Chapter 19 Rayne
Rayne
The Onyx House front room is full, and the rows of dark red candles in every windowsill are lit.
“Last call for confessions,” Noah says, walking all around the room and shaking the little black box full of our little pieces of paper. “Anyone who hasn’t added yours yet, you better put it in now.”
I watch as a couple of guys walk over to slide their papers in through the slot at the top.
Everyone in the house is milling around, heading upstairs to grab their short capes and coming back down again with them tied around their back. Moments like these, when all thirty of us put on our capes and gather with the candles lit, are when I truly feel like I’m part of a secret society.
Most of the time, Onyx can feel like any good fraternity. Guys I know better than anyone else, living in one house, helping each other.
But right now?
I feel like I’m part of something more special.
The way the vaulted old ceiling in this house looks as the candles cast shadows all throughout the room.
The way all of us look with our capes on.
The Confessional is always one of my favorite Onyx Society traditions.
Weston comes in and plops down on the sofa next to me, the cushions sinking a little under his weight. He has a short glass in his hand full of ice and a clear liquid.
I tap the edge of it. “Starting early on the gin and tonic?”
“It’s just vodka,” Weston says.
“You’re drinking pure vodka?”
He nods. “Roman’s cousin got him a bottle that costs four hundred a pop. This doesn’t even taste like alcohol. Roman told me his cousin’s description was that it tastes like the tears of the gods, or something.”
I snort. “Give me that.”
I take a little taste, swallowing as the vodka burns down my throat.
“Good, huh?” Wes says.
“Tastes like vodka. May as well be paint thinner, as far as I’m concerned.”
Wes laughs, giving me a little shove. “Don’t tell Roman you said that. He’s got a lot of pride for this shit.”
As I hand the glass back to Weston, he looks at my wrist. It’s exposed as my long-sleeve rides up a little on my arm.
He brings his fingers up, thumbing the thin, black leather bracelet on my arm.
Weston frowns.
“You’re wearing his bracelet?” he asks.
I bite the inside of my cheek, looking down at it. “Oh. This?”
Weston’s looking at it as if I had a deadly spider on my wrist. “Hunter’s worn those for years. He’ll probably pull a knife on you if he sees you wearing that, just so you know.”
I breathe in deep, giving Wes a nod.
Funny thing about that: he was there when I took the bracelet, right from his arm.
In bed with me.
And Hunter has already pulled a knife on me, anyway, before he shoved it into my headboard and came all over my chest.
“Every secret’s in?” Noah says as he makes the rounds again, shaking the box near me and Weston.
“Put it in yesterday,” Weston says, taking another long sip of his vodka. “Wrangle everyone in here. It’s time for secrets.”
Over the next five minutes, everyone streams into the room, one by one. As we wait, Weston keeps running his fingers through his hair and taking huge sips of the vodka until the glass is polished off completely.
And then he gets up, goes to the kitchen, and comes back with the glass completely full, again.
When he looks at me again, I can tell he’s already on his way to being very drunk.
He’s been doing that too much lately.
“You okay, Wes? You don’t have to drink the whole bottle, you know.”
“I watched you drink plenty of my whiskey the other night at the fair.”
I nod. “I had some fun, but drinking glass after glass of pure vodka is a little different than that. You seem… upset.”
Weston’s eyes usually look kind, but right now there’s something dead behind them.
He gives me a glance and for a moment I think he’s going to brush me off again.
But instead, he pulls out his phone.
He navigates to a group text message, and I see that it’s between him, Hunter, and their father.
There are two texts from their dad, from an hour ago.
Barrett Knox: First quarter exams are unacceptable, Weston. Hunter, yours are where they need to be.
There will be consequences, Weston. You know what that means.
I furrow my brow.
“Your father checks your fucking grades?”
Weston looks down at the phone, turning it off and then staring into the middle distance at nothing.
“He’s had access to our online term grades since freshman year. It’s just never been a problem until now.”
“And what does your dad mean by that? There will be consequences?”
Weston chews his lower lip, then just takes another sip of vodka. “It means he’s still pitting us against each other for who gets to take over his company when he’s done.”
My heart feels like a stone pit in my chest.
In this moment, I know too much.
I know what Hunter has told me about Weston’s past with his father, but Wes isn’t aware of that.
His father has been putting him through a lifetime of abuse, and even if the physical abuse ended, the mental abuse is still clearly there.
“You both should raise a fat fucking middle finger to him, and neither of you take over that goddamn company.”
“My dad has it written into our inheritances. We get nothing if we don’t take it over.
And you know how badly I want it, Rayne.
The moment I step in and take over, I can make the changes the company has needed for years.
I can finally do something good with it.
Take it from corporate greed and make it actually mean something. ”
My chest aches for him.
Weston really has always wanted that.
Since we were kids, he’s talked about how he will run the Knox Corporation differently. How he’ll put millions and millions of company funds into research, rather than just lining his own pockets.
“You can get your grades up. Promise,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “Hunter’s always been better than me. He barely studies, and he still gets an A on every exam. His college in London wasn’t as cutthroat, and Dad didn’t compare us as directly. Now… now he’s just going to make it a sick game.”
Hunter walks in a moment later, wearing his cape.
He looks untouchable.
Stunningly handsome, cold, and like some sort of goddamn ethereal being rather than a human like the rest of us.
As he walks by, he glances down at me, looking me over, and it hurts how badly I want him.
I’ve been trying so hard to hold back. To stay away from him.
To treat him how I know he wants to be treated.
But every time I’m near him I want to fucking pounce. And since the night at the fair, it’s been growing inside me each night, like a balloon that’s threatening to pop.
I need him in bed tonight.
Like a habit I badly need to quit.
“We begin,” Noah says finally, walking over to the edge of the room by the fireplace, looking out at all of us. “Say it with me, brothers. Nocte onychina nigra, cor meum adhuc igne coccineo ardet. Honestas ante omnia.”
As we repeat it in English, I look over at Hunter, then back at Weston, feeling like I’m being tugged between two worlds.
“On an onyx black night, my heart still burns a crimson flame. Honesty before everything.”
“Tonight, we have our Confessional,” Noah continues, the flames of all the candles lighting up his face.
“For our new members, I think it will be an illuminating experience. We will pass around this box to each member, and you will randomly reach in, grab a secret, and read it out loud. As if it were your own soul, baring your own truth.”
That’s another thing I like about the confessional.
Writing down my own secrets felt vulnerable.
But reading other people’s secrets, as if they were my own… it feels like sharing a burden. Sharing something deep and dark, with the people I’m closest to.
“I’ll begin,” Noah says.
He reaches into the black box, feels around, and pulls out a piece of paper. “I want my professor, Elizabeth Mayfield, more than I’ve ever wanted any other woman. I can’t stop thinking about her. And the sick truth is that I want to break college rules and fuck her senseless.”
No one ever comments after each secret is read.
We’re silent as we pass the box from one person to another, and each secret is accepted, just like the others.
No judgement.
Nothing but honesty.
A sophomore named Andy reads the next secret. “There is a freshman member of Onyx who gave me the best night of my life. He is shy, but that all changes in bed, and I quietly say his name now, each time I come.”
Interesting. So Oliver’s a good fuck, and someone in here has had a taste.
I let the thought slip through my mind, knowing that I should stay unbiased.
The box passes to Hunter next, and as he reads it out loud, I watch the way his lips move, wishing they were on my skin instead.
“I cheated on my final exams last year, and I’m afraid that I’ll have to do it again this year. I know I’m fucked. I don’t know what else to do.”
I idly wonder if that secret may have been written by Weston.
But that’s the thing about the Confessional.
I’ll never truly know.
Hunter passes the box along.
A dozen more secrets are read out loud. Some of them are sweet. Apparently someone in Onyx can’t sleep without hugging a little teddy bear at night, another cries every time he hears a song that reminds him of his mother, and another has deep impostor syndrome.
Some are darker.
One person says that he secretly fucks girls from different sororities, but can’t ever develop feelings for any of them.
Another says that he has a secret love of touching himself outdoors, but he never wants to freak anyone out with it. Deep down, he just wants to find someone to go camping with and fuck wildly on a blanket in the grass.
And then there’s a second secret that sounds like it’s about Ollie.
This time, it’s someone who describes catching a “awkward but adorable freshman” in the act of giving a Luros girl oral sex while being fucked by a Double Daggers guy at the same time.
The secret that Roman reads catches me by surprise, though.