Bradford Brawler (Bradford Bastard 2)

“Don’t babe me, Logan Morgan. You’ve been avoiding me again. Just when I think we're all good, you go and fuck it up again. If you want to break up with me, just say that. Stop being such a pussy about it.”

Logan glares back at her. “Tough shit because I don’t want to break up with you.”

“Good,” she snaps back at him. “Because I don’t want you to break up with me either.”

“Good.”

Chanel groans in frustration, clenching her jaw. “You’re impossible,” she spits. “I can’t stand you.”

“Wonderful, because I can’t stand your bitch ass either.”

“Good,” she spits.

Logan gives her a condescending grin, irritating the shit out of her. “Good.”

Chanel’s frustration reaches a whole new level, and she balls her hands into tight fists, more than ready to drop his ass, but instead, she turns on her heel and storms away, leaving Logan staring after her with a dopey-ass grin across his face. “Fuck, she’s incredible,” he says, completely amazed by the creature otherwise known as Chanel.

I shake my head, unable to understand their twisted relationship. “You two are giving me whiplash.”

“I know,” Logan says. “But tonight, when I’m all alone and she’s refusing to text me back, I’m going to feel like an asshole and go over to her place, and then we’re going to have the most vigorous make up sex you could ever imagine. It’s such a fucking rush.”

“Okay,” Tanner says, cutting him off before he can give us any of the sordid details. “Did you get what you were looking for?”

Logan holds out his phone to Tanner. “Why do you doubt me?” he questions. “I always come through with the goods.”

Tanner immediately takes the phone and unlocks the screen before glancing over it, his brows furrowed in confusion before turning the screen toward me. “Do you know who this is?”

I look over it, finding a picture of one of the assholes I used to go to school with. “That’s Roxten Hargrove. He’s one of Colby’s best friends and a fucking pig at that too. He’s on the football team, but I don’t think he’s very good, not like you guys. Why? Did he do something to piss you off?”

“You could say that,” Tanner scoffs. “This is the asshole who sent that text last week.”

My eyes bug out of my head, glancing over the image of Roxten again. “No shit,” I say, not in the least surprised. I’d wondered if the text had come from one of Colby’s friends, and the moment I did, Roxten was the first to come to mind. “I should have known. The asshole is all talk, but when it comes down to it, he’s a sheep. He doesn’t have the balls to act on anything he says.”

Tanner studies his image again before pressing his lips into a hard line. “I’m still not taking the risk,” he says. “We’re up against Hope Falls next week, so I’ll be more than happy to have a quiet word with the guy when I see him.”

My heart lurches in my chest, squeezing with unease. “What are you going to do?”

Tanner grins wide as Riley smirks back at me, his gaze darkening with something sinister that puts me on edge. “Nothing that he doesn’t deserve.”

The end of the day is creeping closer and closer, and I can't get out of this class soon enough. The tension in the room is so thick it’s going to suffocate me. Arizona sits on my left as Jax takes up prime position on my right. Neither of them has uttered a word to each other since the party, and I think Jax is finally starting to figure out that something has shifted between them. My only question is, how the fuck did I get stuck sitting between them?

My gaze snaps up to the clock. Twelve minutes left.

Fuck my life.

As we take notes, I can’t help but glance through the window, my eyes connecting with Tanner’s in the adjacent class, separated by nothing more than a row of poorly cleaned windows.

The fucker rolls his tongue over his bottom lip, his eyes darkening as a flood of heat blooms deep in my core, forcing me to clench my thighs. The asshole. He knows exactly what he’s been doing because he’s been doing it for the past forty-five minutes.

“Oi,” Jax says, stealing my attention away from Tanner as he leans into my shoulder, pretending to take down his notes. “Would you stop trying to eye fuck Tanner and concentrate on the issue at hand? Ari’s avoiding me. What’s up with her? Is she acting weird to you too, or is it just me? Because I invited her over last night to … you know, and she left me hanging. She never leaves me hanging. Ari is always down to fuck. I didn’t know what to do. I had to take care of business by myself.”