Chapter 5
WEST
I’m just slipping the strap of my backpack over my shoulder when a familiar car pulls up to the back of Romeo House, and Xave and Damon get out of it.
I watch as Xave goes around to the back of the car and pulls a small suitcase out of the trunk. He hands Damon the handle of the suitcase, then leans in and gives him a long, deep kiss.
Xave and Damon created quite the scandal when they came out and announced that they’re together, but the excitement died down pretty fast since they went public a few days before spring break started.
My cheeks flush hot, and I quickly look away as I wheel my own suitcase toward the back entrance.
“Hey,” Damon greets with a dopey smile when they finally break apart.
“Hey,” I say. “Hey,” I add, flicking my gaze to Xave.
He upnods me, then immediately returns his attention to Damon. “See you tonight?”
Damon smiles suggestively, and I shift from foot to foot when Xave leans in and gives him another long kiss.
“Bye,” Xave whispers and gives Damon’s ass a squeeze.
“Bye,” Damon says in a dreamy voice.
“Later.” Xave gives me another upnod.
I wave like a moron.
“Did you have a good break?” Damon asks as we walk up the path to the back door together.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to sound enthusiastic. “It was great. How was yours?”
“Amazing.” A faraway look comes over his face as he smiles. “I could have stayed there forever.”
“You went to a lake, right?” I tap my card on the ID sensor on the door.
He nods and also taps his ID.
“Since when are you an outdoor person?” I pull the door open and hold it for him so he can go in first.
“I’m not.” He lets out a soft chuckle. “But we didn’t exactly spend a lot of our time outdoors unless it was in the hot tub or on the beach.”
“Sounds relaxing,” I say, unable to keep the wistfulness out of my voice.
“It was.” He shoots me a quick look as we walk down the hall and toward the western stairwell together. “I was a good friend and actually checked your stories,” he says, his tone carefully casual. “It looks like you had a busy week.”
I smile, but it feels forced. “Yeah, it definitely was. I need a vacation from my vacation.”
He gives me another look as we reach the door to the stairwell. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course,” I say quickly and pull open the door.
He follows me into the stairwell. “Are you sure? Last time we talked, you were taking McKenna on a romantic getaway, then I see a week of stories where you’re at the clubs every night with her friends. And I can’t really explain it, but there’s something different about you. You seem…”
“Different?” I offer, trying not to sound too sarcastic. It’s not his fault I’m in a bad mood.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he presses as we climb the stairs together.
“I’m fine,” I tell him, my chest tight at how easily the lie slips out. “I’m just tired from traveling.”
“What happened to your plan to get away, just the two of you?”
“No clue. I got a text just before lunch on Friday that she needed to talk to me, and when I met up with her, she said she wanted to change our plans because there were all these events she wanted to go to, and I basically got steamrolled into agreeing.”
“Was it at least fun?” he asks dubiously.
“It was…busy.”
“That’s a diplomatic answer.”
“It’s the short answer,” I nod at the door to my floor as we step onto the landing in front of it. “Otherwise we’ll be in here for a while.”
“I want the real answer later,” he says as we pause. “After the meeting tonight.”
“Deal.”
“See ya.” He gives me a quick upnod.
“Later.” I pull open the door to my floor as he continues up the stairs.
A sense of familiarity and relief washes over me as I step into my room, and I drop my bag on the floor as my door swings shut with a loud bang.
Leaving my bag and suitcase where they are, I trudge over to the small couch in the corner of my room and sink down on it.
The fact that I feel more relaxed and at ease now that I’m back in my dorm room than I did during my entire vacation isn’t lost on me, and I let out a heavy sigh as I try to muster up the will to put my bags away so I don’t end up leaving them sitting in the corner for days.
I have no idea why McKenna changed our plans, but I’m really not mad that she did.
It would have been nice to have a low-key break and chill for a week, but it’s not like jetting around and going to clubs and events is some sort of hardship. And I got time to relax while she and her friends were off doing stuff during the day.
It wasn’t the vacation I wanted, but it was still a vacation, and complaining that I didn’t get to relax the way I wanted isn’t going to help anything.
And as much as I hate to admit it, maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that we didn’t spend much time together.
I hoped that I’d get my head back in order after a week away from school, but seeing Damon and Xave kissing earlier was proof that didn’t happen, and I was fooling myself when I thought I’d put my bisexuality away again.
I’ll never admit this to anyone, but I had a thing for Damon when we first met. It’s why I hung around him like an overeager puppy, but those feelings faded once I actually got to know him, and I haven’t felt anything but platonic love for him since.
I don’t want Damon, not like that, but seeing him and Xave together made me realize that I want what he has.
And I want to experience what it would be like to have it with a man.
Women are great. I love them, I love being with them, and I’m wildly attracted to a lot of them, but there’s a part of me that wants something different.
Something I can only get from another man.
But I can’t have that because I’m with McKenna, and I’m okay with that. I chose her, and I love her, but there will always be a part of me that will wonder what it could have been like if things were different.
Ping.
I jump as my phone chimes.
What the fuck?
I pull it out of my pocket. How am I getting a notification if I put it on silent?
Distracted by the notification, I don’t look too closely at the text itself or the number it came from. Instead I open the ring settings.
It’s still on silent.
“How…?”
Ping.
Another text appears, and I nearly drop my phone when I finally look at the number.
“No fucking way.” I read the number again to make sure I’m seeing what I think I am. “No fucking way,” I repeat.
It’s the same number I had when I got my first phone back in middle school.
Do they reuse old numbers and give them to people after they haven’t been used for a while? That would make sense considering there is a finite number of phone numbers out there, and they’d eventually run out if they didn’t.
But even if they did, and this is someone who legit has my middle school phone number, there’s no way it belongs to someone I know.
My instincts are screaming at me to delete the texts without reading them because this has to be a trap or a scam or something else I don’t want to get involved in, but my curiosity won’t let me.
Someone went to the trouble of finding a way to use my old phone number to contact me, and I need to know why.
“This is such a bad idea,” I murmur and open the text thread.
Unknown: I have a question for you
Unknown: would you want to know if your fiancée cheated on you?
What the actual fuck?
There’s no way those texts are meant for me. This has to be some sort of mistake, or maybe a really elaborate prank.
It could be one of my actual brothers trying to fuck with me.
They’ve done this kind of shit before, but they both really like McKenna, and they’ve told me multiple times that they can’t believe we’re together and she could do so much better than me.
I can’t see them doing something like this if it could cause us to break up, but I can also see them not giving a shit and doing it because they think she’s too good for me.
But if it was them, why would they do it now?
I haven’t seen or spoken to either of them since Christmas.
They’re grown and have careers and families and all the things that perfect sons are supposed to have.
Why would they waste their time setting up something this elaborate and cruel when there are way easier ways they could fuck with me?
It could also be one of McKenna’s exes trying to break us up, or even one of her friends wanting to cause trouble for her, but that doesn’t really fit either.
Using my old phone number is personal, and I’m not going to give whoever this is the satisfaction of letting them know they got in my head.
My finger hovers over the delete button.
Whoever sent those texts went to the trouble of figuring out what my old phone number was, then found a way to use it to text me.
That’s a lot of effort for a prank. And it was a deliberate choice to use my number when there are plenty of other ways to send an anonymous text to someone.
Plus there’s the fact that my phone notified me that the texts came in even though I had my phone on silent. I know nothing about phones or hacking them, but I imagine that overriding a phone’s ring settings isn’t something just anyone can do.
That part is freaking me out as much as someone cloning or using my old number.
If they could override the settings on my phone, what else can they do to it?
Can they read my texts? See my search history?
Can they access my apps? Or was making my phone chime when it’s on silent the extent of whatever they did?
Shoving my phone back in my pocket, I jump up off the couch and look around my room.
I need a distraction before I give myself a headache from overthinking and drive myself crazy with “what-ifs.”
My gaze lands on the small pile of workout clothes I tossed next to my hamper before the break.
I could go to the house gym.
Working out is the only healthy coping mechanism I’ve found that actually helps when I get overwhelmed like this.
Exhausting my body helps tire out my mind, and it gives me something to focus on other than whatever is driving me crazy at the time.