Page 49 of Troublemaker

Coach’s house.

Ellipses appeared and disappeared. Mason clearly had no idea how to respond to the revelation that his fiancée’s best friend was at his coach’s house in the middle of the night, obviously up to no good.

Finally, he responded.

I’ll send someone.

Shit.

Someone else was bad. Someone else could talk. This still needed to be a secret.

No, Mason, it has to be you.

More ellipses, before he replied.

Don’t worry. I’ll send Emory. He’ll keep your secret.

I relaxed, slightly. I knew enough of Emory’s secrets for him to keep mine, too. I hoped.

Before I left, I scribbled a note to Blake. A continuation of the story when he’d had me backed in a corner and trapped around his cock. My weak, exhausted pussy clenched at the thought, making me even angrier.

Mine, he’d called me.

We’d finally gotten somewhere. I finally had someone I belonged to, or at least I thought I did. By being a fucking unthinking idiot, he was taking that away from me, too.

I put my pink panties on top of the note, just in case I wasn’t clear enough. And with that, I headed outside to wait for Emory and get the hell out of here before I stormed back inside, up the stairs, and unleashed my fury and rage and hurt on the man sleeping there.

Minutes later, Emory pulled up in his McLaren. He glanced over at me when I got in the car.

“If I ask what happened, will you hit me?”

I turned my head to glare at him.

“No, but I’ll tell that lit professor of yours what you’ve been up to.”

He sighed. “No, you won’t. Your bark is worse than your bite, Lucy.”

He was right. Maybe if it were the other way around, I’d protect myself better from being hurt by Blake.

“If I ask if you’re okay, will you threaten me again?”

I shut my eyes, unwilling to let him see the truth.

“I’m fine.”

For a moment, he was quiet as we drove, the woods around town turning into streetlights, sidewalks, and bars. A few drunk students stumbled around, laughing, but otherwise off-campus was quiet.

“My biteisworse than my bark,” he told me. “And even though my professor may not know it, I refuse to give up on her. I won’t let my own personal demons get in the way of our endgame.”

I shook my head, still refusing to open my eyes, or he’d see how glassy and wet they were. I refused to show anyone else my pain.

“That’s nice for you, but you don’t know what it’s like to be rejected your whole life. I’ve had enough of it. I won’t take more. I can’t force Coach to do what he doesn’t want to do, so protecting myself is the next best thing.”

“You might be surprised,” Emory murmured, but didn’t elaborate more.

He was quiet as we drove the rest of the way to my dorm, but he did put on Sabrina Carpenter for me, making me soften a little. Especially when he said, “If you want, you can crash with Matt and me. Might take you out of the line of fire, and I know I wouldn’t want to be alone right now.”

I softened even more, grateful to have people in my life who cared, even if the one person I wished cared enough didn’t.