Page 28 of Beneath the Surface

His lips were soft, which was surprising. He kissed me slowly and tentatively, knowing damn well that we shouldn’t be doing this. I let myself get lost in that kiss for a few seconds longer, telling myself it was the adrenaline that made me do it.

One of Grayson’s hands curled around my waist, then pulled me toward his body. My hands came to his chest. He was a wall of pure muscle.

“Fuck, Ava,” he whispered.

His voice was like a bucket of ice water being thrown over me.

I pushed him away without a second thought. Our gazes locked, and I wondered if the same hungry look was mirrored on my own face.

“This never happened,” I gasped.

“Ava,” he said my name, but it sounded more like a warning.

“We should head back to the rest,” I told him and began to turn around, but he pulled me back.

“You taste sweeter than I imagined,” he confessed.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, hating how his words warmed me.

“This. Never. Happened.”

“Ava…”

I turned around and put one hand between us.

“I have enough on my plate already. Skating, meeting my graduation credits, and a house of one hundred and fifty sorority sisters waiting to put a knife in my back if I step out of line…” I took a deep breath, and whatever heat was in Grayson’s eyes was gone—they had gone soft, and I think that was worse. It chipped another layer into the image of him I had built in my head.

“You’re telling me you felt nothing?” he questioned.

“You can’t have everything, Grayson. You’re the captain of the hockey team, star player, and voted hottest guy in school two years in a row. It doesn’t matter what I feel. You can’t have it all.”

Hurt flashed across his features, but I ignored him. My morning was already full of problems, and the note was adding fuel to a fire that was ready to explode.

When I came back to the table, Cruz had a smirk on his face, and Micah looked at anything but him.

“Did you kiss his boo-boo all better?” Cruz asked me.

“What?” I almost jumped out of the seat I had just sat down in.

“It’s just an expression, princess,” he added.

“Her name is Ava,” Grayson spat as he sat down back at the table.

Was it just me, or were tensions running higher than usual? Even for our first meeting, it wasn’t this bad. I was trying to think of something I could do or say to make it better, but a shared look went through Micah and Grayson, and then I could see some of Grayson’s tension leave his body.

A sting could be felt in the pit of my stomach. I bit my lip as the realization dawned on me. It wasn’t jealousy…was it?

No, it wasn’t. We were all under enormous amounts of stress, so it was bound to get feelings confused.

The only problem with that was I didn’t know who I was jealous of.

“We need a plan,” I told them. “Avoiding this will not make it go away. Maybe if we had gotten together sooner, we wouldn’t be in this predicament right now.”

The boys nodded.

“The note was a power play,” Grayson added.

“We are being watched,” Cruz inserted.

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