Page 35 of Study Games

Jax did his thing and worked his magic.

The image was both me and not in noir, but I knew in an instant what he had done, the same thing he's done for my bee flight.

He’d taken the motion and our very one sided conversation and incorporated it all.

Me talking, thinking, blushing when he said words I’d never had aimed at me, and thought I never would after what had happened. Even a touch of shame. Every part of me was layered into that painting, there for the whole campus to see.

Motion, fears, and dreams rolled into one.

And above it all, Jax perched on the edge, waving a beer and warbling a drunken love song at the top of his lungs.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I opened it to find a message from an unknown number.

Photos and movies deleted. Treat him well. He deserves it.

Crush. It had to be. Jax’s best friend. I grinned, tears prickling the corners of my eyes as people turned to take photos of me. For the first time, I didn’t care. They could take whatever they wanted. Jax had striped away all the rubbish so I could just be me.

With him.

He waved at me, and, choking on a laugh, I waved back.

And that was all I wanted.

12

JAX

The ground swayed beneath me, though I wasn’t half as drunk as I pretended to be while I sang one of Xoan Kennedy’s songs—Rippton’s resident rockstar. Was I exhausted? Absolutely. I hadn’t slept while I finished off my drawing of Waverly, slipped out of her bed, and nicked the kit I needed to suspend myself from the side of the building.

Then, before dawn even thought about cracking her bright eye over the horizon, I got to work with my whitewash, putting together the shadows I needed for the outline. Once the ground work was done, Waverly’s portrait came together as light crested over the campus at first light.

My methods were far from the usual, but then nothing about me constituted around the grounds of normality.

While I painted and doused myself in the occasional beer to ensure I both looked and smelled the part, Crush and a few of the frat boys I’d owe later did a little job for me. Hacking the twins and claiming back the intellectual property that should never have fallen into their hands in the first place was no small job, but they got it done by the time I finished painting and started singing.

Loud, off key and with Xoan’s express permission to use his unreleased, brand new work.

Apparently artist respected artist, because his photographer set up to grab first photos before the crowd gathered with their accumulated weekend hangover that turned up on the single’s track cover that released fifteen minutes ago.

When my voice cracked and gave out, and I ran out of beer I never drank anyway, Waverly gave me a small, shy smile back that hit my heart dead center. I swung my legs up over the edge of the building, unable to tear my eyes off her. My knees ached but I didn’t care.

I tossed my phone into the sling I used when I painted and lowered it as music blared out across the quad, killing conversation that crept up. Xoan’s lullaby that would forever be linked with Waverly now, and probably be a number one hit across the country bearing her likeness by the end of the day.

Watching from above I got my stalker self on as Waverly made her way forward to take the offering I lowered. Her head was lowered as she took the phone, but she never lowered the sound, only stared down at the screen.

My heart lodged in my chest. I fucking well knew it was the best work I’d ever created in my life, but that didn’t mean she would. And just because my plan of toddler distraction method worked to keep the twins off her back didn’t mean she had to agree with what I’d done.

I sensed their eyes on me the whole night while they watched me work from across the quad all night instead of heading up to her room to torment her for not doing what they asked while Crush’s boys raided their rooms and removed every single copy of her tape.

That included the ones on their phones through various dark web and hacking, shit I didn’t get into, nor did I want to know about.

Both the twins and Crush’s team would exact a penance, and I’d have to pay both. But for Waverly, I’d do it, and I didn’t care what it would cost me. She’d been through enough.

Right now, my pleasure came from the fact that she had no idea how free she was.

My girl finally turned her face up toward me. When I might have expected embarrassment or anger, I was far from ready for the tear streaked cheeks, the liquid rawness in her eyes shattered me apart and reformed me in an instant.

Nothing more—no words, no false gestures, because she wasn’t that sort of person.

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