Now, it’s my turn to laugh. When I turn to my side to face him, his expression is dead serious.
“Sorry. I don’t buy that. I saw you post-orgy only a few weeks ago, remember?”
He rolls his eyes.
“That’s not what I meant. I’ve fucked girls before—plenty of girls.”
“Gross,” I interject.
“But I don’t ever sleep with them. I usually get them to leave straight after.”
I gape at him in shock and I don’t like the strange warmth spreading in my core at the confession and all that it means.
I’m sure that I don’t want to hear the answers to the next question, but I ask it anyway.
“But what about Layla?”
Raph doesn’t even blink at the mention of her name, although I feel my own extreme discomfort at having mentioned it.
“I have never slept in the same bed as a girl,” he repeats.
Still, I don’t want to believe him.
“Okay, what about that morning when I saw those two girls in your bed—naked girls.”
I have to admire Raph’s cool in the face of these questions that would make most people flush crimson. I sure as hell feel embarrassed at even asking them.
“What you saw that morning, those girls came to my room that morning. They didn’t sleep there.”
The image of what I saw that morning is still burned into my mind, and I remind myself that this guy is a total pig, so I should tell him to get the hell out. But when I open my mouth, something else comes out.
“So, what are you doing here then?” I ask quietly.
“I don’t know,” he replies honestly. The same thing he said to me in the art studio and on that training session on the beach.
“Do you want me to go?” he asks, turning to me.
Yes. Should be the answer. But I can’t seem to make myself say it.
We’re not touching, though there’s something strangely intimate about the way we’re laying across from each other, eyes locked.
“No.”
Something flares in his eyes, something that I don’t recognize. It stirs something inside me which I’m not ready for. So, I close my eyes.
I’m almost asleep when I hear Raph’s words. So gentle, that I think I must be dreaming them.
“Goodnight, Jaz.”
“You have to come to Friday night’s game—it’s our first one this season.”
Raph has been bugging me to go to his stupid game for the past two weeks and it’s driving me bananas.
“Dani, help me out here.” He really knows how to lay on the charm, because to my annoyance, Dani joins the chorus.
“You have to go, Jazmine. The Regency Gladiators are the best.”
I narrow my eyes at my traitorous friend. But part of me is kind of glad that she and Raph have been getting along so well. I’ve learned pretty quickly that Dani is good at reading people, so I guess I thought that she’d see right through Raph’s charm pretty quickly, and see him for the arrogant asshole that I still like to think he is. But she seems to think that he’s a genuinely good guy. I guess I was wrong about her being able to read people after all. Because I refuse to acknowledge the alternative.
“But I don’t even like soccer. I went to one game before, only because they needed someone to work the concession stands for the night and it was dull,” I say, helping myself to another spoonful of my frozen yogurt.
“Trust me, this is like no other soccer game you’ve ever seen before,” Raph says. “It’s not the same as the kind they play on Earth. Plus, you get to see me in all my glory.”
I choke on my next spoonful of yogurt.
“How could I say no to that,” I reply sarcastically.
Raph leans over to me and I don’t miss Dani’s smirk as Raph’s thumb wipes a drop of yogurt off my bottom lip. The simple touch sears my skin and I jump back as if he’s just held a lighter up to my lip.
I hear Dani stifle a laugh with a cough.
Ever since that first night in my room, Raph has been acting like we’re attached at the hip. In the classes that we have together, he either sits next to me or behind me and of course, it doesn’t stop him, if those desks happen to be occupied. One look from him and the offending person promptly gets up and finds somewhere else to sit. He is also now a permanent fixture at Dani and my lunch table, much to Layla’s annoyance, and to the confusion of the rest of the student body. Everyone, apart from Baron, Keller and Lance, that is. Because whenever they see Raph and me together, they exchange looks which tell me that I desperately need to set the record straight about whatever they think is going on.
Because nothing is going on. I mean, sure Raph has now taken to sleeping in my bed like it’s his own, much to my annoyance. But nothing ever happens, and we both keep to our respective sides of the bed. Although, even I haven’t failed to notice that Raph is always trying to touch me—surprisingly, nothing perverted or sleazy. Just a brush of the hand here, an arm around me there, wiping food off my lip like he just did. I always push him away but I get the feeling he understands why. Especially since I told him about foster father number six a few nights ago. I also get the feeling that he’s doing it to make me at ease with his touch, and the flutters that it causes inside me aren’t entirely unpleasant. Shit, I’d rather gouge my eyes out than admit it, but something tells me that I’m straying into dangerous territory.
“God, Jaz, you really know how to chip away at a guy’s ego,” he says. His tone is light hearted, but I think I see a flash of hurt in those blue eyes, although I’m probably just imagining it.
“Which is perfect for you, because your ego could use some chipping.”
He chuckles at that.
“Anyway, about the game …”
I throw my hands up in frustration.
“Oh god, okay, if you stop bugging me about it, I’ll go.”
His smile lights up his entire face and those perfect dimples pop out, making it impossible for me not to smile back.
He pulls me in for a hug and although I don’t return the hug, I also don’t pull away. I try not to notice the deafening silence that has descended on the tables around us or Dani’s shit-eating grin.
18
I think I must be fast asleep and dreaming, but I can hear Raph’s voice in the night. I can’t make out the words but I hear the anguish in his voice.
Consciousness taps at my senses and I drag myself out of sleep as the impact of Raph’s large frame tossing and turning causes my bed to quake.
I look over to the other side of the large bed where he’s lying with the sheets tangled around his waist. It’s dark in my room, but the silvery moonlight beaming in through the large French windows illuminates the bed just enough so that I can see that Raph’s bare chest is gleaming with sweat and the beads of moisture glistening on his face.