Faking the Play (Hot Mess Harems #2)

7. Ryan

Chapter seven

Ryan

E nglish was going to kill me.

My sports management major only required one English course and I’d put it off for four years even though everyone told me not to. Now, I was in a class with a bunch of freshmen and a syllabus that was going to kick my ass. Ethan and Logan would help me out if I needed it, but they were doing their senior-level classes for their majors and needed to keep their grades up too. I couldn’t ask them to put their own futures at risk just because I was stupid.

In the back of my head, I heard Amelia’s voice yelling at me for calling myself dumb. She did it all the time when we were kids, and even after we stopped hanging out, it was her voice I heard whenever I got down on myself for not being smart.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar figure. For a second, I thought my head made her up because I’d been thinking about her, but after I turned to get a better look, I saw it was Amelia after all. I opened my mouth to call out to her, but snapped it shut when I realized that something was wrong.

Fuck. She was crying.

Anger surged through me and I shoved my syllabus into my back pocket, my own problems already forgotten. If that asshole ex of hers had done something else, I didn’t care what happened to me. I’d find the prick and kick his ass.

“Lia,” I called out when I was just a few feet away, not wanting to startle her. When she looked up, I muttered a curse. When I went to sleep last night, she was fine.

“Hey, Ryan.” She tried for a smile but didn’t quite make it.

“You got somewhere to be?” I asked as I fell in step next to her. I wanted to put my arm around her, but I didn’t know if that’d just make matters worse since there were people watching.

She shook her head. “Just figuring out if it’d be better to hide in the library or risk going back to my dorm.”

“Come back to the apartment,” I said. “Coach gave us an off day. Or, as much of one as we get, anyway. The guys and I were just gonna eat and chill. No pizza tonight though. Just good food.”

“Ethan’s cooking?” she asked.

“Yeah, we still don’t let Logan near the kitchen.” I grinned and bumped her arm with my elbow. “Remember when he told us he knew how to make mac and cheese better than Ethan?”

She laughed and my heart damn near skipped a beat. “It took us three hours to get the kitchen to stop smelling like burnt macaroni.”

“That’s a yes?”

She nodded. “Okay. I’ll come over.”

The relief on her face hurt more than it should, considering how long it’d been since we’d seen each other before yesterday. I wasn’t the sort of guy who thought about my feelings too much though, so it was easy to push it aside.

“Come on,” I said. “It was too damn hot to walk this afternoon. I’m parked over here.” I glanced at her as we headed for my car. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

I nodded, and neither of us said a word as I drove us to the apartment. Even though she was still clearly upset, the silence wasn’t awkward. It never had been with her. As much as she liked to talk, she didn’t have a problem being quiet either.

When we got out of the car, a handful of people I knew were hanging around the entrance. Even though none of them were CSU students, I knew they could’ve seen those damn pictures so I held my hand out to Amelia, offering the extra bit of protection that would come from me staking a claim. They didn’t need to know what that claim was. She took it immediately, lacing her fingers between mine as she gave me a grateful smile.

Still, she looked down as we walked, her dark hair hiding her face, either because she didn’t want them to recognize her or because she didn’t want anyone to see she’d been crying. Either option pissed me off, because none of it was her fault. Sure, some assholes would probably tell her that she shouldn’t have posed for nude pictures in the first place, but if you were gonna trust someone enough to have sex with them and be in a relationship with them, why the hell wouldn’t you think you could trust them with pictures?

“Hey, man,” Ethan called out from the kitchen as soon as I opened the door. “We got about thirty minutes before this is ready if you want to grab a shower or…” His voice trailed off as he turned toward me and saw I wasn’t alone. “Hey, Amelia.”

She gave a little wave and then seemed to remember that she was holding my hand. She pulled away just as Logan came out of his room. He, of course, noticed right away that something was off and didn’t bother pretending not to.

“What happened?” He immediately came over and gave her a hug before leading her to the couch.

I sat on the other side of her, and Ethan just plopped right down on the coffee table so his knees brushed up against hers.

“Today sucked.” Her voice broke and something inside me cracked.

“Tell us.” Ethan patted her knee but didn’t let his hand linger. “You’ll feel better if you get it all out.”

“Will I?” she asked. “Because I thought I got it all out yesterday when it all happened and I’d be okay today because everyone was going to be focusing on their classes and once people saw that Dr. Isenberg and I were being weird with each other the gossip would change and everyone would be on my side—”

“Breathe, Lia,” I reminded her gently.

She took a gulp of air, but then started going again, just as fast as before. “But people just stared at me and talked about me and even the freshmen in the class I’m supposed to be TA for know what happened.” She sniffed and Logan handed her a tissue without a word. “And then at the end of class, these two jerks from the ethics committee came in like they were cops or something and asked all these humiliating questions like why I’d posed for the pictures and if there was anything going on with Dr. Isenberg and they definitely didn’t believe me when I said there wasn’t because no one believes me.”

“We believe you,” Ethan cut in. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She shook her head and blew her nose, a loud honking sound that all of us used to make fun of when we were kids.

None of us were laughing now.

“The worst part is, even if the ethics committee believes Dr. Isenberg and me and I can salvage my academic reputation, my personal one is always going to be shit. I’ll be able to tell potential employers I was cleared of wrongdoing, but will anyone else give a damn?”

She took the box of tissues that Logan held out and blew her nose again. “Every guy who ever wants to ask me out is going to find out I have nudes online and there’s no way they’ll ever want to date me after that. Fuck me, sure, because those pictures mean I’m easy, right? But dating? Being the girl they can take home to meet their parents? I mean, what if their brothers or their dad saw those pictures? Could you imagine what that would be like? Christmas dinner knowing they’d all seen me naked?”

She started sucking in air in short bursts and I reached out to grab her hands, drawing her attention to me.

“You need to slow down,” I said calmly. “You’re gonna make yourself pass out.”

“Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter.” Her grip on my hands tightened, panic in her eyes. “I was already shit at choosing guys. Always have been. Until I met Jason. Then I thought it’d be different. I thought I’d finally found a good one but he was the worst of the bunch and what does that say about me that I keep picking these horrible people and no one nice ever asks me out because I’m just awkward and weird and—”

I moved without thinking, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her against my chest. The other guys moved in too, Ethan kneeling in front of her and leaning against her legs while Logan held her from the other side. It should’ve felt strange, us all being pressed together, but it didn’t.

We sat like that even after she stopped crying and her breathing slowed, only moving when the oven dinged and Ethan got up to get the food out. Amelia went to wash her face and us three didn’t say a word. We were all thinking.

What we didn’t know until later, when Amelia had fallen asleep, curled up on our couch, was that we were all thinking the same thing. Of course, Logan was the one who brought it up first.

“Guys, we need to talk about her.” His expression was serious. “I have an idea, but it’ll work best with all three of us.”