Stepbrother Wow! (Bad Boy Frat #1) (7 page)

There was a party at Phi Kappa that night and I
decided that I would go. Jaxon would be busy, but it wouldn’t be hard to get
him to talk to me. Even though he was the leader of the frat, he could go
upstairs for a little while and at least talk—and no one would think anything
of it at all. I dressed the way that I always did, not even putting on makeup;
I didn’t want him to think I was one of the clingy girls who tried to muscle
her way into a relationship—I just wanted to figure out what was going on.

I found him while he was moving through the frat
house, his toga draped around him, a cup in hand. I’d gotten my first drink
into me and I was feeling just a little tiny buzz—enough to work up my courage
to ask him to talk to me. At first, I could have sworn that he was avoiding me
again, that he was determined to ignore me just as he had at practice. I raised
my voice a little bit as I called out to him, knowing that if I
was
loud enough, one of the brothers would get his attention
on my behalf. Jaxon glanced at me and I could see in his expression that he was
irritated—but he moved off to the side and I followed him. The kitchen was
weirdly deserted—everyone was in the living room, the den, outside enjoying the
last of the reasonable weather before the first real snows of the late fall.
“What?” he asked me, scowling.

“What the hell, Jaxon?” I asked him, looking up into
his bright eyes. “You flirt with me for months and then screw me and now you
can’t stand to be around me?” Jaxon crushed his Solo cup in his hand and tossed
it aside, turning away from me. I saw him take a deep breath, trying to keep
himself calm—and wondered how it was possible for him to get so angry.

“Look, nothing happened,” he said, turning back to
face me.

I felt shock wash over me. “Something did happen,
Jaxon—now what the hell is wrong with you?” Jaxon slammed his hand against the
frame of the kitchen door, breathing in deeply again.

“Nothing happened. Just forget it, Mia. Nothing
happened between us, so let’s just go on with our lives.” I frowned.

“I didn’t want to do anything other than that!” I
said, trying to keep my voice down so it wouldn’t carry. “But you’re the one
making everything weird.
Ignoring me, avoiding me.
That isn’t the way it was before.”

“I don’t care. Forget it and move on.” I felt my
eyes stinging—I was shocked to realize that I was on the point of crying. I
couldn’t understand why Jaxon would change so completely overnight. Even when
I’d seen him play it out with other girls, I’d never seen him go from being
flirty and fun and friendly to completely shunning them; normally he just kept
things casual and let whatever situation fade. I shook my head. He couldn’t
just say nothing had happened—something had. I clenched my teeth, trying to
keep my feelings under control even as my anger started to get more and more
intense. He hadn’t even considered me one of the guys—he’d just been trying to
get into my pants the whole time. I shoved him on the shoulder hard, knocking
him into the wall.

“You fucking loser, I should have known.” I spun
away from him, throwing my half-empty second drink over my shoulder in his
direction and walking out of the frat house as fast as I could without calling
attention to myself. I fumed the whole way back to the dorms, thinking of how
low and dirty it was that Jaxon could use me that way. He was nothing more than
an asshole, plain and simple. If he had even given me half the respect he gave
the rest of his frat, he would have told me he wanted things to be the way they
were before we’d had sex, and I would have been okay with that. But to pretend
like it was nothing, to avoid me and ignore me completely instead of even
telling me what the hell was wrong—I wanted to go back and find him and punch
him for it. It would just make it worse. I ran up the stairs to my dorm, not
even bothering to use the elevator, and I threw myself into my bed, crying
until I fell asleep.

CHAPTER
8

I spent the next few days staying close to the dorm.
I couldn’t know if any of the guys at the party overheard my conversation with
Jaxon and I was regretting it already. It had made Jaxon’s feelings clear, that
was certain; he didn’t want to have anything to do with me at all. To him I’d
just been another sorority bunny to screw and then move on from—not even
someone he liked enough to stay friends
with
. I was
paranoid enough to imagine that Jaxon had told everyone about what a pathetic
crazy fool I had been—that he told them all he’d nailed me and then I’d tried
to hook him, which wasn’t true, but it was the exact kind of gossip that flew
around the frat house.

I was regretting the whole situation, stuck with my
boring roommates who didn’t seem to want to do anything other than watch
Real Housewives
or
Golden Girls
, or studying alone in my room with the game on. It was
okay, but I hated watching games alone when I knew the guys in Phi Kappa were
probably watching the same game, drinking beers and making fun of the players,
talking about classes, midterms, and everything else. I was thoroughly sick of
being by myself, and I didn’t even feel entirely comfortable going down to the
courts and playing a few games—there might be Phi Kappa guys there, and I’d just
have to see their faces when they noticed me and started laughing. I shouldn’t
have done anything at all with Jaxon; when he put his arm around me I should
have just pushed it away and kept watching the game. Or I should have not
flirted with him in the first place, just treated him
like
I would treat anyone else in the frat who flirted with me.

After a few days of my self-imposed exile, there was
a knock at the dorm room door and since I was the only one in, I answered it.
Jeremy was there; he looked relieved that it was
me
and not one of my roommates. “Hey,
you been
sick or
something?” he asked, coming into the room and throwing himself onto the couch.
I shrugged.

“Just busy,” I said, feeling defensive. “What’s up?”
Jeremy shrugged and rummaged through the snacks on the coffee table, trying to
find something he wanted to eat.

“You haven’t been around at all, and I thought maybe
you’d come down with something. You missed a great game the other night—Notre
Dame versus Duke.” I thought about it. If Jeremy had thought that I was sick,
he clearly didn’t know the real reason I’d been staying away—which meant that
he probably didn’t know about what had happened between Jaxon and me.

“I’m just burned out
on midterms
studying, that’s
all. I caught the game in my room.”

“So come by tomorrow night—there’s a
Preds
-Maple Leafs game, we got Molson to celebrate.” I
laughed. If Jeremy didn’t know then maybe no one in the frat knew about
it—Jaxon had definitely been clear that he didn’t want to talk about it to me,
so he probably hadn’t talked to anyone else either. I thought about Jeremy’s
offer. I’d had more than enough of hanging out in the dorms; all of my laundry
was clean, all of my studying was up to date, I had nothing to do with myself
other than tool around on the Internet or watch the Predators game. I liked
hanging out with the guys; I had from the very beginning. If Jaxon wasn’t going
to make things weird, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t keep hanging out with my own
friends, even if they did belong to his frat.

“I won’t miss it, man,” I said.

When I got to the Phi Kappa house the next night,
I’d decided that I was just going to strictly hang out with my friends. I
wasn’t going to look for Jaxon, I wasn’t going to try and make him acknowledge
me in any way. Two could play the ignoring game, I thought to myself as I went
in behind Jeremy. Everyone hanging out in the living room cheered; one guy
proclaimed that the good luck charm was back, and he was sure to clear the
betting pool with me there. Someone made room for me on the couch and for a
little while it was exactly the way it had always been before things had gotten
complicated with Jaxon; the chatter flowed around me and I put in my own two
cents, dissing players, shouting at the refs, offering up my opinion on different
girls on campus that the guys wanted to get in bed.

Jaxon came in after a while and I made myself not
look at him. If he wanted space, I would give it to him; I couldn’t help but
notice that while he tried to act normal, he didn’t talk to me even once, not
even when someone asked him outright to dispute something I’d said about the
Preds
. He was determined to ignore me—and it hurt a little
bit, but I told myself that if he was going to be petty, I wasn’t going to talk
to him either. I kept myself occupied watching the game, talking to the guys in
the frat who actually enjoyed my company, making sure that I didn’t seem like I
was there for Jaxon at all—I was there to hang out with guys I liked, with
people who were my friends. I would have been open to talking to Jaxon, at
least on the normal level we’d had before we’d had sex, but if he didn’t want
to I wasn’t going to force him. I would just enjoy myself, drink some beer,
kick some cash into the alcohol fund before I left, and move on with my life, just
like
he said. He couldn’t possibly take offense to
that, could he?

It got easier for me after the first night, and
after a few weeks I stopped even trying to get Jaxon to notice me. I managed to
get through midterms without help from him on Biology; I returned to the Tau
Delta boys, who were more than happy to give me a hand and scraped by with a B
on the test. I would need to get another B on the next test and at least a C on
the final, but my grade would at least be good enough for my mom.

I carried on as best as I could, going to classes
and hanging out at the frat house as much as I could. I felt awkward the first
few times I dropped by, thinking that soon everyone would know—that the truth
of the situation would come out and then everything would get weird. But no one
seemed to have any clue that anything had changed, and I was once more one of
the guys, hanging out, drinking, partying and watching games. I helped one of
the first-year members with an English essay, one of the seniors on his History
take-home test, and everything seemed to be smoothing out all around me. I
could almost forget that anything had happened with Jaxon at all; before he had
started flirting with me he hadn’t paid me that much attention, and now he was
avoiding me altogether.
What a damn baby,
I thought when I saw him skulk through a room I was in, heading for his bedroom
or the kitchen.

My lonely walks to my morning classes were a little
bit of a loss, but I had walked to class alone before anything had happened
with Jaxon, so it wasn’t as though it was a huge change in my life. I worked
out in the gym, I played pickup games, and I went to snowboarding practice.
When it came time for us to start hitting the slopes for real, I caught a ride
with one of the girls, not even hoping to ride up with Jaxon. We carpooled to
the mountains and I got to break out my winter wear, and got to really enjoy
the snow. If it weren’t for the tension whenever Jaxon and I happened to be in
the same area, I wouldn’t have ever even known he was there. I made better
friends with some of the other members of the team and did my own thing,
practicing hard, getting in as much training as I possibly could.

It would have been fine if it weren’t for the fact
that Jaxon didn’t just ignore me. Everywhere we ran into each other—whenever I
was in the frat house and he came into the room, or whenever we had practice
together, the few odd times we ended up in the gym at the same time—there was
an awkwardness
, a tension—almost anger from Jaxon. It was
exhausting, and part of me was tempted to have it out with him, to tell him he
was being a giant baby and point out that I was doing my part—I had totally
moved on with my life. So why was he acting like an asshole and making a point
of ignoring me? If he really wanted to act
like
nothing had happened, he should at least pretend like I existed; he should at
least say hi to me, or respond when I made a comment about something he liked.

It surprised me that no one in the frat seemed to
have any clue. They were totally oblivious to the tension between Jaxon and me,
they didn’t even notice the ways he snubbed me over and over again. He couldn’t
make them not invite me to parties—he would have to tell them why. He couldn’t
even say anything to me in front of them about what was going on. But he
seethed and glared at me when he thought no one was looking, and I could
definitely get the message that he would rather I didn’t come around at
all—that I should not just move on like nothing had happened between us but
instead move on from hanging out at the frat altogether. I was tired of his
pettiness. I wasn’t going to ruin my life just because he couldn’t deal with me
being friends with his frat brothers.

I tried my best to just stay out of Jaxon’s way
whenever I was in the Phi Kappa house, but no one in the frat seemed to think
anything of the situation—they didn’t even know that there was one. As long as
Jaxon didn’t explode and tell them all that he’d nailed me and now didn’t want
me around, things would probably remain that way. No one questioned my right to
be there, no one said anything about the tension I could feel like a physical
substance between
me and Jaxon,
and as far as I could
tell they were all dense enough not to have even noticed it. The rest of the
team didn’t say anything about it either and I didn’t know if that was because
they didn’t want to start a fight or if they just didn’t know there was
anything going on. I didn’t care—I would rather not talk about it myself, and
would rather just keep things on as even a keel as possible. It wasn’t hard to
avoid Jaxon, it wasn’t hard to give him space, and in spite of the lingering
resentment and hurt I felt, I told myself I didn’t really care. I was having
too good a time with everyone else to miss him.