good opportunity here. Coach Erikson remembered me from my tryouts.”
“Tryouts?” I asked. He wasn’t making any sense.
But he just nodded. “Two years ago, when I wanted to come.”
Cold air washed over my bare back. His parents had pushed him to go to New Haven, but I hadn’t realized he was considering Westmont. He would have, of course. It made sense now. And it was a stroke of luck if there ever was one. He might have ended up moving to Westmont with me, becoming my roommate, and waiting patiently until a better time to do what he had done that night.
Anger, so hot and exciting, spread through my stomach. “Just remember,” I said in a low voice. “I was here first. This gym, this campus, these people, they were mine before you came along.”
Jaxon acknowledged it with half a nod. “I see you’re still an ass.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I don’t like being played,” I said.
A lazy smile appeared on Jaxon’s face. “Is that what happened? I played you?”
He was baiting me into a fight, and I was biting. I couldn’t stop myself. The smug satisfaction on his face was too irritating to resist. The fact that he was standing here right before me was too novel to ignore. “What would you call it? Because I remember you pretending to be friends with me. But all you wanted…” I snapped my mouth shut. It didn’t matter what Jaxon wanted.
Jaxon looked at me steadily, not a single emotion appearing on his face. As he took another step toward me, I bristled, but he lifted a corner of his lips. He was still four or five inches shorter than me, but it would be a fair fight if we went that far. Not that I wanted to grapple him like this, creating a terrible scene for someone to accidentally discover. I wouldn’t be able to live it down for as long as I was here. Falling on the floor, wrestling, half-naked…
“You want to hit me again,” Jaxon said coldly. “Is that it? I’m sure it is. Oh, the tension, El. Can you feel it?”
I stood my ground, not letting him take an inch from me, and bared my teeth. He was right about that. The tension was so thick it existed like a cushion between us, or rather, like a balloon blown close to bursting.
It was something I could almost put my finger on, touch, and feel so fully, like it was made of flesh and blood.
Jaxon pulled a casual face. “Maybe not.” This was still a bait, but I didn’t understand it. Not until he spoke again. “Maybe you’re hoping I’ll try again.”
“Go to hell,” I hissed.
Jaxon took a step back, sucking his teeth. “You’re blushing, El.” He turned away from me as if he had a guarantee I wouldn’t tackle him to the ground. An easy target. I looked at the muscles knotting in his back and the towel draping over his glutes. He would tangle in it if I even budged, but I didn’t. I did nothing.
He was right.
My face was hot as Jaxon bent down and snatched his boxer briefs off the bench, stepping through them and pulling them up under the towel. I followed the path of the waistband, his hands gripping it behind, dragging the towel upward. His legs were smooth, his skin evenly tanned, and his ass big. When he snapped the towel away, his boxers were in place.
He turned around, his crotch a big, unevenly round bulge packed tightly in the lemon-yellow underwear.
“You know, El,” he said, not pausing a second before pulling his sweatpants on. “For a straight guy like you, your eyes are boring into me so hard I almost feel violated.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said under my breath, stepping toward him.
Jaxon lifted his hands in surrender, stalking back a pace. “Whoa. Easy, there, cowboy. We’re just catching up.” He bit his lower lip as his gaze dropped to my chest. It was instantly back on my face, but I had seen him do it. “I’ve been around since then,” he said. “I’ve seen your type in every locker room and every frat house I entered, El. And do you know what I realized?”
“You better stop talking,” I said, my voice still a low growl, words barely legible.
“I realized that you’re not that special,” Jaxon said. He stepped around me and picked up his T-shirt from the bench, pulling it down over his head. He sat down a moment later, picking his socks out of the sneakers. He put them on one after the other, still talking. “I fucked a dozen of you, El. It never took them much. I’d wiggle my ass, bat my eyelashes, and they drooled. Kinda like you’re drooling right now.”
My mouth was snapped shut, but I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t so heated I might trigger a fire alarm. I had never known I could be this angry, this hateful, yet here I was, struggling to inhale. “You want me to hit you,” I breathed. It was the best I could do, considering the state I was in. “You’re trying to provoke me.”
“Trying?” he asked and laughed dryly, then put his feet into his sneakers and got up. The shoelaces were untied, flailing with each step he took. “You’ve no idea how easy you are to mess with, El.”
I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going to hit him. I had never meant to hit him in the first place, but he wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t let go of me, so I had to. Panic had wrapped itself around my chest, and I knew I wouldn’t inhale until he let go of me, but he’d refused. So I hit him. I never should have done it, but it happened.
He knew how low I’d fallen at that moment. And he wanted to see me there again.
Jaxon picked his backpack up, stuffed his towel inside on top of his training clothes, threw it over his shoulder, and headed for the door. When he hesitated and turned around, his face was red. He shot me a murderous look and swallowed. “Maybe you were here first,” he said. “But I don’t give a fuck, El. I’m taking this place.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He walked out, leaving me with a tight chest and a hollow head. Taking it for himself or taking it away? And did he mean any of what he’d said? He was not the guy I knew in Pittsburgh. This person, who spoke in Jaxon’s voice, only looked like Jaxon. This was a vicious, angry person, nothing like a friend I had once had.
And this one got under my skin just as easily.