The Big Boys' League: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Troubled Playthings 3)

“Dad, did you buy all these today?” When I crouched to straighten up the stack, some of the books still shrinkwrapped, I was unfortunate enough to get a glimpse of some of the prices. Good content or not, we could not afford that kind of stuff.

“Oh, your young friend Axel gave me a bit of an advance to help me with looking into some of these technologies he’s interested in exploring.”

“An advance… on what?” I finally made my way into the lounge. There was Dad, with a cup of coffee and a bowl of chips and zero of his new books.

“I can see more or less where you’re going, Aileen, and you need to stop it. No, your dad has not ‘spent all his salary on nonsense’.” He was quoting something I’d once said to Marcia in a fit of extreme aggravation with surprising accuracy given he could rarely remember to pick up extra tampons for me on time despite that requirement being depressingly regular. “I’m to get an allowance for research purposes. Obviously I’m not up on everything that’s out there at the moment; nobody can be expected to manage that. So I need to invest early.”

I hadn’t been able to come to terms with Axel having financial control over my dad enough yet to be ready to see the evidence of that. “You should have asked me, Dad, I have some textbooks that might be helpful.”

“These aren’t schoolbooks, Aileen.” Never mind I had one of the exact same books from last year. “Honestly, I’m a little disappointed in you. I feel like you’ve been trying to cast a shade over this arrangement from the beginning, and I don’t understand it. Is this jealousy?”

“Jealousy… over what?”

Dad leaned back in his chair and said, “You tell me, Aileen,” like that was some super-zinger.

“I’m not exactly worried you’re going to sleep with him or anything.”

“And I’m not bothered if you do,” Dad retorted. “Because that’s part of the issue, isn’t it? You think I’m going to go off at you for whatever’s going on between you two. Well, you’re a grown woman now, your personal life is your business.”

I was stuck between horror that he’d noticed a weird vibe between us (as if the photo hadn’t screamed ‘weird vibe’ in six different languages) and horror that he’d found some way to interpret it as that kind of connection.

Dad laughed. “I was at your stage of life once too, Aileen. I know what it looks like… and after coming through it I’m still here, bad decisions and all. Not that I’m saying you’re making any right now, I guess what I’m trying to tell you is you shouldn’t worry too much. Other people might be watching you closely to see if you trip up, but I’m not. I have complete confidence in you.”

Sometimes, he could even say exactly the right thing. It made my heart so soft, I wanted to confide in him. Tell him what was really going on and sit back to suck my thumb while he fixed it.

But there was nothing he could do to fix it that wouldn’t make our lives worse. So I had to keep my mouth shut.

I turned to head to my room. I could do with a lie down. “Just give me a yell if you need any help with those books, Dad.”

He threw a chip at me.

Chapter Twelve

School formal season was probably supposed to be the time all a girl’s remaining girlhood dreams came true. I don’t know, I don’t watch those sorts of movies.

For me, all my worst nightmares were coming true.

Dad opened up a couple of his new books and spent some time looking at the pictures, then after a few days of getting high, which he explained was ‘part of his process’, he went out and brought home a 3D printer. He spent one entire sleepless night on that and was still in his workshop with it when I got up the next morning, glaring at it in place of actually doing something useful with it. Bits of twisted and sometimes burned plastic were everywhere.

That afternoon when I was able to check on him again, he’d draped a few towels over the offending piece of machinery, and he wouldn’t talk about it any more.

The Saturday after the printer disaster, Axel was scheduled to come to our house ‘to see what progress was being made’. I would have loved to have the excuse of work to keep me well out of the area, but my boss was only giving me one shift a week at the moment and calling it a favour ‘because exam season is so tough’. Since everyone had stopped speaking to me properly I had plenty of damn time to study. Well, at least I would graduate soon and then I was going to take my reliable work history to a nice job with fixed hours. I was working on an application to the local university too, I had my eye on law, but I probably wouldn’t be able to take that up assuming I even got an offer. I’d heard it was hard work, and I already had too much hard work at home. If I even still had a home by the end of the year.

With no money to be made that day, I didn’t think I’d be able to enjoy going out for fun—Callie was working anyway and Tamara was busy with her sister and Steven, and who else would I even—

Then I realised there was one person who might be willing to spend some time with me, assuming he could forgive me for ditching him after he’d stuck his neck out for me in a major way. And at the moment, I could meet up with him and there was nothing Axel could do about it.

Dodging Dad skipping around clearing things out of his workshop like he was preparing the area for a visiting girlfriend, I pulled out my phone and started typing an instant message to Matt. At least with him there was a bit of message history from last year, when we’d been working on a group project and trying to coordinate homework efforts.

Hey. I’m sorry I kind of ditched you when you were trying to help me before.

The response came back within a couple of minutes. It’s okay. I understand, more than most I think.

Can we meet up and talk about it some more?

My heart was really pounding after I sent that message. It was a little embarrassing, like I felt there was some romantic subtext or something. I was mostly afraid he would think I was using him now there was nobody else for me to spend my time with… because honestly, what else would you call this?

Is Axel going to be at your house today?