Page 36 of Play The Game

They share a look, but I ignore it, pushing my empty plate away as I gulp down the last of my iced coffee. There isn’t long before we have to start moving off to our classes and I need all the caffeine I can get. When neither of them move, I scowl at them both.

“Star, he hasn’t even told us that stuff. Fuck, he really is serious about you,” Blaise mumbles, and my scowl deepens.

“You thought he wasn’t? Wow.”

He cringes, cheeks flushing slightly, and Harley snorts at him before cutting in to save both their asses. “Blaise and I both spend all of our spare time figuring out how to get you alone. Ash doesn’t. This dick has been… concerned that Ash is having second thoughts because he’s never really been the type to embrace celibacy.”

Fucking idiot boys! I blush and clear my throat. “He told me last night he’s waiting for Avery to stop being so defensive. I kind of think that means he’s taking it very seriously, because if something happened and she wasn’t so supportive of us all, I think we all know we’d be in for a world of misery. Ash also told me I should start coming to your room.”

At the predatory gleam in both their eyes, I hold up a hand. “I’m thinking about it. I’m not interested in hearing more gossip about how much of a raging whore I am. I’m pretty fucking close to snapping and stabbing some rich dickheads as it is. I don’t need to test my patience farther.”

Harley glares around the room in that fierce challenging way of his and students start averting their eyes, turning their bodies away from his wrath. I’ll say it again; I must be so unbelievably broken because that look is such a turn on. He turns back to me and smirks at my flushed cheeks. Cupping my cheek gently, he kisses me dirty, deep, and with entirely too much tongue for the audience we have. Blaise cackles at the glances we get from those brave enough to look as we break apart.

“I’ll take care of them for you, babe,” Harley murmurs, and my blush deepens.

“Now who’s flirting?”

All eyes follow us out of the room, especially when Blaise slings his arm over my shoulders. Even when my eyes land on the scathing sneer Annabelle is sending my way, not an inch of subtlety in the jealous gold-digging bitch as she whispers to the girls around her, I hold my head high. Who the fuck cares what the rich assholes think? Not me.

Okay, I care a little.

Just enough to want them all to fuck off.

TEN

Getting enough details to Illi about Joseph Beaumont so he can start looking into the billionaire sociopath on the down low, without incriminating either of us, is almost impossible, but he replies with a simple ‘I got it, kid’, and I hope for once it really will be that easy. It’s definitely not dealt with yet, but I shift my focus back to my assignments and making it to graduation academically, not just physically.

Choir is still my least favorite class.

Miss Umber smiles as Blaise and I walk in together and take our seats. She still insists we sit at the front so she can ‘monitor us’, which is her way of saying ‘giggle and blush at Blaise Morrison’. It pisses me all the way off but I guess I’ve gotta get used to it sometime; this is my life now. Such a steep price for the rock god in my bed, but, like the true Mounty girl I am, I’ll pay it.

In blood, more than likely.

Smirking to myself now that Avery has transferred out of choir to take on extra dance classes, I’m still sulking just a little about having no one to commiserate with. God, the only good part of this class, other than hearing him sing, was the looks Avery and I would shoot each other whenever Blaise started singing and the room began to drip for him. Okay, I was too so like, glass houses and all that, but he’s my boyfriend. Sue me.

“Okay, class! Time to start thinking about your performance for this year! You will already know from your syllabus that you’re going to be working on your own original material to sing, an exciting challenge for some of you and a regular occurrence for others,” Miss Umber says with a coy and completely inappropriate look at Blaise, who in return looks mildly uncomfortable.

Scoffing at him like the prize that I am, I nudge him gently in the ribs to call him out. He’s always been a shameless flirt and I have no desire for him to stop; he wouldn’t be Blaise Morrison without it. He glances down at me with a grin, wiggling his eyebrows at me like an idiot. I don’t know whether he’s hamming it up because it’s just the two of us now or if he’s distracting me from how much I hate having to sing, but either way, my mood lifts instantly.

“You’ll be working in pairs, so choose wisely!” She turns to start writing on the board, detailing a list of requirements and resources for songwriting, and Blaise steals my pen from me when I start to take notes.

“I’ve already written our song,” he whispers into my ear, and grins cockily when I shiver.

“I can’t take credit for your work,” I mumble, trying to ignore the rasp in my voice, but he just shrugs, the grin dimming a little as his eyes get serious.

“It’s called collaborating, Star. Besides, I’m not being selfless by writing it, I want you to sing it with me and let me record it… and then listen to it yourself. That’s way harder for you than the writing would be, so really, I’ll be the one slacking off here. I just—I wrote the song for us. For you.”

Fuck.

With all the time he’s spent in the music rooms, I’ve been hearing snippets of what he’s been working on already and more than a few times he’s dropped hints about luring me in there with him. He’s not wrong though, even the idea of listening to myself singing gives me the shakes, but I desperately want to be able to do this. For myself, and for him.

Ash would also probably sell his soul for the song. I’ve had to ban him from playing the video Avery recorded of me singing around me, because he listens to it so often. He hums it under his breath while we’re studying together but no matter how often he does it, I still blush like an idiot.

Blowing out a breath, I glance around us both before I murmur back to him, “I don’t know if I can listen to it but… if you sing it for me, I can copy you with the earplugs in. It’ll be a nightmare for you if I can’t hit the right notes, though. Avery sat with me for months to get Pompeii right⁠—”

Blaise threads his fingers through mine, cutting me off to stop me talking myself out of it before we even start. “So then I’ll sit with you until we get our song perfect, too. This isn’t a rough deal for me, Star, I want nothing more than to listen to you sing for hours on end. We’ll work on it together; singing and then listening to it. I’ll do whatever it takes to help get you past this because I want this song on my album. It will be on it, and it’ll be a single. It’s going to get a lot of airtime on the radio, I can already tell, and I know it’s going to be huge. I want to sing it on stage with you someday. We can’t do any of that if you can’t listen to it.”

Holy fuck.