Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Zeke
I’m so distracted I almost forget the dean is coming. Last night was insane. Not only a huge gamble in getting caught, but I said things I shouldn’t have. Things that were unnervingly true.
I couldn’t keep my hands off him. We showered together, dressed together, snuck back into the room, where we curled up together, trading kisses and soft words until I had to let him go, and the small distance between us killed me.
Like now, seeing him talking and laughing with Bailey and Sam fills me with so much envy I’m holding myself back from walking over there and claiming him.
And goddamn do I want to claim him. Every inch of his haughty, easily offended, spitfire frame.
Before I can follow that thought through, the dean arrives, and everyone snaps to attention. With any luck, sometime in the next half an hour, Larken will call with this fuckface motherfucker trapped and on camera messing with the Kappas’ shit.
The pressure is mounting for this plan to work. If it doesn’t, I have no clue what our next move should be because our leads are dry. The guys have been asking around, but whoever it is mustn’t be talking.
Charles takes Dean Hutchins through who the winners were and their prizes, and I try to keep my focus on them and not the other end of the street, where Kappa house looks still and empty.
Looks can be deceiving.
I have everything crossed that this works. Then with the stupid claims gone, I can focus on graduation … and Charles.
Who shouldn’t even be a consideration.
I drag my hand through my hair, wishing I could go back to when compartmentalizing was so much easier. Getting to know Charles on top of all the sex has been too much. My brain is getting all screwy and caught in that trap that this can be more than it is.
Am I ready to drown my Olympic dreams?
Clearly fucking not, or I would have come out already.
I can’t work out if that makes me selfish, stupid, or driven.
I’d like to think I’m so focused on my goals that nothing can dampen that fire, but I’m overly aware of how true my words were last night. How easy it would be to say fuck it all and walk away and try for something real.
Charles and I have never had that talk. He’s never specifically said anything like that would even be on the table, but I dunno, there’s something there.
I can feel it when we’re touching, when we’re talking, when we’re texting.
I don’t even have confirmation that I’m the only one he’s sleeping with. I just know.
Maybe that makes me a naive idiot, but every day only makes me trust Charles and what we have more.
I metaphorically kick myself with the reminder that what we have is the start.
A barely thing. An arrangement that could work out to be amazing but needs to be stopped before we get to that point.
I’ve never been one of those dudes who believe love is all you need and whatever.
I have goals and ambition, ones I don’t want to give up, and if Charles is making me question that, it can’t be a good sign.
The fucked-up thing is he hasn’t asked me to question anything.
He’s offered me sex and friendship, and I’m the one who’s getting carried away with it all.
Even last night, he’d been all about a quickie and making sure we weren’t discovered, and all I wanted to do was touch and taste every part of him I could reach.
“Ready whenever you are,” Chad says, holding up his phone.
That snaps me out of my circling thoughts and back to the important part. Dean Hutchins reads through the winners and announces the amount we raised. Every second he’s talking seems to inch slower, and I can’t stop looking back down the row again and again.
I’m swimming with nerves. Charles too, if the way he keeps pursing his lips and lifting up his head is any indication.
I want to hurry the dean out of here, but a big part of this was to show we’re playing nice and are all about the school spirit or whatever.
When the recording ends, his gaze strays over by our front door. “That’s, a, uh, interesting decoration,” he says.
And when I turn to see what’s caught his eye—motherfucker. Our Heroes Hunt trophy is hanging in pride of place.
And when I say trophy, what I mean is a bright pink dildo with trophy pieces superglued to it. Chad’s eyes have widened comically, and I’m kind of hoping the front deck will open up and swallow me whole.
Robbie, on the other hand, cracks up laughing. “We’re good at improvising.”
“Hmm …”
“It was part of a street-wide event,” I hurry to explain. “One of the great things about this community is the way we all come together. Events are a big one. Traditions that have been in place since the school was founded is another. That trophy is one tradition that’s been passed on to us.”
Dean Hutchins gives a curt nod, and I’m kicking myself for not removing the stupid thing. But that trophy has hung there for as long as I’ve been a Sigma Beta Psi, which is why we fight so hard to win the scavenger hunt every year.
“Good job with the money,” he says. “Charles, I’ll see you and your fathers next week.”
They shake hands, and the dean leaves. We all stand there, trying to act normal until he’s driven off, and then I grab my phone to text Larken.
Not even a minute later, I see him jogging down the street.
“Anything?” I ask.
He shakes his head, and my gut sinks. “No one showed.”
“Fuck.” The hope I’d been holding on to crashes. “Fuck.”
“Hey, it’s okay. We’ll make another plan.” Charles gives my arm a quick squeeze, and it kills me that I can’t have more.
“Another plan. More time spent on this, fuck.”
“Whoa,” Brandon says. “It’s okay, we’ll figure it out.”
“Will we?” And sure, it’s not like me to have these types of outbursts, but I can’t stop. “We don’t know who this asshole is. We don’t know why they’re doing it or what their plans are. We don’t know a goddamn thing, and it feels like this creep is playing with us.”
“We’re doing everything we can,” Brandon says.
“And if it’s not enough? What if we really do get shut down? And then I’m the president who sank Sigma Beta Psi. What a legacy to leave behind.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad?” I yank at my hair. “My record needs to be clean. Why do you think I joined a fraternity in the first place? Why do you think I became president? It wasn’t because I had nothing else to do.
I’m working my goddamn ass off for that gold.
It’s all I’ve ever cared about, but shit like that comes with consequences.
It comes with notoriety and people wanting to dig and find out all the shit about you.
My record needs to be squeaky clean so when I step onto that podium, I won’t have a single regret in the fucking world.
” My gaze slips to Charles, and I have to yank it away again.
“My entire focus for the last three years has been to make it. I’m so close.
College is almost over, and now some bored jackass in their parents’ fucking basement is trying to bring all that down because they, what …
think they’re important? Have something to prove?
” I turn and drive the palm of my hand into the post by the front door.
Pain shoots up my arm, but I grit my teeth against it.
Charles steps in front of me and grabs my upper arms. “Hey, that’s enough. Nothing happened today—that’s a good thing. It gives us more time to think.” His grip tightens. “I didn’t join a losing side.”
And for maybe the first time ever, it’s him calming me down. It works too. The conviction helps remind me that with all the worst-case scenarios rattling in my brain, none of them have actually happened yet.
We have time.
Only when I roll out of bed the next morning, I’m groggy and disoriented. I’ve slept through my alarm and missed my morning swim. For the first time since I joined college and—crap! It’s almost nine. If I don’t hurry, I’ll miss my morning class too.
I have a text from my coach to see where I am, along with a missed call from a private number.
I click on the voicemail and switch my phone to speaker as I hurry to dig up clothes but pause as soon as a voice I almost recognize fills my room.
“This is Pamela calling from Dean Hutchins’s office.
The dean requires an urgent meeting with you. If you could call back on …”
My mouth goes dry. What fresh hell is this?
It takes two attempts to punch in the number because my hand is shaking, and when Pamela won’t schedule me any earlier than four, I want to tell her to go and fuck herself and her “urgent” meeting. But I hold it together, forcing my unwavering calm to the forefront.
And when I drop onto the side of my bed, face in my hands, one thought is louder than the others.
I want Charles.
The urge is so brutally overpowering that I’m calling him before I can think it through. Before I can talk myself through all the risks and remind myself of keeping us quiet. I just … I’m exhausted.
He answers on the third ring.
“Where are you?” I ask before he can even say as much as hello.
“Umm, home. About to leave for class.”
“Can you not?”
There’s a pause. “What’s wrong?”
“I have a meeting with the dean today. They wouldn’t tell me what it’s about, but apparently, it’s urgent.”
The silence is stifling, and I’m scared he’ll say no. I’m asking a lot, and I know it isn’t fair.
“What do you need?” he asks.
“You. Just you.” Not sex. Not someone amusing to pass the time with. Him.
“So am I coming to you, or are you coming here?”
The relief is immediate. “I’ll be right down.”
I shower quickly, then get dressed, and as I’m leaving, I pause to grab my swim hoodie to switch out for the one he has.
I jog down the street and straight up the steps at his place, then walk right on in without knocking.
There are people in the front room, but I don’t bother slowing down to see who, just continue into the hall and down to Charles’s room.
I slip inside, then close the door and immediately lock it behind me before I manage a huge inhale.
Charles’s eyes are filled with sympathy as he crosses the room to pull me into a hug. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t fucking know. Things are spiraling, and I don’t know how to stop it.”
“We will though. You know that, don’t you?”
I chuckle darkly into his shoulder. “Let’s hope.”
Lips brush my neck. “Do you want to go somewhere? Do something?”
“Like what?”
“Anything that will distract you.”
I pull back and pump my eyebrows. “Doing you will distract me.”
He laughs. “Not what I had in mind.”
Just being around him has helped to calm some of my rising panic. I hand over my hoodie, loving the way Charles’s face lights up before he presses it to his nose.
“Are you sure you’re okay with skipping class?”
“I shouldn’t.” He shrugs and falls back into his desk chair. “But every day, Cornell looks further and further away.”
“What do you mean?” I drop onto the side of his bed and lean back into my hands.
“When you were talking yesterday … I realized that I’ve never felt that way about anything before.
There’s nothing I’d give up everything in my life to achieve.
I’ve been raised to follow this path, to act a certain way, to think certain things and …
I hate it.” His laugh comes out on a burst of air.
“Law is painful. I’m smart. I understand it when I try, but it’s like these little blades under my skin whenever I walk into a classroom or try to argue a case.
Especially when the person I’m supposed to be defending is guilty.
I …” He snarls. “You said I’m passionate, but I’ve never, ever felt that burning need for something the way you do. ”
There’s something in his words, his tone, that makes me swallow and ask, “Ever?” Because Charles is one of the most passionate people I know. It’s impossible to me that he doesn’t have that drive inside him, propelling him forward, reaching into every part of his life.
Then his eyes meet mine. And he swallows thickly. And suddenly, he doesn’t have to answer.
But I want him to.
“Not over … anything?” I prompt.
His cheeks are going splotchy, and excitement is dancing in my veins.
And when he lifts his head, chin tilting that bit higher, I’m torn on whether he’s going to say what I think he will or lie. “Never.” Lie, it is, then. “Until you.”
“Charlie …”
“I’m not asking for anything. There are no expectations. I know this thing between us is going to end, and I told myself I’d never tell you how I feel about you. But then … I think … well, you feel it too, don’t you?”
My neck is stiff, but I nod.
“Okay …” He smiles before he ducks his head. “This doesn’t change anything. You’re still West Coast, I’m still East. But … thank you. It’s nice to know I’m not alone in this.”
“You’re not.” My voice does this awkward crack, and I hurry to clear my throat. “I wish I could change things.”
“No. That’s not how this goes. We’re both realists, but it means that everything we share until then will be that much sweeter.”
I agree, because what else can I do? Nothing he’s saying isn’t true. But having that definite reminder of how limited the time we have left is makes me more desperate to hold on to it.
The easiest way to have that is to come out. To tell my brothers the truth and fuck what they think.
Charles moves to stand between my legs, and his soft fingers cup my face. “I’m coming with you today. To see the dean. From now until graduation, we’re partners in everything, and that includes this. We’re not going down without a fight.”