Page 65 of Hating On Riot

“Leave me alone, Riot!” I cry out over my shoulder. “I need space from you.”

“If it’s the girl⁠—”

“It’s not,” I lie.

“I’ve already said she doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Which means she once took up space in his heart, and probably his bed too. We’ve been together for a week straight, but do I really know him?

Where does he go when I’m left alone in the house with the guys? Are the errands he’s running true errands, or is he getting a quick blowie from the coeds who ogle him during the team’s practices? Or maybe he’s so sexually frustrated that I’m not putting out due to our messy love triangle that he’s getting his something-something from a different girl?

“Eff off, Riot!” I run from him. After what seems like forever of running, I glance behind me. No one. He didn’t follow, which makes him even more guilty in my mind.

24

Riot

“What the fuck just happened, bruh?”

Cooper hands me my coffee. I take a long drag, then toss the cup into the trash can. Brooke is eyeing me from where I left her and her friends, in front of my truck. She bats her eyelashes, giving me that annoying come-hither look.

“You got something going on with that home wrecker?” He jerks his thumb toward Brooke.

“Home wrecker?” I hike my backpack higher on my shoulder, turn away from the determined set of her jaw and those predatory eyes, and book it to class. Coop follows alongside me.

“Yeah. She’s broken up many relationships over the years.”

“You know this how?”

“‘Cause she broke up mine. Destroyed some of the other guys on the team. She gets satisfaction out of it.” He jams his hands in his pants pockets and pulls his shoulders to his core. Why doesn’t he have a backpack? “Diabolical that one.”

“She might be, but she’s helped me pass more than a few of my classes. That’s what she meant when she asked why I haven’t been to her place.”

“Then tell Arie.”

“I can’t.” Arie will think less of me for needing help getting through my classes. Then I’ll have to tell her the embarrassing, defeating reason I stuck around DU instead of chasing my dream. “Tell Hope you and Arie are fake dating. I want Arie, day and night. She feels the same.”

“Doesn’t look like it when she stormed off.”

I blow out a breath. “Let me handle my own business, but this agreement of ours, we gotta call it off.”

“Not yet.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because what happened with Hope isn’t like what happened with you and Arie, okay?”

Aware of eyes on us, I grab him by the collar and yank him behind a large tree in front of the health and science building.

“Explain,” I grind out through my gnashed teeth. “It’s time we end our agreement so we can all get our happily-ever-afters.”

He pries my fingers from his shirt. “Class starts in ten minutes.”

“Don’t give a fuck.” I wait with my arms crossed.

He runs his fingers through his hair. “Hope and I dated senior year. She wasn’t closed off, like Arie was when we first met. She went through shit with her parents. It was a nasty divorce. She’s an only child, and once she trusted someone who would listen, she opened like a dam. Then she wanted me to comfort her, but I couldn’t. I have an aversion to touch,” he explains quickly, as if he needs to get everything off his chest before the words crawl back into their dark hole.

He lowers himself to the ground and clutches his head. I join him, stretching my long legs. Poor guy. He needs someone to talk to, other than Arie, like, badly. The dude needs another dude to run his mouth off to, and I’ll be that guy. Arie’s best friend will be my friend too. She loves him, and I can accept that.