Page 20 of Make Me Mean It

CHAPTER SIX

CONNOR

The back of the couch jolts, knocking me forward, my pen skittering across the hardwood.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and bend to grab it, only for a leg to swing over my head where my face was a second ago.

“Jesus Christ.” I duck lower, glaring up.

“Sorry, little bro!” Marcus hollers, landing heavily on the cushions beside me before scrambling straight back to his feet.

I stare after him.

He doesn’t sound remotely sorry.

Carter comes charging into the living room behind him, absolutely furious, bright pink streaks smeared through his blond hair that definitely weren’t there when I arrived.

“You’re fucking dead, Reid!”

Carter storms after him, shouting something about murder while Marcus’s laughter carries in from the kitchen, and I drop my eyes back to my notebook before either of them can catch me smiling.

Idiots.

The entire house has been steadily descending into chaos since practice ended, every available space slowly disappearing beneath another body until people are crammed onto couches, sitting across the floor and leaning against walls with beer bottles hanging from their hands. Music thumps through the speakers, apparently at the exact volume required to make everyone shout over it without actually drowning any of them out, leaving me trapped in one constant wall of overlapping voices and laughter.

It smells of beer, takeaway someone ordered hours ago and whatever body spray half the hockey team seems determined to drown themselves in.

I knew I should’ve stayed home.

I have stayed home for the last week, despite Marcus asking me almost every day to come over for dinner. Tonight he finally wore me down with the promise of actual food, which was apparently a lie considering it’s after ten, my stomach physically hurts, and there hasn’t been anything resembling dinner.

Just beer bottles littering every available surface and hockey players behaving as though intoxication counts as a personality.

And Theo.

I haven’t looked at him since I sat down, but I could still point to exactly where he is without lifting my head from my notebook.

Not that I’ve been paying attention.

He’s somewhere behind the couch, his voice occasionally breaking through everyone else’s, followed by that stupid laugh I’m beginning to recognise far too easily. Every time it does, my concentration slips, and I have to reread whatever sentence I was working on.

I blow out a breath and drop back against the couch, flipping through my notebook until I find the right page and forcing my attention back onto the half-finished line in front of me.

“Are you done pretending I don’t exist?” Theo drawls from directly above me.

I tip my head back and find him leaning over the couch, that familiar amusement back in his eyes like the last time we spoke didn’t end with him slamming his way out of my flat.

The knot that’s been sitting in my stomach all week loosens slightly.

I roll my eyes and turn back to my notebook, flipping the page only to realise I was already on the right one.

Theo chuckles.

“I’m over it, by the way,” he hums, his forearm brushing the side of my neck, a faint prickle following the path of his skin. “So you can stop pretending.”

My pen stills against the page.

He’s over it.