11. Fletcher
Chapter 11
Fletcher
T he Black Thorn house at Rose Hill University sat on the top of a hill at the boundary of the school’s property line. The Sinclair family— my family—owned the neighboring plot, which caused more problems for the school and less problems for me. It was difficult for the administration to dictate what we could and couldn’t do when the lines about where we did those things weren’t always clear. Besides, families like mine only got as powerful as we were by spending generations blurring those lines anyway.
Rose Hill University schooled the cream of the crop as far as power went. Personalities were often lacking, but that was to be expected when you were the kind of people who’d never been told no. I’d been told no quite often in my life, though, a bitter fact I carried very close to my chest and never spoke about. That was how I often found myself on the weekends at the house, surrounded by people who had never been told no and would rarely tell me no.
They were entertainment.
But I was still bored.
“Can you fuck a little quieter?” I asked, stepping over the tangled mess of sweaty bodies on the floor.
It was the fall of my senior year at Rose Hill, and everything was about to change. I’d spent the last three years like any other student, attending parties and classes, counting down the days until I flipped a tassel from one side of the mortarboard to the other. Except where other students would walk away from the rivalries and pettiness of college life, I’d only dip deeper into those trenches. The start of my final year in college meant I was finally ready to assume my role as president of The Black Thorn Society, an underhanded group of men with too much money and not enough boundaries.
The fraternity itself was a ruse. A complicated masquerade of men who knew better and men who didn’t. I found myself envious of those who didn’t because they were the ones fucking and sweating and hoping to get closer to those who did. They all believed these were childish games and hazing meant to build character, but only a handful knew the truth. The upcoming initiation was a test of loyalty, nothing more.
It was my welcome to a world that I would have rather burned to the ground.
Summer was on the way out and initiation weekend was coming. Everyone who wanted to pretend to be anyone was trying their hardest to impress us on the off-chance they could earn a spot in our house and among our ranks. Initiation weekend meant it was time for the Black Thorns to have a president on campus again because the spot could only be held by a Sinclair, and up until now, it had been my father. Even though I’d spent my whole life being trained for this moment, being so close to opportunity and control was an aphrodisiac…even for me. It was hard to not be drunk with power after a lifetime of having decisions made for me. RHU was my first tease of freedom. A trial run for one year before being released into the proper ranks of my family and the men my family controlled.
“Sorry, Fletcher,” my second, Daren, said with a grunt, his back arching up like a cat as he came inside whatever little freshman had been stupid enough to get under him.
“You know the rules,” I said.
It was a warning meant for his ears alone. Anyone who tried to fuck their way into my good graces was out.
Stupider men had tried that before and, once, I’d almost fallen for it.
Never again.
“I do,” Daren said with a laugh. Sweat beaded on his forehead and fell down onto the younger man’s back. “He doesn’t.”
“You’re terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m going for a walk,” I said, “leaving my phone.”
It was a warm night, still too much like summer for my liking, but the air in the house was thick with the smell of sex and I needed a break from it. I needed a break from my life and what was about to become of it. Even though I was more than ready for the freedom, the path to get there was beyond daunting.
The man with a cock up his ass whimpered, his dick leaking cum against his belly, and Daren gave me a mock salute before wiping the mess onto his fingers and smearing it onto his dick like it was lube before sinking back in. I closed the door behind me on the way out, wishing I could be like Daren, wishing I could be like anyone who was able to separate their heart from their cock long enough to just get off.
Not to imply I was a virgin, because I definitely wasn’t. I’d lost the right to call myself that my freshman year in high school when I’d walked Sarah Reynolds back to her room after watching her fail her math final. She was distraught, beyond consolation, and I’d never admit it to another soul, but so was I. I took advantage of her that day. Or maybe she’d taken advantage of me and she just didn’t know it. We were both not the best versions of ourselves back then, only one of us hiding that truth from the other.
With trembling fingers and lips that tasted like cherries, she asked for a distraction and I gave her one.
It was over quickly, and I called my father on the way back to my room to tell him about it. He wasn’t even impressed. He acted like I’d called to tell him I cleaned my room or showed up on time for a tutoring session. I supposed that, to him, it was the same thing.
A command being given and an order being followed.
Without another word to anyone in the house, I made my way down the winding old staircase and out the front door. Black Thorn house was a monstrosity of a building, with black siding, four gables, and a wraparound porch offering immaculate views of the valley below. From my bedroom on the third floor of the house, I could even see Rose Hall, all the way on the other edge of the acreage owned by the college. That was a view—and a reminder—I could live without, but my father told me once the placement of the president’s private room had been on purpose.
“So you never wake up without remembering who you’re fighting,” he’d said.
My first morning as president, I’d stared across the property at Rose Hall, wondering if Gideon was there. If he was awake. If he was staring back at me.
My ribs burned and twisted at the thought of him, contorting like a gnarled oak tree in the middle of my chest. Shortly thereafter I’d ordered Daren to hang blackout curtains and I’d never opened them since.
Avoiding Gideon North at Rose Hill University had proved to be far easier than it had at Rose Hill Prep…namely because he’d fallen behind after taking an F in our first year English class. One term later, his father pulled him out of the school entirely, and I’d never known such relief. It was impossible to look at him without hating myself, without hating my father. It took months after his departure for my anxiety to settle, and months after that for my routine to reassert itself. The years passed, and that sixteen year-old boy I’d been—along with all of his dreams—was long gone. I moved on to college unscathed, made it through three years without so much as a hint of Gideon North, and then the summer before my last year started, he showed up on campus looking nothing like the boy I remembered him to be.
At some point, Gideon had finally hit a growth spurt, shooting up well past my six-foot-one frame. I hadn’t seen him up close—or in person—but I’d heard enough rumors about the return of the prodigal North son, ready to take his seat of power opposite mine. There was some part of me that had tried to convince myself he’d be out of my life forever. After his disappearance from school and his lack of enrollment at the college level, I thought I’d be free of him for good. But as I often did when it came to Gideon North, I’d let my guard down.
A mistake.
Rumors began to swirl about his arrival for our last year of college, ready to take his rightful spot as the head of the Crimson Roses, but they’d been just that.
Rumors.
Until Daren showed up at dinner in the middle of summer with a streak of pictures on his cell phone that proved Gideon had, in fact, arrived on campus. His hair was longer than before, but just as golden and beautiful. He was taller, more muscular, but still fitted with that lean swimmer’s build I remembered him having when we were younger.
“They call him The Beast,” Daren had said, not even blinking an eye when I snatched the phone out of his hand to zoom in on the photos of Gideon at the pool. Wearing nothing more than a small and tight Speedo, he cut a sharp line through the water, leaving four other swimmers in his wake.
“Why?”
“Because he is.” Daren snorted, like it was some kind of joke I wasn’t getting. “He’s been here two weeks and he’s already obliterated every swim record the college has ever had. He’s less than one second off the world record for the hundred meter freestyle.”
I tried to give Daren back his phone with as much casual indifference as I could muster. “That’s a stupid nickname.”
“You should watch him swim.”
“I don’t want to watch him do anything,” I’d snapped. “And neither should you. You may not be a Sinclair, but don’t forget whose side you stand at.”
That sobered him up.
His earlier admiration gone, Daren gave me a sharp nod and a quick apology.
That was the last we’d spoken about Gideon North. The boy whose heart I’d once broken…along with my own.
Gideon North.
The Beast.