Iris Boys Box Set

by Lucy Smoke

  I nodded. "Yeah, you're right." I took a deep breath. Even though the mere idea of Erika being held against her will terrified me, I gave him a grateful smile and he nodded for Knix to continue.

  "Well, as I was saying—let's just assume that they aren't being held against their will. Grayson and Texas, you're on Josh duty. Marv and Harlow—Erika duty."

  Each one of us nodded, and as the guys moved on to other topics, such as who would sleep where, I kept wondering if Erika was really out there somewhere, on her own and just fine, or if someone was holding her against her will, possibly hurting her.

  Chapter 9

  "Hey, Harlow! Wait up!" I turned as the sound of a familiar voice caught my attention. Blinking blurry eyes, I waited as Lizzie rushed to catch up with me. After last night's meeting, I had snuck back into the dorm room late and I was tired from lack of sleep.

  Lizzie finally came to a stop next to me, but instead of leaping into whatever her reason for chasing me down was, she held up one finger and put her hands on her knees. "Just...need...a second..." she panted.

  I yawned, covering my mouth and waited. Finally, with her chest still rising and falling much faster than usual, she stood up and brushed away a few pink strands of her hair before grasping my shoulders and staring into my face. I jerked back in shock, but she held steady.

  "Okay, girl, that's it," she said. "I can't take it anymore. I have to know."

  "Have to know what?" I stared at her—wide-eyed and worried.

  "Which one of the guys is your boyfriend?" She shook me. "Come on, don't leave me hanging! Is it the hot blue-eyed playboy? The sweet one from yesterday or is it the skinnier one from lunch?" Lizzie pulled away and wagged her finger under my nose with a serious expression etched into her face. "Don't think I didn't notice. Are you stringing them along? The one from yesterday—Marv, right?—he all but admitted he wanted to be your boyfriend. And yeah, even though the playboy hit on me—" She paused amidst her tirade and flicked more pink hair over her shoulder. "Which I mean, who could blame him? But he didn't deny that you were his girl when I suggested it."

  "Um..."

  "So, come on, fess up. Which one are you dating?" she demanded.

  I don't know what came over me. Maybe it was the mission, the worry, the new environment, the fact that I hadn't talked to or seen my mom in a couple of weeks or maybe it was the fact that Erika wasn't there and I felt like I really needed to talk to someone, a friend on the outside of all of it. She had always been the relationship expert and now that I finally needed her advice, she wasn't here. The truth came spilling out.

  "I don't know," I confessed.

  Lizzie blinked. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

  I sucked in a hard breath. "They want me to choose between them and I don't know who I'm going to choose."

  Her eyes rounded like saucers. "Oh, my God. Are you serious?"

  I shook my head. "It's not just Marv or Texas. I, um, I have two other friends who want me to—who are interested in, um, a relationship."

  "Wait a second. What about the playboy?" she demanded.

  "Grayson?" I shook my head. "No, we really are just friends." She pursed her lips and looked at me skeptically.

  "I promise!"

  "Oh, I'm sure you believe that," she replied with a smirk. "But I can assure you, playboy is definitely interested. He may have seen this package of gorgeous, but I’m not in the market for a playboy." She paused and gestured down to herself. "But boy definitely only had eyes for you. He might play around, but girl, he's got the hots, too."

  I groaned and covered my face with my hands. "No," I said. Not because I didn't believe it, but because if she was right then Grayson's interest only made this whole situation even more complicated. Ugh. I didn't do complicated. What was that thing I told the guys whenever they tried to tell me something was "too complicated to explain"? Oh yeah, "uncomplicate it." Well, that saying definitely did not apply here.

  "Wow, though," Lizzie said. "That's a lot of interest. What are you gonna do?"

  "I don't know," I moaned through my hands.

  When I finally uncovered my face, roughly scrubbing my palms down my cheeks, Lizzie was looking at me with a mixture of awe and sympathy. And as if I couldn't already tell what her feelings were towards this, her next words clarified. "Wow," she repeated, "I honestly don't know if I'm jealous, impressed, or just plain sorry for you, girl."

  I sighed. "You haven't even met Knix or Bellamy yet," I said. "They just got in last night."

  She tilted her head to the side. "Who are they? Do they go here?" I shook my head. "Oh, um, no. They don't go here. They're, um, visiting for a little bit."

  I cursed my stupid self. I mean, I assumed that Lizzie was innocent in our mission and probably wasn't even aware of what was going on—but it was better to be safe rather than sorry. And on the off chance someone came looking for me and found her, she wouldn't know anything. I had already questioned both her and Kelsey about whether or not they had known or seen Erika, but neither had.

  "Well," Lizzie started, tapping one delicate finger against her lips. "Do you like any of them over the others?"

  I shook my head. "No. They're all special to me."

  "Which of them have you known the longest?" she asked.

  "Well, we kinda all met around the same time."

  She huffed. "Well, dang it. What about chemistry?"

  "Chemistry?" I asked, confused.

  She grinned at me. "Yeah, chemistry." She wiggled her hips suggestively. "You know—sexual healing and all that jazz. So, come on, which of them do you have the most chemistry with?"

  "Uhh..." My cheeks heated under her expectant stare. I looked around and even though most people were already in class or not paying attention, I knew I didn't want to talk about this here. I reached forward, snagging her hand. "Can we talk somewhere privately?" I asked.

  Her eyes widened, and a big smile spread across her lips. "Oh my God, you've already done it with one of them? Or more? Have you done it with more?"

  "No!" I insisted. "I haven't—I'm not—" I cut myself off and huffed. "Please, can we just go somewhere else?"

  She nodded. "The student center has study booths. No one will be there in the middle of the day and I don't wanna walk all the way back to the dorms because I have class in an hour, so let's go there."

  I didn't care where we went as long as it was private, so I let Lizzie lead me to the student center. When we got to the study booth front desk, Lizzie grimaced and asked if I had my ID because she had forgotten hers and we apparently couldn't request one without it. Luckily, I had it tucked into the back of my phone case and I let the attendant swipe us in before we went back. We strolled down the rows and made sure that we got a booth in a row of empty neighboring stalls.

  Almost as soon as I slid into my seat, she reached across the table and grabbed my hands. "Okay," she snapped, "spill. I want to know everything."

  My phone pinged just as I opened my mouth, but I sighed and leaned down, clicking the ringer off before I addressed Lizzie. "It's difficult to explain," I began.

  "What's difficult to explain?" she asked. "Either you did it with one of them or you didn't. So, which is it?"

  "No, I haven't had sex with any of them," I answered.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. "I sense a but in there. Do not leave me hanging. If there's a but and I don't get to the bottom of that but, then Lizzie is not gonna be a happy camper."

  I raised my eyebrow at her third person dictation of herself before huffing out a breath. "Well, I mean, I've never..." I swallowed, "had sex before." I paused, waiting for a negative reaction. When she just sat there and waited for me to go on, I did. "I mean, not just with them, but I've never had sex with anyone before."

  "Oh, honey, that's not a big deal. A lot of girls our age haven't." Lizzie waved her hand in front of her face. "The real question is do you want to?"

  "Do I want to?" I repeated.

  She nodded emphatically. "Do
you want to have sex? And do you want to have sex with any of those guys?" I bit my lip, wondering if I should open up about what happened with Bellamy. My cheeks heated up once more. Her eyes zoned in on the telltale sign of my thoughts.

  "Something did happen, didn't it?" Lizzie leaned forward until she was practically halfway over the table. "Come on, Harlow. I'm dying here. You have to tell me."

  "Well, I mean, I—" I pulled back and pressed my spine against the booth wall. My heart thudded against my ribcage. To tell or not to tell, that was the question. The ultimate question.

  Even though my lips froze on the words. I needed to say them. "I kissed them."

  "All of them?" Lizzie asked. I nodded. "Oh my God." She stared at me in shock before leaning even further over the table. "And then what?" she pressed. "Do they know?"

  "Yeah," I said. "They know. They aren't mad about me kissing them, but it's only a matter of time now."

  "A matter of time before what?"

  "Before they expect me to choose between them," I answered, lowering my head in shame. The thing was, the more I thought about it, the more it stressed me out. I knew I wouldn't be able to choose. No matter how much time they gave me—all the time in the world couldn’t force me to make this decision. How had this even happened to me? I wondered. How did I manage to put myself into such a predicament?

  "Wow, girl. That's some real-world TV drama right there." Yeah, except my life wasn't a television show. With television shows, there were always background players, writers, directors, producers—someone who knew what was going to eventually end up happening. There was an end goal. And while there was an end goal here, I wasn't being let in on the final script. I folded my arms on the table and laid my head down, feeling exhausted by not just the conversation, but by the events of the night before and my lack of sleep.

  "I just don't know what to do," I admitted. "I don't want anyone to get hurt."

  "Oh, babe, someone is probably going to end up getting hurt either way," Lizzie said.

  I tipped my face up to meet her sympathetic gaze. "I care about them," I admitted. "I really do, but this..." Words failed me.

  "What if you just didn't give them an answer?" she asked. "It's called ghosting or something. Maybe you just back away and they'll eventually move on."

  I shake my head. "I can't do that," I said. "That's not fair to them." Plus, we lived together—well, most of us did. Grayson was living with the guys right now, but that wasn't a permanent situation. As far as I knew, he had a house back in Charleston. Besides, despite whatever ideas Lizzie had in her head, Grayson was just a pest. An annoyingly good-looking, somewhat damaged pest whose blue eyes made me think of the swimming pools and the summer sky all wrapped up in one. I groaned into my arms.

  "Then what are you gonna do?" Wasn't that the question of the freaking century? When I chose to remain quiet, Lizzie sighed heavily and dropped her arms down on the table next to mine. She turned her face so that our eyes met.

  "I'm sorry, Harlow." I bit my lip to keep myself from saying anything. Even though she had previously admitted to at least some jealousy, she sounded sincere in her apology. Still, it didn't make me feel better. It only made me feel worse. "There's more, isn't there?" she asked a moment later.

  Bellamy, my traitorous mind reminded me. I nodded against the cold, hard surface of the tabletop. "I haven't had sex, but there was a situation a few weeks ago...I did something with one of them," I whispered the words quietly despite the fact that we had double checked that there was no one else around before we took this booth. It felt like I was spilling my soul for this girl and I had hardly known her that long. But maybe it was easier to tell virtual strangers my secrets than it was to tell my family or my best friend or the guys—not that I had really had the opportunity to tell anyone so far.

  "What happened?" Her words were just as soft.

  I thought back. The way Bellamy's hands had pressed down on my thighs. The way his breath had fanned over the place between my legs. A shiver cascaded up my spine. "It wasn't sex, but he..." Unable to stand her curious stare, I closed my eyes as I spoke the words. "One of them—he put his mouth on me..." I could feel the flames of hell burning across my cheeks and down my neck. "You know, like down...um...down there." When I finally opened my eyes, I could tell there was something warring in Lizzie's expression.

  "Oh, Harlow," she said, "you're in deep, girl."

  She was right. I had leaped off the edge and dived straight into the deep end, and now I was sinking under the weight of my decisions. My chest felt heavy. My mind was a riot of emotions and thoughts and memories and "what ifs."

  "It was before I knew about the guys—I mean, apparently they knew they were all interested in me and they knew that I had kissed them."

  "But they didn't tell you?" Somehow, her tone was both irritated and impressed. I re-opened my eyes and nodded. "Assholes," she muttered, then she grinned at me. "So, he went down on you. How'd it feel?"

  If it was possible, my blush burned hotter. I shrugged as best I could and sat up, leaning away from the table. "It was nice," I said.

  It had been more than nice. It had been like hundreds of fireworks going off at once in my head and it had been hot and dangerous and I wanted to know what else Bellamy could do. God help me, I was curious for more. I craved more. And not just him. I wanted to know what Knix's lips would feel like down there. I wanted to know what Marv would do with me pinned under him or what Texas would sound like if I did what Bellamy did for me, for him. And Grayson...of all the things I shouldn’t be curious about, he was at the top of my list. Did that stop me from craving? Not one bit.

  Lizzie leaned back and arched one brow at me, shaking her head as if she could hear all of my thoughts. "I'm sure it was more than nice," she prompted. When all I did was give her yet another shrug, she rolled her eyes. "Still, it'd be nice if you didn't have to choose, huh?"

  "Yeah," I mumbled, sliding my gaze to the side. "That would probably solve all my little problems."

  A soft cough interrupted whatever Lizzie would have said next and with dawning horror, both of our gazes moved to the aisle as we leaned out of the booth and Marv stood there, looking decidedly uncomfortable. I slid quickly out of the booth, eyes wide. "What are you doing here?" My voice was almost shrill, and I had to work to clear my throat before I could speak again as he answered.

  "I tried calling your phone, but you didn't answer," he said by way of explanation.

  I vaguely recalled my phone pinging when we got here, but I hadn't checked. Lizzie slid out behind me. She glanced between the two of us before shaking her head at me sadly and pointing towards the end of the hall.

  "I'm just gonna...head to my next class," she said weakly in the awkward silence that followed. My eyes stayed on Marv even as she retrieved her bag and headed out. Just as she passed by me, Lizzie caught my hand and looked at me. "If you need anyone to talk to just let me know," she whispered low enough that I knew she didn't want Marv to hear, but when Marv's brows drew down, I knew he had. I nodded at her anyway, grateful for the offer—whether it would be needed or not.

  Once she was gone, it was as if a spell had been broken. "So, you and Bell..." he trailed off, choking off the words. The hurt in his voice punched me in the stomach. He had heard what I told Lizzie. He knew how far I had gone before.

  I gulped and said the only thing that came to mind. "I thought you guys told each other everything?" It was more a question than a statement. That had been what they told me when I found out they knew I had kissed all of them.

  He shook his head, the soft strands of sandy colored hair sliding over his brow. It was getting longer. "He never mentioned that you had—" he cut himself off once more, waving his hand in frustration, "that anything had happened."

  "We didn't plan on anything happening," I defended weakly.

  Marv pinned me with a look that was both parts longing and hurt. "I know," he said. "I trust that you wouldn't...or that you would've told us about...
that." He was struggling. Guilt sank into the pit of my stomach.

  "How did you know where to look for me?" I asked as my fingers gripped the hem of my shirt and twisted.

  "Your phone," he said. "All our phones are tapped with a GPS just in case—I thought you knew that?" Did I? Maybe. I couldn't think right now. All I could focus on was the pain in his eyes and how when he looked at me I felt lower than low. I bit my lip, sucking in a breath of air before I finally decided to break the distance between us. I was almost scared to do it—terrified that if I took a step forward, Marv would back away. I didn't want to see him reject me. My eyes burned with fear, but when I took a step forward, he stood perfectly still. I raised my hands, only then seeing how hard they were shaking. He noticed too.

  "Sunshine," Marv whispered. He let me reach for him and when I came near, he reached back, taking me into his arms.

  I sobbed into his chest. "Don't hate me," I pleaded, my throat tight even as my eyes burned and my mind rolled.

  It was a long moment before he managed to say anything. "I don't hate you," he said gruffly. "I'm just...surprised."

  I needed to be honest with him. In fact, I probably needed to be honest with all of them. I thought that—well, I didn't know what I had been thinking. But this, I needed him to know this. "I care about you." My voice was barely above a whisper as I shook my head against the fabric of his shirt. "But I'm not sorry. I care about Bellamy, too."

  Marv stiffened, but thankfully, he didn't pull away. "And Knix and Texas?" he asked.

  I nodded, my cheek brushing the muscles of his chest. "Yeah,” I said. “I care about them too.”

  Marv leaned his head back on a rough laugh that sounded more tired than amused. "I didn't come looking for you for this," he said.