ing married to one of the guys, but everybody loved Paige. If me, Jax, Knight, LJ, and the other guys fought for her, she’d get in. I frowned. “You stopped coming to these things with me, but you didn’t have to.”
And I never got that. We went to so many of these Court events together when she first moved here and we became friends. That first one had been something, the two of us getting into all kinds of shit and working my dad’s nerves. He got on me pretty bad that night, but for the first time, I hadn’t cared. I hadn’t been… scared.
Paige made me different, better, and I didn’t care about all the shit with my dad. It made it all a lot easier to deal with.
Paige actually lowered her cell phone after what I said, and I figured she’d say something like she always did, how the Court was a cult or some other shit like that.
“Paige?” I questioned. Paige Lindquist was never one to lack for words, but she was now.
She shrugged, passive about it. “I just don’t like going.”
“You just don’t like going,” I parroted. I tossed my dress shirt at her, and she caught it easily, one of the best on the lacrosse team with me.
She balled it up. “Things just got weird that last time we went, with one of the guys there?” She rolled her eyes. “He got handsy, and it freaked me out, I guess.”
I froze, seeing nothing but red.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, coming over. “Who got handsy with you?”
We’d literally been all of twelve the last time the pair of us went to one of these things together, so if someone came after her, touched her…
“Oh, bro down, caveman. It’s not a big deal.”
“Paige,” I gritted. “Who? Did someone touch you?”
“No, I didn’t let him,” she said, sitting up and looking like she accomplished something. “And I’m not telling you who because you’ll go make a thing of it.”
“You’re damn right I’ll make it a thing. If some… sick bastard was trying to touch a kid, then yeah, I’m going to make a thing of it.”
She eyed me. “It wasn’t like that. Anyway, I handled myself. Kicked him right in his balls.”
I didn’t like how she was passing this off, nor how I didn’t know about it for literally four fucking years. I sat on the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her head titled. “You wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. Anyway, I’m good. So please. Stop.”
She pushed me, and I grabbed her. “Paige…”
“You know what? I’m thinking I’m going to go to this party of yours,” she said, doing what she did best. She averted anything from herself, always protecting, protecting me, and had since we were kids. She didn’t know it, but she always acted like a buffer for me with my dad. Her very presence in my life frustrated the shit out of him, and he gave up on me. He stopped trying to force me to do things and washed his hands. Both the mental and sometimes physical burden of him stopped. He just stopped caring, and I had too, the need to please and try to earn my dad’s forgiveness from what happened so many years ago gone. I’d given up on him too, both of us done with each other.
That could be the greatest gift this girl on my bed ever gave me, and because of that, I let this go, but only for the time being. We’d be talking about this again, but I knew how she was. I couldn’t push Paige too hard or she reverted. She ran. She kept playing on her phone, and I stood, switching out my shoes.
“One second,” she said, taking more than a sec. She stuck her tongue out at me when I eyed her. “Just a second.”
“It’s been more than a damn second.” I took the phone from her. “Come on. We going?”
She took it back. “Chill the fuck down. My sister’s going on some date with a guy, and I’m trying to talk her down off a cliff about what to wear. It’s the first since that tool Dean.”
Paige didn’t talk a lot about her sister or really, hardly any personal stuff, but that thing with Dean I’d heard about. She hadn’t said much about that either, but I knew the guy hurt her sister in some way.
Paige thrust her phone at me. “Tell her the pink one looks the best. I need to go to the bathroom and change my tampon.”
I made a face again, another one of the joys of having a female best friend. I sat on the bed, but before doing what she told me to I clicked on the picture. Her sister, December, wore a pink dress, one that hugged her hips and made her curves superior to probably ninety percent of the girls I’d screwed in our junior class, and I’d screwed a lot of them. Paige was right. I was a complete ho and un-the-fuck-ashamed.
I scrolled to the next picture, her sister in a black dress this time and completely gorgeous. I’d never tell Paige that. It’d probably freak her out and make her hit me or something.
“The black one’s best,” I texted to her sister, smiling at how her eyes complemented it. She had this long dark hair, thick and perfect with how it fell across her shoulders. It also worked well with the color of the dress, amazingly well. I smiled again. “You look beautiful.”
Honest about that, I put the phone down, and when Paige returned, she picked up her cell. After reading what I sent her sister, she threw a pillow at me. “I said to tell her the pink one.”