Page 145 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

Even now, Rory turns to Luke with faint surprise, as though he doesn’t understand how anyone could possibly complain. From his perspective, encouraging me to suck his cock in the back seat of a taxi had probably been a gift for the others to enjoy as much as him.

“Problem?” Rory asks, with all the innocent charm and privileged entitlement he’s ever known. He balls his hands into his pockets, and watches Luke seriously.

“That was obscene, what happened back there.” Is it my imagination or is there a quiver of breathlessness in Luke’s voice?

The ghost of a smirk curves across Rory’s mouth. “In what way?”

Rory’s calm questioning seems to infuriate Luke, insofar as I’ve ever seen Luke anything other than utterly placid. His jaw tightens and he glares at Rory. “You can’t just whip out your cock and expect someone to suck you off.”

With an amused raise of his brows, Rory comments, “But you liked it.” He turns his back on Luke and examines the massive bed, with its princess-style carved headboard and immaculate cream, silk-blend covers.

This remark, more than anything, seems to push Luke past the edge of mere irritation and into full-blown anger. “Did you evenaskJessa? Did she say yes enthusiastically or did you decide to just shove your cock down her throat?”

“She’s standing right there, Luke,” Rory says easily, his face lightened with pride as he casts a glance at me. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

But Luke can’t even turn around to face me. He stands frozen to the spot, seething at Rory.

“She deserves better,” he mutters, stalking over to a cream-colored sofa and slumping into it. He buries his head in his hand, weary. “All of you are off your head on drugs. You’re going to regret everything tomorrow.”

“I’m not.” It’s out of me before I realize I’ve spoken, and only then does Luke turn to me, his gaze sidelong and dubious. My voice is quiet in the suite but they all pay attention to me. “I liked it.”

“You’re just saying that,” Luke scoffs, turning away from me again.

“So now my own words aren’t enough?”

“Exactly,” Rory says, sounding pleasantly surprised by the fire in me. “Don’t say you’re throwing a hissy fit to stick up for the saint. This is clearly about me. She doesn’t need a knight in shining armor defending her. She’s stronger than you think.”

And I marvel at those last five words, because how often have those words been used in reference to me?She’s stronger than you think. I wish I had his innate belief, but I’d hazard a guess that other people’s positive perceptions of you are something that takes time to sink in, achingly slower than their negative counterparts.

“Fine. Thisisn’tabout Jessa. It’s about your raging sense of entitlement.”

This, if anything, seems to provoke wild, lighthearted laughter from Rory. “Coming fromyou?”

It’s the thought-stopping, argument-ending words that will haunt Luke for the rest of his life.Coming from you— a liar, a schemer, a fake.

Danny moves across to Luke, still, absurdly, clutching the upturned bust between his hands. I wonder if he’s ever going to let it go, or if he’s planning to smuggle it from the hotel, with plans to perch it on his bookshelves as a rare collector’s item.

With effort, Luke glances up at him. An expression of distaste is written all over his face, in the tight tug of his lip, as though he’s chewing the corner of it to stop himself from lashing out.

“It was hot,” Danny declares openly and honestly, and his words seem to take Luke aback. “Don’t lie to yourself, Luke. You saw it as well as I did.”

“That doesn’t mean what you did was right,” Luke says, apparently agreeing with Danny’s frank assessment, and saving the last of his dredged rancor for Rory.

“No, probably not,” Rory says, still with that uncharacteristic good cheer, still acting like the world is coming up Rory. “But when have I ever done the right thing? When has any of us?”

It’s a question that weighs down the room. And as we each run through the other’s personal histories, it becomes obvious that we’re all terrible, dreadful, broken people.

Luke and his family, lying to a goddamn country about birthright and status and blood.

Flattered and wooed by the charms of a political prisoner, Finlay stabbing his best friend in the back for a piece of power and the ability to recorrect history on his own terms.

Me — the dancing girl who facilitated the break-up of a kingdom, who destroyed her own family in the most bitter circumstances.

Danny, the best of all of us, who once upon a time had been Rory’s number one — his lovesick head gremlin, his obsessive chief bully, the one who booted bruises into others at Rory’s behest.

And where to even start with Rory, the head honcho, the chiefs’ supreme leader and commander, groomed for a career in politics since before he uttered his first word, who pulls the strings and cracks the whip with as much relish as his fascist father. A blowjob in a taxi seems innocent compared to the vast litany of his other misdemeanors.

“You know what I’m starting to think?” Rory asks, settling on the edge of the huge bed as though our spectacular whereabouts is a common, everyday backdrop. He unlaces his shiny black brogues and tosses them aside, bored. “We’re the products of unparented children.”

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