Page 15 of Slick & Spooky

Then he’s gone. Walking off like he didn’t shake the foundation of this house and me along with it.

I’m still staring after him when Joey slips into view and lets out a low, impressed whistle.

“That was hot,” he says. “Even I’m bricked up.”

I shoot him a look and roll my eyes, but my pulse won’t slow.

Behind us, Tripp is still coughing on the floor, his lackeys fluttering around him, the other pledges caught between staring at him and staring at me like they don’t know which side to take.

I’m split down the middle.

Part of me is still stunned, reeling, that the man I’ve been orbiting like a goddamn planet watched me walk away and followed. But the other part, the part rising like a tide, recognizes that what he did might’ve done more harm than good.

Tripp’s already climbing to his feet, brushing off one of our pledge brothers like the contact singed him, trying to patch together whatever’s left of his ego.

I should feel bad, but all I can feel is the throb in my cock and the slow, creeping truth that maybe power isn’t the poison I was taught to fear. Maybe power is only potential. Maybe it only turns dangerous when you start using it for yourself.

“What you want is already yours. Don’t be afraid to take it.”

Something sharp coils inside me, cold and clean and exhilarating, and I don’t hate how it feels.

I’ve been going about this all wrong.

“What you want is already yours.”

I’ve been so busy trying to be palatable. Trying to be the version of myself that someone like Knox Everett might want. Sweet but not too soft. Bold but not threatening.

Looking at the way Tripp’s jaw is clenched, the way his pride crumples around him like an empty can I see it for what it is. It’s a performance, and mine’s not that different.

“Don’t be afraid to take it.”

I am a Finley.

Maybe not in the way my dad intended all brute force, business deals, and social domination, but in the way that matters.

I know how to read a room. I know how to flip a script. I know how to shift the odds without ever breaking a sweat.

That’s not manipulation. That’s survival.

So why pretend to be above it now? Why act like I didn’t bait Knox the second I stepped into this party? Why act like I didn’t want exactly this?

Tripp got put in his place and I got my answer.

Knox bends for me.

I thought I caved to him over summer, but the truth is, he bent for me. He gave in before I ever had to ask, folded beneatha smile, a glance, a whimper he pretended not to hear. He let me take something from him and then ran before it could ruin him. Because that’s what it would’ve done.

If he’d stayed and kept giving, we would’ve burned the whole fucking world down.

That’s why he’s spent the semester pretending it didn’t happen. Knox Everett wasn’t afraid of what I wanted from him. He was terrified of how much of it he wanted to give.

Watching him go after Tripp, I see him clearly for the first time.

Obedient. Desperate. Broken in.

Knox Everett is not a prize I need to earn. He’s a dog itching for a leash, and I’m done pretending I don’t know how to hold it.

Maybe I should feel guilty for what I’ve done in reducing someone like Knox to this version of himself, but I don’t. I feel wanted and powerful.