Chapter Sixty-Nine

Havermouth, Five Years Before

Although the football oval was overflowing with cars and people, Rhett and Cameron found parks next to each other, just down from where a collection of mobile food vans were busily trading.

“I’ll get you some strawberries and cream to eat,” Rhett grinned at her as they leaned on the side of his car watching Heath and Cameron strip down to their uniforms and begin warm up stretches. “Unless you’d prefer a corndog?”

“Strawberries sound nice,” she leaned a little against him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. She indulged in the fantasy that they were just an ordinary couple come to watch their friends play football, until Cameron pinched her arse.

“If I win this game for us,” Cameron laughed, on a pre-game high. “I’m fucking our slut in the locker room.”

Heath laughed and said something that she didn’t catch, but he and Cameron bumped fists.

“Fuck you, Cameron,” Aislen felt her cheeks heat, and she looked around, knowing that too many people had overheard him. “And you think that I’m the one with a big mouth,” she said to Rhett, pushing away from him.

“Calm down, Aislen,” Rhett sighed. “They’re just fucking around.”

“I care,” she replied. “It’s my reputation that suffers when you guys boast about fucking me.”

“I’ll go get you some strawberries,” he shoved his hands into his pockets, and hunched his shoulders, chin to chest, his hair falling over his face. “Maybe by the time I get back, you’ll be in a better mood.”

“Good luck with that,” Heath snorted with an eye roll.

Aislen wanted nothing so much as to disappear, and stayed against the side of the car, letting her hair fall over her face to hide her distress, her stomach twisting and turning within her.

“Aislen,” Heath leaned over her, his mouth near her ear. “Don’t make a scene. Cam and I need to get our heads into the game, it’s an important match.”

“He shouldn’t be shouting about it,” she hissed. “How would you feel if I joked loudly about how you started your morning with Cameron giving you a head job?”

“Aislen,” Heath gripped her shoulder, his fingers tightening to the point of discomfort, the bones seeming to grind against each other within her. She could feel his anger rolling off him in waves. “There’s a big difference between Cameron joking about fucking you, and what the Triquetra do together. Don’t make me use the equalizer.”

“There is no difference,” she replied stubbornly. “It exactly the same.”

“So, you want us to pretend like you’re only fucking one of us?” He snarled. “Let me guess which one you’d choose to be your pretend boyfriend. That isn’t what this fucking is, Aislen,” he shook her slightly. “You have to get that shit out of your head. Now, kiss me sweetly, with tongue, and then Cam, and wish us both luck with the game.”

“Or what?” She whispered.

“Or I’ll pin you against the side of the car and dry hump you and then tell the team how much you crave my cock.”

“Sometimes I hate you,” she fought back tears.

“That’s not a surprise,” he replied through his teeth. “As you make no effort to disguise it.” He straightened up. “But you will learn to at least pretend. I’ll count to three…”

She stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his neck, threading her fingers into his hair and rose to her tiptoes. He leaned down meeting her lips with his own and palming her arse as she kissed him, squeezing before releasing her.

“Good girl,” he said with a flash of his wolf in his eyes. “Now Cameron.”

She stepped up to Cameron and flattened her palms against his chest. “Have a good game,” she said to him. He grinned and tugged her closer as he kissed her, keeping her against him and deepening the kiss, until Heath laughed and nudged him as he passed.

“Let her go Cam, or you’ll be waving a tent pole and piss coach off.”

“Too late for that,” Cameron surrendered her. His smile was bright as he trotted after Heath, and the two of them ran out to where the team was gathering.

Aislen could feel the eyes of everyone around on her, knowing that the kisses had just added fuel to gossip fire, and that they’d all be talking about the slut who was f-king all three of the Triquetra. She wrapped her arms around herself as she sank back against the car.

Why did they have to be such arseholes about it? She asked herself bitterly. Why couldn’t they see what their behaviour did to her? Because they didn’t care, she answered herself. Because she was nothing more than their current sex toy. Sooner or later, they would get bored of her, and they would discard her, reputation in tatters, for the next conquest.

She saw Lillian, Diane and the three girls that the Triquetra called the Debutantes laughing and whispering, sending her glares… And what was it with the werewolf pack, she thought sourly, that they gave trios weird titles? She looked around and spotted Rhett at the front of the queue, placing an order, while not looking her way.

She hunched her shoulders and quickly strode away into the crowd, heading towards the public bathrooms. The Triquetra couldn’t complain about her going to the toilet, she thought, with false defiance, knowing that if she were truly brave, she would grab her things out of the back of Rhett’s car, shove his strawberries into his face, and stomp off never to have anything to do with the Triquetra again…

They were like a drug, though, she thought, with self-loathing, as she joined the queue. She knew that they were bad for her, she knew that they didn’t care about her, and yet she couldn’t make herself stop…

The jostling of the queue as it moved forward through the tight hallway, and the girls passing by on their way back out, distracted her, her efforts going to holding the bubbles in place, and keeping other’s thoughts away.

“Did you hear about Guy and Lucy?” The girl in front of her said to her friend. (Such a scandal! Lucy was such a slut.) “I heard that he shoved the knitting needle straight through her and then watched whilst she bled out on the bathroom floor.”

“That’s so sad. Poor Lucy. Why didn’t they just pay to get it done?” (If rat faced bitches like Lucy could get laid, why was she going to die a virgin? When would one of the football team notice her? Cameron was smoking… His arse as he ran out onto the field – yum…)

“I guess they spent all their money on drugs instead…” (These things only happen to people who deserve them. If they hadn’t been fucking outside of marriage, Lucy would still be alive…)

(My father would pay to get the abortion done. He wouldn’t want an incest baby running around… People would know then that he fucks me…)

Aislen turned her head to look over her shoulder at the girl behind her, whose thought she had caught. She was a pretty girl, with thick blonde hair and nice skin – the sort of girl that in any other town other than Havermouth, would have been in the popular crowd, but Havermouth had werewolves, and their presence disrupted normal social hierarchy.

The girl met her eyes and smiled uncertainly. “The queue has moved up.” (Strange girl, people are right about her…)

“Oh,” Aislen flushed and turned forward.

“Heather, can I cut?” Another girl asked. “I just got my period and I’m desperate.”

“Sure thing,” the pretty blonde, Heather, replied.

“Take my place,” Aislen said, stepping out of the queue. “I don’t need to go that badly.”

“Thanks.”

Aislen wove back through the crowd, looking for Rhett, and saw him standing, holding a cardboard container of strawberries, and watching the game. She went to his car, and found it unlocked. So she took her bag out, and left the football match.

It was a half an hour walk home, and she spent it crying and berating herself, moving between a desire to return before her absence caused a fight between her and the Triquetra, and pride and self-preservation that told her that she needed to break it off with them.

Both her parents’ cars were parked in the drive, and she groaned. She crept in through the front door and down the hallway.

“Aislen,” her father said from the kitchen at the back of the house, and the tone of voice in which he said her name made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

She was in trouble.

Fuck, she thought, dumping her backpack and heading down the little hallway. In trouble for being away all weekend? In trouble for skipping school on Friday and running out on Mr. Owen? In trouble for her fight with her mother at the grocery store?

Both of her parents were in the kitchen, her mother on one side of the kitchen bench and her father on the other. “Hi, mum. Hi, dad,” Aislen said, trying not to squeak the words, but her throat feeling tight and her heart racing in panic. “Nice day, isn’t it?”