Page 142 of Fuckboy Psychos (Scarlett Force 1)
“All I’m saying is that your little rendezvouses with Widow in the library haven’t gone unnoticed.”
I just stare at him.
“What do you mean my ‘little rendezvouses’?” I ask, my voice dark and commanding. Bastian shudders, but Nisha isn’t afraid of me in the least. She sets her mug down with a heavy thump.
“Girl, everybody knows you been goin’ in there and flashin’ your damn panties at the boy. You, Widow, and those old ladies you like so much aren’t the only people who use the library, you know.” She gives me a look, one that I know I should heed, but that I probably won’t anyway. “Widow was at the track last night looking for you.”
“Was he now?” I query back, absurdly pleased by the idea but acting as nonchalant as I possibly can. “Why? What did he want?”
“He was also looking for Bohnes,” Nisha begins, tapping her chipped nails on the table’s surface. “Aspen, too.” My body flushes hot, and I find myself licking my lower lip as my best friends both stare at me like they’d just love to wrap their hands around my boy crazy neck and strangle me. “Want to explain why he might be looking for the horrible men you’re obsessed with?”
“I am not obsessed,” I say, but then my mind immediately shifts to Aspen and the taste of his mouth in the rain, the sharp kiss of obsession on his lips … I pick up my spoon again, casually shrugging one shoulder. “Widow has a crush on me. He came up to me in the library last week and declared his intentions.”
“Which are?” Basti asks, eyes shining. “Oh, I like him for you. Much better than Bohnes or … Aspen.” That last name is spat out like a wad of phlegm. “Rich boys are gross, Scar. Widow is the perfect tortured, damaged soul.” He sighs and pokes at his own cereal. “I’d love a guy like that, just … a little less dominant. Someone who wouldn’t mind getting on all fours for—”
“You’re acting like a guy again,” I warn him as Nisha purses her lips at the two of us.
“Am I the only one who isn’t completely mesmerized by dick?” she asks, looking up at the ceiling for strength. “Lord help me with these fools.”
“As a lesbian, that’s sort of the definition,” I say, and she gives me a look.
“Don’t go falling into that ol’ Prescott trap, the one where a girl finds a broken boy and tries to fix him. Don’t you dare.”
“If anything, Bohnes is there to fix all of my problems,” I explain, and Nisha just puts her head in her hand and sighs in frustration.
“I give up. What are you gonna do then? Have Widow and Bohnes both as your fuckboys?”
I shrug again.
“I was considering it,” I admit, and Nisha grabs her coffee, lifting it to her mouth and draining the rest of it in a single swig.
“We gettin’ our nails done today or what?” she asks, offering me up another suspicious look. “Or will that interfere with your plans to have lunch with Alexei Grove? You know that his father has connections to the mob in New York, right?”
Another shrug from me, and Nisha’s lips are pursed so tight they practically disappear into her face.
“That what you want? Aspen, the mayor’s son and Lemon’s fiancé as a fuckboy? Alexei, a mobster’s kid? You’d be better off with ol’ poor and broken Bohnes, or Widow’s uncle-killing-ass. You know he poisoned him, don’t you? Put some sort of drain cleaner in his coffee.”
I pause. Hadn’t heard that part of the story yet.
“He was probably molested,” I offer up softly, thinking back on Widow’s off-the-handle reactions to sex. “I’m sure he killed the bastard for a reason.”
“You’re as bad as Lemon, you know that?” Nisha says, scoffing as she stands up. “Get up. Let’s go to the salon.”
Basti and I rush to finish our cereal—deal is, last one to put a dish in the sink has to wash them all—and then scramble up, hip bumping each other out of the way as we fight for the right to not handwash anything. Nisha walks right past us, sets her mug in the sink, and then gives us both a scathing look.
“Hurry up. I gotta go grocery shopping for my mom later.”
With a sigh, Basti yanks the plastic bowl from my hand, and I grin, giving him a peck on the cheek that reminds me of Alexei all over again.
Oh, I like him.
He’s weird, sure, but he’s gallant as fuck. So polite. Sexy, too. That blond hair, his pouty mouth, the arrogant cast to his face … Ugh. I didn’t mean to kiss him; I wasn’t thinking. I’m not about forcing myself on people, you know?
Regardless, he didn’t say anything, didn’t push me away, didn’t even seem to mind too much.
