Page 85 of Never Will I Ever

“Colin never found out, actually. I didn’t turn the kid in.”

From the way his brows arch imperceptibly, he’s surprised by my admission. Which makes all the sense in the world considering what happened a couple months ago. Me…snitching on him.

I try not to focus too much on the term he used, but it still stings.

I don’t regret doing the right thing by Aspen and Keene, but I’d be remiss to think that the entire situation isn’t a lot more nuanced than I originally thought.

Part of me wishes I never would’ve turned him in, knowing him the way I do now. Knowing the loneliness and isolation he was experiencing. The fear of finally being vulnerable with someone, of saying the thing that’s been hardest to admit, and worrying that those secrets aren’t safe after all.

I can’t excuse what he did. But damn if I don’t hate knowing all of that now. Knowing that, if he’d shared those things with me when he needed someone to hear him the most, he wouldn’t have felt all those things.

But the reality is, if everything didn’t happen exactly as it did, he wouldn’t have been expelled. He wouldn’t have come to work here for the summer. We wouldn’t be where we are right now, in my bed.

I never would’ve seen this side of him.

“Look at you, aiding and abetting underage stoners.”

“Well, does that make me rebellious enough for you?” I ask jokingly, putting forth my best effort to shove down the guilty feeling welling inside of me. “If it helps, there were multiple joints, so it’s not like it was a one-and-done thing.”

“Definitely not,” he replies, not missing a beat. “Plus, we both agreed that it’s not really breaking in if you have a key.”

A smile tugs at my lips, and when he meets my gaze, a matching one spreads across his face. There’s something intimate about sharing the inside joke with him, even if no oneelse is around to be on the outside of it.

“Correct,” I concede, still grinning. “But technically, I don’t have a key. I just know where they keep the spare.”

His eyes take on a devious glimmer, and it doesn’t take a genius to know the request that’s about to leave his lips.

“I think you should show me.”

A sharp laugh leaves me, the wordsnot a chanceon the tip of my tongue, only for them to die there when Avery grinds his hips down into mine. The ridge of his erection against my own thickening cock quickly has me gasping instead, making it impossible to form a coherent thought, let alone argue with him.

Avery runs his lips over the column of my throat in a whisper of a kiss before trailing them along my jaw.

“If you want me to believe you’re as much of a rebel as you make yourself out to be, you’ve gotta be willing to back it up,” he murmurs in my ear. “Take a walk on the wild side with me.”

I let out a low moan when he rolls his hips down into me.

“If you think I’m gonna do a damn thing right now other than pin you to the mattress below me, you’ve got another thing coming.”

His low, seductive chuckle floats over my skin before he presses his lips to my thundering pulse. “I think you’re in the wrong position to make those kinds of statements.”

“Maybe, but I can change that in an instant.”

To prove my point, I slide my hands to his hips. I plan to use the element of surprise to my advantage and flip us until his back lands against the mattress with a soft thud. But clearly I haven’t learned to not underestimate Avery, because he’s reversing our positions yet again and pinning my hands to my sides before I have the chance to so much as gloat.

Shit.

A triumphant smirk appears, matching the victorious glint in his eyes, when he peels his body away from mine to rise off thebed.

“What kind of game are you trying to play?” I rasp, glaring at him from the mattress.

“One called Put Up or Shut Up, LaMothe.” He shrugs into his hoodie and motions toward the door. “Now, c’mon. Time to go.”

Slightly annoyed and painfully turned on, I climb off the bed and adjust myself behind my zipper. I feel Avery watching me, and when I glance up, I find him aiming another self-satisfied smirk at me.

Oh, fuck that.

“You’re gonna pay for this,” I murmur, my voice low and deadly. “And mark my words, baby, it’ll be heaven and hell all wrapped in one.”

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