Make My Move (Hannaford Prep #5) - J. Bree Page 0,57

just as pissed but the biggest surprise comes when Morrison steps the fuck up and snaps, “Lay off, man. She’s not here so you can poke and prod at her for your own enjoyment.”

Ash shrugs and drinks his bourbon like this is all nothing.

It’s not fucking nothing.

I ignore the look Avery shoots my way, and snap at Ash, “Why are you asking her about her underwear?”

Lips panics.

She fucking panics as Ash smirks at me and says, “We picked out her entire collection together this week. Why do you care?”

I’m going to kill him.

Lips nudges me again, always so fucking gently like she thinks she’d actually be able to hurt me, and says, “He decided our path to friendship is going to be paved in lace. I decided he’s a perv and it’s easier to let him go than fight it.”

He fucking would too.

“Crap, we haven’t gone down to the laundry yet to ask about the thief,” Avery mumbles but she doesn’t look up from her phone.

Thief?

Blaise looks up from the floor at us. “Someone is stealing your underwear?”

“Her used underwear,” says Ash.

What.

The.

Fuck?!

I glance down at her but she’s staring up at me like this is all so fucking normal, like I didn’t just find out that there’s a whole new fucking subset of bullshit going on with her that I need to sort out. “Are you a magnet for fucked up shit and psychos?”

Avery laughs. “Why yes, Arbour, she is.”

Chapter Eighteen

Blaise

The first time my father told me I was a mistake was the day my manager came home with a NDA he’d forced out of a groupie who’d taken photos of me eating her out after one of my first gigs. I was too fucking drunk, and young and stupid, to do a decent job of it and she was out there in the world talking shit about me.

My straight-laced, incredibly bigoted father almost dropped fucking dead on the spot.

Sometimes I imagine that Blaine Morrison must only have bland missionary sex in the fucking dark on a night that’s been marked in the calendar for the last six months, because that’s the good and proper thing to do. It makes me sick to my fucking stomach.

So I already know exactly what the fallout is going to be when my agent calls me with the news of what Annabelle has done. It has to be Annabelle, she’s the only bitch who hasn’t given up on chasing us all. Fuck, she’s still panting after my trust fund and Ash’s billions every chance she gets.

Explaining this to my father doesn’t fucking work, all he sees is his fuck-up son once again making mistakes, so I do what I always fucking do when I know I’m going to have to deal with this.

I get fucking wasted.

I head back to my room from the dining hall before anyone can stop me and I start with Ash’s top-shelf bourbon, sculling that shit down until I find myself at the bottom of the bottle.

Then I start in on Harley’s whiskey.

He keeps this shit for emergencies, some Mounty fucking quirk he has that none of us question because that’s what friends do, but it barely touches the sides as I chug it down.

“Jesus fucking Christ, I told you there was something wrong.”

The bottle is wrenched out of my hands. I’d put up a fight to keep ahold of it but the perfume is Avery’s and I’d never, ever fucking disrespect her or Ash like that. If she broke a nail in the struggle? No fucking thanks, the fallout isn’t worth the shitty whiskey.

“What the hell are you doing letting that fucking snake into your room? Morrison—”

“Drop it, Floss, he’s already in the fucking hole.”

The hole.

The deep, dark place inside of me that swallows me until there’s nothing fucking left. Sometimes it feels fucking pathetic to be here because Harley watched his dad’s brains get fucking scrambled and Avery was choked to death by her own brother.

Why do I get to be this depressed over my asshole father?

Words aren’t that fucking bad, Morrison, for fuck’s sake.

“Just shut up and put your fucking arm around my neck. We’re going to the girls’ room. Hold the hell onto me, I’ll be fucking pissed if you eat dirt right now.”

My words are slurred and running into each other as I fumble out, “I’m fucking pathetic.”

We’re about the same height and Ash is a fucking solid wall when he wants to be, draping my drunk ass over himself as he walks for both