Page 32 of Bear
To my surprise, Mason gives Duke a furtive look out of the corner of his eye that I’m unsure I was supposed to see at all.
My eyes go wide like saucers before I blink rapidly. Wait, what? My brain is going a mile a minute. Clawlike marks on Duke’s back. A hickey on Mason’s neck. The odd look they’d exchanged. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to make the evidence before me compute in a way that makes sense.
“Why the fuck are all of you staring at me?” Duke’s tone is… defensive.
All eyes swing back to Mason, who simply shrugs and holds up his hands, eyeing Duke up and down. “They probably want to know who marked up your back, too.”
Bear’s brows go up at around the same time my mouth opens and closes.
Duke spins on his heel. There’s no hesitation at all, he slams his fist directly into the door with a sickening crack. I don’t know if anyone else is at the right angle to see it, but his face creases in pain before he rears back and punches again.
“Duke!” I suck in a breath, covering my mouth with shaking hands. I’m too stunned to move more than that.
“Duke, don’t.” Bear grabs him by both shoulders and yanks him back, his gravelly voice whispering in his ear. Whatever he’s said seems to get through to him, as Duke expels a hard breath, his chest heaving as he faces us.
“You think you know things, but you don’t know shit.” He shakes his head, swallowing hard before turning to yank the door open, then slamming it behind him.
Mason’s hands go into his hair, clutching at the inky, dark strands. “Jesus.” He grits his teeth together. “I guess he must not have fucked all the mad or sad out, huh?” His jaw works to the side, eyes burning with something I don’t quite understand, but I almost believe it’s something close to humiliation. It makes my head spin to realize Mason is upset by what just transpired. Like at first, he tried to make light of it, but he must have recognized he wasn’t fooling Bear or me.
He strides past us to the end of the hall, where he throws open the attic door and shuts it behind him with a sharp, meaningful snap. The kind that says,Don’t fucking follow me.
SEVENTEEN
DUKE
All of twofucking minutes have gone by when my door creaks open. I don’t look behind me. Fucking Mason can suck a bag of dicks for all I care. I’m too busy tearing the sheets off the bed that still harbors evidence of what we did together to give a flying fuck if he wants to stand there like a creeper and watch me.
With every move I make, my knuckles burn and my heart continues to jackhammer in my chest. My attempt at controlled breathing isn’t slowing down the vicious pounding, nor is simply willing it to stop racing working at all. I pause, bracing myself with one hand on the bed while rubbing the other over my left pec. Before I know it, I’m clawing at my heart, trying for a more physical approach, wanting to tear it out of there. I grimace at the feel of the fast-pacedthud, thud, thud.It continues until I’m sure it’s going to punch through my rib cage and land right here on the mattress in front of me.Fuck my life.
Why today of all days? I huff out an irritated laugh.Simple. Because Mason, that’s why.Not the first time he’s messed with my head on the anniversary of Juliette’s death. Probably won’t be the last. The question is what the fuck is his angle? Is he purposely choosing the day when I’m at my weakest to come at me like this? Way down deep, I don’t want to believe that’s the case. And I know…I knowhe hadn’t wanted us to be a one-time thing all the way back during our freshman year. I shut my eyes, my jaw tightening as my head spins and spins, knowing he’s watching me slowly unravel.
“Where do you keep the spare sheets?” Lennon’s voice is like a bucket of icy cold water dumping over me. Shock slides through my system.Oh, hell.Now I’m hearing shit. But then I turn my head to find I’m not imagining things, and it really is her standing there, watching me with cautious, concern-filled eyes. Eyes that are currently seeing way too fucking much.
I pick up the cum-stained sheets, my face growing hot. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, pressing my lips into a tight line. When they flick open again, Lennon hasn’t budged an inch and is watching me like a hawk. Without a word, I pivot and march the bedding into my bathroom, where I disappear into the closet. I’m confident she won’t follow me in here, given her anxiety issues, so at least I can catch my breath for a few seconds.
Dumping the sheets into a laundry basket, I fold my hands over the top of my head, lacing my fingers together while I think. I should probably deal with the mess I made of my hand, but I’m too keyed up to worry about it.
Lennon definitely knows what Mason and I were up to earlier. I close the door to the closet for a moment, turning to look at my back in the mirror’s reflection.Holy fucking shit.I blink, certain that my tired eyes aren’t really seeing what I think they are.
Fuck me.
There are angry—not “claw marks,” thanks fucking Brendan and Kai—red patches all over. Mason and I had gone hard at each other, and it hadn’t occurred to me until my shirt was already off and everyone was fucking whooping that it’d be that noticeable. I shouldn’t be embarrassed. It’s not like they fucking know how they got there.
But I do.
“Duke?” Lennon’s voice drifts to me from the other side of the door. “Are you okay? I will absolutely walk out of here right now if you tell me to. But…”
I grimace, then pull the door open. She stands on the other side in a tank top and some sort of stretchy little short-shorts, the same kind she’d been wearing—or, uh,notwearing—downstairs in the gym with Bear and Mason. She must have taken a few minutes to towel off and find dry clothing before coming to search me out.
My eyes ping over her softly curved hips, the tininess of her waist, and up to her perky tits before noticing that while she’d taken time for clothing, she hadn’t bothered with her hair. It’s still soaking wet.
As if she can follow right along with my thoughts, she gives me a wry grin. “I rinsed the chlorine off, but I didn’t stop to dry my hair. I—” She pauses, eyes meeting my distrusting ones. Shrugging, she murmurs, “Sorry, there’s no way I was going to bed without checking on you. It’s already going to be a shitty day—we all freaking know that—but to add both the assumptions about you and me that Tucker made down at the pool and then…”
And then Mason and the fucking purple love bite I left on his neck without realizing it. Or was it a hate mark? I don’t fucking know which it was, just like I don’t want to think about whether or not I knew what I was doing at the time. Because the answer—fuck. It messes with my head in the worst way.
I blink, realizing I have no clue if Lennon ever finished her thought, but I guess it doesn’t fucking matter because I knew she’d bring up Mason, and I’m having a lot of trouble processing everything as it is. And now all her thoughts are colliding with mine, resulting in a tempest in my head that won’t die down.
She continues explaining her presence in my room, gesturing a bit wildly toward me, then back at herself. “I didn’t figure you were sleeping, and I’m kinda worked up from my underwater adventure, so here I am.”
