Page 84 of Hate the Game
I gasped and rushed forward, all but pushing him into the door. “If she doesn’t forgive him I’ll never be able to turn in a good article about y’all.”
Jax swung the door open and we all kind of just spilled inside the office and looked up to find Coach Carrington and Marla locked in a passionate embrace on top of his desk. Jax let out an amazingly high-pitched shriek for a guy with a deep voice and I slapped my hands over my face so hard that it stung.
Marla shouted for us to get out but something she said made me freeze. “Send in your positive article, Savannah. I need it on my desk tomorrow morning. I want to know what you’re thinking right away.”
“Get. The. Fuck. Out!” Coach Carrington sounded more than a little strained as he shouted at us and I wanted to gag at the potential reason why.
“Gross, Dad. Jesus.” Jax backed into me and I stumbled into Ryder. We left the office in a crush of bodies that threatened to crush me until we were moving down the hallway and Ryder plucked me up and held me against his chest.
We were in the stairway, halfway to the exit when I lost it. I laughed so loud that it reverberated in the small space. We’d just caught Jax’s dad with his penis in Marla. From the sounds they were making it’d been wild. Slowly the screaming I’d heard transformed and made more sense. Those had been screams of pleasure. Apparently, Coach Carrington could still make an impact on a woman.
Once we were outside, in the sunshine, walking briskly away from the scene of the crime, the guys started laughing with me. Jax looked like he had to shake off the image of the whole thing before he could really laugh about it. I was sure he wasn’t thrilled by what he’d seen.
It seemed to occur to each of us at the same time that we hadn’t spoken in a week and that we had big issues to deal with. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to but they didn’t give me a choice.
Ryder held me tighter and carried me across the back parking lot to Cole’s truck. When he felt me stiffen he growled at me. “No. No, we’re done with all of the bullshit between us and we’re done with the lies. You’re coming with us and you’re going to hear us, dammit. After we’ve said what we need to say, if you still hate us and want to run, that’s fine, but you’re going to hear us first.”
Hatedthem? We were both in for a surprise if they thought I hated them. “Okay. I won’t run.”
For the moment, I swore to myself silently.
***Jax***
Seeing Savannah tug at her t-shirt for the hundredth time was driving me crazy. Each time she tugged at it the neck pulled down enough to give a hint of her cleavage and the material stretched across her tits so tight that my jeans tried to mimic the effect. It was a sweet, sweet torture that was so damned distracting that I went to my room as soon as we got to our dorm and grabbed one of my shirts to pull over her head.
Hurt flashed in her eyes and she seemed to make herself smaller right in front of me. My gut twisted at seeing how deeply we’d hurt her and I couldn’t let it go. I grabbed her and tugged her into my chest, letting her feel how much I wanted her. She stiffened at first but eventually relaxed in my embrace.
“I can’t think when you’re pulling that tiny shirt over your chest constantly and I need to be able to think to have the conversation we need to have.”
When she pulled back, I let her go and saw that she was bright pink. She slipped her arms inside the shirt and a few seconds later managed to pull the other one over her head withoutflashing an inch of skin. She quietly folded her shirt while staring at the floor. “Y’all moved the mattresses.”
Cole snorted from where he sat on the edge of the couch, perched as if ready to run for Savannah at any second. “Yeah, without you we’re just three dudes cuddling on their living room floor, Sav. Not a good fit for us.”
She gave a little smile at that and then took a deep breath. I think we all held ours as she slowly blew hers out. “Can we start from the beginning?”
Ryder took her hand and pulled her to the couch. He surprisingly let her sit beside him instead of on his lap. “You mean can we start from the time you were acting like Texas Barbie?”
Savannah huffed. “I thought if I seemed like an airhead it’d be easier to get the three of you to be yourselves around me. It was before I knew anything about who you were, really, as men. It was a dumb idea. But it would’ve worked on any of the other guys on the team. Just…for the record.”
I scowled and sat on the coffee table in front of her. “They don’t even exist, Savannah. They can’t or I’m going to lose my shit and drag you off to a cave.”
She looked up at me with her eyes as wide as I’d ever seen them. “W-what do you mean?”
“He means that we want you. Just us. The three of us. And the idea of any other man getting close to you makes us want to fucking go on a rampage.” Ryder gripped her inner thigh as he said it and I held my breath as I waited to see if she’d shove his hand away. She didn’t.
She did seem to shake her head and force herself back to what she’d started saying, though. “I was wrong to come here to hurt y’all. I was blinded to the truth of that game against Texas. I expected y’all to suck. I thought it would be easy to gather information that reflected how awful y’all were and then I’dwrite this big article. I’d get back at you for my brothers’ injuries and I’d get my career back. I’m sorry for plotting against y’all.”
Cole gave up the edge of the couch and sat next to me on the coffee table. We all ignored the creaking wood, too focused on saving things. “Were you plotting when you kissed me?”
Savannah’s reaction was so horrified that it told of her honesty when she answered. “No! No, of course not. I never meant to get close to any of you like that. I’d made a big deal to my brothers about staying away from y’all and I’d assured Marla I could do the job without getting sucked in. I just… I couldn’t seem to help myself. No matter how many nights I went to bed hating myself for doing things with the men who’d hurt my brothers, I couldn’t stop.”
“Cass told us who you were after we realized that we were attracted to you. When we made our stupid fucking plan, we were under the impression that you’d been doing the same thing to us.” I searched her face, looking for even the smallest sign that she understood and would forgive us.
“Were you pretending when you did things with me?” She looked so vulnerable that I wanted to tear my hair out.
“Fuck no.” Ryder barked the words at her. “Nothing was ever pretending. I wanted to fuck you that night in the ring. The only thing stopping me was that I thought you were trying to play us and I didn’t want to just roll over that easily for you. I thought that I couldn’t trust you.”
Cole nodded along. “The night on the lookout it took everything in me not to replace my fingers with my dick. The same way you felt like you weren’t supposed to get involved with us, we felt we couldn’t give in to our desires with you.”
