Getting Played - Emma Chase Page 0,67

soft, pliant, laughing lips and every part of her body and her heart was mine for the taking.

I reach out, kneading the tension in her shoulders. I press my forehead against hers, whispering, “I know this looks bad, baby. But I swear, it was nothing. It’s just a misunderstanding.”

For a moment, she leans into me and I soak up her scent and closeness greedily. But then she takes a deep breath and backs away on the exhale, lifting her chin and hardening her eyes.

“I have to get Jason home—he has to be my priority right now.”

“I know.”

“I have to talk to him, calm him down, figure out . . . I have a lot of things to figure out, Dean.”

“All right. I’ll come to the house after school and we’ll straighten everything out.”

For a second, Lainey looks like she’s going to tell me not to come, which would really suck because there’s no way that’s happening.

But then her eyes drop and she nods. “Okay.”

Okay. Good. I can salvage this. I may be down but the game’s not over. Not even close.

I move my hand to the back of her neck, pulling her near and kissing her cheek. “Don’t give up on me, Lainey. Not yet.”

~ ~ ~

Henry the janitor cleans up the glass in my classroom and boards up the window, but it’s still a major distraction. I assign busy work across the board and the kids complete it without commentary or complaint. Because high school is a petri dish of rumor and innuendo, so the stories of the shattered window in the Dork Squad class, the drama between me and Jay, and me and Lainey—and hell—probably some whispers about me and Kelly, spread like a contagion through the halls.

Garrett swings by my class on his lunch break, but I’m too strung out to talk about it. It’s like my lungs are filled with concrete. The only person I want to talk to is Lainey, and if I let myself contemplate what she must be thinking right now, I’ll lose my shit.

Garrett pats my shoulder.

“I’m here if you need me, man. If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”

Finally, after what seems like a week, the clock ticks to three o’clock. I weave my way through the mass exodus of students, and I’m out the door while the echo of the last bell is still ringing in the hallway. Then I’m in my car, driving straight to Lainey’s house.

When I pull in the driveway, I see that she’s called in the reserves. Three of her sisters are waiting for me on the front porch, and I just bet number four is inside.

That was fast. I wonder if they all took a bus together or something.

I walk up the steps to the door.

“She doesn’t want to see you yet,” Judith says.

“Then she can tell me that herself.”

I open the door and walk inside. Lainey is in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar. And it’s not good. She looks down, beaten—so frigging sad.

Linda, the writer-sister, steps between us and gives me the stink-eye above her tea cup. “You done messed up, cowboy. She’s not stupid—you only break a Burrows girl’s heart once.”

“I didn’t do anything to break anyone’s heart.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

From the corner of my eye, I see the other three peek around the corner—like a blond totem pole.

“Look—you’re Lainey’s sisters and I get that—but can you all kindly fuck off for two minutes?”

Slowly Linda sets her tea cup down on the counter, smiling ruefully. “I do like you, Ken-doll. I really hope you don’t turn out to be an asshole, because that would just be a damn shame.”

Then she steps out of the room, taking the other Three Amigos with her.

I hold out my hand to Lainey. “Come on.”

She lets me lead her outside to the back patio. I grab her coat, the pink Sherpa one, off the hook because it’s cold.

Lainey crosses her arms and looks out across the lake as the breeze tousles her hair.

“I talked to Jason. He told me what he saw.”

“Kelly’s husband was screwing around on her. He left her. She came to me, she wanted to hook up and I turned her down. That’s what Jason saw.”

Lainey fidgets and twists her fingers together—it’s what she does when she’s nervous or uncomfortable or upset—and I hate that I’ve made her that way.

“I think we should take a step back, Dean. Slow things down between us. Focus on the baby.”

I laugh and