Page 4 of Daring You

“Sweetheart, I’m fine in that department,” I said.

She arched a brow and managed to give me the once-over while half of me was under a table. I might as well have had my cock out for inspection. She was utterly unimpressed, and being one of the most pursued guys in our year, I was insulted.

“Yeah, I’ve heard you’re the Shrödinger’s Dick around campus,” she said.

My mouth fell open, since I didn’t know how to respond to something I couldn’t pronounce.

Locke barked with laughter and I thumped him good in the shoulder, because he wouldn’t have any more clue than me.

She smiled and elaborated. “Physics one-oh-one. Look it up, sport.”

Astor tutored Locke the rest of the night, and while I had my head pretend-buried in my Business Marketing textbook, I was drawn to her voice, to the curl she gave to every syllable, the clear dedication to her sentences.

Fuckin…dedication to her sentences? I wanted to punch myself after that.

I told myself to ignore her. She was Locke’s sister. Basically private property. And with everything going on, I couldn’t add that kind of complication to the the chemistry explosion that was my life.

Yet, I found myself pretending difficulties in subjects I excel at. Asking Astor to meet me at the library more and more. If she knew what I was doing, she didn’t let on, and definitely didn’t tell her brother about my shenanigans. She approached my questions patiently and thoughtfully, pointing out answers with the eraser end of her pencil, our fingers interlocking once or twice.

I had no idea if she liked me more than simply as her brother’s dumb best friend. No clue if she wanted anything above tutoring. All I knew was, I absolutely, positively, wanted my sheets to smell like roses.

That kind of conflict was hard to ignore, and I took it out on other women as much as I could. The hot ones, the loose ones, the tipsy ones, the skilled ones. I had my fix, my fill, yet still I felt this void. My heart—that annoying organ that keeps me alive—kept up its slow beats for those girls, then picked up the pace whenever Astor was around. I’d never seen her naked, never felt her tits or buried myself between her legs or smelled her sex scent. My imagination was doing that all for me, and before I knew it, I was waking up to a blown wad in my sheets after particularly detailed dreams that I somehow had to explain away to Locke when we woke up in the morning, when he had a chick in bed and I didn’t.

Almost two years of that. Two fucking years of jerking off to the image of Astor Hayes, and somehow, some little fucker named Dodge Hennessy figured it out.

And leverages it.

“I’ll tell everyone,” Dodge threatens, and it brings me painfully back to our current conversation. “Starting with Coach. You’ll lose everything. Is that what you want?”

“What’ll make you stop there, huh?” I say. Rage drums in my chest, my heart replaced by a warrior’s shield banging against my ribs. “What makes you think I’m so stupid as to believe this dare will make you keep what you know a secret?”

It’s a rhetorical question. I know exactly why he wants this. Dodge has been aching to get in with me and Locke since we were freshies, first trying hard, then trying harder, to impress us. Worse, he was convinced we’d started our own Skulls club or some shit, when really, these stupid tasks were more to enforce our egos and cement our status on college campus as royal badasses. I mean, why do most guys do this kind of shit?

Dodge twisted it all up into his own weird membership card where drugs and stolen exams could be involved. He was a bad egg, carrying with him a rotting smell I caught the day I met him during frosh week, only now, he’s decayed further.

Unfortunately, he’s a smart little corpse.

Cut to this moment, where he’s having his fun dangling this carrot in our school parking lot. It’s prudent to keep him happy, since there is the chance—slim, but there—that he will tell the wrong person, and any blowback would land directly on me.

Fuck, no matter what I do, he could always tell the wrong person. There’s only one way to end this blackmail cycle before it grows legs.

Dodge smiles through the blood. “I know it’ll break you. That’s why I want you to do it.”

I snarl and grab him by the neck, slamming him against a parked car. “Why do you hate me so much? Huh? What have I done to you?”

Remarkably, the bastard still grins. He says through the barricade of my strangle-hold, “You could lose everything. Locke will hate you. Astor will hate you. It’s perfect, for the sparkling, pristine, All American boy who’s catfishing everyone.”

I scowl and utter my last shot at losing his interest. “You’re a sick fuck. What makes you think I could get hard for some fucking pimple-faced string bean, anyway?”

Dodge shows his teeth, eerily white against the frame of blood. “Nice try.”

“You know what kind of pussy I pull? She’s nothing. You can’t think of something better? My boys could come up with a better dare while high as fuck and drunk off four bottles of whiskey. Why don’t I steal an exam, huh? Break into Coach’s office and spray paint my name across his walls? Throw a game so you can make a ton of cash for your Fentanyl-laced crystals?”

“None of them come close,” Dodge garbles out. “You’re ruined either way. This way, I get to watch. The other way, you’d get to disappear, and that’s no fun for me.”

I lean in, so close I can smell the metallic tang to his blood. “I’m not doing it.”

“Then expect to make the news tomorrow.”

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