Page 36 of Devious Obsession
“You think you deserve to be in the same room as her, let alonetouchher?”
“Hey, man, she was flir—”
Crack.
I slam my fist into his mouth, and something breaks. I’m not sure if it’s a bone in my hand or his face, but I’m hoping it’s the latter. Either way, he goes down like a ton of bricks, sprawling out at my feet. Which makes it easy to stomp on his kneecap hard enough to snap it.
He screams.
Knox suddenly appears, his brows drawing together. “You know we’re not trying to permanently maim them,” he mutters. “Especially since this is technically on you.”
I glower at my best friend. He’s right—itismy fault. I should let them beat me up instead. Maybe that would take away some of this rage that’s been hammering at the bars of its cage for far too long.
Aspen ignored me. Fully. Even at lunch, when she and her roommate sat at the end of our table with the dance girls, she didn’t even look at me. Not when I called her name, not when I stood behind her like a giant freaking shadow.
Nothing.
She may as well be a stone wall.
And then I got a phone call from my father.Apparently, he’s taken his new family on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Spain. They’ll be gone until the new year.
Does Aspen know that?
I asked him what she’s been telling him, the lies she’s been feeding to keep herself afloat here at Crown Point University, and he had nothing to say. But he didn’t throw anything in my face either. So I take that to mean Aspen is doing a shitty job of being a spy—or he’s preparing for something big. With a lot of ammunition.
I jerk away from Knox and the idiot on the floor, pulling a joint from my pocket. I don’t smoke during the school year, and especially not the night before a game, but fuck it. I’m so wound up, I can’t even think straight.
“She’s under your skin,” Greyson says. “And the only way to make it stop is to get the whole school to believe she’s yours.”
I nod to myself. That’s how it happened with them, wasn’t it? One minute, his girlfriend’s lips were wrapped around my dick, and the next, he was the only one who could touch her.
“You’ve sent the message you needed to send,” he continues. “Both to her and to the guys… they’ll spread the word that she’s untouchable.” He nudges the idiot in the leg. “Won’t you?”
“Aspen’s untouchable,” he gasps, curling in on himself. “I’ll tell everyone I know—”
“Good enough for me,” Knox says lightly. He hauls him up and shoves him toward the door. “Get the other guy in the boiler room to help you the rest of the way down.”
He hops toward the exit, the door slamming shut behind him.
I light the joint and suck in a lungful of smoke. I hold it, then slowly exhale. I pass it to Greyson, who wrinkles his nose and hands it to Knox. He takes a small hit, then exhales, too. I cross to the edge of the roof and sit on the ledge, looking out at Crown Point.
We’re on top of the Administration building on campus, but it has a great view of downtown. To the right is the lake, and barely visible is the restaurant that serves as a visual marker for the point. We jumped off it once last summer, but we didn’t get a chance to do it again.
And with the way the semester is going, I doubt we’ll have a chance to do it before the lake freezes over.
“Party,” Greyson says, his attention on his phone.
“Where?”
Greyson lifts his head, grinning. “The stadium.”
I shake my head. “Coach is going to murder us.”
Knox slaps my arm. “Coach won’t find out.”
Sure he won’t. We follow Greyson downstairs and across campus, heading directly to the stadium. I guess he’s not worried about drinking. Well, we have a game tomorrow, so we shouldn’t be doing that anyway.
All that body-is-a-temple talk really is true during hockey season. Eating well, sleeping well—it allmatters. And yet, I feel like I’m on the edge of self-destruction.
