Page 42 of Salacious Park Avenue Prince

He pulled his arm from mine, and as he walked over to the valet stand I stood there staring after his obstinate ass. If he wanted to climb in the back of some sweaty, germ-infested taxi cab to get to school instead of a luxury van, no skin off my nose.

“Trav? Is that you?”

I spun around to see West’s head poking out of the Sprinter, a shit-stirring smile on his face as I climbed inside and Scotty slammed the door behind me.

“What? You stare too hard at that Golden Boy of yours and go blind?”

“No.” He chuckled and pulled my hat off. “But you in this hat and no makeup had me doing a double take.”

I snatched it out of his hand and jammed it back on my head as East eyed me from across the van.“Yes, we were all a little confused for a second there. But then we saw you all but begging Caleb to look your way and clued in that it was you.”

I graced them all with the finger and a hearty “Fuck you,” which had them all laughing, then Scotty started up the engine. As he pulled out of the porte cochère, my eyes shifted to where Caleb stood waiting for his cab, and it took everything in me notto point out to each and every one of them that I wasn’t begging him to look now, was I?

But who was he looking at? Me. That’s who.

Because he could deny it all he wanted, but Caleb Reeveswasback, and so were all of the messy, inconvenient feelings he always brought with him.

TWELVE

caleb

JT HAD ALREADY commandeered our usual table in the library, his laptop and several random books he wasn’t using littering the space to warn anyone off from joining. I sat down across from him, pushing aside a copy ofModern Quantum Mechanicsto set up my own laptop.

“Physics, huh?” I chuckled, wondering where he’d pulled that from. “Did you change majors and forget to mention that?”

“Like the way you forgot to mention you were old friends with West and the others?” JT didn’t look up from what he was typing.

Oh wow, okay.He wasn’t gonna give me a pass for leaving out that little fact after all. I figured he would’ve gone in on me about it last night, but waiting to call me out when his boyfriend wasn’t around was a much more JT thing to do.

“You’re right,” I said, nodding. “I should’ve told you, but it’s not something I talk about. Or try to think about.”

JT looked up, hurt lacing his brown eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Then why lie?”

“Eh…would we saylie?”

“Withholding information is lying.”

I held my hands up. “It’s complicated.”

“You already said that last night.”

“Still true.”

JT stared at me over his laptop, and I felt the accusation. “When I met you, all I heard was to stay away from all of them, that they were bad news?—”

“They were. They are.”

“You acted like you hated them.”

“Still do.”

He shook his head full of brown curls, the ones that made him look so innocent. And maybe he still was, for now, even if he had a deviant for a boyfriend. “Well, apparently you’re one of them again, whether you like it or not.”

“Fuck. That.”

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