Gladiator guy looked around slowly, almost like he was seeing it all for the first time, and cringed when he saw a guy doing a handstand with a beer funnel in his mouth.
“You really wanna be like these guys?” he asked, gesturing with his arm at the guy who was now choking on the beer. “We’re, what, ten years older than you, and this is what we’re doing with our lives. Don’t you want to be better than this, girl?”
Jenny looked shocked. “You mean, you don’t love this shit?”
His head jerked at the question. “I came to blow off some steam tonight. It’s been a stressful year, and I’m kind of over a lot of it. These guys, though, they party like this every weekend and enjoy the hell out of it.”
When she just raised an eyebrow, he crossed his arms over his chest, and even I almost whimpered when I saw what it did to his arm muscles. “Here’s a scenario for you—what if your mom got sick and needed your help with your siblings, but you were out getting blitzed and couldn’t get to her? What if she needed to go to the hospital ASAP, and you couldn’t drive her?”
“I’d get a cab.”
Gladiator made the sound of a buzzer. “Wrong answer. Cabs aren’t always safe or available, and if your mom was being sick or bleeding, they likely wouldn’t let y’all in one.”
Jenny jutted her chin out as she smirked at him. “Okay, then, an ambulance.”
The same noise came out of him. “Do you know how expensive a trip in one of those things is? Granted, if it’s a must, then you call 911, but if it’s avoidable, you don’t want to have an unnecessary bill for thousands of dollars all because your daughter was too drunk to drive you to the ER.”
Throwing her arms up, Jenny snapped, “Why are we talking about this? I’m sixteen. I don’t even have my license yet.”
“Because you need to learn to be sensible and more mature.” Just as he said it, four guys who’d been doing keg races let out the loudest burps I’d ever heard, making him growl and shove a hand in the hair on the top of his head. “You wanna end up with a guy who does that? Yeah, everyone belches and has fun, but these guys just placed bets on who’d win the keg race and then did double or nothings for who’d burp the loudest.”
Jenny chewed on her lower lip as she watched the guys bounce off the walls and then drop down onto the floor.
“I don’t know why we’re talking like this. All I did was come here tonight to let off some steam.”
Figuring now was the time to break my silence, I called, “Jenny?” When she looked at me, I laid it out. “Your mom’s worried sick about you and Zoyla. She needed you to be home and in bed, not out partying. You’re also underage, which means, if the police come, they’ll arrest the guy throwing the party all because you wanted to ‘blow off some steam.’”
She opened her mouth to say something, but I was too tired to listen to it, so I held my hand up. “I’m not done. If you decided to fool around with someone tonight, the guy would be done for statutory rape, and he’d be placed on a sex offenders register because of it. Is that what you want to happen? All because he didn’t know you were underage, but you do, and you wanted to prove to the world you could party.”
Tears suddenly appeared as she blinked rapidly. “Just take me home.”
Smiling wryly at the gladiator, I held my hand out. “Thanks for helping me tonight.”
His grip was confident and firm but not oppressive. “No problem.”
At the point when he should have rereleased my hand, he held on, staring at where they were still joined. Tugging at mine, I tried to get his attention and discreetly hint at him to let go, but he still didn’t.
“Uh, I should probably take her back to her mom.”
His eyes lifted to meet mine, and up close, and with the different lighting, I saw how unique the color was. There was denim blue around the outside of his irises and a light blue shade in the middle of them fanning out from his pupils. They were as beautiful as he was.
“Nice to meet you…?” he dragged it out, hinting at wanting to know my name.
“Heidi. Nice to meet you too, Gladiator.”
“Trojan,” he corrected with a wink. “But you can call me Bond.”
Tilting my head to the side, I looked him up and down. “Is that some kind of pick-up line?”
His head tilted back as he burst out laughing, allowing me a close-up of the muscles in his neck moving as he did it. Was there anything about this guy that wasn’t ticking my boxes? For real.