Chapter 5 Rayne #2
“Some guys get around more than others,” I say. “Oliver, I want to know where you’re placing your bets this year. You’re new to Onyx, so going based on first impressions only, who do you think will have the most walks of shame this year?”
Oliver puffs out a laugh, scratching the back of his head. “I don’t know. I don’t want to assume anything—”
“No, no, assume away,” Weston says. “That’s what this is for.”
Oliver’s eyes scan the room, and he shrugs a few seconds later. “I don’t know, I guess that guy Hunter?”
“Oh yeah? Any reason why?” Noah prods.
“He just seems like the kind of guy who probably gets a lot of action,” Oliver says. “Show me a girl who wouldn’t fuck a guy who looks like that.”
Noah breaks out into laughter, and Weston looks like he wants to puke.
“Show me anyone on Earth who wouldn’t fuck you, Oliver,” Noah comments. “Do you actually do modeling, or do you just look like a walking Calvin Klein ad?”
I see a blush appear on each of Oliver’s cheeks, and he seems to struggle for words.
Noah and Weston start talking about their new best personal records for bench presses in the gym, but I’m still feeling like I need to reassure our youngest Onyx member.
“You ok?” I say in a low tone, leaning near Oliver’s ear.
“Good. Great, actually,” he tells me. “I’m just… not used to compliments.”
He pulls out his phone and holds it out for me to see. He flips through a few photos of a gangly, acne-covered teen with a bowl cut for hair.
“No way that was you.”
Oliver nods. “That’s classic Ollie, and it’s how I looked until I got a haircut.”
“That’s more than just a haircut, bro.”
“I also started putting in time working out. Joined the hockey team in high school, and in the summers, I was lifeguarding. Add in some dermatologist help for my face, and an unexpected growth spurt…”
“And you became a hunk.”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” he says, smiling a little as he scratches the back of his head. “Can I stop talking about myself, now?”
I’m starting to realize that Oliver isn’t always shy, but he’s definitely shy when he’s forced to talk about himself.
“You’re adorable, Ollie. Don’t hate on your younger self, either. You were cute, even then,” I assure him.
“I thought I’d always be the ugly duckling, if you want the truth. Got bullied sometimes. I think I still feel like that guy on the inside.”
Ollie looks strong but sweet, the kind of guy who must have been turning heads forever.
But he doesn’t see himself that way at all.
“Did I hear you say you played hockey?” Weston asks, turning back toward us. “As a football player, I have to ask. How the fuck do you do all that on skates?”
Oliver laughs, and already he seems like he’s more at ease. He’s chatting along with them soon after, and it turns out he’s not awkward at all once someone gets him talking.
This is what I fucking love about Onyx, and really any of the houses on Red Row.
In the end, they’re all about connection.
And nothing feels better than being able to bridge a gap and watch someone like Oliver fit into place just like I experienced last year as a freshman.
Everything feels warmer for a moment.
I sit down on a ledge near an open window, letting the cool air hit my skin.
Everything feels good, actually, before I hear the sound.
It’s sudden when it comes.
A tiny whoosh sound coming from one side of my head, quiet enough that I could have missed it if it weren’t for what happened after.
And I feel a pinprick of sharp sensation, right on the edge of my neck.
“The fuck?” I mutter.
A few people’s heads turn.
I reach up to my neck, expecting a bee or a wasp.
But my hand hits something bigger.
I glance over at the window and see it in the shadowy reflection: there is a tiny little dart sticking out of my neck.
Panic hits my blood before whatever’s in the needle does.
“Rayne,” Weston says, immediately reaching up and crudely yanking the dart from my neck.
Images flash through my mind, but my thoughts are slowing down, already.
This only happens in the movies.
I sink onto my knees.
When I feel a cold rush of liquid along my knee I realize I’ve dropped my glass of champagne.
The last thing I see is the high, vaulted ceiling of the Onyx front room.
The ornate chandeliers, far up above me.
The shifting shadows that the candles make along the wooden walls.
Then everything goes black.
“You’re pretty when you’re knocked out.”
I pull in a gasp of air as I wake up with a start.
The world still looks hazy for a moment, but as I wake up I see that I’m still in Onyx, though I’m in the common room in the back, now.
I feel like I’m moving through sludge.
My limbs are heavy like bags of sand.
Hunter’s on a chair far away, across the room from me.
He couldn’t have been close enough to have whispered those words in my ear, but as I slept, I swore he was saying them to me.
I’m able to keep my eyes open for brief moments, here and there, trying to fight the urge to fall back into slumber.
What happened to me?
It’s a question I can’t answer yet.
And with the smallest shred of energy I can muster, all I do is watch Hunter.
He watches me, too.
And I’m too out of it to protest.
He’s taken off his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his black collared shirt.
I gaze at his forearms, and the strong muscle that forms a line from his elbow down to his wrist.
There’s a little constellation of freckles along his skin there, forming no particular shape.
His brow is slightly furrowed as he leans back in his chair, looking at me like he’s trying to figure out an answer to a question that’s too complex.
Trying to figure out who did this to me?
Or something else?
I can’t take my eyes away from him, every time I manage to open them.
It’s like Hunter’s the only person in the room, and in the hazy fog of my mind I’m not thinking clearly about him.
Still shocks me, how handsome you are.
Even more than you used to be.
Why did I kiss you? How did I ever have the fucking courage?
I realize one of my arms has fallen asleep and I groan a little as I try to move, shifting positions on the sofa.
The moment I move my body an inch, Weston and Noah realize I’m half-awake.
And they’re at my side in an instant.
“There he is,” Roman says from the edge of the room, clapping his hands together.
Roman doesn’t usually say much, but it seems like he was truly worried about me.
Soon I realize the other side of the room is filled with people, too, including some girls from Luros and a few guys from Double Daggers, sitting on couches nearby.
Hunter just watches as the others come over to my side, asking me a million questions.
“Thank God,” Weston says, looking me over. “The nurse said you’d be fine in a few hours, but I was still praying you weren’t about to fucking croak.”
“Jesus, Knox, you don’t need to be so blunt when he just woke up,” Noah says, breathing deeply.
“Nurse?” I ask, my voice low. “What nurse?”
“We took you to the campus hospital. You got sniped, we couldn’t find anyone outside on Red Row who could have done it, and we didn’t know what the hell was in that thing. They found out it was just a strong sedative. Somebody wanted to tranquilize you, but not kill you.”
Yet again.
Just on the edge of death, but not crossing the line.
What the fuck is going on?
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Maybe they just got their dosage wrong. Anything can kill you in a high enough quantity.”
A group of the girls from Luros come over to give me hugs, even though I don’t know who some of them are. Things finally start to die down.
More than anything, I’m wrecked, bone-tired, and I want to go to bed.
I doze off, then come back to consciousness, over and over again, and I know there are still some remnants of the sedative in my blood taking me in and out of sleep.
Hunter doesn’t come over to comfort me.
But he watches me the whole time, as I drift in and out of lucidity.
Eventually, Weston helps me out of the common room and up to bed.
My own bed.
Finally.
Thank God.
As I finally pull the covers over me to sleep, the room is blissfully empty and Hunter isn’t in here.
All I can see is the opposite side of the dorm room.
The gleam of the knives that Hunter brought in here, laid out across his desk.
Knives that I could easily report him for. That I still might report him for, if I want to.
That needle in my neck is exactly the kind of thing you’d do for fun, Hunter Knox.
My thoughts drift as I fall in and out of sleep again, but I keep seeing the image of his eyes in my mind. Blue-grey beautiful eyes.
I shouldn’t have kissed you.
Shouldn’t have ever gotten close.
Just fucking leave this place, and leave me alone.
But as I sleep, my dreams don’t become nightmares like I expect them to.
I dream of Hunter at the edge of my bed, but for some reason, I’m not afraid.
I dream of his lips against my skin.
They’re soft, and so warm, just like they were at the Stone and Flame party. He kisses me gently, in the same spot on my neck where the dart took me out.
Or is this real, and I’m just too sedated to know it?
His lips feel so good.
Shamefully good.
“Don’t stop,” I murmur, and he comes back in. It’s like he’s trying to kiss away the remnant of the drug on my skin.
“I’ll find out who did this. I will end them,” I hear him murmur, and I know I have to be dreaming because for the first time in my life, I feel a strong, unwavering emotion that I’ve never felt toward Hunter Knox.
I trust him.
And even somewhere in that surreal state, I know how dangerous that is.