Page 46 of Hate the Game (Playing Dirty #1)

***Savannah***

“There are the obvious commandments. Like I was saying. No glove, no love. Don’t be silly, wrap your willy.

Don’t go out without a raincoat. No condom left behind.

Cover your stump before you hump.” I stretched out on the soft grass and smiled up at the tree Jax had brought me to.

He’d take me farther up the mountain and had made a big fuss about the particular tree we were under but he wouldn’t explain it.

Instead, he was forcing me to tell him the commandments of sex in your twenties.

“So romantic.” He rolled his head to the side so he could watch me. “Next.”

“There’s no such thing as too much birth control.

Condom, oral contraception, spermicide, hopping on one foot after sex and counting backwards from one hundred.

Whatever you can do to decrease the odds of getting pregnant is welcome and encouraged.

I once saw a girl take a coke and a douche into the bathroom while swearing that if coke could eat an egg, it could eat sperm. ”

Jax blanched. “What?”

I laughed and shrugged. “I’m not saying that I’m going to run out and buy those two things but she’d just slept with this guy from a frat who was big in the men’s rights movement. She didn’t know until afterwards and she was one thousand percent unwilling to chance having a baby with that idiot.”

“Next commandment, please.” He shuddered and then sank his teeth into his lip. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not involved in any insidious movements.”

“Are you padding your resume in case I let you…you know…in me?”

His cheeks darkened as he leaned over to glare at me. “No. I don’t. I mean, I’m not… You’re a pain in the ass.”

I threw my head back and laughed. “Okay, okay. Forget the commandments. Tell me about this secretive tree.”

“It’s a buzzkill.” He rolled back over onto his back and I studied the sharp lines of his face when he closed his eyes. “You sure you want to know?”

More than anything. “Yeah, Jax. Obviously I’m not a reporter today. I’m just out with a friend and I’d like to know more about you.”

His jaw tensed and it took him another few minutes to speak again. “My mom used to bring me to this tree. I don’t know if it had any significance to her or if she just liked this spot. She’d come here and tell me if I counted every single leaf on the tree she’d take me for ice cream.”

I sat up so I could watch him. “That hardly seems like a fair trade.”

“Yeah, that’s how it was with her. Now I know that when we came here she gave me such an impossible task because she didn’t want me to notice her slipping away to get high.

It was just weed but Dad has this intense viewpoint about our body being a temple and other shit.

He smelled it on her once when we came back home and he lost his shit. ”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Mom acted like nothing happened. Dad flipped out. And the world kept right on turning. Until it didn’t.

I remember their last fight like it was five fucking minutes ago.

He caught her smoking a cigarette after she’d sworn that she’d stop.

In the middle of his rant about how she was ruining her lungs, giving herself premature wrinkles, making her breath stink, etc.

, she just stood up and let out this crazy loud scream. ”

“Oh, god.” I was horrified at the idea but then I realized that Jax was chuckling. “Wait. Why are you laughing?”

“The look on his face.” He had to take a deep breath before he could go on.

He was still laughing every few seconds, though.

“None of us ever spoke to him with any level of disrespect and in the blink of an eye we were suddenly watching our mom scream at him every time he tried to speak. She wasn’t saying anything, just screaming.

Dad was so flustered that he finally sat back and just stared at her, in silence.

Even though I fucking hate that her next move was to leave all of us, that moment of seeing her snap was beautiful.

I can only imagine just how fucking good it felt to lose it on the man who’d made you miserable for so long. ”

“She left?”

He must’ve heard something in my voice because he sat up and stared back at me just as hard as I was staring at him. “Yeah.”

“My mom left, too. Also, courtesy of my dad. Although, I doubt it was all because of him. I don’t remember her being much of a mom when she was around but I was so young that I wouldn’t really know.

” I shrugged. “I’m not as understanding as you seem to be.

Our mom left us with the man she thought was so horrible she had to run off.

She forced my brothers to grow up way too young. ”

He rested his elbows on his knees and scowled. “What the hell is wrong with people?”

I scooted closer to him. “Do you want to know something I’ve never admitted out loud?”

His eyes flared with interest. “Yes.”

“I fucking hate her.” I whispered it, afraid of being judged if I said it too loud. “She tried to message me a few years ago. No one knows. Over a decade after leaving us and you want to know what she messaged me?”

“I’m terrified to ask.”

“She wanted me to join her fucking MLM.” Something about admitting it out loud made me cackle.

“I don’t know why I’m laughing! When it happened I was angry enough to hunt her down and punch her lights out.

I mean, I didn’t, but I wanted to. Now, though, it’s ridiculous.

The kicker? It wasn’t even a personalized message.

It was definitely a copy and paste piece of shit.

She cold messaged the daughter she abandoned. ”

Jax had to force his mouth shut. “What the fuck would she have done if you’d been game for the MLM? Can you imagine her introducing you to her team?”

I knew I had a crazed look in my eyes. “Imagine that reunion, Jax. Estranged mother and daughter brought together by essential oils. I can imagine the marketing now. We’d show up in facebook ads, holding hands over a bottle of peppermint oil.”

He grunted. “Why peppermint oil?”

“If I had to pick an oil to stick up my nose, it’d be peppermint oil.” I realized we’d moved closer and closer together until I was facing him between his spread legs, his thighs tight around me. I didn’t want to call it out and have to move away. “What was so awful about your dad?”

“Nothing so obvious. It’s just… He has this level of intensity about being the best that’s suffocating.

There are days when I get our mom running.

I know Blaire wants to at times. I… I just get it.

” Jax ran his hands through the grass beside us.

“He can be amazing at times. And other times…I want to strangle him. I have some of the highest stats in the country and it’s never good enough.

No matter how hard I play, there’s always more I could do. ”

My chest ached for him. Ironically enough, I knew that reality from living with my brothers and watching our dad trash them. “Not just some of the highest stats in the country, Jax. You’ve been at the top week after week.”

His eyes practically sparkled as he grinned. “So you’ve noticed me, huh?”

I rolled my eyes. “Hardly.”