Page 8 of Punish Me

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not stupid. There’s more to this than“he’s riding my ass so hard”,” she says in a whiny voice.

“I don’t sound like that.”

“Hmmph. Yes, you do, and I bet he has been riding that ass,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me and pointing at my ass.

I slowly return to the couch, shaking my head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Which is why I’m giving you a chance to tell.”

“Or what?”

“Or...I’ll tell Bray what I think I know, and he’ll go and confirm it with Ro. We both know that Ro’s not about to lie. He’s honest, if nothing else,” Shayla says.

“God!” I groan, dropping my head against the back of the couch and pulling my hands down my face.

“Nope, it’s just me,” Shayla squeals, knowing I’m about to spill the tea.

Sitting up, I fold my legs under me and turn sideways to face her. “Please don’t say anything. We both swore we would never let Bray find out. It would crush him.”

She grins, claps her hands, and mimics my position. “My lips are zipped,” she says, miming zipping her lips before propping her elbow on her thigh and resting her chin on her fist.

“I’d been crushing on Ro since meeting him in my freshman year when Bray introduced us. In my sophomore year of college, Ro came home with Bray on the holiday break. I think his parents had gone to Switzerland and he hadn’t wanted to go.One night, we were sitting in front of the fireplace, and everyone except the two of us had gone to bed. We started talking about school, extracurriculars, pledging, and all the dumb shit in our world then. I’d had one too many spiked eggnogs, and I confessed my crush.”

“Aww, that’s so sweet, Bryn!” Shayla exclaims.

“Yeah, well, I hadn’t expected him to admit he felt the same. He kissed me, and I was a goner for Ambrose Charles from then on. We snuck away for kisses the rest of that holiday vacation until we returned to school. He and Brayden had no classes in common, but they shared an apartment.”

“Please don’t tell me that you crept over there.”

“No. I wasn’t stupid. Bray would’ve killed us. He would always sneak over to my dorm and spend the night as much as possible. That went on throughout my entire sophomore and junior years. Couldn’t have been happier even though I was always scared Brayden would find out.”

“Well, what ended you two because he clearly went on and married?”

“That.”

“What?”

“He cheated on me with his agent his first year in the league. It was my senior year, and we were heading toward three years together. He was in town for a campus speaking engagement. His agent, Lyndsey Moon, flew in unexpectedly when a prior engagement was canceled. I’d returned to my dorm to grab my things to spend the weekend with him. When I returned to his hotel, she was there. She answered the door while he was in the shower and let me know they were a couple, and she wasn’t going anywhere...neither was their unborn child,” I reply sourly as I recall the bitch rubbing her belly while delivering the news to me.

“Did you ask him about it?”

“He stepped out of the shower when she was announcing it. I looked at his face and knew the truth. Besides, she had no reason to lie. She was a professional business woman making her mark on the world.”

“Or she was a money-hungry bitch who saw that he was on his way to making millions. MLB’s next biggest star and she couldn’t wait to get her claws in him,” Shayla says.

“Yeah, but she had his baby. I couldn’t compete with that, nor did I want to.”

Shayla reaches over and grabs my hand. “I’m so sorry, honey. You never told anyone?”

I shake my head. “No one but you. I haven’t even spoken with Ambrose about it. I told our dorm manager not to let him up, avoided him, and haven’t let him back in.”

“Not even today?”

“Especially not now.”

4 – AMBROSE

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