I shook my pom-poms along with the rest of the squad when Reece knifed into the air to intercept the opposing team’s pass and sprinted down the court, the orange ball a blur of movement under his palm. When he reared up to slam-dunk in a version of athletic poetry that took my breath away with only three seconds left on the clock before halftime, the crowd erupted into ear-splitting wails and cheers of Reece, Reece, Reece!
We sports fans weren’t a creative bunch, but we had enthusiasm.
Reece clapped hands and backs with his teammates then turned toward the stands and I knew he was coming for me.
My palms sweat against my pompoms.
It had been a week since I’d lost my cherry to the Prez of The Fallen MC.
A week of spending each night with him in his bed in a cabin he built with his own bare hands. When he’d told me that, I’d made him take off his shirt in the cold late November air and chop wood for me. I’d goaded him into it by saying I didn’t believe he’d do such a menial task himself, but really, what girl didn’t want to see her man sweaty and bare-chested chopping wood?
The cabin was more than that though. It was a chapter in the life of Zeus that I’d never known about, one that my little girl self wouldn’t have understood no matter how precocious I’d been.
It seemed my man had shit parents. Not shit like Benjamin and Phillipa with their neglect and superficiality. Shit parents like a dad who drank himself silly, couldn’t hold down a job and stole money from his mother who, on her bad days, beat her own son because she was so far past the end of her rope.
The fact that someone had beat on little boy Z made my gut churn like a violent sea and if he hadn’t assured me that they were already dead, I would have used my newly acquired gun skills to hunt them down and use them for target practice.
His uncle Crux had takin’ him in as much as a terminal bachelor VP of an outlaw motorcycle club could take a kid in. Crux, it turns out, was Eugene’s dad, which explained the similarity in size and gruff handsomeness between Zeus and the bar owner. When Zeus was old enough to move out of his parents’ house, Crux had given him the supplies and told a teenage Zeus Garro that the only way to make something out of yourself was to do it with your own bare hands.
So, Zeus had built himself a house and then he’d prospected The Fallen MC just like his uncle.
No one but Eugene and Zeus knew about the little cabin, so even though it was rustic in the extreme, three rooms with a bathroom that was seriously lacking in amenities, I loved spending my nights there.
But between spending late nights and early mornings with Zeus at the cabin, my last week of ballet classes before I’d have to stop for chemo, hanging out with Sammy and Mute, and studying for end of term finals, I hadn’t had time to see Reece.
Which meant that I’d been an ex-virgin for a week and my boyfriend still didn’t know it.
“Fucking epic, right?” he asked me with a wide, boyish grin as he scooped me into his arms and pressed a self-congratulatory kiss on my lips.
“Epic,” I breathed, because through my guilt I also felt something dangerous hit my radar.
Surreptitiously, I looked around the crowded gym over my shoulder as shivers chased themselves across my skin.
“Babe, be ready for a wild after-party when I bring this home for the team,” Reece panted in my ear before squeezing my hip and taking off after his team into the change rooms for a team chat.
I watched him go but that feeling of wrongness remained and before Cassidy, my cheer captain, could rally us for the halftime show, I ducked away into the crowds of people going to the washroom and concession.
I scanned the bleachers, trying to discern a face amid the sea of green and yellow colours supporting EBA and the red and white on Entrance Public High School’s side but nothing jumped out at me.
What I did notice was Mr. Warren.
He was partially concealed by the side of the stands, but I recognized him because he was the only man I knew who wore bow ties. I moved closer, rounding the corner of the benches just enough to see him talking to Talia McCutcheon, his teacher’s assistant from last year who went to the local college now, and Lily Foster, the girl in the year below me that had shown up just as I was leaving his classroom last week.
Curiosity burned through me even as the saying curiosity killed the cat reverberated in my head.
Still, I stalked closer.
It was too loud in the echo filled gymnasium to hear what the three of them were saying but both girls were curved on either side of Mr. Warren like brackets, listening quietly and so attentive.
I didn’t have the first clue what they could all be talking about.
Mr. Warren reached out to take Talia’s hands in his, pulling her close so that her body obscured my view. After a few seconds, she moved away with a deep blush on her pretty face and quickly fiddled with her purse before ducking her head and taking off into the crowd.
Lily lingered, looking pale and terrifyingly excited. Mr. Warren took his time with her, drawing her closer and closer until he was curled around her but not touching. She had her lime green backpack close to her chest like she didn’t want him to get closer and I was this close to interfering when she took off into the crowd.
Mr. Warren stood there for a minute, little smile of satisfaction on his face, his hands in his pockets and his weight on his heels. He looked like a man about to declare checkmate on his opponent and it sent a ripple of alarm down my spine.
I wondered if that was the man who had me seeing warning flares everywhere I turned.
Then I felt a hand on my arm and knew before the rough, wide fingers had even closed around me that the real danger had arrived.
Without turning me to face him, Zeus led me with a hand at my back and the other on my arm deep into the shadows Mr. Warren had just absented. Instead of stopping there though, he pushed me deeper, into the small gap between the metal siding of the bleachers and the wall of the gym. We entered the dark space and the noises of the court immediately receded.
Zeus had me flipped around and pressed against a pole before my eyes could adjust to the dark.
“You still seein’ that motherfucker?” he asked me in a voice that was lower than a rumble and so controlled, I knew I was in trouble.
“Erm, technically, I don’t know if we were ever dating in the first place,” I tried to explain. “The logistics of modern dating are kind of complicated.”
“You fuckin’ with me, little girl? You playin’ with a grown man for sport to learn a few things ’fore you go back to limp-ass teenage dick?”
“Zeus,” I called to him through the fury and pressed a hand against his AC/DC tee-covered chest, right where I knew his scar would be. “I didn’t break up with him because every spare moment this week I’ve spent with you and when I wasn’t with you, I was so busy getting everything done so that I could be with you that I did not have time to see him. Chill, Z.”
His body turned to stone beneath my hand. “You think a man sees his woman kissin’ another man, he needs to chill? I’ll remember that next time I got bitches hittin’ on me at the clubhouse, yeah?”
“Okay, that’s fair,” I admitted, because the idea of any of those women touching Zeus made me manic with violence.
“You’re damn right it is. Come to see my girls cheer and instead, I see H.R. wearin’ her uniform but suckin’ face with her trash boyfriend behind the gym. Then I come in ’ere thinking, at least my good girl will cheer me up, wearin’ that pretty little outfit, and doin’ the splits in a way that’ll remind me how I had ’er doin’ them naked around my cock just this mornin’, and instead I see her suckin’ face with another trash boyfriend. You see the fuckin’ theme here?”