by Anna Martin
“Lazy ass motherfucker,” Chris drawled, letting himself into Jared’s room without waiting for an invite and sitting down backward on the desk chair. “Where the fuck have you been, homie?”
Jared snorted. “Here. Why do you care?”
Chris rolled his eyes. “Pretty-ass white boy causes a scene at my white party, then storms off and doesn’t turn up to school for two days? People are talking. I want the scoop.”
“You know the scoop, Chris,” Jared snapped. “You’ve known right from the start. I should be hauling you over the fucking coals for details.”
“What do you wanna know?” Chris asked, leaning back with his long fingers curled over the back of the chair.
Jared was slightly taken aback at that. He hadn’t expected Chris to be forthcoming with information. There were so many layers to this whole epic clusterfuck Jared didn’t know where to start. Of course, all roads led to Clare, so….
“What were you gonna get out of it?” Jared asked impulsively. “Adam got the car, Clare got to mess with everyone, which is clearly what she wanted all along, but you lost the Caddy, man. What was the compensation for that?”
Chris raised an eyebrow and waited a few beats for Jared to talk himself into the answer. “All roads lead to Clare. You said it yourself.”
It dawned on Jared slowly. “You got Clare. Adam won, he got the car. You gave up the car but got the girl.”
Chris nodded.
“So, did you get her?”
“Naw,” Chris said, shifting uncomfortably. He looked embarrassed.
“Why don’t you just go get her on your own?” Jared asked, genuinely curious now. “God knows I can’t stand that bitch, but she’s the Faith to your Biggie, you know? You two are meant to be.”
“I’m not into forcing a girl,” Chris said. He was visibly uncomfortable, the first time Jared had ever seen him look that way. “She’ll come to me when she’s ready.”
“I suppose it’s nice to have that option,” Jared said acidly. “It’s fucked up to bet on sex. Don’t get me wrong. I like sex. I don’t care who fucks who around here. But it’s different when someone doesn’t get a choice. I thought we were friends,” he finished, realizing he’d suddenly made all this theoretical talk personal.
Chris grinned, although the humor didn’t seem to reach his eyes. “Jared, I’ve got one piece of advice for you, man… don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
Jared barked a laugh. “Right. I’ve heard that one before.”
Understanding flowed between them, and even though Chris was Adam’s best friend, Jared knew this conversation wasn’t going any further.
“You need to come back to school,” Chris said. “Sooner rather than later, bro. Don’t let these motherfuckers get to you. Walk back in with your head held high. You can’t let them win. Not ever.”
“Why do you care?” Jared mumbled.
“Because despite what you think about me right now, I never really cared that much about the bet. We’ve been doing stupid stuff like this since seventh grade.” He shrugged. “You’re not the first person to get fucked over by the Harbor posse.”
“Fucked over, or just plain fucked?”
Chris’s eyes widened, and Jared suddenly realized—
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Naw,” Chris drawled. “Fo’ real?”
“Yeah.” It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. Jared hadn’t moved to Washington, he’d fallen down a fucking rabbit hole. “Saturday night. I thought he would have picked up the Caddy by now.”
In response, Chris drew his keys from his pocket and jingled them in Jared’s direction. “He didn’t tell anyone. If he’d told Clare, then you know every damn person in the state would know by now.”
Jared nodded.
“Be at school tomorrow,” Chris said, swinging his leg over the chair and standing, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m telling you this as a friend, you feel me? Get up, brush your fucking hair, and look slick as fuck when you roll up. Don’t look left, don’t look right. Walk in there and make all those motherfuckers your bitches.”
This time Jared grinned. Biggie had a lyrical way with words, even if he did drop the F-bomb more than any other person Jared had ever known. And his words made sense.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
Chris looked like he was about to say something, then stopped himself.
“What?”
“Here,” Chris said and tossed him the keys to his car. “It’s yours.”
“What?”
“Look, I was pretty much prepared to give it away anyway. I’ll tell my dad I sold it, and I want a new car.”
“You rich motherfuckers make me sick,” Jared said, but he was grinning, twirling the keys around his finger.
“Mostly I just want to see the look on Hemlock and Metago’s faces when you show up in it tomorrow morning,” Chris said. He raised an eyebrow.
It was at that point Jared decided Biggie wasn’t a playah. He was the fuckin’ game.
“A’ight,” Jared agreed. “Do you need a ride home?”
“Nah, I’ll call a taxi. Later,” he said, and sauntered out of the house.
After Chris left, Jared waited a few minutes, then got up and cleared his room of all the crap that had accumulated in the past few days. Then he shut everything down except his iPad and lay back in bed.
Internet porn had started to bore him years ago, but he had recently discovered blogs that captioned erotic images with short stories, and he was currently stalking several of them. With the page loaded and the iPad screen glowing softly in the dark room, Jared slid his hand under his T-shirt, down his belly into his boxers where his cock was already starting to rise.
Touching himself like this was a familiar comfort, an old one that wasn’t affected by any external factors. No matter what was going on in this version of hell, jerking off was always going to feel good. With a strong palm wrapped around his hard cock, Jared thumbed through the blogs, letting the combination of words and pictures slowly turn him on.
As his cock thickened and pulsed in his hand, Jared paused at an image of a younger, smooth-skinned boy with two of his fingers pressed deep in his ass. A tiny noise—a sigh, or groan maybe—escaped his lips, and Jared ran his tongue over them.
He hadn’t done this. Not yet, anyway….
Eyes fixed on that picture, absorbing every last inch of it, Jared let go of his cock and reached down farther, giving his balls a light squeeze and tug, then pressing his fingers behind.
The position was unfamiliar to him, and he didn’t want to flip over on his front and reach back like the boy in the picture. That was too pornographic, especially while this was so new to him.
Frustrated, Jared kicked off his boxers and spread his legs, making more room for his curious fingers.
With his iPad propped up on a pillow, Jared pulled his knees back and gripped his cock with his left hand, which was deliciously unfamiliar, as he spread his cheeks with his right.
He realized, probably too late, that some lube would probably make this better, but it was too late now. He was too far gone to dig out a bottle or go to the bathroom. With the knuckle of his index finger, Jared nudged and teased at his tight opening while squeezing and tugging his cock, hips jerking in time with the motion.
He wasn’t ready to push fingers inside yet, not without lube, anyway, and this feeling was still so unfamiliar he wanted to explore it. Jared knew, from being on both sides now, that there were hundreds of nerve endings here, and his gently nudging knuckle was igniting them all, enough stimulation to make his cock drool clear fluid.
The boy on the screen provided intimate inspiration, his back shamelessly arched into the sensation of two pale fingers lodged deep in his own body, and Jared wondered if he would ever be that wantonly sexual. He thought maybe he’d learn.
With a loud groan, Jared pushed his finger harder against his hole, the tip breaching the ring of muscle as his cock stiffened, t
hen spat hot come up Jared’s belly and onto his T-shirt. He was breathing hard, hot and cold all over, wondering what this new exploration of his body meant.
Without Jared’s permission, the ghost of Adam still moved inside him.
Chapter 14
The next morning dawned crisp and cool, the sun hanging low in the sky. A light frost had dusted the town like icing sugar, and Jared felt good. He’d made his peace with Chris, which sort of meant something, although he wasn’t sure exactly what.
The weak sunshine was bright enough to justify wearing his reflective aviators and when he turned on the stereo, there was only one CD he could possibly stick in the player.
Jared rolled the top of the car down and rolled up in front of the school with “Gimme the Loot” blasting from the stereo. Actually, it was louder than just blasting. Chris had installed an insanely good stereo system in the Caddy, and Jared’s ears hurt a little from the volume coming out of the speakers.
His nose and fingers were frozen. It was barely thirty-five degrees, but there was no point in turning up in the pink Cadillac unless people knew he was the one in it.
Feeling rebellious, Jared parked across two spaces in the lot closest to the office, in the handful of spaces that were reserved for teachers. He cut the engine, and the stereo dropped at the same time, and the sound that followed was sweet, crisp silence.
Still humming the tune, Jared got out of the car and tossed the keys to a freshman kid in the same way he’d seen Adam do. Insanely arrogant. Just as he wanted.
“Put the top up,” he said, leaving the shades on and not even looking at the kid as he strode purposefully to the main steps of the school. “Scratch it, and I’ll rip your balls off.”
He was hyper-aware he was being watched, being judged, by every kid at Harbor Academy. No one other than him and Chris knew about the car, although he was pretty sure there wasn’t a kid out there who didn’t know about the argument and the bet. The few who had been elsewhere on Saturday night, grounded or out of town or at a family thing, would be kicking themselves.
Jared was clawing back some of that control, some of the respect he’d surely lost over the weekend.
At the office, he leaned on the counter and tipped his sunglasses down his nose, giving a winning smile to Ms. Horncastle, guarding the school like the dragon she was.
“Ms. Horncastle,” Jared drawled.
“Mr. Rawell. You have been absent for several days.”
He reached into his back pocket and flicked a sealed envelope at her. He’d forged a doctor’s note—not difficult, what with access to the Internet—and had created a signed note from Hadley, and that was tucked into the envelope too.
“I was sick,” he said, in a tone of voice that begged for sympathy.
He got a hard-eyed stare instead. “Is that so.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.” Jared faked a cough.
“To your class, Mr. Rawell. I’ll file these.”
“Thanks, Ms. Horncastle,” he said in a sunny voice and walked out of the office.
When he reached homeroom, the keys to the Caddy were lying in a patch of weak sunlight on the desk next to the window. He picked them up with a hum of appreciation and tucked them into his messenger bag. Out the window he could see the car—top up—still parked obnoxiously. It gave him great pleasure to look at it like that.
The room was buzzing softly with the murmured conversations of thirty or so students, each catching up on or trading gossip. Jared heard his own name mentioned more than once, his ears sharp to the familiar sound. He ignored them all and plugged his earbuds into his iPhone, turning music on to drown out the background noise.
Bowen hated it when they wore headphones in class, but it wasn’t rebellion, not today. Jared didn’t look up when Chris walked down the main aisle, or when Adam came in and flopped into his usual seat.
The burn in his chest hollowed out into a deep ache, and Jared forced himself to breathe slow and deep. He wasn’t going to look at Adam. It was a promise he’d made to himself.
To try and appease Ms. Bowen, Jared tugged one earbud out, hoping to avoid drawing attention to himself. When Adam responded to his name during roll call, Jared felt the hole in his chest widen, broadening with resonating pain and forcing thorny stomach acid up into his throat.
Don’t throw up, Jared instructed himself sharply. Don’t you fucking dare throw up.
He forced his attention to his phone and tapped away at nothing.
If he had been so inclined, this would have been the day he turned to narcotics. Drugs would whisper through his veins, numbing the pain and taking him to a floating cloud where nothing could penetrate the walls he’d built.
Jared told himself he was too strong for that, though. He wasn’t some pussy who needed chemical enhancements in order to face the day. He wasn’t his mother.
The bell rang, and Jared stretched up out of his chair, swung his bag onto his shoulder, and started his mission to—what had Chris called it? Make all these motherfuckers his bitches.
By the time he got to the period before lunch—gym—there was a dull ache behind Jared’s eyes that was caused from trying to look like he didn’t care. Nonchalance was exhausting.
He got to the locker room before the bulk of his class and changed quickly, heading for his now habitual treadmill. The girls would join him soon enough, and the guys would go to the other side of the gym to grunt and lift weights.
As always.
Jared walked for a few minutes to warm up while he set up his music and his earbuds, then pushed himself into a blistering run to get his heart pumping and legs aching. He was aiming for oblivion, the blissful moment when the pain in his throat, lungs, chest, legs all blended, forcing coherent thoughts from his head.
He looked over when the machine next to him started and caught Mia’s eye.
Goddamn it.
After giving her a terse nod, Jared resumed his eyes-forward sprint, hoping she’d ignore him. A small hand reached across and pressed the down arrow, slowing the machine.
No such luck.
With a heavy sigh, Jared pulled his earphones out and continued to jog.
“Can I help you?” he said to Mia, any venom in his tone lost by the fact he was breathing heavily.
“Are you okay?” she replied.
Jared rolled his eyes. “I’m fine. Thanks for your concern.”
He went to turn the speed back up, but Mia swatted his hand away. The girl to Jared’s left, someone whose name he’d not bothered to learn, looked like she was trying very, very hard not to be caught listening.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Mia asked.
“Not nice, is it, being out of the loop,” Jared said rhetorically, again without any menace. Mia was involved, for sure, but she wasn’t the mastermind of the bet. She was just a willing participant.
Mia glowered at him. “You pull up this morning in Biggie’s Caddy? The car that was supposed to be Adam’s. Chris isn’t talking, Adam looks like shit, and you’ve turned into Elsa the fucking Ice Queen.”
Despite himself, Jared grinned. “I like that, actually. The Harbor Academy Ice Queen.”
“Jared,” Mia said, a touch of pleading in her tone.
“Why don’t you ask Clare?” he suggested. “After all, she’s the one behind it all.”
He shoved the earbud back in his ear and turned the speed up on the treadmill, determined to slap a bitch if Mia tried to interrupt again.
Knowing Clare didn’t have any more information than Mia was incredibly satisfying. Mia had actually given him more than she realized; Chris wasn’t saying anything about the change in the Caddy’s ownership, and Adam looked like shit.
Both of those little nuggets kept him going on the treadmill for another half hour before he moved to the rower and worked on his arms without having to pump iron.
Jared purposefully didn’t look up when he returned to the locker room to shower and change. He kept his head low, not meeting any of th
e curious gazes as he fiddled with the knot on his tie.
In the hallway it was different. Here he was more confident in keeping his head high, still not looking at any of his classmates but with a proud jut to his chin that defied anyone to dare to speak to him.
The fact that Chris was holding court in the middle of the canteen, as always, was vaguely comforting. Before last night he would have been wary about joining that group of people for lunch. Now, though, he and Chris had an understanding, and he wasn’t about to forget that. Or lose the opportunity to exploit it.
Jared collected a baked potato and tuna from the hatch, and a can of soda, then walked over to the table. He was aware that everyone was looking, everyone wondering what had happened between him, Adam, and Chris.
You have the power here, Jared told himself as he walked across the crowded lunchroom. You’re in charge. You’re the boss.
By way of greeting, Jared held out his fist to Chris, and he bumped it with a grin that showed one gold incisor. In silence, Jared sat down in the unoccupied seat to Chris’s right and began to eat.
The noise around him blended into a comfortable, indistinguishable hum. Jared was still warm from his post-workout shower, despite the definite chill in the air. The lunchroom never got truly warm, or it hadn’t since he’d been here, at least. The space was too cavernous, too expensive to heat, despite the fact this was a fee-charging school.
Bastards.
People came and went, joining Chris’s posse until all seats were taken. Logically, Jared knew Adam was here somewhere. Not wanting that conversation, not now, and definitely not in front of Clare, Jared refused to allow himself to look around.
When his phone buzzed in his pocket, it was a welcome distraction.
Dylan: Are we still on for tonight?
Damn. Jared had forgotten today was Thursday, and he was supposed to be meeting Dylan in the city for their study session. Vaguely, Jared wondered if Ryder had filled her brother in on what happened. Probably.
Sure, he texted back. Same place?
