Better when He's Bold

Wow, that was either highly evolved or very shortsighted. She continued in a steady tone.

“The same thing goes for my brother.” I flinched a little at that because she was looking at me like she knew exactly what I had been up to with her gorgeous, golden sibling. “These guys will take everything you have, Brysen, but in return, they will give you everything they’ve got to replace it. That’s a huge commitment to make and you have to be willing to let them and that life fill you up.”

I blew out a breath that sent my hair floating up around my face. “I don’t know that I’m in a place where I’m comfortable offering anyone anything, let alone offering a guy like Race everything. His world terrifies me. My dad owes him a lot of money, Dovie.”

Sympathy flooded her face and her freckles stood out across the bridge of her nose.

“It’s not just his world, Bry. It’s mine. It’s Bax’s, and if your dad has been gambling, then it’s kind of yours too. The Point doesn’t discriminate, it will taint whoever touches it to some degree. The trick is not to fear it, but to embrace it and make your own place in it.” She nudged me with her shoulder. “It sounds to me like you think your place might be next to Race.”

“Sitting next to him on his tarnished throne? Would that make me the queen?”

She laughed and moved past me now that we were both really, really late for our next classes.

“A tarnished throne for a tarnished king in a tarnished kingdom. Can you handle being a tarnished queen? He likes you enough to let you in, Brysen. Either you like him enough to do the same or you don’t. Hey, I’ve got to run, but think about what I’m telling you.”

I liked Race; that wasn’t the problem. I hated everything that came with him, and I just didn’t know that I could separate the two. But I also knew no one else in my life had stepped up to the plate and helped me handle any of the seemingly insurmountable problems that had been piling on me lately, and that alone made the decision to at least tell him thank you a no-brainer.

Now if only I could quiet all the tingly parts of my anatomy that were screaming at me that in order to properly show my appreciation we both needed to be naked and wrapped all around each other, it would be superhelpful.

I might have a ton of apprehension and a million reservations about Race’s world and his hand in keeping it running, but it seemed like my hormones didn’t share any of those very valid concerns and that my silly heart was caught firmly between the crosshairs of the mixed signals my body and brain were firing at it.

Chapter 12

Race

I WAITED IMPATIENTLY FOR Bax to finish mauling my sister and leaned against the fender of his car. It still surprised me after all this time, the way they were with each other. Bax was so dark, so entrenched in everything violent and unpredictable that came from the place where he had done whatever it took to survive. Dovie was sweet, and even with the hardships she’d been forced to endure, she hadn’t let anything poison all the goodness that was inside of her. I knew they loved one another, that nothing on this earth, nothing the Point could produce, would ever tear them apart, and that was beautiful. It also made them a force to be reckoned with. Dovie had given Bax something to live for, to fight for, and Bax had given her something that was completely her own. Not a day went by that I wasn’t grateful to have both of them on my side.

Really, I had more pressing matters on my mind than the fact that Bax had his hands inside Dovie’s shirt. The weasely little TA had backed down and started babbling as soon as I had cornered him in the empty lecture hall. I don’t know if it was the fact I had picked him up by his collar and shook him like a rag doll, or if it was Bax’s threatening, silent presence, but the guy had started babbling and blubbering immediately and had rushed to admit within seconds that he was tanking Brysen’s grade on purpose. I think if I had pushed any harder, the little slimeball would have peed himself, but the information he was spilling was far more valuable to me than his embarrassment would’ve been.

I let him go and told him he was going to transfer classes, or better yet, transfer schools, and he didn’t argue. I told him to stay the hell away from Brysen. It was then he told me the reason he had been harassing her so furiously, and why he had been dead set on ruining her semester, and it was those reasons that were chasing themselves around in my mind. Yes, Brysen had turned him down when he asked her out and she hadn’t been very tactful about it, but then he insisted that she had proceeded to hassle him online about it. He stammered that she had sent mocking text messages, awful e-mails telling him a guy like him never had a chance with her, that she posted nasty stuff all over his Facebook and just generally made him look like and feel like an idiot. According to him, it was Brysen acting like a typical, spoiled mean girl and he was her target. He called her a bully without actually using the word. So he struck back the only way he knew how, by taking it out on her schoolwork.

The problem I had with the scenario he was laying out was I knew how busy Brysen was and I had torn apart her old computer. She didn’t even have a Facebook page, and the only e-mail she used was the one all students had access to, which was registered through the university. The correspondence I had been able to retrieve was mostly boring stuff related to school and projects. There had been nothing alarming, nothing lining up with the story this guy was spinning, but his reaction and his immediate agreement to get gone had me wondering what was really going on. Someone wasn’t only stalking her, they were messing with her life behind the curtains as well. I didn’t like any of it.