Page 75 of Hate the Game
Ryder swore and pushed his best friends away so he could pick me up again. “Back to our room. I have a feeling if Coach or that crazy woman screaming at him come out and see us, they’re not going to be happy about us escaping that bullshit.”
If they didn’t hate me there was no way I was going to fight to go back into the stadium and listen to Marla call Jax’s dad a sonofabitch a dozen more times.
***Savannah***
“Talk. Explain.” Jax didn’t wait for me to get settled on the couch in their suite before he was demanding answers. “Please.”
“I… It’s not that easy, Jax. I can’t just…say it.” What he was asking me for was too big. He was asking me to cut myself open and let them see my soft insides. I couldn’t do it.
Cole sat across from me with a beer. “Fine. You don’t want to go first? I will. I’ve missed you. I got used to seeing you coming and going from the dorm or even just hearing you moving around inside your room. It’s felt like shit to know that you were hiding from us.”
I wrapped my arms across my stomach and curled my toes in my boots. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d want to see me. Not after what happened…”
“You mean after I saw you on your knees for Jax?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “I deserve whatever you’re going to say.”
He let out a quiet laugh. “It was fucking hot.”
My eyes snapped open. “What did you say?”
His grin was wicked. “I said that it was fucking hot. I don’t know what you’ve been telling yourself, Sav, but it seemed like you were way off base. Did you think seeing that would make me hate you?”
I nodded. “Yes. I was being terrible. I was acting like a slut. I-”
“Stop.” Ryder sat next to me and dragged me into his lap. He hugged me tight to his chest and heaved out a giant sigh. “Why the fuck are you talking about yourself like that?”
When I didn’t answer right away Cole moved to the coffee table in front of me. “We’re all big boys, Sav. We knew things were happening with each of us. Seeing it was a bit of a shock at first but we’re all fine. It’s abnormal and it’s definitely not something we’ve ever done but we all want you and you want us. We’re adults. Mostly, anyway. We’ve come to terms with the idea of you being with all three of us. And like I said, seeing you like that for Jax was hot. If we’re not pissy about this whole thing, why are you?”
“He’s right. We talked about it and made our peace. It’s your turn now.” Jax sat next to us and gripped my knee. “You’ve been hiding this whole week because you thought we hated you for the things thatweinitiated? How would you ever be to blame for that?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” I rested my head on Ryder’s shoulder and busied myself with the neck of his shirt. “This whole thing, it felt like a redo of something that happened to me last year.”
“You had three boyfriends last year, too?” None of them seemed phased by Cole using the word boyfriends.
I shot him a frown and blew out a deep breath. “No. I hadoneboyfriend. That was all it took to ruin everything.”
“Tell us. Please.” Jax squeezed my knee and then sat back, arms folded across his wide chest. “Help us understand why you’re being so cruel to yourself.”
I groaned but I knew I couldn’t hold it all in anymore. I’d only talked to my brothers about it as much as I had to but for some reason I wanted to tell the guys surrounding me. They were watching me with care and concern and I felt like they really wanted to know.
“There was a professor. Charlie. He said all the right things, told me everything I wanted to hear. I didn’t even realize he was trying to seduce me at first. I’d never had the chance to get close to a man before because my brothers were always so protective. They never thought they’d need to protect me from a much older professor.” I closed my eyes and gripped Ryder’s shirt in my clenched fists. “It wasn’t like I had any great examples of what love was supposed to look like so when he told me he loved me, I just believed him. It never occurred to me that he was saying it to get me to offer up my virginity. I was stupid.”
“Sounds more like he was a predator.” Ryder’s arms tightened around me.
“I’ve always wanted to be a sports journalist. He taught several of the classes I needed for my major. He saw all of my work. Nothing was ever good enough. It was horrible. He made me think I was disgusting and took advantage of making me think that…” I took a deep breath. “By the end he didn’t touch me at all. He got off on using me, I think. He thought it was hot if I hid under his desk and… I don’t want to say. I can’t.”
“Don’t. You don’t have to.” Jax sounded furious but I couldn’t focus on that or I’d stop saying what I needed to say.
“I wrote an article for the school paper, just something I did for fun. I was proud of it. I let him read it because that was just what was expected of me by that point. He trashed it. Said it was shit. Imagine my surprise when he announced to my class that he’d submitted an article to one of the major sports magazines and had been offered a permanent position writing and editing for them.
“When I saw the article and realized it was mine, I saw red. All the anger I’d shoved down deep during our relationship just…exploded. I stood up and called him every name I could think of. I told everyone he was a fucking liar and a thief. He’d already accepted the job and was quitting the college so he had nothing to lose. He announced to the class that I was just a jaded ex that he’d dumped and my claiming he’d stolen my article was a pitiful attempt to get back at him for moving on.”
“He ousted himself?”
“Yeah. It didn’t matter, though. The harder I fought to prove that it was my article the worse the rumors got. He must’ve been fueling them behind the scenes but I didn’t help myself. I was so angry that I looked crazy. The narrative turned into me being a slut who’d tried to fuck her professor to get ahead. When he moved on to bigger and better, I’d snapped and tried to take him down. Everyone thought I used my body to try to get what I wanted and hadn’t been very good at it. I was branded and nothing made it better. When I contacted the magazine, with proof, and told them what’d happened the man I talked to said he’d heard of me and knew to expect my games.
“That fucker ruined my reputation before I ever got a chance to start my career. I’m a joke. A pathetic slut user who tried to take down a brilliant man who’d turned her down. I tried to submit articles to multiple magazines after that and basically got laughed at for even daring to try.” I swallowed the bile that threatened to come up every time I thought about Charlie and what he’d done to me. “Marla had heard of me but she gave me a chance. It’s probably the only chance I’ll ever get to prove myself.”
