Page 136 of Play With Me

“So what?” I say, kicking snow.

“Don’t be cute.”

“I’m always cute.”

“Do you want me to toss you in a snowdrift, or help you?”

“I never asked for—”

I’m interrupted by two giant gloved hands shoving me backward so hard I don’t have time to catch my balance. I land on my ass in the snowdrift beside me.

“What the fuck?”

“You didn’t answer,” he says. “You ready to actually talk now?”

Heat gathers in my chest. “You’re being a bully, you fuck!”

It’s always Eli who I got into wrestling matches with as a kid. Griff never had time for any of that. But now he’s looking at me with his lip curled up and all I feel is anger.

Not really at him, but he’s there for it.

“Fine, you want it?” I shove up from the snow and tackle him, my shoulder in his solar plexus. Maybe he wasn’t expecting that, or he was underestimating my weight—I’m not the skinny, wiry kid I was at twelve—but he lets out a low sound and stumbles backward.

I grin. “Not so tough now,” I grunt as I try to push him back. I don’t get far though. Griff digs his heels in and hooks his arm around my waist.

Then he flips me upside-fucking-down.

I land with a thud on my back. “The fuck?” I wheeze. I’m not a small dude. No one should be able to do that to me.

“You done?” Griff asks, his ugly mug hovering over me.

I growl and flip my legs up, surprising him. I think. I rush him, grabbing him around the waist and tugging down. Or at least, I try. He tips forward the tiniest bit, but the bastard doesn’t fall. He uses some weird move behind his back on my wrists, so I grunt out in pain, my arms suddenly useless. Then he knees my legs, and I find myself on my stomach.

He’s kicking my ass, frankly, and I should know better. But it only makes me madder. I spit out snow, getting up on all fours. “It’s cheating, you know. All your Jiu-jitsu shit.” Griff was into martial arts when he was a teenager. He doesn’t talk about it, but he obviously didn’t stop there. The guy is a trained fighter.

“You don’t know what Jiu-jitsu is.”

I stand up, lifting my fists in front of my face and hopping like a boxer. “I know what these are.”

“Put those down,” Griff says.

“Hell no.”

“I’m not going to hit you.”

“You should.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I fucking deserve it, that’s why!” I shout.

The words seem to surprise us both.

Griff’s expression changes, going from tight to kind of sad. “No, you don’t.”

“I do.” I’ve stopped bouncing, though my arms are still up. “I’ve fucked up everything in my goddamned life. No one else did that to me. It was all me.”

I swing at him, just because I’m mad at myself, and knowing he won’t let me hit him.

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