and make you pay him back for all the free booze by having to cut off his enemies’ heads or some shit.”
I barked a laugh as JJ turned a little pale.
“Shit if it’s a head per bottle, beautiful, I’m gonna be bloody by the time I’m done paying off our debt,” Maverick laughed.
“We’ll be bloody you mean,” Fox said with a flicker of darkness in his eyes that reminded me of his dad for a second.
“Yeah all of us, you’re not the only one who sank his booze and we’re a team anyway, remember?” Rogue said.
“Come on then, let’s go rack up our debt with a drinking game,” Maverick encouraged.
“I got a new deck of cards,” JJ announced, offering me a hand to help me out of the boat. We climbed up onto the dock and Rogue rested her shoulder against mine as I held her close and we walked along the jetty.
“New or stolen?” I asked.
“Can’t it be both?” JJ said through a grin.
“We could play strip poker,” Maverick suggested.
“That sounds like a dickfest I don’t want a ticket to,” Rogue said and I laughed, knowing exactly who Maverick wanted to see naked. If we played, us boys would probably all end up with our balls out and Rogue fully clothed while she raked in the pretend poker chips – which would likely be a bunch of shit that happened to be floating around in our pockets. That girl had the best damn poker face I’d ever seen.
“We’ll give you an advantage, beautiful,” Maverick teased. “We’ll all start with one item of clothing off. And that makes it an extra advantage because girls have all kinds of extra padding and undergarments going on.”
“Undergarments?” Rogue burst out laughing and me and JJ laughed too.
“Drop it, man,” Fox bit at him, but their shoulders rubbed as they walked and they were soon smiling again as we made it to Fox’s truck parked up on the road.
“I’m just kidding. She’s like a dude to me,” Maverick said, though the hungry look he gave Rogue said he didn’t really think that and it made possessiveness writhe in my chest as I held her tighter.
“I’d never wanna be a stinky dude. I mean, you guys are okay, but most guys are so hairy and sweaty and ew.”
“I pray your opinion on that never changes,” Fox muttered as Rogue got into his truck so she didn’t hear it.
I had to agree with that. There’d been plenty of guys interested in Rogue in our class, but fuck if any of us let them near her. Fox had followed Peter Dirkin home last week after he’d posted a photo of him and Rogue working together in Math with the caption ‘I love math debating with this girl’. The masturbation pun had not been missed, and he’d turned up to school with a bruised face and no more interest in our girl the next day.
We piled into the cab and Rogue sat on my lap, her fingers still trailing over me in a way that made my pulse skip and dance. Everywhere her hands grazed stung and I was addicted to that kind of pain. I hated her seeing me weak, so I never flinched, but I was lost to her caresses and the way her brow pinched as if she could feel each hurt in me.
JJ blasted Billionaire by Travie McCoy and Bruno Mars and we were all soon singing along at the top of our voices, my heart so full I forgot all about my father and the fear of returning to that house where he’d peel away my happiness piece by piece. But I always got it back when I was with my friends. They were the only cure I needed for any wound. I’d do anything for them, and I was pretty sure they’d do anything for me. And I realised I wouldn’t trade that for all the riches in the universe.
My head was heavy, throbbing and there was a rattling noise in the back of my skull that wouldn’t quit since Shawn’s last beating a few days ago. I sat on the floor with my back to the cold stone wall, my bare feet pressed to the equally cold floor as I tried to summon the heat of the sun in my past, sure I was forgetting how it felt already.
The right side of my face was so painful that I couldn’t touch it without fire flaring along my flesh. But sometimes I