Page 5

Chapter Five

Jay

I hated Ryan.

Seriously. And I rarely ever allowed myself to feel that emotion. It was toxic.

Something else I hated?

“Spider,” I said, looking up into Ryan’s green eyes. “In the shower.”

The funny thing about hate, though? Sometimes it very much resembled its complete opposite cousin: love. Passionate, irrational, mind-altering.

As Ryan currently had my hardening cock against his own stiffening dick, hate became one of the last emotions I could even think about.

Love, on the other hand?

Yeah, I could see myself loving this.

Which was why I had to will myself to stop.

Maybe it’s not really hate that I’m feeling… “I, uh, you okay?” Ryan asked, his arms wrapped around me. I had my hands pressed against his chest. I could feel his heart beating against my palm through his white tee. And… holy shit. I was rock hard now. So was he.

But I didn’t want to separate. Not yet.

Ryan flashed me a cocky smile. “You know, if you wanted to cuddle with me, you could have asked.”

“Who says you aren’t the one who wanted to cuddle with me? Maybe you planted that huge hairy-ass spider in the bathroom?”

“Nah,” he said, “I’m deathly scared of those fuckers, too.” He pushed his hips forward. Gently, but enough for our hard lengths to rub together. Flames seared through any shred of logic I may have possessed. I wanted to get Ryan as naked and wet as I was. He lowered his hands, sitting them above my ass. I became hyperaware of how much water I dripped onto the floor, of how I must have been soaking through Ryan’s clothes, and yet he didn’t let me go.

“This is weird,” I said out loud but still didn’t budge.

I didn’t like Ryan. Or rather… I didn’t like this. The way this entire situation made me feel like I was doing something morally wrong. In reality, I barely knew anything about Ryan. I only knew about his father.

Maybe, in this case, the apple did fall far from the toxic tree?

“I like it.” His grip around me tightened, pulling me against him. God, he was so firm. I could practically feel each individual muscle of his ripple and shift under my hands. He was a Greek god, and I simply wanted to worship him. I wanted to run directly to his altar and drop to my knees. I wanted to…

Redpine Global.

Arch-nemesis .

Impossible.

The last strand of logic and morals I had left suddenly solidified. This wasn’t weird; it was wrong. Ryan and his family stood against every single thing I fought for in this world. No matter how hot he was, or how muscular he was, or how big his dick felt, or how funny he could be, or how interesting his hobbies were, or how… no . This couldn’t happen.

I somehow conjured the strength of an entire Spartan army and took a step back. I put both hands over my stiff dick in a small sign of modesty, although I noticed Ryan did nothing to hide the massive tent that had formed in his shorts. Fuck. I wanted to take care of it. I didn’t even care if I came or not; I wanted to focus on him. Make him see the stars before he blew his load down my throat.

“You’re so sexy, Jay.”

“And you’re bad news, Ry.”

Ah, damn it. A nickname. It had slipped out, and now there was no taking it back.

His face lit up. He fisted his stiff dick, gave it a shake through his shorts. “Why don’t we forget about the spider and focus on us instead?”

The temptation was intense. No one would know if me and Ryan fooled around behind closed doors. But if it ever got out… Activism was about passion, but it was also about reputation. How would anyone listen to my message if they knew I was sleeping with the enemy? I’d lose all respect, from others and from myself.

Or maybe it wasn’t even about any of that…

What would my dad think?

It couldn’t happen.

I had to be strong.

But fuuuuuck, Ryan made me so horny.

“Why am I bad news, Jay?”

I blinked, surprised he still didn’t realize. How did he walk around the world with all this blood and oil on his hands and not even care? He was a smart guy. I was sure he was aware of the damage his family caused with their company.

I wasn’t about to go into it with him now. Not while I was still dripping wet, butt-ass naked, and hard as a goddamn stalagmite.

“Just forget it and call someone who can deal with the tarantula in the bathroom.” I grabbed my damp towel and wrapped it back around my waist. Ryan’s face dropped in disappointment.

Yeah, well, that made two of us, buddy.

Three days had passed since the spider incident, and I would still randomly get hard throughout the day thinking about it.

Which was awkward when I was sitting across from my advisor this morning. I went to ask if I could double major in Environmental Science and Theater. Unfortunately, she had let me know that their theater program was full but that I could still audition for the spring plays. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, but being in Cali meant there were way more opportunities to grow as an actor outside of college.

It was also a great way to deflate my perma-boner, although it didn’t last too long.

Even now, while I sat in a huge lecture hall being taught all about how to stain a culture of bacteria. It was likely one of the least sexiest topics in the world, and yet I couldn’t get my dick to calm the fuck down. I tried focusing on taking notes, but I’d miss random things because all I kept thinking about was:

Dick, dick, dick, dick, Ryan’s dick, cock dick, Ryan’s dick against mine, Ryan’s dick inside me, dick cock?—

Yeah. It wasn’t great.

“Psst.”

Maddison Winstead, someone who’d quickly become a good friend in the short amount of time since I transferred, pulled my attention out of my peen-trance. She sat next to me, doodling in her iPad instead of taking notes. She had bright pink hair styled in a pixie cut, which made her hard to miss in any room. She had a gentle face but an ability to read someone to filth and not even break a sweat doing it. She was pre-med, extremely driven, and extremely political.

Plus, she had a really successful ASMR YouTube channel, so she exuded creative boss bitch energy too.

Basically, she was made for me.

“Danny is saying that he saw you with Ryan Redpine. Is that true?”

I looked past Maddy to a smirking Danny. He had dark black hair that looked like campfire smoke next to Maddy’s pink comet. Super friendly guy but clearly too interested in other people’s lives.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were friends with him?” Maddison said in a shocked whisper, her face covering Danny’s.

“I was going to,” I said, leaning forward and shooting one last (menacing but mostly friendly) glare at Danny. He gave a wide smile before running a hand through his hair. I returned the grin before turning my attention to the front of the class .

I wasn’t a huge fan of people linking us together, but Danny had been friendly since the start of class, so I didn’t really mind if he was the one who spotted us.

Professor Sinclair, our microbio teacher, was out sick today, so his hot TA took over for him. Everly wasn’t exactly my type—I wasn’t into the blond-haired, blue-eyed, buff aesthetic he rocked, but regardless, no one could deny he wasn’t difficult to look at.

Now, if Ryan were my TA, then it’d be game over. But of course, he wasn’t my TA. Why would he be working in a classroom that had anything to do with potentially protecting the environment? Of course he wouldn’t want to learn all about the ecosystems his family was destroying and the creatures his family endangered on a daily basis.

What an asshole.

What an extraordinarily hot and charismatic and magnetic asshole.

Ugh.

“And we aren’t friends. He’s my new roommate,” I whispered back.

“Are you serious? That’s who you’ve been living with? I knew they reassigned someone, but you failed to mention it was Ryan Redpine. Wow.” She sucked her teeth and shook her head. “Naughty, naughty.”

“There’s nothing naughty about it.”

Unfortunately.

Maddy gave me a “mhmm” glare. “We’re talking about this after class, mister.”

I glanced at the clock on the pale yellow wall. Good. That meant I had about twenty minutes to come up with a way to stop discussing this topic. Everly walked across the front of the class, enthusiastically lecturing us all about how the stains would look under a microscope. I had to give it to him: he was a good stand-in for the professor. Rumor had it he was also a stripper on the weekends, which wouldn’t really surprise me in the least. The guy had a body made for dancing naked and getting bills rained down on him.

Just before the end of class, Everly switched gears. He clicked off the projector and leaned on the desk, crossing his legs. He wore a pair of tight khaki pants that really didn’t leave much to the imagination. “Before I let you all go today, I want to shout out the Clean the Beach event my club is throwing this weekend. There’s a new motion to try and start drilling offshore, which has brought a lot more foot traffic to the beach, along with a lot more trash. If you all want to come volunteer, we’ll be meeting at Beacon’s Beach from noon to evening next weekend. The beach needs us now more than ever.”

“Oh, we’re so going to that,” Maddy said as chairs started squeaking and students started rising.

I gulped. Shit. So she didn’t know about my secret and strengthening crush on my new roommate, and she didn’t know about my pretty intense fear of large bodies of open water—of which the ocean happened to be one of the largest.

“I’ve got to check my calendar,” I said as I stuffed my notebook and textbook into my backpack.

We followed the flow of kids out of the lecture hall and into the bright spring sunshine. I loved this time of year. The days were getting longer, the weather warmer, the shorts shorter. Especially coming from New York, where it was snowing a few weeks back .

“So, spill. What’s going on with you and Mr. Redpine.”

“Ugh, stop saying his name. It’s nausea-inducing.”

“That the only thing he induces?”

“Yes,” I said, giving her a stern look before cracking a smile. “He’s nice, at least. And yeah, he’s kinda hot. But he’s also a Redpine , and that right there is a huge Redflag .”

I said it with the same intonation I said Ryan’s last name.

Maddy cracked up. We headed back to the dorms, walking through the picturesque campus dotted with palm trees. “You know, it’s not such a terrible thing if you two end up sucking and fucking. You can get insider information that way. Be a double agent.”

“There won’t be any sucking or fucking or touching or canoodling or whatever the hell you want to call it.”

“Beasts with two backs, breaking your back, breaking the bed, breaking in your hol?—”

“Okay! I get it. There’s a lot of ways to call it.” I arched a brow. “And how do you know I won’t be doing all the topping?”

“Because we already talked about this that night we first met. We were drunk at Shenanigans, and you quickly made it known that you were a self-proclaimed dick-hungry bottom.”

Blurry flashes of that night started coming back to me. “Hm… yeah. I did say that, didn’t I?”

“You also said that you considered yourself a superhero at sucking dick. Like a mutant dick-sucking spider bit you and gave you the ability to deep-throat any size of man that wanted to shoot his web down your throat.” She shrugged. “Your words, not mine.”

I nearly tripped on myself. “Shit, okay, I need to be careful what I say when I drink, then. ”

“Please, I live for all that messy shit,” Maddy said with a chuckle.

It made my heart warm. I smiled as I walked alongside her.

We decided to take the long way to the dorms today. We passed through Liberty Court, a beautiful courtyard sat between four residential houses reserved for students. Maddy pointed out Stormer House, affectionately called Stoner House since the smell of (incredibly strong) weed usually wafted out the open windows.

“I dated a guy who lived there once. Huuuuge… heart ,” she said with a slick smile.

“I’m sure,” I said, chuckling as we crossed the grass, passing by hammocks strung up between tall palm trees.

“It’s how this courtyard became one of my favorite spots on campus. Also how I became a size queen.”

We continued talking about stupid shit until the conversation turned to family. “Hold up. I remember you telling me you have five brothers. Are you close to them?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. Well, almost all of my brothers. The oldest kind of self-destructed in his early thirties and never pulled himself back together. It’s hard to see. He’s pushed us all away, even though we try to help him.”

“Damn, I’m sorry, Maddy. That’s really shitty.”

“It is, but I’ve got hope he’ll stop drinking and get his priorities in order again.” She smiled bright and wide. “How ’bout you? Any siblings?”

“Just me and my mom,” I said.

“And your dad? Do you still talk to him?”

I shook my head. Her assumption about my parents divorcing was a common one, but it wasn’t the right one. We hadn’t talked about this yet. I usually avoided it. The topic always felt like salt water being poured into an open wound. “He died. Drowned in a boating accident when I was twelve.”

Maddy put a hand to her chest, her rainbow assortment of nails popping against the black shirt she wore. “Jay, Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

“It was hard. Really fucking hard. I… It’s okay,” I said, even though it actually wasn’t and likely never would be. But still, it wasn’t on Maddy to unpack all my childhood trauma and help me deal with it. There was a lot about that day that took years to process.

We were reaching our building anyway, and I didn’t want to bog down the rest of the evening with dark stories. I looked at my watch. It was still pretty early, and it was a Tuesday, which meant Ryan was likely at his rowing practice. Not that I memorized his schedule or anything; it was only observation.

Good. Maddy and I could have some chill time in the dorm. Maybe she could help me come up with a strategy to break this Ryan spell before it was too late.

“Come, let’s go to my dorm, and we can plot together on how we’re going to single-handedly take down the Redpine Empire.”

“Fuck yeah,” Maddy said, clapping her hands together. “God, I’m so glad I bought you a drink that night at Shenanigans.”

“Same here, Madds, same here.”

She looped an arm through mine. “Oh, and you also said that you can tell how big a guy is from a handshake.”

“ Ooookay , that’s enough reminiscing for now. ”

She shrugged and giggled. “I’m just saying. If that’s a skill you’re willing to teach, I’m a student eager to learn.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed. These were the kinds of moments I was scared I’d lose by leaving my last school, leaving behind the friends I made there. With Maddy by my side, though, I realized I wasn’t losing anything at all.

Another checkmark under the “Everything Happens for a Reason” column.

Now I just had to figure out what the reason was for me crossing paths with Ryan. The column was still blank for that one.