Page 29 of Heartbreak Kings
Can I trust any of them, or is all of this just another head game in disguise?
Giving them another chance after last night was a tall order. But if what Daniel had said was true, there was a lot more to these guys than the front of militant conservative rich boys that they all wore. And every one of them was interested in me.
Sexually interested.
Five guys. Holy crap, what would I even do with them all?
I had never had a real lover in my life. Just two goofy high school flirtations. Kissing, groping, nothing serious. Now, I had five guys who had somehow gone from wanting me to leave to wanting to fuck me. And when I thought about that, my mouth went dry but not from fear.
I hated being a virgin. Not just because it was awkward to be one well past the age when so many of my friends no longer were, but because I didn’t even know enough about romance and sex to make a clearheaded decision.But the idea of being with them sexually made me squeeze my knees together as lust pressed against my womanhood.
And I still didn’t know what to do about the “gentlemen” situation.
Dating one guy seriously, going to bed with him, that was unfamiliar territory by itself. But five?It was pretty damned intimidating. I wasn’t sure I could choose between them, aside from Jude, whose shitty first impression had still left me with a foul taste in my mouth, even if it was just an act.
And really, after last night, can I even trust these guys?
I’ll sleep on it.
I rolled over and turned off the light. Outside my window, a few flakes of snow fluttered past, and I sighed, pulling my comforter up to my nose.
Chapter 12
Jude
I was just startingto get over my guilt for having treated pretty, clever Sabine so poorly when bad news crossed my desktop.
It had been a rough few days. I had slept little. During that time, Daniel had successfully talked to Sabine and apparently convinced her we weren’t such bad, hateful fucks. I just hoped it really had worked. But the anger in her big brown eyes still haunted me.
How was I going to explain to her that I wasn’t that guy—or at least, wasn’t that guy anymore?
How was I going to clarify that I had been acting and had been uncomfortable the whole time?
I was glad Daniel had stepped in to explain some of it, but I still regretted every damn word that had come out of my mouth that night.
It brought out parts of myself I thought I had left behind. Parts I had put to bed after getting into high school. Parts I was not proud of.
After Mom had taken Dad for so much in their divorce, Dad had spent his partial custody bitching to me about women. He called it “warning me,” so I wouldn’t do something stupid like falling in love.
“Women are only good for pussy,” he would splutter at me, drunk as usual and bitter as hell. “You can hire a cook. You can hire a cleaner. You can even hire someone to bear you a kid. Pussy, Jude. Find yourself a hot sugar baby and trade her in for a younger model every few years. Don’t even bother with that marriage shit.” I always felt torn when he said that. Now, looking back, I realized he had been a hot mess of a man who had been caught cheating by his wife too many times and had gotten what he had deserved. Back then, though, I had worshiped him.
So, from ten years old to fifteen, I had stayed on Team Girls-are-icky way too long, and way too vehemently. While my friends had fallen in love and experimented with sex, I had pranked the girls in school, said nasty things, talked back to female teachers, and frustrated the hell out of Mom. Dad had poisoned me with his own bitterness, and it had taken becoming my own man for me to purge myself of it.
Time had passed. Dad had a nearly fatal car accident while driving drunk. He dried out and got his shit together. His drunken rants against women had stopped.Then the big dumbass had shocked me by getting remarried and had even started admitting that he had been wrong. The new wife—age thirty—had helped him get his head out of his ass just by being nothing like Mom or all the stereotypes he had been telling me that all women embodied. My stepmother was big-hearted, sweet, patient. A kindergarten teacher.
It was then, just after becoming a freshman in high school, that I had realized my dad’s habit of talking out of his ass, and I’d cleaned up my act.
I took a long swallow of my energy drink and tried to wake up. Now, there was Carmody, ten years older than me and worse than Dad ever was. And he’d gone from being a nuisance to being a genuine problem. And the worst part was that other guys, dumbass freshmen, who couldn’t think critically yet, were backing him up.
I glanced at the window. Cold dawn light spilled in around my blackout shades.Fucking insomnia.I hadn’t slept well since going full teenage sexist asshole on Sabine. Not really a surprise, but it still frustrated me.I needed to focus.We had a big problem that I had just learned about, and the only way I was going to bring that across to the others was with a clear head.
I had set aside video games for a while, and I was checking my email and feeds when I caught sight of some files forwarded by one pledge. They turned out to be group chat logs between the pledges and some first-years, with Carmody as the most frequent poster.
I thought you should look at this,the pledge’s note to me said.
And after reading through all the files, I knew he was right.
Carmody had been talking behind our backs, stirring up the pledges. Every new guy trying to make his place in the fraternity, everyone on our waiting list, was included in the secret chat. I went to the site and checked myself. I had known he was bitching to some of them—he’d never shut up even when we told him to—but I hadn’t known it was this bad, that he was reaching out to so many, or that so many were listening to him. And I sure as hell hadn’t known he was trying to do all of this without the Gentlemen knowing.
