“Zeke is a piece of shit.”
“And you think I’m a piece of shit. What’s your point?”
Fury darkens his blue gaze to a deep navy. He steps toward me, his nostrils flaring. “I never called you a piece of shit,” he grits through his teeth.
I meet his stare, standing my ground. For the first time, Jace backs off first. He gets in the truck and fires up the engine, then waits until I join him. Silence stews between us, but the tension screams a full volume. I have no idea what all that was about,and I don’t care. Jace Wilder is an arrogant prick who hasn’t earned himself a say in my life.
Back at the house, I stomp into my room and slam the door. As usual, Jace finds a way to turn my good mood to shit just by being his asshole self. All I want to do right now is crawl into bed, watch Drag Race on my phone, and pass out. I pull off my clothes and change into a pair of mesh shorts and a tank top when I hear a knock on my door.
“What?” I call out without opening it.
Jace’s muffled baritone comes through the wooden pane. “We had a deal.”
I beat my fists against the air before yanking it open. My muscles quiver, heat flushing through my body when I see him standing there. “Go to hell.”
He cocks his head with a smirk. “I’m already there, princess.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “You want me to clean now? I’m liable to break all your shit.”
“I ain’t got shit to break.” He turns on his heel and storms off. I stand in the threshold, watching him go, but make no move to follow until he turns to face me again. “You comin’ or what? I assume you’ll want a ride to school tomorrow.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I flap my hands and push my way into his room.
The smell hits me square in the nose. Sweaty socks and dirty laundry, with a thread of delicious masculinity weaved within the foulness. It’s no wonder I’m still a virgin. Boys are gross.
“You actually live in this filth?” I ask.
He shoulders past me and flops on his bed. “Live, workout, and house my tools, thanks to you.”
I roll my eyes. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Laundry’s over there.” He points at an overflowing basket of dirty clothes. I consolidate it and pick up whatever’s on the floor, wishing I had a hazmat suit, then drag it to the laundry roomand throw it all in the machine without bothering to separate the whites from the darks. We agreed I’d clean his room. We didn’t say I had to do a good job.
As the machine whirs in the background, I get to work scraping plates of congealed food, wiping away piles of cigarette ash, and vacuuming the crumbs off the indoor/outdoor area rug. All the while he watches as if I’m doing a seductive strip tease for his enjoyment instead of picking up his dirty drawers. He relishes my degradation.
Against my better judgment, I peek under his bed and find a sporadic mess of condom wrappers hidden beneath. I scrunch my face in disgust. What kind of girl would actually get naked in this pigsty of a room? “I’d think even Darla would have a little more class than this.”
He purses his lips. “I ain’t about to fuck Darla.”
Eyes wide, I turned toward him. “Isn’t she your girlfriend?”
“I don’t have girlfriends.”
“The condom wrappers would say otherwise.”
He shrugs. “I have girls I call on when I wanna have a good time.”
My lips part. “You don’t believe in one guy, one girl?”
His dark brows pull together. “Do you?”
“Yeah. That’s the way it should be.”
He blows out a humorless laugh, mumbling more to himself than to me, “You don’t know shit about real life, do ya?”
Ignoring his jab, I stand in the center of the room and survey my work. “I think I’m done here.”
“Well, there’s the door.”