“Wait. Hold on,” I say, rewinding and skipping over the fact that Rocko is a pathetic excuse for a boyfriend while secretly hoping he never inserts himself back in her life. I’d prefer she dealt with the heartache of him ditching her than to have him screw her over and really hurt her. “Did you never sleep with Rocko?”
“No. I’d only had one date with him before Noah demanded we go on that awful camping trip, and then the crash pretty much happened right after that.”
“Come on,” I say. “The camping trip wasn’t awful. I thought it was good. We got a lot of shit out in the open and everyone was able to move past all the shit.”
Tully rolls her eyes. “I see how you could say that,” she grumbles. “The spotlight wasn’t on you. You just got to sit back and watch the disaster unfold before you while you toasted fucking marshmallows. I was the one who offered my heart up to the boys like a damn punching bag and watched them stomp all over it.”
“That is the worst metaphor for what actually happened,” I tell her.
Tully gives me a sarcastic grin. “I’m surprised you know what a metaphor is.”
“You’d be surprised what you can learn when you stop spending your afternoons bitching about stupid shit and concentrate on your schoolwork,” I tell her, indicating to the piles of work in front of me that I’ve been trying to get done for the past two hours.
Aiden gives me a funny look and I snap at him. “What?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “You’re surprising me. I didn’t have you pegged as a nerd.”
“I’m not a nerd,” I defend. “The furthest thing from it.”
He raises a brow in response. “Could have fooled me.”
Tully laughs. “No, really. She’s only got all this work because she needs to catch up on her grades, otherwise, she can’t graduate and get into college.”
“Ahh, you see, that sounds right to me.”
I roll my eyes and drop my face back into my textbook and try to get back on track as Tully and Aiden work on getting to know one another. Before I know it, Tully’s jar of Nutella is practically licked clean and the two of them are curled on her bed watching a movie as I finish off yet another paper.
“Fuck yeah,” I cheer, throwing myself to my feet. “I thought I was never going to get through that.”
“Boo. Down in front,” Tully yells out.
I do my happy dance right in front of their movie, not giving a shit that I’m in the way. Besides, I have a feeling both of the idiots have already seen ‘Transformers’ more than the acceptable amount of times. “Hell yeah. I’m fucking awesome.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get out of the way.”
The door of Tully’s room swings open and before I know it, a grinning tatted up bad boy is standing right before me, grinning at me and making my knees go weak. “What are we celebrating?” he questions walking into the room making me wonder when the hell he got home. After all, Anton stole him again this afternoon.
I go to respond when Noah’s eyes swivel around to check on his sister, just as they always do when he takes in the very built guy lying beside her with his arm tucked firmly around her. “What the fuck is this?” he roars, racing forward and making Aiden spring out of bed, somehow managing not to jostle Tully in the process.
“Calm down,” Tully groans. “It’s not what you think.”
“I come home to find some random guy in your bed and you have the nerve to tell me it’s not what I think. His arm was around you. He was two seconds from trying to fuck my girl at lunch and now he’s moving in on my twin fucking sister.”
“Dude,” Aiden cuts in.
Noah isn’t having it. “Don’t fucking ‘dude’ me. Who the fuck are you and why are you inserting yourself into our lives? Is this some game Spencer is playing to get at us?”
Aiden looks momentarily confused but I ignore it. We can deal with that later. Right now, Noah is looking at us in horror and acting as though we’re attempting to replace Rivers in our pack, and that’s simply not the case. We’re just hanging out with a new friend, a friend who’s not a threat to any of us. Well, I guess he’s sort of a threat to Noah if you consider the fact that he probably wants to do unspeakable things to him, things that I simply won’t allow to fly.
Aiden turns to me before quickly glancing across to Tully, silently begging for help. “Don’t fucking look at them,” Noah spits. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Noah. Stop,” Tully yells, sitting up in bed and trying to mask her cringe.