Playing for Keeps (The Game #2)(11)
Author: Emma Hart

Hello, irrational Megan.

It would be easier if I could get a little box to stuff this jealousy in. We’ll bundle it in with the rolling stomach and clenching heart. What a tidy little package that’d be.

“She’s not my type.”

“Are you gonna call her?” Lila asks.

“Yep, we’re going.” Maddie grabs Kay’s arm and pulls her up and after her.

Aston snorts and glances at me. “No.”

“Does she think you are?”

He shrugs. “How am I meant to know?”

I disguise my snort by covering my mouth with my hand. My half-annoyed, half-amused snort.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.” I shake my head. “You get with stupid girls, y’know.”

“I do, huh?” He turns his face toward me slowly, his gray eyes challenging me.

“Yeah, you do.” I run a thick blade of grass between my fingers, focused on him. “If I were them, I’d be shocked if you did call – hey, I’d be shocked if you even text. I mean, the girl who speaks to you the day after sleeping with you would have to be something, right? Hell, the girl who speaks to you after kissing you would have to be someone pretty damn special.”

“Depends when I spoke to her,” he replies evenly.

“The morning after?” I vocally challenge what’s in his eyes and silently send him one of my own.

You told me it meant something. I call bullshit.

“If I spoke to her the next morning, then it’d mean she’s more than a f**k – or a mere kiss. It’d mean she meant something. That she was someone pretty damn special.”

Throw my words back at me, you bastard.

I guess I lose this round.

My heart pounds painfully in my chest, twisting and scrunching as what I can never have is dangled openly in front of my face. We are being dangled openly, for everyone to see, but they’ll never know. An open secret, a complete contradiction of itself.

“Then it’s a good thing no girl has ever got that morning chat, huh?” I ask quieter, forcing the hard edge into my voice.

Gray eyes flick to my lips, making me part them and draw in a breath at the intensity in his stare. Every time. Every damn time those eyes get me.

Aston rubs his chin, studying me carefully. “Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” he replies just as quietly as I did.

Lila coughs and I look away from Aston. Her eyes flick between us and I grab my bag strap.

“I have to get to class. See ya later.” I get up and leave without looking back.

Lila is the teenage girl version of Sherlock Holmes. If she has any suspicion someone is up to something she’ll follow your ass around until she’s got to the bottom of it. If we’re not careful, she’ll have us figured in a heartbeat.

But, as I walk back onto the main campus, I can’t stop thinking about what he said.

He said I meant something. A kiss meant more than the endless stream of one night stands he’s had over the last few months. How is that possible?

Huh… It doesn’t matter anyway. It can’t happen. That mind-blogging, knee-quaking, heart-pounding kiss shouldn’t have happened, so anything else definitely shouldn’t happen.

But what if “anything else” is sex? I walked away from that once. Stupid or smart, I don’t know. Yet … what if we both want that more? And what if sex turned into more? Like a relationship … Or love. What would happen then?

Psh. Love and Aston in the same sentence? If there was such a thing as too many books, I might agree with Lila when she says I read too many. People don’t just change and neither do their actions. I don’t believe for one minute he could flip a switch and go from man-whore to a one woman man.

Knowing this makes it all the easier to fight my want for him.

But in the slim chance something did change – and we’re talking very freaking slim here … There just isn’t a chance on this Earth I’d be able to fight anything if he wanted me the way I do him.

~

Maddie and Lila loop their arms through mine, and I’m not surprised when we begin to head in the direction of Starbucks.

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like whatever conversation we’re about to have?” I groan.

Maddie shrugs. “I have no idea.”

“It could be, oh, I don’t know … Maybe the fact you’ve both grabbed me and directed me toward the ‘chat room’ of Starbucks?” I deadpan, looking to Lila. “And the fact Lila has that grin on her face means she’s up to no good.”

“Okay.” Lila sighs as she pushes the door open. “Go sit down. I’ll get coffee.”

“This is not good,” I mutter to myself. “What did she do? What did she break? Oh, hell. Don’t tell me she deleted my essay from my laptop again.”

“Nothing.” Maddie pushes me down into an armchair and sits opposite me. “She didn’t do anything. And you know that was an accident.”

“Mmph. Well she’s about to do something, and if she’s buying me coffee I don’t think I’m gonna like it much.”

“Well, it’s a ‘maybe baby’ situation.” She taps her chin. “You’re either gonna love it or hate it, but I don’t think it matters–”

“Because I’m gonna do it anyway,” Lila sings, setting a tray on the table in front of us.

“I’m not going to lie to you, I’m starting to get a little scared.” I look between the two of them, from Maddie chewing her lip to Lila’s sparkling eyes.

“Just tell her, Lila!” Maddie cries. “Before she takes that coffee and throws it on you!”

I grab my coffee and point it in Lila’s direction. Nothing like making a point.

“Okay! So, I’ve been thinking,” she begins.

“Which is never a good thing,” I interrupt.

“Whatever. I’ve noticed you’re the only single one bar Kay – and I’d never dream of doing this to her.”

“Damn, you noticed I’m single?”

“She’s always off with some, er, someone, I’m with Ryan, and Maddie with Braden, leaving you all alone.”

“Oh no.” I know exactly where she’s going with this.

“So I was thinking you need a guy–”

“No.”

“So then you won’t be all alone. Obviously Aston is out of the question …”

Obviously. “No.”