Page 13 of New Year

“She deserves to know.”

“Why?” he asks. “She can’t unfuck me now.”

I glower at him. “Because you’re in high school.”

“So? If she’s still eighteen, like she said, then the age of consent for her is fourteen. Even if she was lying about her age and she’s older, it doesn’t matter. I’m sixteen, which is the age of consent for everyone over eighteen.”

“What are you, like, a statutory rape lawyer?”

He gives me a devilish grin. “I like to push the limits,” he says. “Which means I have to know where the limits are.”

“Gross.”

He squeezes my knee and blinks his long, thick, hypnotic lashes. “Tell her if you want. I’ll even do it myself. Give me your phone.”

“No,” I say, pulling away.

He grins. “See? You don’t want to tell her either.”

“I might.”

Colin shrugs. “So do it. Your cousin’s good for a laugh, but I already got the kitty, and trust, if I wanted more, I would have gone back by now.”

“Are you saying she’s not good enough for you? She’s incollege.”

He stands but doesn’t step back, so I’m staring straight at his crotch. “I showed her a good time,” he says. “We agreed to leave it at that. Why tell her? Who’s it going to benefit?”

I don’t answer because he’s right. I’m being selfish. It might lift my guilt at knowing and not telling her the truth, but it won’t undo what happened between them. It’ll just make her feel bad.

Colin gives me a triumphant smile, like he knows he’s got me. Then he lowers his voice and leans down, resting his hand on my knee again. “Oliver told me about your little New Year’s Eve party,” he murmurs. “He never could get things done. Just thought I’d offer to finish the job for him.” He winks at me before standing, hopping down, and sauntering over to the basketball coach.

“What was that about?” Chase asks from my other side.

I’m so startled I nearly fall off the seat. Everyone’s sneaking up on me today. “What are you trying to do, kill me?” I cover my hammering heart.

Chase chuckles and reaches over to tug at a lock of my hair, now straightened to match the other girls in our group. “So?”

“So… What?”

“You had a New Year’s Eve party with the Finnegans?”

Damn it. He heard the whole thing. I wonder if it’s physically possible to die of humiliation.

But then I remember how he shut me down when I brought up the lake before, so I decide to take a page from Daria’s book and get a little petty.

“I told you we spent the break at the lake,” I point out. “You know how those parties get.”

I leave it at that, since he knows exactly how those parties go—and how I act at them. After all, that’s where we met too.

Chase gulps, his eyes widening for a second. Then he bends to tie his basketball shoes, bracing one foot at a time on the step below us.

Finally he straightens, the seriousness in his eyes making me sorry I toyed with his feelings. For once, there’s not a trace of teasing in his face. “I’m sorry about Todd. If it helps, Elaine is very, er, persuasive when she wants to be. It has nothing to do with you. If that helps.”

“It doesn’t.”

Maybe it had nothing to do with me, but it should have.

And now I’m thinking about how she ‘persuaded’ Chase to sleep with her too.

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