Chapter 29
KYLEN
Kole, Nolan, and Toby sit around a table with me in the entry room to Hush.
Arek is sitting off to the side, currently leaning back on two legs of his chair as his leg swings.
When he feels me looking in his direction, his dark eyes meet mine, and I flush, bowing my head to hide my pink cheeks.
No doubt he’s smiling. He loves my blush.
Over the last ten days since I freaked out, confessing my innermost secret, Kole has been up my ass. As if she knows something shifted. Probably because I ran to her and hid there while I sobbed through the panic that overtook me for far too long.
She didn’t like my assurance that it wasn’t Arek’s fault. He didn’t do anything.
He didn’t. Not really. I know for a fact that he didn’t actually touch me there with his mouth.
He wouldn’t do that. It wasn’t Arek that made me run.
It was the memory falling around me as if I were that ten-year-old boy again.
I felt the same sick feeling in my stomach.
I felt my tears. I felt the helplessness that I couldn’t do anything about it.
Everyone knew, and no one was on my side.
I wasn’t twenty-one at that moment. I was ten, and no didn’t mean anything. Telling her I didn’t like it and didn’t want her to touch me there didn’t matter if I wanted to pass fifth grade and wanted to protect Kole from being expelled. It was something I had to endure. A burden I had to carry.
That’s what made me run. I wasn’t me. I was a little kid trapped in my body.
Kole’s foot digging into my shin makes me glance up. She’s watching me. Fuck, they all are. I nearly curl in on myself under their attention as my skin heats. “Sorry,” I mutter.
“You okay?” Nolan asks.
After a deep inhale, I nod. “Yep. Still worrying about finals,” I lie.
Nolan has known me my entire life. There’s no way he believes me. Neither does Kole. Hell, I doubt Toby does either, but at least he pretends to.
“You have any others?” Toby asks.
“No. It’s the waiting for my grades that stresses me now.”
“Fair enough,” Nolan says, and I’m thankful that he’s allowing me to play up this lie. I mean, it’s not entirely a lie. These are all real worries. They’re just not what I was thinking about right then. “It’s not just a grade for a test but for the entire semester. Holds a very different weight.”
I nod. “Yep.”
“How d’you think you did?” Toby asks.
I hum and glance at Arek again. He’s on his phone. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but he always knows when I’m looking at him. His eyes meet mine, and he smiles, which makes me smile before I look away.
“You two are stupidly sappy and gross,” Nolan says, grinning.
His words make me blush again. Surprise, surprise.
Ignoring him, I answer Toby, who’s also grinning at Nolan’s comment. “I think I did okay. Always worried about math classes, but—” I shrug.
Sometimes I wonder if my block in math was because of that year. It was math that she said I struggled with. It was math that would hold me back. It was math that I needed additional help with.
I didn’t realize it at the time because I was ten, but not once did we do any extra math work. I wasn’t actually getting help in math. Which, I think, means I never struggled.
If I struggled after that, it’s because math was a little bit of a trigger. I was so terrified of doing poorly and having to make an arrangement with another teacher in order to pass the class that I would always panic when there was a math concept I didn’t understand.
Ten years later, and I still have those moments, even now that I know the truth.
“We all struggle in math, I think,” Toby says. “I know I do. It’s stupid that we have to take so much math when nothing after algebra is something we truly have to deal with every day unless we go into a field where it’s required.”
“American education system,” Nolan agrees.
“Anyway,” I say, and move the conversation back to the reason we’re here.
“I think the algorithm is set to adjust the number of occupants in a single room. We have up to five keys made for each room, but making it random is a little difficult since the intake gives them an option to choose between two and five partners.”
“We make it spit out how many keys each room needs,” Kole says.
She spins her tablet to face us, where there are stick figures drawn with tally marks above them.
“We don’t need that information immediately, right?
The system needs to know the information.
Once the first round is in their rooms, the system can spit out how many of each color key we need to add into the bowl. ”
“That’s not taking into account how many the next round is comfortable with,” I say.
She shakes her head. “I think the only one able to decide the limit is going to be the first round. Which means everyone who chooses a groupie needs to take that into account. If you have a specific limit, then you need to be in the first round.”
“I think that’s a good compromise,” Nolan says.
“What about the groupie versus gang bang?” Toby asks.
Kole shakes her head. “I think we have two options, unless I haven’t thought of something. Either we hold two different kinds of sessions—one session is for groupies, and another is for gang bangs—or we let them determine their own play once in the room.”
“I think we can do both,” I say. “It’s not like we’re policing what they’re doing behind the door, so if they end up with one person taking all the dick, then we’re not going to break in and tell them this isn’t the weekend for it.”
“Which brings up safety. What system have we put in place if someone decides they’re no longer comfortable with the situation?” Nolan asks.
“It’s really annoying that we can’t trust people to be decent human beings,” I mutter.
Kole pats my hand, and I roll my eyes.
“Honestly, we only have a single option,” Toby states, frowning.
“We need someone listening to the rooms. Microphones. Maybe put the system in charge of identifying the recognition of anything that can mean stop. If it identifies something, it’ll send us an alert, and we’ll tune into what’s going on in the room. ”
I nod absently because I’m not sure there are any other options.
Toby isn’t wrong. The system will already tell us who’s in the room because we’ve kept them anonymous to each other but not to us.
Not only for this reason but also for sexual safety.
Condoms break, and some people aren’t going to abide by the rules 100% of the time.
It is what it is, which is why it’s necessary for us to have a trail of partners.
“The lights are set up and ready to test,” Lucas says as he joins us. “Three colors—red, black, and lights dimmed with a brown film.”
“Cool,” Nolan says, pushing his chair back. “Let’s check them out.”
We get to our feet and I glance in Arek’s direction. He’s already on his feet too, slipping his phone into his pocket as he joins us.
“I want that shirt,” Lucas tells Arek, grinning.
I already know what it says, and my cheeks flush as I drop my attention to my feet.
‘Pronouns: He/Him/Pole.’ I’m back in the ‘I’m a good boy’ hoodie today, which I think is Arek’s favorite on me.
Especially when I refused to wear the ‘Thinking about your junk’ in a thought bubble hoodie. I would die.
“Thanks. If I knew where it came from, I’d tell you. I have siblings with no personal boundaries,” Arek says.
He laughs. The entire frat is well aware that Arek’s clothing was hijacked before he left home at the end of summer this year. Arek mentioned how he thought he’d have a full new wardrobe on his way back to campus at the end of winter break, too.
Arek doesn’t seem to actually care. They are funny, and he really loves dressing me in them. He stares at me, all hotly possessive, every time he sees me in his shirt.
The six of us head down the hall. Lucas has the master key and lets us into the green room.
This is the room with the black light. We all pile in, which is also intentional since we’re capping off the capacity of each room to six.
Not only is this a test to see how comfortable six people are in the room together, but also to test the lighting options.
We need enough light to see shapes but not bright enough to recognize faces. One-on-one, complete darkness is okay because you’re only looking at each other. That means there are a whole lot of challenges and new blind spots when adding in more people. They increase with each additional person.
The door shuts, and darkness momentarily blinds me. Arek guides me to the chair and pulls me into his lap as he sits. The others I hear more than see as they move around the room, trying to find a spot to relax while we wait for our eyes to adjust.
Protected by the darkness, I guide Arek’s hand between my legs so he’s cupping my crotch.
My cheeks burn because I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t embarrassingly shy.
But I feel like Nolan, at the very least, won’t miss the opportunity to call out his hand between my legs.
Likely, Kole will growl about it, too. Since I’m pretty sure they’re all hovering around the bed, it’s a good test to see how far their challenged sight reaches.
The goal is to spend twenty minutes in each of the three rooms, which gives us plenty of time for our eyes to adjust to the light and test the limits. It’s a little misleading because we know who’s in the room with us, so of course, we’re going to recognize their faces once our vision adjusts.
“I think this light is too bright,” Nolan says. “I can see you two groping in the dark already.”
I cover my face with my hands and scowl. See? I knew he’d call us out.
Lucas laughs. We hear his voice a few minutes later as he speaks into his phone. “Dim the lights a little more in green.”
The darkness becomes deeper in response.
I hadn’t realized how thoroughly I’d been seeing them until the shadows practically swallow them whole.
Kole shifts, and I can make out the movement of her arm but not the lines of her hands.
It’s more like a suggestion of movement than seeing it for what it is.
“Good. Note that level,” Lucas says.
“This isn’t bad,” Toby agrees. I can barely see him move and touch… who was that? Nolan, I think. Maybe Lucas. When Lucas laughs and Toby backs away, I think he missed his target.
“Raise the lights a notch,” Lucas says into his phone. “Like, a hair.”
My eyes don’t register the difference, but I can certainly see their shapes a little better. They’re fully formed but fuzzy. Their faces are still completely hidden.
“The lights should move to the ceiling instead of on the flat surfaces,” Arek says. “Illuminate from the top so faces are always cast in shadow. Right now, the lights—even dim—are coming from the angle where it gives the best possible angle to see someone.”
“Oh, good call,” Nolan says.
“Let’s go to the red room where the red light is. I already had the lights placed at two opposite ceiling corners,” Lucas says. “I think it’s going to be a combination of that placement, but using the black light. The red is still too clear, I think.”
We follow him out of the room and move down the hall until we’re getting comfortable in the red room. Once again, Arek and I sit on the chair, and his hand drops between my legs as I settle into his hold.
“Oh yeah, too bright,” Toby says, looking straight at us. “You have no shame, Arek.”
Arek snorts. “I don’t.”
At least I’m relatively convinced they can’t see the way my skin turns to molten heat. Kole turns her back on us, not hiding her scowl, which only proves further that the lights are far too clear.
Lucas brings his phone up and says, “Dim the lights until they’re almost off.”
The lights dramatically drop, but the red still feels too bright. I’m already shaking my head.
“This isn’t going to work,” Toby says as he shoves Nolan onto the bed.
Nolan goes down, bouncing as he falls, and laughs.
“I know my brain is already sure who’s in the room with me, but I can see the details of your face, so even if I didn’t know you, I’d recognize you once we left this room if we passed on campus. ”
“Yep, not going to work,” Nolan agrees. “Any reason to stay longer?”
Arek pushes me to my feet with his hands on my hips, and we follow the guys out of the room. The last room has a dim light with a brown filter. I’m not sure what made them choose the color, but it’s fine.
This time, I can see the glowing outline of the furniture, something I didn’t realize I couldn’t see in the red room.
The lights were too bright, I guess. When we sit in the chair, Arek changes it up.
I sit first, and he settles between my legs.
This might be surprising, but when he brings my hand around to cup his junk this time, my face burns, and I hide it against his back.
“This isn’t bad, but I can still see that they can’t keep their hands off each other,” Toby says.
“I can’t see Kylen at all,” Kole says, and I imagine she’s narrowing her eyes.
“That’s because Arek is basically twice his size and he’s sitting on your brother,” Toby says, amused.
“Ew.”
Arek snorts. Meanwhile, I lose track of their assessment because his dick is growing hard under my hand.
The longer we sit in the brown-lit room, the harder he gets and the more breathless I become.
By the end of the evaluation, I realize that I’m not good at the same things Arek is.
He can sit with my dick cupped in his hand for hours.
Me? I’m practically jerking him through his pants.
Something that no one comments on, which makes me think that the light in the room is a little better than they think it is.