13. Fletcher
Chapter 13
Fletcher
I didn’t bother taking a flashlight when I left the house. The lights from the main floor washed down enough of the hillside I could almost see the trail that ran down the back of the slope to the edge of the property line. Normally, at night, I wandered onto Sinclair land, thinking of all the ways I’d burn it to the ground once I was finally in charge, but that night I found myself walking west, deciding to make a loop of the campus instead. It would be well over three miles, which I hoped would be enough time to clear my head. The fall air was still warm enough that my joints didn’t ache, so the walk was an easy one, not a punishment.
Though, I would have taken either.
I was by no means isolated or alone, but I did enjoy my quiet interludes because it was the only time I didn’t have to pretend. Being a Sinclair had been work since the day I was born, and the reminder of what happened when I tried to walk away from that responsibility had been beaten into me my freshman year of high school. I’d toed the line ever since, even if there were always stray thoughts in the back of my mind that led me other places.
Halfway around campus, I stopped at a particularly tall tree, pressing my fingers against the rough and peeling bark. The trunk was sticky with sap, and I pushed my fingers together, enjoying the way they stuck before popping free. With a mess on my hand and my attention on it, I almost didn’t notice the new light coming from Rose Hall.
It was in the attic. And I knew whose room was in the attic.
Gideon.
He’d been on campus at least two weeks, and though I hadn’t seen him, I knew it was impossible to avoid him forever. There were rules and there were rituals because the competition between our families was not without a facade of civility. I had less than a week before we were due to come face to face for the first time since I crossed him at RHP and I definitely was not looking forward to it.
I was a different person, though, and it was a different time. It was ridiculous to think Gideon North would still have any power over me. He was my nemesis. The man I hated beyond all measure, all reason. He was the only man powerful enough to be my downfall.
We both knew it, and my father knew it as well.
Pressing my back against the tree until the bark cut into my spine, I forced myself to look up at the attic room, daring myself to not look away when a tall silhouette appeared in the window. It was dark at the tree line, and I was wearing all black. There wasn’t any way for Gideon to see me out there…watching him…but the figure pulled the curtain aside just the same.
I remembered cum on my fingers, sticky like the tree sap, Gideon’s slack-jawed, post-orgasm face still as fresh in my memory as if it had happened yesterday.
He hadn’t been a beast back then. He’d been the softest thing, gentle and hopeful and all of the things that had no place in a world like ours. He wouldn’t have survived. We wouldn’t have survived. Almost a decade later, and I better understood the reality of our situations in a way he never had. There was too much power, too much money, too many lies wrapped up in the Sinclair and North families for us to pretend we could escape it. And we’d just been two boys who didn’t know any better, pretending we were stronger than a generations-long legacy that would still exist after we were gone.
In the window, Gideon let the curtain fall back into place and I snuck out of the shadows, heading off campus and into town. An hour later, I made it to Thornhill Pub and Grub, ready for a drink.
Considering it was the Friday before classes were set to start, the place was packed, mostly with underclassmen who were still excited about all the ways the connections they’d make over the next four years would ruin their lives. Daren had apparently finished fucking because he was against the bar, a completely different man in front of him, ready to spread his legs to get close to the VP of The Black Thorns.
Daren saw me enter, laughing to himself when I rolled my eyes at his next conquest. I didn’t judge him for the eager way he took new partners to bed. Sometimes, I envied it. The way he found release from it. Sex, to me, had felt like a responsibility for years, the only responsibility I had any power to ignore. I would often go days—weeks—without, testing my willpower and my resolve before I found myself on the brink of collapse. Then, and only then, would I find a partner.
Hardly.
I’d find a warm and willing body. And then I’d be done with it.
With initiation weekend just around the corner, I’d decided to hold out because…
Well…
There were many tools when it came to the games men like me had to play in life. Money being the most common currency, sex being the second. My self-imposed and short-lived vows of celibacy were one of the only chances I had to keep people from sticking to money when it came to me. Using sex to gain control had always felt like a coward’s choice for me. Also too risky and too emotional. I couldn’t touch my own cock without picturing Gideon North’s shining green eyes and that was bad enough. I didn’t want another man to come into my life and make things worse.
While Gideon’s reputation as a quiet recluse had come before him, I’d spent years on the ground making sure nobody had any doubt about the kind of man I was. Ruthless, rough, and unforgiving. I was Fletcher Sinclair, president of The Black Thorn Society, heir to the Sinclair dynasty, and whatever else I decided to make of myself…whatever my father decided to make of me.
I was not a lover. I was not a friend.
I was a threat.
I was the villain.
“Shit, sorry,” a soft voice said behind me, a hard shoulder digging into the middle of my back.
I straightened my spine and groaned, grateful to find a distraction from my own tortured thoughts. Turning, I reached behind me, curling my fingers around the wrist of the man who’d knocked into me and effectively stopping him from making an escape.
“Shit, sorry?” I repeated his apology back to him as a question.
When he saw me, a series of things happened, nearly simultaneously.
He tilted his head back to look up at me, hazel eyes wide and scared.
My breath hitched in my throat, expanding until it was almost impossible to breathe.
“I didn’t…” he trailed off, licking his lower lip with the tip of his short and oh-so-pink tongue.
“Didn’t?”
“Didn’t what?” I asked.
“Didn’t know it was you.”
I flexed my fingers around the delicate bones of his wrist. “And who am I?”
Before he could answer, I was jostled again. This time I knew from scent alone it was Daren behind me, pressing his cheek against the outside of my arm like an over-eager puppy.
“He’s a teddy bear,” Daren answered, and I elbowed him hard in the gut.
He keeled over, choking and laughing at the same time.
“Definitely not a teddy bear,” he rasped, quickly righting himself and pushing his way in between me and the stranger who’d accidentally accosted me. “But he’s no one you need to worry about.”
“I…” The other man blinked quickly, stare darting from me to Daren and back again.
“He’s right,” I bit out, unwrapping my fingers from the man’s wrist and handing him off to my second. “As far as you’re concerned, I’m no one at all.”