Chapter 18 Mads
Mads
Abreeze cuts through the quad, cool enough to raise goosebumps and send Blake tucking her chin into her jacket collar.
Her steps are quick, steady, boots scuffing the pavement while her backpack strap slips lower down one arm. I catch myself watching the way her fingers tap against the strap still in place, the same fingers that had fisted in my shirt hours ago, that had pulled me closer, that had—
I shut it down before my brain goes further.
I will never get it together now. The last thing I need is to be walking around campus with a raging hard on.
Before we left last night, Kai had shoved the sign-in sheets into my hands, muttering something about “good reference material for your project.” He probably thought I’d skim them for a class assignment. Instead, they’ve been burning a hole in my bag ever since.
She hasn’t said much about what happened between us. Doesn’t need to. Not when her mouth tips up every time she catches me staring. Not when her arm rubs up against mine twice in the span of a minute and she doesn’t move away.
She leans into me as we walk. The shift is small, casual, and the contact is barely there.
Mine, my brain supplies before I can stop it.
Somewhere behind us, someone laughs too loudly.
A skateboard rattles over a crack in the pavement.
The world around us moves on as if nothing in the cosmos has shifted, and I’m at a standstill in time, wondering how I’m supposed to sit through class like I didn’t spend last night memorizing every sound she makes when she comes apart.
My brain’s stuck on loop—her mouth, her hands, the way she’d looked up at me like I was the only person in the world who could ruin her like this.
The feeling is mutual, Blue.
Focus. Think.
Class.
Murder investigation.
Murder investigation.
What in the actual fuck am I doing?
“Okay, so last night was informative,” she says, dry. “Sort of.”
“Hey, we confirmed you're into masks and amazing at giving head. That’s data.”
She glares at me, unamused. “Focus, Casanova.”
“‘Scuse me. I am a one-woman man.”
That earns me a side eye that turns into an eye roll, but I don’t miss the way her lips twitch.
I want to kiss it.
I want to eat her alive.
I want to press my mouth to the hollow at the base of her throat and listen to the little noises she can’t hide.
I want to catalog every single thing that makes her breath hitch and use that knowledge like a handbook.
I also want to be the person who shows up with coffee and eggs when she’s worked herself into the ground again.
I want to be the one she steals the blanket from at two a.m.
I want to make her feel good for an hour, for a day, for a life—cook for her, argue with her over goofy shit, hold her while she sleeps, and still be the person who makes her knees go weak with a glance.
I know it’s pathetic that I want all of it, but I want all of it anyway.
We didn’t say much when we got back to the flat.
Just stripped off the day, crawled under the covers, and fell into bed as if gravity had more of a pull on us than usual.
We were bone tired. Maybe it was the mutual orgasms, maybe the weight of everything catching up to us. Maybe both of those things.
She let me pull her in. Tucked against my chest, one leg slung over mine.
I contemplated whether or not she would have if she’d had a bed of her own to sleep in, and decided I wouldn’t be fixing hers anytime soon. Just in case.
I didn’t even try to sleep for a while. Just lay there listening to her breathe, wondering how the hell I got so lucky.
Eating her out until she nearly cried was incredible—no question—but her falling asleep in my arms?
Letting me keep her close like that? That felt bigger.
Like something I wasn’t supposed to have but got to anyway.
I shrug. “At least we have a concrete lead now. Kind of. Maybe we can figure out who this Jonah guy is and do a little light trespassing? Baby’s first B&E.”
She exhales an annoyed breath through her nose. “Or we start with the list and see if anyone else stands out before we go full criminal.”
I pull my hood up as the wind picks up. “What’s a tiny felony if it brings us one step closer to solving a murder?”
“We already got onto the movie set last night under false pretenses. Maybe there’s an easier way,” she pauses to think for a second. “Maybe the universe will give us another breadcrumb. Or four.”
I huff out a laugh. “We can’t possibly get that lucky twice or four times in a row.”
We slow down as we reach her building, and for a second, I forget how to walk like a normal person. She’s already fishing out her badge, probably thinking about whatever assignment she’s been putting off, and I’m just… standing there.
Like an idiot.
Like someone who really wants to kiss his maybe-girlfriend goodbye but isn’t sure if that’s a step too far. Too soon.
Which is ridiculous considering that not very many hours ago, my dick was down her throat.
I’m half hard just thinking about it now.
But then she glances up, eyes bright, and I think, fuck it. I lean in. She doesn’t move away. In fact, she tilts her chin like she was waiting for it. The kiss is brief, ridiculously perfect, and when I pull back, she smirks and says, “See you in a few hours.”
As soon as the lecture slides flicker onto the projector screen, I stop pretending I’m going to pay attention.
My eyes are wide, pen in hand, but the part of my brain meant for learning is already elsewhere—tangled in Blake’s hair, back in that supply closet, replaying every sound she made with painful clarity.
Except now it’s competing with something less fun but equally all-consuming.
I tap my pen twice against my notebook, already mentally searching through every name-drop, social media breadcrumb, and blurry group photo I’ve seen in the last week.
The professor drones on about information security protocols, and I nod once to keep up appearances, even though I couldn’t repeat a single word he’s said if someone held a gun to my head.
I’ve been crawling through Kai’s sign-in list since breakfast, eyes blurring from one faceless name to the next.
Half of the names I search on social media, the accounts are private, the other half are useless—no posts, no pictures, nothing that connects.
Then I hit the last page, damn near ready to give up, and there it is.
Jonah.
And of course, this fuck is the only one who didn’t list his last name.
I run the name over in my head again, fitting it to the profile Kai gave us.
Vintage cameras, probably the kind of guy who posts film grain selfies with captions about “aesthetic decay.” It’s not a lot to go on, but in the age of oversharing and geotags, it doesn’t need to be.
Social media’s basically built for stalking.
I just need to find the right thread to follow.
I open my laptop.
It’s not technically stalking if the information is readily available to the public.
I tell myself this as I begin typing, already flipping between search tabs and social media apps.
Instagram’s a goldmine for this kind of thing.
Everyone wants to be seen. And guys like Jonah?
They want to be envied. I just have to find the right curated section of the internet where he’s busy doing both.
I search, “Jonah Briarwood.”
Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of guys named Jonah at and near Briarwood. Some in clubs. Some on sports teams. One with a SoundCloud and a cowboy hat who definitely isn’t the one I’m after, but will haunt me anyway.
I lean into the vintage camera angle and search “Jonah Briarwood Communication and Media Studies.”
It takes a second, but then—there he is.
Found via a tagged reel from the university’s media showcase.
A student film clip with a behind-the-scenes featurette no one asked for.
And smack in the middle? A guy with artfully disheveled hair and a Leica strapped across his chest. The caption confirms it: Jonah Smith, head of the Briarwood Film Collective.
This has to be him.
I click on his profile.
His bio reads: Filmmaker. Collector of light. Party architect.
Gag.
I scroll past the pretentious profile pic (black and white, blurred background, obnoxious smirk) and hit Follow without a second thought. Might as well make myself known.
He lives in a sprawling, exposed-brick flat that’s definitely one of those showy lofts near Briarwood’s campus. Edison bulbs, a neon sign that says Welcome to the Shitshow, and a giant-ass speaker setup.
One post is a graphic that looks like a promo for something, but says: JONAH’S PLACE — FRIDAY — COSTUMES OPTIONAL BUT ENCOURAGED.
Of course, he’s throwing a party, which is exactly the kind of thing I was banking on. And the fact that I get to wear a mask has my cock screaming against my sweats regardless of our reason for going.
A scrape of the chair leg against the floor pulls me back to the present, and my spine goes rigid.
The murmur of the lecture, the click of keyboards around me—it all filters in at once, reminding me I’m not hunched over my laptop in my flat, but smack in the middle of a lecture hall.
The fluorescent lights feel too bright. The air smells faintly of burnt coffee from someone’s travel mug a few seats over.
I adjust in my seat, suddenly aware of every movement, every glance that might catch what I’m doing on my screen.
Or what’s going on in my pants.
Somewhere between scrolling past Jonah’s third tagged photo of him likely giving himself alcohol poisoning and wondering how many selfies one person could reasonably post in a week, it hits me.
Miles.
I’ve been so wrapped up in this, worrying about getting Blake out of the woods, that I haven’t bothered to check the victim’s own social media—something I should’ve done from the jump.
My internal detective deserves a disciplinary hearing for this level of incompetence.
I search his name and pull up his profile. The feed’s average man bro: an aggressive mix of gym thirst traps, candid shots of him “thinking” over coffee, and way too many story highlights of him posing shirtless in front of his bathroom mirror. He posted constantly.
The thing that really catches my eye is a photo tagged at Jonah’s loft. Miles is slouched on the couch, red Solo cup in hand, a projector screen glowing behind him. His expression is half-bored, half-amused, like he’s trying to act chill but isn’t quite pulling it off.
I frown.
This is the right direction. I can feel it in my bones.
I tap the post, scanning for tags. Jonah’s there, obviously. A couple of other Briarwood players, too.
I click.
His profile’s a jumble of party shots and moody attempts at artsy film grain, but buried between them is one that makes me pause.
It’s a short clip from Jonah’s loft—Miles filming a Briarwood guy clowning around in one of those same masks from the video. The lighting’s terrible, but the shape of it is too distinct to mistake.
My stomach tightens.
I scroll a little further, watching another of Miles’ clips from the loft.
Different night, same crowd. He pans across a table stacked with props—masks, a cape tossed carelessly over a chair, empty bottles scattered between them.
It looks like a good time, until the caption drags it under: It’s all fun until it isn’t.
The precision in his wording nags at me. It doesn’t read like a throwaway party line. It’s pointed, like he was trying to say something without actually saying it.
I tell myself that maybe I’m reading too much into it. Seeing ghosts in every shadow, turning every cryptic caption into some kind of hidden warning. It could be nothing, but my gut’s already filing it under worth checking out, and I’ve learned not to ignore that.
I snap my laptop shut, already pulling out my phone. If I’m sitting through the rest of this class trying not to spiral, I’m going to need something else to occupy my brain.
Mads
Found your boy.
Blake
Whoever he is, he’s not “my” boy.
Mads
Ok well your potentially murder-adjacent boy then.
He’s having a party this weekend.
Blake
How do you even KNOW that.
Mads
Pls. give me 10 minutes and a wi-fi connection and I can find your blood type.
Blake
…I’m both impressed and slightly concerned.
Mads
Impressed enough to let me take you to this party?
Blake
Oh yeah, nothing screams romance like crashing a rousing game of beer pong for murder research.
Mads
It’s a costume party. *wink emoji*
I watch the typing bubble blink on and off like she’s starting a reply, deleting it, then starting again.
Mads
Admit it, you want to see me all dressed up.
Blake
I would be entertained by the possibility of “accidentally” spilling my drink on you to get us out of a hairy situation.
Mads
Dangerous game, Blue. you get me wet and I’ll return the favor.
Blake
*eye roll emoji*
Mads
Was that eye roll an invitation, a warning, or foreplay?
Blake
Is there a “none of the above” option?
Mads
No.
Blake
You’re so annoying.
Mads
We could go costume shopping?
Blake
Fine. but only because of the murder.
Mads
Sure, Blue. only because of the murder.