Never His Girl: Dark High School Bully Romance (Kings of Cypress Pointe Book 2)
Never His Girl: Chapter 34

BLUE

I rinse the last dish and place it on the rack to dry, just as the doorbell rings.

Shit. He’s early. I was supposed to have twenty more minutes

“I’ll get it,” Scar offers, bouncing toward the door.

Meanwhile, I’m smoothing both hands through my hair, trying to push it back into my braid. Doesn’t work even a little, but I do the best I can. It’s still jacked up from sweating during practice, seeing as how I rushed home to cook right after, thinking I’d have time to shower before West showed up. Looks like I cut it too close, though.

“It’s Shane. Can he stay and game with me?” Scars eyes are lit up while she awaits my answer.

A relieved breath leaves my mouth, realizing it isn’t West at the door.

“As long as you two stay in the living room.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s where the game is, isn’t it?”

When I shoot her a look, she flashes a playful grin. The innocent expression doesn’t stand a chance against the memory of walking in on the two of them doing much more than playing a video game.

“I was kidding, but can he stay a while? I don’t have homework,” she whines.

She does that puppy dog thing with her eyes and I cave.

“Living room only,” I reiterate, bringing her grin back.

“I’m gonna go shower,” I announce in a hurry, already heading down the hall toward the bathroom, snatching my shirt off.

As soon as the water’s hot, I lather up my hair and body, then rinse as quickly as possible. When I’m done, I barely towel myself off before throwing on a pair of pink sweats and black sports bra. I’m moisturizing my arms and face when the Chevelle pulls up beneath the streetlight, right behind my hooptie. The visual of the two together has me laughing at the difference between West’s ride and mine.

He steps out and my eyes are glued to him. Even with it being dark outside, I have a clear visual of him in all his unearthly perfection—light-colored jeans, stylishly distressed with a hole in the knee. Gray zip-up hoodie, white Nikes that match his belt and t-shirt. His breath puffs in the air as he climbs the porch, skipping steps with his long strides.

My heart pounds to the beat of his fist against the security door. I step away from where I just gawked at him through the window, remembering I hadn’t done anything with my hair. Scar’s chatting him up for a few seconds while I rake a comb through my hair. Then, I toss it to the nightstand right before West’s at my bedroom door.

I pretend to be casual and shit, grabbing my phone to scroll social media as I drop down onto my bed, like I’d been sitting here this way the whole time.

“It’s open,” I call out.

The knob turns and in he walks, looking like a damn Abercrombie model. He smiles. I melt.

Those green eyes look me up and down, probably because I never got around to putting on a shirt over my sports bra. He scans me with a slow gaze and I’m eyeing him too, remembering how hot and heavy things got between us this morning, before we had to stop for lack of protection.

Hopefully, he didn’t make that same mistake tonight. I mean, of course we have things to talk about first, and Scar is in the living room, but we can be quick and quiet about it.

Listen to me. Plotting on his sexy ass and he hasn’t even been here a full minute yet.

One corner of his mouth curves up with a smile and the room warms a little.

“That new?” he asks, pointing toward the pink jewel in my navel.

I glance down at it, too, shaking my head. “No, just one you haven’t seen before.”

His chest moves when he nods, drawing in a slow breath. I feel him struggling, knowing we have something serious to discuss, but he’s clearly as distracted as I am.

Focus, Blue. Talk now, fuck him later.

“Thanks for letting me stop by. I know you and Scar hang out at night,” he says.

I smile at him, still getting used to him having more layers than I realized.

“Scar has a full stomach, and she has Shane. Trust me, she’s probably forgotten I even exist.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Best friend,” I answer, leaving off the ‘with benefits’ that nearly follows that statement.

There better not be any more benefits. I’ll kill them both.

“Seems like a nice kid.”

I nod, agreeing. “They’ve known each other their whole lives. He’s Ricky’s brother,” I add, unsure of whether this is new news to him. When his brow quirks, I realize it is.

“Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

“You’re telling me,” I say with a laugh.

There’s also the part where both me and my sister lost our virginity to one of the Ruiz brothers, but I’m pretty sure West isn’t interested in hearing that. As it is, the faint smile he wore has all but faded now. Things always get a little tense between us when the topic of conversation is Ricky.

West takes a seat beside me on the bed and I draw both legs onto the mattress, sitting cross-legged.

Our short-lived conversation comes to an unexpected end, and it’s because we have yet to address the elephant in the room—whatever he came all the way to my side of town to discuss. I don’t want to push, but I kind of want to get it over and done with. If I’m being completely honest, my stomach is in knots thinking about it.

West flashes a look my way, and I sense dread within it. I imagine he’s anticipating this talk, too, but likely with a completely different set of emotions than those I’m carrying at the moment.

“We may as well get to the point,” he says with a sigh, and I don’t miss the nervous edge to his tone, either. It prompts me to draw in a deep breath, preparing for wherever this conversation is heading.

My gaze shifts left when he unzips his hoodie and shrugs out of it. I stare at the images that mark his forearms, choosing to keep my eyes focused there when he speaks.

“Makes the most sense to start at the beginning, I guess. Which is right around the time my brothers and I got recruited at end of sophomore year,” he shares. “Tons of colleges started hitting us up early, trying to get us to commit back in like… eighth grade and shit, hoping we’d consider them when the time came. Dane and Sterling were ready to decide as soon as the first offer came in, but I wanted to hold out. Getting into NCU was my dream and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Listening to him speak, it’s clear that he refused to settle, which doesn’t surprise me. If these past few months have taught me anything, it’s that West is never one to take anything less than exactly what he has his heart set on. If he wants something, he goes after it hardcore.

Relentlessly.

“So, as I’m sure you can imagine, once I got in, that shit kind of went to my head a little bit,” he adds with a laugh. “Summer before Junior year, right when I was turning seventeen, I basically spent the entire three months partying, drinking, and fu—”

His voice trails off then and he glances over at me, as if only now remembering who he’s talking to.

“And… fucking?” I add, pretty sure that’s the word he was about to use.

“…Yeah. Sorry. Guess I could’ve left that part out.”

Holding in a laugh, I keep to myself how there isn’t a single part of me that thought he was an angel before this conversation anyway.

“At any rate, the partying sort of carried over into the beginning of the school year. The heightened interest in me, my football career, turned me into kind of an addict for the attention. So, if there was a party somewhere, me, Dane, and Sterling were there.”

He breathes deep and I settle against the headboard, just listening.

“Some kid from Everly Prep was having a bunch of people over while his parents were out of town. Pandora posted the info. Then, we were in the car and on our way the next second.”

There’s this look in West’s eyes I’m not sure how to read. It’s thoughtful, yes, but there’s something else. My best guess is that it’s regret.

“I remember being in this really shitty mood,” he shares. “My dad and I got into it about something I can’t even remember now, but I just know I was desperate to get as far away from him as possible.”

He’s quiet for a second, and then meets my gaze before saying four words that—even in their simplicity—feel surprisingly heavy as they leave his mouth.

“There was a girl.”