Page 30 of Deadly North
“Damn right I’m jealous.” He reaches for me, pulling me into a long probing kiss that leaves me dizzy. When he releases me, his eyes are dark with desire. “Especially now that I know what this is like. What you taste like. What you feel like when you’re under me, moaning my name as your pussy clenches around me. I don’t share, Gigi. I don’t evenjokeabout sharing. You get me?”
Whoa.This conversation suddenly feels a lot more weighty that it started out being. The look on Mack’s face is dead serious, which in itself kind of stops me in my tracks. I’m so used to him making light of pretty much everything.
“I get you,” I hear myself say breathlessly.
His face instantly relaxes. “Good,” he says, smirking. “Otherwise, I might have to tell the club you’re not into guys.”
I freeze.
All of a sudden, the evidence of mymonumentalstupidity comes rushing toward me. All the years I’ve known him to be a colossal jackass, all the years I’ve known being attracted to him was a terrible mistake, flash before me like the worst movie I’ve ever seen.
Without a word, I scramble up off the bed, naked, then run to the tiny bathroom and lock the door, Mack calling after me in a bewildered voice.
Staring at myself, wide-eyed, in the mirror, I hiss at my reflection: “What the fuck are you doing? With Mack Maxwell, of all people? Christ, you’re an idiot!”
I havemorethan enough knowledge of who that man is to stay as far away from him as humanly possible. How in the hell did I let him lull me into thinking he had changed? I mean, he’s never apologized for what he did to me back then, but I can’t believe he would actuallyjokeabout it. And not only that, but threaten to do itagain?
“Hey!” Mack calls from the other side of the bathroom door. “G, what’s up? You okay?”
I can’t stand this. I can’t stand that he was just touching me — that he basically now knows my body probably better than any other person on this earth except me — and he just proved that he’s still nothing but King Asshole. I can’t have this conversation with him. I can’t face him again right now. I’m pretty sure I’d break down crying if I had to.
“Get out!” I yell through the door. “I’m tired and I want a shower. Go party with your friends. I’m calling it a night.”
“G, what the hell? Come on, I was just joking.”
“I said,go!” I scream, a note of hysteria creeping into my voice.
My whole body tenses, waiting for him to start pounding on the door or trying open it. I stare at the knob, fists clenched.
“What the fuck?” I hear Mack mutter. The mattress creaks softly. There’s the sound of a belt buckle, and then the scrape of boots on the floor. His footsteps stop just outside of the bathroom. “I don’t know what the hell’s gotten into you, Gigi,” he says gruffly. “But I ain’t gonna beg you to talk to me. You get ready to talk, you come find me.”
The boots walk away. Seconds later, the door to the apartment slams.
The back of my throat starts to sting, letting me know tears are close. Sniffling, I emerge from the bathroom to skitter across the apartment, flipping the lock on the door. I slump down on the bed my tears spilling over as the memories flood me.
I didn’t have a lot of friends in high school. Part of that was by my own design. My home life was bad enough, with my drunk of a dad, living in a ramshackle house that was probably only a few steps away from being condemned. As soon as I was old enough to realize how our lives would seem to anyone looking in from the outside, I avoided getting close to people. The end result, of course, was that I was lonely. Often desperately so. Books were my refuge, the one place I could go in my mind to escape.
My main defense mechanism outside of my home was theI-don’t-carepersonality I developed. By the time I was a teenager, I had the reputation of being a defiant loner. Most of the time, that suited me just fine. The downside was that I didn’t really have anyone in my corner when classmates decided to taunt or bully me. And since I wasn’t supposed to care, I also wasn’t supposed to be hurt by the meanness of my peers.
Connor knew a little bit of what I was going through. But he was older, and an upperclassman. He had his own life and his own stuff to worry about. And of course, I did my best to keep it hidden from him, and from Mack, whom I had had a mortifyingly persistent crush on since I was a tween. The thought of Mack seeing what a social outcast I was horrified me almost more than the thought of him discovering my crush. So I cultivated a cool girl rocker aesthetic, and pretended to have a friend group that I knew they didn’t care enough to ever ask me about.
Mack and Connor had always been naturally gifted at sports, even as young boys age. In high school, they both went out for football, and got on the varsity team as sophomores. I was jealous of Con’s popularity, but again, I did my best to hide it behind my cool, aloof girl persona. Reenie and Choppa, of course, went to every one of their home games. Sometimes I went too, sitting mostly by myself at the top of the bleachers, out of sight.
During my own sophomore year, which was also Mack and Connor’s senior year, I somehow caught the eye of one of the other players on the football team. His name was Brock. I met him because he was in my art elective class. He was one of the only boys and certainly the only athlete in the class, so when he started talking to me one day it was probably out of boredom. He was Homecoming-King cute, and had a great football player body.
Since Brock was a popular kid who was way out of my league, it never occurred to me to be intimidated by him. I enjoyed our easy companionship. I was able to talk to him just as a buddy, if an unlikely one. Eventually, I did end up developing a bit of a crush on him. But since we already had an easy rapport, I just looked at it as an unfortunate development that I would just have to ignore. If nothing else, crushing on Brock had the positive effect of distracting me from my unrequited feelings for Mack Maxwell.
One day after school, Brock noticed me walking by the practice field as I set out on my way home, and came jogging up to talk to me. He was looking especially good that day, I remember, in that handsome jock way. He was cracking jokes and making me laugh loudly enough to capture the attention of some of the other players. And so it happened that just as he was leaning over to say something to me in confidence, Mack came ambling up.
“Hey, G,” he said casually. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I replied. My emotions started to swirl, between pride that Mack saw me talking to a good-looking boy, and the ever-present attraction to him that I just couldn’t seem to shake. “Just on my way home.”
Mack’s eyes slipped from me to Brock. “Didn’t know you two knew each other."
“Yeah,” Brock said easily. “We have a class together.”
Mack paused for a second, then nodded. “Oh, sure, I get it. That makes sense, then.”