Page 35 of Playing By Their Rules

“Is that the minestrone soup?” I ask hopefully.

“It is.” She grins. “Our favorite!”

“Sweet.” One of the best perks of working at a restaurant like Pepperoni Palace is all the free food. Despite its name, Pepperoni Palace serves far more than just pizza, and their soups and bread are to die for.

While Mina heads to her room to change out of her work clothes, I jump up and take the containers to the kitchen to distribute into bowls.

“How was work?” I ask when she comes back to the living room.

“Good, good.” She curls up on the other corner of the couch, mirroring my pose, and we tuck into the dinner.

“How was your night?” she asks.

“It was nice.” I’m feeling a little sore from my earlier activities. My spanked ass twinges, and my pussy aches. The reminders are welcome, though, even though they’re painful. I want to do it all over again.

“Who was that?” She slurps some soup, swallows. “On the phone, I mean?”

“Bradley,” I say. “He’s still stuck at his cousin’s wedding.”

“I wonder why he didn’t bring you as a plus-one?”

I shake my head and carefully adjust my position so as not to spill my soup. “It would’ve sent the wrong message to his family. They’re already trying to ship us hard.”

Bradley’s family adores me, and I adore them, but his well-meaning parents, aunts, and uncles all want us to be a couple, and it just ain’t happening.

“Huh,” she says. “You know, you haven’t been interested in anyone for a while.”

With a shrug, I say, “Dry spell, I guess. How about you? You haven’t talked about any guys lately.”

Probably because I got pissy the last time she did, given that she was crushing on the same guy I had expressed interest in during our Intro to Applied Linguistics course.

“I wish there was someone,” she says, “but I guess like you I’m having a dry spell.”

“Nothing wrong with that, right?” I say.

“Not at all. We have our studies to focus on. Who would’ve thought, seven years ago, that we would be here, in grad school?”

I nod. “San Esteban seemed so far away.”

We used to dream of this city. We’d hide in an abandoned cabin in the woods behind our foster parents’ house and hold each other’s hands, making plans for the future—for our future together. It’s amazing we’ve made it so far, two kids in the system with foster parents who completely sucked. Our foster mom was a deadbeat, the dad only had us there to look pretty. He never touched us, but it was obvious he wanted to. I shudder and push myself farther into the couch.

“You’re thinking of Percy too, aren’t you?” she asks.

I nod.

“Did I tell you I went back to the old cabin a couple of months ago?” she asks.

“What?” I sit forward. “Really? What was it like?”

“Nobody’s been there, it’s about the same. All of our posters are still on the walls.”

“Our sanctuary,” I say, remembering. That place, located at the far edge of Percy and Tara’s remote property, had been our hideout. Whenever Percy got too weird, Mina and I would tell him we were going for a walk, and then we’d hide at the cabin until he left to work his night shift at the paper mill.

“Everyone needs a sanctuary,” she says. “Whether it’s a place, or people.”

That’s the truth. And now that I’ve met Chance and Ethan, I’ve found a new set of people to feel safe with, a new sanctuary. It doesn’t mean I’ll ditch my old friends, but I’m excited about what could happen in the future.

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