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Chapter One

Jay

A buff football player leaped butt-ass naked into the pool, and a whole squad of cheerleaders shrieked, jumping back as the splash from Free Willy soaked them. The guy climbed out of the pool with a drunk grin on his face.

My eyes naturally drifted downward.

He swung his (very gifted) dick in a few helicopter swirls before another one of his frat bros threw him a pair of torn underwear.

This was dumb.

Hot, but really fucking dumb.

It was Spring Rush Week at Franklin University. A time full of booze and parties. When fraternities and sororities opened their doors and coaxed in their next pledges.

I thought it would be a good idea to take a stroll down Frat Row. I figured it’d be a good way to make new friends. I’d been kicked out of my last school, forced to move across the country to live with my mom, and now had to somehow scramble together another life surrounded by a whole new cast of people .

And then there was me. A dream-filled kid and an environmental activist who managed to get a land protection act passed through Congress as my high school senior project.

It was that same passion that landed me in trouble last semester. Forests in Upstate New York were being wiped out. I organized a protest—peaceful, might I add—except the peace didn’t last too long.

Another group, not involved in my protest, must have smelled the chaos in the air. They arrived with firecrackers and BB guns.

It didn’t take long for the woods to burn.

Four people got hurt, one of them being a police officer.

I was asked to leave voluntarily or be expelled a week later. With such short notice between semesters, I had only one option available.

Transferring to Franklin University. My dad had been a professor here and had been very close to the dean. She heard my story and accepted my application.

Coming back home was hard. Being so close to the ocean was harder. But I had to deal with it. I couldn’t mess this up, not again.

And now I was here, at the Sigma Alpha Chi house, surrounded by smelly frat boys and giddy sorority girls, all of them peacocking as much as possible.

Eh. Fuck this.

I wound my way through a crowd surrounding a beer pong table. One of the balls bounced off the beer-stained white plastic table and landed at my feet. I picked it up and tossed it back.

The guy who caught it nearly made me stumble. Wow, was he good looking. Pretty, but also a little rugged, handsome. Square jaw with a rounded smile that softened those hard planes. He had green eyes that appeared to shine like gems under the backyard lights. “Thanks, bro,” he said, holding the ball out for me. “Want to give it a shot?”

“Sure, why not?” I grabbed the ball from his hand, our fingertips grazing. Sparks flew.

What the fuck?

I tried to ignore whatever fluttery butterfly feeling landed in my chest and focused on the four red Solo cups directly across from me. “Can I get a rerack?” I asked the two fraternity brothers on the other team. “A diamond, please.”

They moved the cups into a diamond formation, and I took aim. It was all in the elbow after all. I was about to throw when a gentle hand landed on my elbow, and a low voice entered my ear.

“Lower your arm. There you go. Which one are you aiming for?”

“The one closest.”

He lowered my arm a bit more. He must have taken a step forward because now he pressed into my back. It was a gentle pressure and a nice one. I pushed back a bit. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was a brother or another student trying to rush, but I didn’t really care. The guy was sexy as fuck and was currently pushing his dick up against my ass, so the formalities really didn’t mean much to me in that moment.

I shut one eye, aimed, and tossed the ball. It smacked the rim of the cup and bounced off.

“Damn, a rim job,” my hot beer pong tutor said. “You were close.”

“What if a rim job’s exactly what I was going for?” I asked, turning around so I could see Mr. Green Eyes’ reaction.

His lips curved into a sexy smirk. He wore an FU rowing shirt, purple and gold, with a pair of white shorts that revealed a black-and-white snake tattoo wrapping around his thigh. Music pumped through stereos the size of tiny elephants, rattling my ribs. Or was that the hundred thousand monarch butterflies currently slapping their wings against my heart and lungs?

I worried that if I opened my mouth, they’d all flutter out at once.

“Damn, bro, in that case, then let’s forget about the game and go play with ourselves.”

I nearly tipped right over. “I, um…” This wasn’t like me. I was rarely ever at a loss for words. Usually, I was loaded up with sass and sarcasm.

“Ryan!”

My beer pong instructor looked over my shoulder at the opposing team.

“Come on, man, if you win this game, then you’re an automatic pledge. Let’s gooooo .”

Ah, so he wasn’t a brother yet. Interesting. And his name was Ryan. Damn, I was in more trouble than I thought. That was a hot name. All the Ryans I’d been with were hung like horses and, more importantly, knew how to use the tools they were blessed with.

And this Ryan was no different, judging by what I felt moments earlier when he rubbed up against my back.

“Want to jump in with me?” Ryan asked.

Tempting, even though all I really wanted to do was jump on him. I glanced at my wristwatch, the dark green face lighting up. “I was heading out, actually. This really isn’t my vibe.”

“Then let me walk out with you,” he said. He casually tossed the Ping-Pong ball behind his back. The ball bounced on one cup and landed in another. The opposing team tried to finger the ball out of the cup but it didn’t work. He made the shot.

I arched a brow, impressed.

“I play a lot of sports and video games,” he said. “It’s sharpened my reflexes.”

All right, what the hell was going on? This guy was hot, had sexy biceps and a friendly smile, and he played video games? He had to be some kind of trap. Either a straight guy who liked to fuck around orrr he was a serial killer. There was really no in-between, and I wasn’t in the mood to figure it out, either. My legs were sore from the gym earlier, and my guard was up around all these straight guys.

I should have stayed in my dorm watching Survivor and called it a night.

“Finish your game,” I said to the handsome guy with the big arms and perfect aim. “Maybe I’ll see you around campus.”

I started to walk through the drunk crowd, Ryan following behind me. “Hold up,” he said before placing an arm on my shoulder.

More sparks lit up the night, brighter than any amount of fireworks could.

“I didn’t get your name.”

“Joey. But everyone calls me Jay.”

His eyes opened wide, and he leaned in. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Jay,” I repeated myself. “My name is Jay. ”

“Ohhhhhh.” He started to laugh, and damn it, the sound of his laugh was perfect. “I thought you said gay .”

I blinked a couple of times before I started to match his laughter. “No, but I am that too.”

“Then we have something in common.” His grin pinned me in place. Okay, so he wasn’t straight. That made him a serial killer. I had to go. Fast.

“Well, it’s great to meet you, Ryan. Hope you end up finding a good frat to rush.”

He looked around at the gathered crowd and shrugged. “Eh, I came out here for some booze and a good time. I’m not really interested in joining.”

One of the brothers nearby must have heard him. He whipped around and threw an arm across Ryan’s shoulders. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, did I hear that right? Ryan, you don’t want to rush Sigma?”

“Nah, I think I’m good.” Ryan shrugged off the arm and pointed toward the door. “Wanna head out?” he asked me.

But the frat bro wasn’t finished with his sales pitch. “Hold up, man, you’ve got to join. You’re a legacy. Wouldn’t your dad be pissed off if you didn’t?” Mention of his father seemed to give him pause. Like the guy had pressed some invisible button and set off a nuclear countdown inside Ryan’s chest.

My curiosity got the best of me. “Who’s your dad?”

“No on?—”

The frat bro cut Ryan off, beer sloshing out of his overflowing red Solo cup. “The owner of one of the most successful fucking companies on this planet.”

…

…

So Ryan was hot, funny, a gamer, good at sports (the kind involving alcohol at least), gay, and came from a rich family.

Definitely a serial killer.

“Maybe I should stay,” he said to me. His tone sounded more fit for a funeral, not a keg-fueled rage. “It was great meeting you, Jay. Want to trade numbers? Maybe we can link up later.”

I shrugged and took out my phone. What would it hurt? I was in a brand-new school, starting off during the beginning of the spring semester. Friend groups were already established, and new kids weren’t always welcome, so the more, the merrier. Especially since I wanted to continue with my activist work here. There was power in numbers.

Plus, the guy was hot.

We swapped information, and I left with another goodbye, trying hard not to be hypnotized by Ryan’s bright smile. I headed toward the huge two-story stucco house, a gentle breeze rustling the thick palm tree leaves. It smelled like salt, like the ocean.

God, I fucking hated that smell.

A group of brothers chatted near the exit. I decided to play the role of a detective. I smiled and caught one of the guys’ attention.

“Hey, quick question. I was wondering,” I said, acting as nonchalantly as possible, “but who’s that guy over there? The one with the FU shirt and white shorts?”

“Ryan? Ah, yeah, we all know him. His family was one of Sigma Alpha Chi’s founding fathers. Christopher Redpine.”

“Redpine. Why does… wait, wait, wait.” My heart dropped to my feet. “Redpine, as in Redpine Global? The company kn own for fracking all across protected lands? Ruining natural habitats for over a hundred different endangered and rare species? Contributing to the metric shit tons of carbon that’s accelerating climate change and creating natural disasters all around the world? That Redpine Global?”

The frat guy scratched the back of his neck. “Uh, I don’t know about all that. But yeah. Redpine Global. Dude’s fucking loaded.”

“Got it, thanks.” I walked around the fraternity brother and through the inside of the messy and cluttered house.

I knew it. I fucking knew it.

So Ryan wasn’t straight, and he wasn’t a serial killer. Instead, he was the heir to the oil throne for a king hell-bent on ending the world while making his pockets fatter in the process.

Before I left the house, I deleted his number. If there was any kind of god or goddess in this world, then they’d hear my prayers and never make our paths cross.

Ever. Again.