Page 3 of Pucking My Bad Boy Enemy

"Relax, Margot." He salutes me with his hand and dissolves back into the noise like the last few minutes never happened.

Like I never happened.

There's my answer. Beginning, middle, and the end.

I don't cry in the house. I make it to my car in the driveway,

December slicing through my thin sleeves, goosebumps chasing the freckles down my arms, and I grip the wheel and I just sit there.

He only wants me when he's too far gone to mean it. Sober Jax high-fives me and asks how school's treating me. Drunk Jax kisses me and calls it nothing.

Knuckles rap the window. Cade, breath fogging the glass, big-brother radar screaming.

"Hey. What happened?" His jaw goes to granite. "Did something happen in there? Tell me who, I’ll kill them."

Every cell I own wants to say yes. Hand my brother the truth and let him go off like a bottle rocket on my behalf.

Then I'd have to say the rest of it out loud, that I wanted it, that I've wanted it since before I had the words for it, and I will not survive Cade knowing how far gone I am for his best friend.

"Nothing." I dig a smile up from somewhere deep and unconvincing. "Too loud in there. I'm going home."

He doesn't buy a single syllable. He lets it go anyway, because that's the treaty between us, and he moves away watching me back out of the driveway.

I make myself a promise on the drive home. Not a wish. Wishes are for girls who sit and wait. I have a plan.

College, a career, a whole life that has nothing to do with standing at the edge of a party waiting for a boy to notice I exist. I'm going to build myself into someone he has to see.

And one day, when I'm ready, I'm coming back for Jax. The real thing. Not the drunk version of him who forgets women by breakfast.

The sober one, the one who has to hold my eyes and mean every word, with nothing to hide behind.

One day he's going to want me.

It’ll take years. But I’ll walk back into his world with a lanyard, a title, and a plan.

He won't see me coming.

Chapter 1: Margot

Four years later

"Before you yell at me, I come bearing gifts, and it's the good coffee, not the locker room sludge."

Jax fills my office doorway, looking all kinds of hot.

He's holding a paper cup in each hand and not one ounce of remorse on his face.

I snap my eyes back to my monitor. Writing an apology the media team will need to approve and it must be ready by noon for the press conference.

"I'm not going to yell." My typing doesn't slow. "Yelling implies I expected better."

"Ouch." He sets a cup on my desk. The smell reaches me before I can brace for it, oat milk and a double espresso shot, my favorite drink.

"She wounds me, and it isn't even 9am."

"You dropped your gloves in the handshake line." I make the mistake of looking up. Oh my gosh he's smoking hot this morning. Keep it professional, girl.

"There's a clip. It has four million views. Somebody set it to opera. There's a meme!"