Page 108 of No Saint
My lips brushed her cheek. “I was miserable without you.”
I spun her around again, this time stopping her so that we were face-to-face. I took her chin in my hand, studying her face like I could take a picture in my mind. Preserve it in case I everlost her again—which I refused to do. I would spend a lifetime chasing that girl if I had to. “I fucking love you, Jade.”
A soft smile shaped her lips. “Promise me we’ll never ‘take a break’ again.”
“I won’t let you. You’re stuck with me.”
“I love you, too, Wolf.”
And that feeling of warmth that spread through me, that was what men lived for. I pressed a kiss to her lips, my hands in her hair, while the music and the Alabama heat wrapped around us.
A paycheck, a house, the nicest car on the goddamn block didn’t mean shit if you didn’t have someone to share it with. Someone you reallywantedto share it with. Someone you would willingly sacrifice your life for because death would be kinder than living without them. Selfishly stupid? Maybe. But wasn’t that the definition of love?
I’d spent enough time with her, and way too much time without her, to know that she was the one goddamn thing in this life I couldn’t live without.
Twenty-Nine
Jade
Most Saturday nights, I was working, studying, or stealing. But on this particular night, I was standing in the middle of the crowded frat house, looking at the sign Cassie and I had painted earlier that read:Welcome to the Meat Market. It was supposed to piss off Rogue. Turned out, he didn’t care, and neither did the squealing girls in the corner of the room, ready to be said meat. They were all wearing Rogue’s auction T-shirts—if they could even be referred to as T-shirts. There was underboob everywhere. Sure, the Roller Burger uniform was bad, but at least I got paid to wear it.
My attention homed in on one particularly busty blonde. Megan.
Of course she’d happily sell herself off like hamburger meat close to expiring. She glared across the room at me, or more specifically, at Wolf’s arm wrapped around me. I glared right back, hoping she knew exactly who gave her car its new paint job. Slash my damn tires…
Wolf pressed his lips to my temple, and a familiar sense of warmth rushed through me. If I had to endure this shit, andher, then at least I had him. The whole auction thing wasalso made far more bearable, knowing that somewhere in this packed house, were women ready to take a steaming shit on this misogynistic bullshit.
The music cut off when Bellamy stepped onto a chair. “Welcome to Omega Dicksolon’s Charity Auction.”
“Save the jackass penguins!” Petey shouted.
“That’s right,” Bellamy said, pointing at his frat brother. “Bless the little bastards. And bless the lovely ladies volunteering their time to save the flightless birds.” Bellamy waved a hand over the first string of half-naked girls lined up to the side of the room.
“I think lovely might be an overstatement,” Drew mumbled beside me as the room erupted in cheers.
“Don’t be jealous, cuz.” Rogue nudged her. “You could always get a boob job.”
His laughter was cut off when Drew whacked him on the back of the head. “My boobs are not small, you rat-faced little pervert.”
I laughed into my beer, delighted that someone had physically assaulted Rogue the way I’d dreamed of for the past three weeks.
The two of them bickered while the auction continued in the background. Bellamy was listing all the merits of an overly peppy finance student when something smacked the side of his face. His palm went to his cheek, wiping what looked like blood from it, before a look of horror fell over his face.
“What the hell is that?” Wolf said, but before I could answer, all hell broke loose.
A group of women emerged from the crowd and hurled tampons through the air, all landing with a splat. Girls screamed, and the guys ran away like they were tossing live grenades, rather than bloody tampons. Assumably fake blood or pig’s blood, at the very least. I hoped.
“Hey, ho! Misogyny has to go!” the feminists we’d enlisted chanted. Most of them separated from the main group of girls in their auction T-shirts. One girl took off her shirt and shouted “free the nipple,” while another smeared the front of her frat shirt with “blood.” The rest of the auctionees scattered, leaving only Cassie standing amongst the carnage, a shit-eating grin on her face.
Rogue shouted something unintelligible before he shoved his way through the crowd, with Petey following.
“Jesus…” Wolf sighed, unwrapping his arm from me before he went to help wrangle the feminists out of the frat house.
“And to think, I thought this would be nothing but a bunch of slutty sorority girls embarrassing themselves,” Drew said, a grin covering her face.
“Aren’t you in a sorority?” She looked the part. Perfect hair, expensive clothes—I couldn’t work out why the hell she was at State.
“Might as well take advantage of my face fitting.” She shrugged. “Cheap room with a private bathroom that I don’t have to share…”
