Never His Girl (Kings of Cypress Prep #2) - Rachel Jonas Page 0,89
to discuss, but he’s clearly as distracted as I am.
Focus, Blue. Talk now, fuck him later.
“Thanks for letting me stop by. I know you and Scar hang out at night,” he says.
I smile at him, still getting used to him having more layers than I realized.
“Scar has a full stomach, and she has Shane. Trust me, she’s probably forgotten I even exist.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Best friend,” I answer, leaving off the ‘with benefits’ that nearly follows that statement.
There better not be any more benefits. I’ll kill them both.
“Seems like a nice kid.”
I nod, agreeing. “They’ve known each other their whole lives. He’s Ricky’s brother,” I add, unsure of whether this is new news to him. When his brow quirks, I realize it is.
“Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
“You’re telling me,” I say with a laugh.
There’s also the part where both me and my sister lost our virginity to one of the Ruiz brothers, but I’m pretty sure West isn’t interested in hearing that. As it is, the faint smile he wore has all but faded now. Things always get a little tense between us when the topic of conversation is Ricky.
West takes a seat beside me on the bed and I draw both legs onto the mattress, sitting cross-legged.
Our short-lived conversation comes to an unexpected end, and it’s because we have yet to address the elephant in the room—whatever he came all the way to my side of town to discuss. I don’t want to push, but I kind of want to get it over and done with. If I’m being completely honest, my stomach is in knots thinking about it.
West flashes a look my way, and I sense dread within it. I imagine he’s anticipating this talk, too, but likely with a completely different set of emotions than those I’m carrying at the moment.
“We may as well get to the point,” he says with a sigh, and I don’t miss the nervous edge to his tone, either. It prompts me to draw in a deep breath, preparing for wherever this conversation is heading.
My gaze shifts left when he unzips his hoodie and shrugs out of it. I stare at the images that mark his forearms, choosing to keep my eyes focused there when he speaks.
“Makes the most sense to start at the beginning, I guess. Which is right around the time my brothers and I got recruited at end of sophomore year,” he shares. “Tons of colleges started hitting us up early, trying to get us to commit back in like… eighth grade and shit, hoping we’d consider them when the time came. Dane and Sterling were ready to decide as soon as the first offer came in, but I wanted to hold out. Getting into NCU was my dream and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Listening to him speak, it’s clear that he refused to settle, which doesn’t surprise me. If these past few months have taught me anything, it’s that West is never one to take anything less than exactly what he has his heart set on. If he wants something, he goes after it hardcore.
Relentlessly.
“So, as I’m sure you can imagine, once I got in, that shit kind of went to my head a little bit,” he adds with a laugh. “Summer before Junior year, right when I was turning seventeen, I basically spent the entire three months partying, drinking, and fu—”
His voice trails off then and he glances over at me, as if only now remembering who he’s talking to.
“And… fucking?” I add, pretty sure that’s the word he was about to use.
“…Yeah. Sorry. Guess I could’ve left that part out.”
Holding in a laugh, I keep to myself how there isn’t a single part of me that thought he was an angel before this conversation anyway.
“At any rate, the partying sort of carried over into the beginning of the school year. The heightened interest in me, my football career, turned me into kind of an addict for the attention. So, if there was a party somewhere, me, Dane, and Sterling were there.”
He breathes deep and I settle against the headboard, just listening.
“Some kid from Everly Prep was having a bunch of people over while his parents were out of town. Pandora posted the info. Then, we were in the car and on our way the next second.”
There’s this look in West’s eyes I’m not sure how to read. It’s thoughtful, yes, but there’s something else. My best guess is that it’s regret.