Page 22 of No Saint
“Nice to know you’ve become the stereotype.” She took the notebook out of the bag and headed to the dining room. “The football player who doesn’t study and banks their entire future on getting drafted.” That comment bled through me like a slow poison, tugging at every ounce of failure I already felt. Yeah, I couldn’t take this…I paused the game.
“Man,” Bellamy groaned. “I was just about to slit his jugular!”
“Give me a minute.” I headed into the kitchen, where Rogue was harassing Cassie while she cleaned.
A pile of dishes was stacked on the draining board. Cassie wiped water from the countertop before tossing the paper towel at Rogue’s chest with a wet splat.
“Oh, you’re done?” Rogue asked, making Cassie’s eye twitch. Probably because he wasn’t rising to her antics. “Good. Now you can go to the store and pick up the list I sent you.”
Her nostrils flared. A psychotic glaze filled her eyes as she begrudgingly took her phone from her pocket. “Toilet paper, pizzas, and Magnum condoms.” She rolled her eyes. “Bless your delusions.”
“Just go get the stuff.” He fished a wad of cash from his pocket, then tossed it at Cassie like a cheap hooker. “I want a receipt and exact change.”
If it were possible for steam to come out of someone’s ears, a massive plume would have been blowing out of Cassie’s rightabout then. I’d once seen her take a pitcher of iced tea and dump it over his head because he hadn’t told her thank you for heating up his Hot Pocket. Honestly, I found their toxic merry-go-round of a relationship fully entertaining.
I pulled the joint from behind my ear and held it up. “Wanna smoke?”
He didn’t answer, just took the weed from me and went to the back door. I followed. The second the door slammed shut behind us, something—most likely a plate—shattered against it.
“Seriously, dude,” I said, descending the rickety steps. “You’re the one who needs to worry about being murdered.” Grass crunched under my feet. “Not me.”
“Megan’scrazy. Cassie just has a temper.”
And tempers were what got people killed…
I sank into one of the lawn chairs I had taken from Dad’s trailer just as I heard the front door slam. “Youreallythink keeping them here for a month is a good idea?”
“It’s not a good idea. It’s a great idea.” The lighter flicked, and the pungent scent of weed drifted in front of my face. “Look, I know it’s petty. Slightly misogynistic…” An engine revved on the street—probably Cassie—and Rogue looked as happy as a pig in shit. “But is it worth it?” His grin widened when the squeal of tires sounded. “Yes.”
Of course it was worth it to him. He lived to get Cassie all riled up.
“And we have free labor,” he said, the nylon of the other chair creaking when he took a seat beside me. “I mean, come on. Do you have any idea how much a maid costs?”
“Do I look like the kind of guy who would?”
“They’re like forty bucks an hour. Which, at say, four hours a day, seven days a week over the course of a month, adds up to about four thousand eight hundred bucks. Per girl.” He lifted the joint to his lips.
Who the fuck had that kind of money? I took in Rogue’s Prada shirt and Balenciaga shoes. Assholes like him.
“We’re making out like bandits.”
Regardless of how much a housekeeper would cost or how much he enjoyed this shitshow, I still had a problem. “Look,” I wiped a smudge of ash from the plastic arm of the chair. God, I hated that I was about to admit this. “I have a bit of a situation…”
Lifting a brow, he passed over the joint. “Nothing a dose of antibiotics can’t fix.”
“I don’t have an STD, you idiot.”
“And you call yourself a football player…”
I stared at the smoldering tip of the joint. I didn’t want to admit to him that Jade being here was throwing me for a loop. I should have been able to ignore her the same way she’d ignored me for almost two years, but a few hours into her sentence, I couldn’t even focus on a damn video game.
“Oh, shit, bro.Noo…” I could feel him staring at me. “You still have a thing for Stabby McStabberson?”
“It’s not that.” Then what was it? “Her being here is—it’s fucking with my head.” A stream of smoke drifted into the daylight.
“It’s been three hours.”
“Exactly.”
