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

“Aileen, it’s not what it looks like.” Axel might know how to drive a hard bargain, but when he was on the back foot chances were he sounded like an idiot. “I record interactions all the time, just… just in case. You never…”

He didn’t want to finish, but I was happy to do what was needed. “You never know whether you might get something really good to use as blackmail material, huh? I’m not sure you’re going to have any luck this time, I mean pretty much everyone in the world already knows something is going on between us, now they’ll just have more evocative audio than you could mock up without my assistance.”

“I wasn’t planning on using any of this to blackmail you, Aileen, I swear.” It was coming out weak, more stilted than if he had tried to mock up a recording of an intimate scene between us. I wished I’d had the sense not to listen to that thing. The sound of his voice against mine, high-pitched and desperate, was going to screw with my sleep for a long time to come, I knew it. “I… I don’t know why I did it, I just always do when there’s a private conversation. It’s not like I can even do anything with it, you know it’s pretty illegal. I just…”

“I get it, Axel, really. You don’t trust anyone, you try to make sure you have something to protect you. Maybe I would too, in your position. But the two of us coming in here together… did you really think you were going to need protection from that? You’ve always had all the power since you started messing with me. I’ve just been doing whatever I needed to barely hold my own.”

“I’m sorry, Aileen.” The shocking thing was he actually sounded sincere, quite stricken. “I didn’t think. It was just in the moment.”

It was too much to have gone from that scene of total intimacy, total trust, into this. “I’d better get out of here. The bus takes a while to get here, never mind the twists and turns of the route.”

Axel stepped forward. “I’ll drive you—”

“No thanks. I’d just like you to leave me alone, please.”

I strode past him and opened the door for myself, and he had the decency to refrain from stopping me, at least. The only thing I knew was that I needed to be away from him to clear my thoughts.

I staggered down the long driveway from his house with a powerful awareness that this was not going to be okay. How could it be? I’d given him power over my life now. He’d taken the one thing that mattered to my dad, and if he wanted he could require just about anything of me to keep Dad from needing to realise what he’d given up. If he wanted me back there the next weekend, doing everything we’d just been doing, could I really afford to refuse? I’d wanted to give Dad a way to stay in the boys’ lives no matter where Marcia’s life took her—this was that way.

Actually I was okay with all of that. The one thing I’d realised about life, that Dad never had, was that sometimes you had to do what you had to do to get what you wanted out of it. I could think of many worse things to be doing than getting intimately involved with Axel—the way he’d touched me was still making my head spin, even as the hurt from this betrayal was numbing my limb

s. I wasn’t likely to have another partner any time soon, either, not with Dad to chase after… and if I did find someone by chance, I could get him to knock Axel’s block off for me.

That thought made me giggle, and then I stopped on the street, laughing harder and harder until tears filled my eyes that were definitely not joyful. The funniest part of it all, the most pathetic part, was that I wanted Axel to catch up with me while I was stopped there. I wanted him to come running after me with an explanation for what he had done. Even though I knew there was no explanation that could satisfy me. Axel was just too caught up in his suspicions and manipulations, he couldn’t stop for one minute to trust someone else even when I had never been anything but straightforward with him.

“Aileen?” It was Matt coming towards me. I tried to wipe my tears away as he drew near, but there was no keeping him from seeing. He tried to put an arm over me, then seemed to realise just how little I was wearing and settled for a hand on my shoulder. “What’s happened? Is it…”

“I didn’t know,” I gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me? No, I’m sorry, I realise it isn’t mine to know.”

Matt was as obviously bewildered as any guy who was probably resigned enough to the reality of his situation he didn’t think about it every minute of the day any more. “Tell you what? Do you need to come sit down, have some water?”

“I’m sorry if you never meant for me to know. I’m talking about with your dad and Axel’s mum, together…”

Matt scowled at me like academic-type guys do when you say something they can’t work their logic through, but then he started to work it out. “They… no. They didn’t, they never. I didn’t—Someone would have told me.”

“Not necessarily,” I said, almost wanting to apologise for mentioning it but having a sense he wouldn’t be able to take my regret or sympathy. How had he been left clueless for so long? “Sometimes people only say what they think you can stand.”

Matt turned back to his suburban mansion, shaking like there were ghosts or monsters or both there. “I need to… I have to ask her, Aileen, will you come with me?”

I was in so deep at that point I didn’t think I could really say no. That was how I ended up in the middle of a very uncomfortable and emotional discussion between Matt and his mother, in which she apologised for just about everything except having him, which was the only thing on the list she would have been at all responsible for. And there was me alongside all the tears and assurances, in my flimsy little sundress looking exactly like I’d been strategising to give Axel Bennett a stiffy—which, of course, was exactly what I’d been trying to do.

It went on for so long without a convenient moment for me to slip out I ran out of buses, and had to call Dad to get in the car to grab me. I was always nervous about that, because he was a crap driver and liable to get himself pulled over for drug testing and come up with weed in his system. But for once I felt happy to have him there when he stepped into the house, because he looked just as dismayed as I felt about the free-flowing emotion in the Ehrlich household. I guessed Matt’s poor mother was stuck with her ex’s name now, like my mother and Tamara’s. It must be like he was pissing on her all over again every time she had to write her name down on a form or answer to it over the phone. Why did men have to be like that?

When we finally managed to excuse ourselves and I was walking to our car alongside Dad, I couldn’t help grabbing his ear to yank his head down closer and kissing him loudly on the cheek.

He pulled away from me, grimacing. “What’s that for? Don’t tell me you have to confess you’re pregnant or something.”

“I don’t think anything I’ve been doing yet today can result in that.” Dad gave me this look like he’d definitely noticed what I was wearing, but he didn’t say anything because Dad didn’t care about claiming me or my sexuality any more than he had cared about claiming his invention.

For all his faults, thank goodness I’d grown up with him instead of with some messed-up pre-divorce parents in this world of high-flyers who would sell out the people they were supposed to value most for a better deal. I didn’t belong in that world… and that was why I needed to make sure I stayed far away from Axel.

Chapter Fifteen: Axel

I avoided being seen with Matt during school hours most of the time and he’d accepted that without questioning why, so when I saw him striding towards me when I was in the midst of my usual group, I knew I was in for it.

I took a few steps forward to meet him, and had to duck a punch while I was still walking.

“Matt, what the fuck?” I swerved left, then right.