Page 84 of Pure Vengeance

It doesn’t take long to walk, but I have to walk pastAlpha Omega Phi’s house. I see a couple of the jocks hanging out front, but I don’t see Adrian. He prefers people call him Ace; that’s his football nickname. He will always be Adrian to me. Nothing will ever change that. I hurry along, not wanting to engage with any of them. They consider us the enemy. The opposite side. Their arch nemesis.

I don’t have time for that bullshit.

I reach the radio station and walk in, going to the window of the booth and giving Alan a thumbs-up. I wait for him to sign offbefore I get in and line up my opening songs. It’s simple enough, just using the station software to do it. Once the three songs Alan has lined up are done, I come onto the mic.

“Thank you, Alan. That was thePower Hourwith Alan Goldberg. You’re with DJ Nova Noah now, and I’ll be taking you through the next two hours with the afternoon request special. So message in those requests on our WhatsApp line, and we’ll line up some good jams. First, here is the Traveling Wilburys withHandle with Care.”

I press play as I queue up some ads. It’s simple enough to do, and I check the WhatsApp line as the requests pour in. I mark the ones I’m going to play and start searching for the songs.

I settle back and I imagine what song I’d play for Adrian. I think I will secretly line up Three Days Grace.I Hate Everything About You. A special just for him.

CHAPTER THREE

Adrian

We’ve been here for two weeks, and I knew the peaceful bliss couldn’t last forever. It started with small things.

The usual things.

TPing the house, putting fish in the air vent, and setting off alarms were just some pranks that had been done between my and Noah’s fraternities. But Declan wanted to go full force. He wasn’t letting anything slide with theDelta Kappa Order.

My brothers saw me as an inside man to the fraternity because Noah is my stepbrother. But they don’t seem to realize what kind of connection that is. How deeply it runs, and how badly it can end.

So when they ask me to mess with one of Noah’s paintings during a house party, I’m almost reluctant to do it. If I don’t, though, they’ll be pissed with me, maybe even cast me out.

The house party is over at one sorority, and everyone is going to be there, from all the different places on campus, off and on living situations.

I sit and wait, and I watch as the members of theDelta Kappa Orderslowly file out of their house, shutting the doorbehind them. No one locks their doors here. Everyone thinks it’s safe. I sneak up to the house, and praying everyone has left, I open the door and slip in. I take a few minutes to find Noah’s room, but it is unmistakably his. I recognize the artwork that’s hung up from his bedroom back home. There can be no question.

I see he has a painting mounted on an easel in the corner, and it’s half-finished. It’s of a naked man. Perfect. What better way to spook him than to mess with work that can imply I would tell his secret? I take out some paint and paint across the top in thick black paint.I know your secret.

I then toss his room, ripping down his artwork, tossing his bed and clothes around, and flipping his table. Once I’m done, I walk to the door, only to open it and bump into Noah. I look at him, and he growls. “What are you doing here?”

He looks past me into his room and grabs me by the shirt. “You fucking jerk.”

“It’s just a prank,” I snap. “Not like you guys putting fish in the air vent. Our place still smells.”

Noah looks at his painting and then looks at me. “You dickhead. You wouldn’t out me.”

“Who says I wouldn’t?”

“You couldn’t without outing yourself,” he says quietly. “I know you wouldn’t do that.”

“Don’t assume things about me, Noah.” I push him off me, and storm past him. “Enjoy tidying up.”

“I’ll get you for this, Adrian.”

The way he says my name, so angry and spiteful. It’s as though he spits it out instead of speaking it. I pause long enough to hear him scrambling to tidy his room. He doesn’t want his roommates to find out. They’ll want to know what secret. There are no secrets in fraternities, so they say.

Even though I’m holding a huge one myself.

I never thought of myself as gay, but now that Noah has brought these feelings to the surface, I have to wonder if I am.

It makes me doubt myself, and I hate that he pays off those girls to say they slept with him. That secret will be the end of him. The end of me, if anyone finds out. Because how could I not know? We’re brothers. We should know everything about each other.

I thought we did.

Then he kissed me.

---