by Amy Love
“Is that it?” she snapped, temper getting the better of her with all that alcohol coursing through her. “Is that all you have to say to me after how you acted tonight?”
“How I acted tonight?” She heard some rustling in the background, followed by the clink of beer bottles. “You… We… I acted fine. You were the one who told me to butt out, so I left.”
“And you were just so dramatic about it, weren’t you?” She huffed, pushing away from the wooden patio railing and pacing back and forth. “You must have known I didn’t mean butt out of our date, just my business. Because I have no right to ask about your business, so why do you get to dictate mine? You aren’t my master in all things!”
A pair of guys glanced her way, eyebrows up, and she turned her back to them, blushing.
“Beth, I’m not trying to control you,” he said tersely, and she could practically see his thick brow furrowing. “I’m just trying to look out for you. I gave my opinion. You freaked out. I left. Simple as that.”
“Grown men have rational conversations about things that upset them,” she insisted, hiccupping over upset in a way that only made her blush worse. To her credit, at least she wasn’t crying. Beth didn’t feel like crying. Suddenly she felt like shouting, spurred on by rage and vodka. Her hands balled into fists.
“Fine, fine,” Gryff muttered just as she drew in a breath, her words ready to explode like a volcano. “You want to have a rational discussion? Fine, but not over the phone. I can come over in a bit.”
“I’m not at home,” she said proudly. “I’m out.”
“Where?”
Behind her, someone opened the door for a moment and the pounding bass of club music wafted out. Apparently that was her answer.
“Are you… Beth, are you at a bar?”
“So what if I am? I’m a grown woman who deserves a real night out every once in a while, Gryff.”
“Of course you do.” His tone seemed softer now, and she heard him let out a sigh near the mouthpiece of his phone. “Beth, are you drunk?”
“N-no.” She cringed. Why was she lying? She’d just made some big statement that she was an adult who could go out, yet she was too embarrassed to admit that she was wasted off her face? “Yes. Really drunk.”
“Oh my god…” Keys jingled in the background. “Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”
“No.” A cold panic clutched at her. No, she didn’t want him to see her like this. Tonight, her world was separate from Gryff, and she suddenly wanted to keep him at an arm’s length until she was back to normal. “No, don’t. I’m out with some girls from my study group, and we’re having fun. I just wanted to c-call to check on you.”
“And I just want to make sure you don’t do something you regret because I was an ass,” he said gently. “Tell me where you are and we can just…hang out.”
“I don’t want to hang out with you tonight,” she quipped, throwing her shoulders back and gripping the phone tightly. “I just wanted you to know I’m having fun. And you were a jerk. And we can talk about it later.”
“Beth, can you just—?”
She hung up before he could finish, then shoved her phone back in her purse.
Well. That hadn’t been productive. All it had done was rile her up and earn the attention of a few of the quietly chatting smokers nearby. Brushing them off with an embarrassed shrug, Beth made a beeline for the door, desperate for that vodka-cran and the anonymity of a busy dance floor once more.
Chapter 24
Even if she was drunk, at least Beth had the good sense not to turn her phone off. After she’d hung up on Gryff, he knew calling her back wouldn’t do any good. She hadn’t been this upset with him before, but he deserved every ounce of rage that little beautiful creature had to give him. He’d been an ass. A jealous, possessive, clingy ass who’d lost his shit on a perfect woman because he couldn’t control his own jealousy in the heat of the moment. Even as he took his first step away from her at the arcade, Gryff had known he was making a mistake, but he kept on walking anyway—because that was the kind of asshole Gryff Reeves was whenever he ventured anywhere close to a legitimate relationship.
Now she’d gone off with people she probably didn’t know very well to get really, really drunk, and it was all his fault. They should have been in bed together, her ass red from a paddling and her body relaxed from whatever number of orgasms he saw fit to let her enjoy. They shouldn’t have been out, Beth at the Sandy Beach Nightclub on Tenth Street, a club famous for its behind-closed-doors coke deals, featured recently in the papers because a college girl was roofied and assaulted in one of the bathrooms. Gryff shouldn’t have been gunning it down the taxi-ridden late night streets of downtown Blackwoods, worried out of his mind that he’d all but pushed her into some skeevy asshole’s arms while she drowned her sorrows in liquor.
She wasn’t the type to drink or party. He knew that. But apparently these new “friends” in her study group brought out a wilder side of Beth, one that didn’t suit her, and all he wanted to do was make sure she was okay. He’d never be able to forgive himself if something happened to her tonight, even if it was that she drunkenly tripped over her own two feet and skinned her hands on the sidewalk. Gryff wasn’t having any of it.
Creepy assholes installed tracking apps on their girlfriends’ phones—and tonight, Gryff felt like one of those creepy assholes wholeheartedly. He’d installed it when her father wandered onto his perp radar, if only to track her movements when she said she was out with him. It wasn’t to track her movements, per se, but her father’s. Until now, he hadn’t even used it, but tonight it came in handy when she refused to tell him where she was. Once he found her, he planned to delete the app off his phone, not liking the way it made him feel when he used it.
Like a chump. Like a creep. Like a stalker. He didn’t want to be any of those things. Beth deserved to live her fucking life however she wanted, but Sandy Beach was bad news for pretty girls, and her safety, somehow, had become his top priority that night.
If she had been anyone else, he would have let it go. Kept on watching TV. Had another beer or two. In fact, if she had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have fought with her about fucking James Holstein, manipulative professor extraordinaire, but he had. Gryff had thrown a hissy fit like some pre-teen boy who discovered the girl he liked had a crush on someone else, and it made him sick.
Pathetic.
The only way he could make up for the shit he pulled tonight was to make sure Beth was okay. If she didn’t want to leave with him, fine, but he was going to make damn sure no one caused her any trouble while she was out.
After parking his bike up the street and paying at the front door to get in, Gryff pushed through the thick crowd of drunken idiots, eyes peeled for a familiar head of blonde hair. The whole place stunk of sweat and booze, the floor wet and sticky, and he couldn’t imagine Beth wanting to be here sober. But true to his phone apps tracker, she was indeed there, sitting at the corner of a bar with her head in her arms, slumped over. When he eventually did spot her, more out of luck than anything, a jumpy panic lurched through him, shooting his heart into his throat as he shoved people out of the way to get to her. Preppy college kids called him an asshole or told him to fuck off as he made his way through, and normally Gryff would have turned and addressed the situation, but he had tunnel vision for Beth and Beth alone.
Around him, no one else mattered.
“You here for her?” the bartender shouted as Gryff approached her slumped form. When he nodded, the bartender gave a sigh and pointed for the exit. “Good. Otherwise they’d have to kick her out. Too drunk.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he growled, situating himself between Beth and her barstool and the herd of teetering drunk girls trying to get the bartenders attention. Under his breath, he muttered, “Maybe if you’d stopped serving her, she wouldn’t have passed out.”
But then again, it probably wasn’t the bartender’s problem. She was a petite thing, no doubt a li
ghtweight when it came to alcohol, and it shouldn’t have surprised him to find her like this.
It definitely made him hate himself just a little more, of course. Images of him and her back at her apartment flashed through his mind as he wrapped an arm around her slim waist and used the other hand to get her head up. Her eyes had been closed—maybe she’d fallen asleep—but once they were open, those vibrant greens radiated nothing but anger.
“No,” she grunted, pushing at his chest. “No. I’m having fun…”
Even though he would have been happy to hang back and just watch out for her from the sidelines, he couldn’t do that anymore—not with the way her speech slurred.
“I know you are,” he offered kindly, hoisting her up and pulling her away from the bar area. He couldn’t carry her out, but she needed support to stay on her own two feet. How much more had she had to drink since the end of their phone call and now? He hadn’t taken that long to get here.
“Leggo’m, Gryff.”
“Your friends are moving the party somewhere else,” Gryff told her, speaking softly in her ear as he wove her through the crowd. This time, people shifted out of the way somewhat, maybe realizing he wasn’t just another drunk dick with a devil-may-care attitude moving through the crowd. “I think it’s time to go to bed.”
“I’m…tired.”
“I know.” He was tired, too. Tired of feeling the way he did for her. Tired of caring. Tired of trying to pull away. It wasn’t fair to her. “Let’s go to bed.”
He had plans to pump her full of water once they were back at her place, then he’d spend the night watching to make sure she didn’t barf in her sleep. Fantastic.
Once they were outside, however, just as Gryff was wishing he’d brought the car instead of the bike, all his good intentioned plans shot straight to hell. Halfway down the sidewalk, away from the huge line of people waiting to get into the club, a sleek black town car pulled up to the curb, and out of it strolled none other than Dean Darryl Truman.
Gryff was so shocked that he actually staggered to a stop, his brow furrowed and mouth dropped open. Beth straightened up at the sight of him too, leaning less on Gryff now and tugging at her clothes.
“Daddy?”
“Don’t you take that tone with me,” he snapped. Although Gryff had seen the dean before, he was still a strange little man in a number of ways. Wiry grey hair sat slicked down around his head, and while Beth had his vibrant green eyes, the rest of her delicate beauty she seemed to have inherited from her mother. Darryl was all angles, sharp and crooked—menacing, in a certain light.
“What’re you doing—?”
“Get your hands off her,” the man barked as he brushed Gryff aside and took Beth away, a seemingly tight grip on her forearm. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m—”
“It doesn’t matter.” The dean cut him off with a roll of his eyes, then pointed an accusatory finger at him. “Whoever you are, you’re a poor influence on my daughter. I don’t want to see you around her again.”
“Daddy—”
“Looking like he’s straight out of one of those awful gangs,” Darryl spat, speaking over Beth and looking Gryff up and down as if he was nothing more than the dirt on the bottom of the dean’s very pricey leather shoes. “If I see you again, I’ll call the authorities.”
“Daddy, stop, he didn’t do anything,” Beth cried, more clarity to her voice at last, though she was still a wobbly mess on her feet, like a baby deer on ice, as her dad dragged her to the awaiting car. Clearly the driver preferred not to dirty his hands.
“Enough from you.” He yanked open the door and pushed Beth toward it. It broke Gryff’s heart to see her trip over her own feet. “You know it was Claire who called me? Because her assistant saw you in your current state! My assistant’s assistant had to contact me! Look at the state of you!”
She had scrambled into the car during his rant, no doubt mortified, even as intoxicated as she was, at the scene he was making. Gryff’s jaw clenched as he watched the whole thing play out, hands balled into fists.
“She’s just drunk,” Gryff interjected in her defense. Drinking wasn’t a crime, after all. Everyone did it. Sometimes people went overboard—especially if someone they cared about pushed them. If anything, he ought to be angry with Gryff. And he was, judging by the icy look the dean shot his way. He cleared his throat and quickly added a sir in there, if only to stroke the guy’s ego so that he wouldn’t take it out on Beth as soon as the car door shut.
The older, slimmer man drew a breath as if to say something else, but then pressed his already thin lips together into an even thinner line. It was obvious, loud and clear, what he thought of Gryff.
Blackwoods filth. Uneducated cretin.
Gryff raised his chin as a challenge, but then exhaled deeply as the dean climbed into the car and slammed the door shut. The last thing he saw was the man’s enraged profile through the partially tinted windows as the car pulled away.
But before that, the last thing he heard was Beth crying.
And that hurt worst of all.
Chapter 25
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Gryff nodded, phone pressed to his ear and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Thanks for everything.”
Not bothering to wait for the sign-off, he punched the disconnect button on the screen and tossed the phone onto the desk, leaning back in his worn-out office chair with a sigh. It was Valentine’s Day. Supposedly the most romantic day of the year, and Beth was nowhere to be seen.
Well, not nowhere. They’d met up for coffee at an on-campus café covered in paper heart cutouts, each of them sitting through a somewhat uncomfortable hour as they forced conversation between them. Try as he might, Gryff couldn’t get Beth to talk about what had happened the other night at the club. After a lot of prodding, she’d admitted that her dad was upset with her for throwing away precious study time to party, but he only had her best interests in mind. It seemed to Gryff that she knew the old guy was a controlling dick, but he was her dad all the same. While he wanted to lay into the guy for the way he handled her, treating Beth like a toddler and manhandling her in front of peers downtown, Gryff kept his mouth shut and drank his coffee, ignoring the fact that they hadn’t made plans to see each other that night.
“I have a presentation tomorrow,” she’d said when he asked if she wanted him to come over. “Harriet and I are going to prep together. I promised her.”
At the time, Gryff couldn’t help but wonder if she was trying to get some space from him, too. Put the distance between them. Pump the breaks to keep the car from spiraling off the road—that sort of thing. He’d pretended to be relieved that he didn’t need to do the whole flowers and dinner and chocolates thing, but deep down, he wasn’t feeling great. While he wasn’t a romantic sap, he would have liked to celebrate the holiday as he saw fit, preferably with handcuffs and a ball gag for Beth.
Still, it was very apparent that she didn’t want to spend the night together, so Gryff threw himself into work instead. He had a lot to do. With no perp apprehended yet, the Steel Phoenix big-shots were getting antsy, and Gryff was eager to show that all this time and energy around the campus had actually been worthwhile—and prove to himself that he wasn’t getting as wrapped up in Beth Truman as he thought he was.
So, after ordering a dozen roses to be delivered to Beth’s dorm—because he thought he owed her something for being a petulant brat at the arcade—Gryff locked the doors, grabbed a fresh pack of cigarettes, and got to work.
He’d come down to the conclusion that the guys whacking his MC brothers were hired help. They were too good, too skilled, to be guys from the local gangs, and after perusing through the usual freelancers who actually did this kind of shit, he phoned in a favor from one to get the logistics. Cash flow. Rumors. Freelance hitmen who were suddenly flush. Gryff dug deep, spending the last nine hours up to his eyeballs in freelance bullshit—who knew Blackwoods was such a haven for criminal activity?
In the end, a large chunk of cash traced back to Blackwoods University. Someone was diverting funds to pay for these jobs, these hits against the Steel Phoenixes, and the only guy who had a finger on that kind of trigger was the dean. Who else had enough sway to dictate where that much money was being spent? The dean was King of Blackwoods University in every sense of the word. All that skinny jerk needed was a crown.
And Beth would be his princess.
Groaning, Gryff’s face screwed as he rubbed it. Dating the dean’s daughter had some perks, but this wasn’t one of them. If Darryl was indeed the guy funneling funds to pay hitmen to take out Gryff’s brothers, then he would have to pay—probably with his life.
It was going to kill Beth. Darryl was all she had—Darryl and Gryff, two secret criminals holding such large chunks of her heart. It wasn’t fair. None of it.
