Page 1 of Strip Bare

CHAPTER ONE

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Kit muttered as he nudged the door closed behind us. Aaron had made this stupid plan too easy. Why we had been dragged into this mess, I couldn’t quite figure out—except, Ryan was our captain and Jamie was his girl. So messing with her meant messing with him and, by proxy, us.

Of course, technically Aaron was our captain too. co-captain, to be exact. But he was a shithead of epic proportions and I’d never liked him. So tenuous friendship with Jamie notwithstanding, I didn’t exactly need an excuse to piss Aaron off and when Ryan had asked for our help…

I winced at the harshness of the bright light in the bathroom where Aaron had passed out. It was his place, so maybe he felt secure having his face against the toilet seat. It wasn’t something I would do at the house I shared with Kit and Xander, my other teammates on the football team, and I was the one who did the majority of the cleaning.

I reached absently for the string of the big light and Kit gave me a wry look, making my hand halt in mid-air. It just felt wrong having it on at the best of times, let alone standing in the bathroom with Aaron and the remnants of what I had to assume was coke on the rim of the toilet. Classy to the last.

Kit sighed. “He’s such a douche.”

I couldn’t disagree, nor could I hold back a smirk at the look of undisguised satisfaction on Kit’s face as he leaned closer to Aaron with his phone out and snapped a photo. The flash went off, making the pop of Kit’s blue hair seem ridiculously bright for a moment, and we both froze as we stared down at Aaron, waiting to see if he would stir.

Nothing.

“He’s not dead, is he?” I wrinkled my nose as I stepped closer and nudged his leg with my foot. I wanted to help Jamie and Ryan out, but manslaughter wouldn’t look too good on the record of a hopeful law graduate.

“S’goingon,” Aaron slurred, trying to push himself upright and failing. Instead, he slid back against the wall, his head tucked down to his chest like it was too much effort to hold it up.

“Oh, that is a good one,” Kit murmured and I snorted as he snapped a few more photos of Aaron with bloodshot blue eyes and a disgusting mixture of snot, coke, and blood around one nostril. Not that blackmail was any better than murder, really, on the legal side of things—but I would be steering clear of the actual threatening. At worst, I was an accessory-to-the-fact but I had plausible deniability going for me. Afterall, how was I, a concerned student, supposed to know that Kit was taking photos of our heavily intoxicated captain for evil purposes rather than good? All’s fair in love and war, and Jamie really knew how to wage it.

Aaron snorted deeply and then coughed, spitting up what was probably a mixture of coke and phlegm into the toilet, and I tried not to gag.

Jamie really knew how to pick them. Of course, she was now with Ry and he was as nice as any guy got, usually. And it wasn’t really her fault that Aaron had leaked her nudes across campus—though, the consequential revenge threesome had her signature stamped all over it. I shook my head. How had I wound up in this mess?

“Can we get out of here now?” I complained as Kit led us back through the door and down the stairs where the party was still raging after the final match of the season earlier that day. This was more Kit’s scene than mine. Loud music and sweaty semi-strangers were not my idea of a good time. I would much rather be at home, digging into one of my new law textbooks—and yes, I knew how pathetic that probably sounded. Luckily, Kit didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes he would stay on without me while I went home, but most times he came back with me.

It was probably the only time Kit left a party with a guy and didn’t end the night by fucking him. Unfortunately.

Things between me and Kit were… complicated. Except, it was actually very simple. He was my friend. Probably the closest one I’d ever had considering how difficult I found it to connect with new people—it was the reason my mom was so pushy when it came to dating and any and all of my relationships. She was sweet, and I loved her, but her life didn’t need to revolve around my love life—or lack thereof.

I liked Kit. More than liked, maybe. And sure, there had been a few moments where it had seemed like he might more-than-like me back. But it was hard to tell because Kit was naturally flirty. People gravitated toward him as we moved through the press of drunk students in the hall to the front door and I smiled tightly as more than one pair of sweaty palms tried to pull me closer to dance before I managed to escape. If Kit was sunshine, then I was frost—and it was only around him that I melted. People didn’t instantly like me the way they did with him. It took them a while to warm up to me, and normally they only attempted it because I was part of the group.

Otherwise I would have continued on throughout my life at college the same way I had previously: looked over, ignored, or cautiously accepted but regarded as a little strange.

I was lucky to have Kit, really. For whatever reason, he’d pursued me after I’d joined the football team and it had given me someone else to talk to aside from my roommate. Maybe that was why I was scared to rock the boat with him. He’d been a permanent fixture in my life for several years now, I didn’t want to lose him over likely-unrequited feelings that would probably fade with time.

“Leee-Oh,” Kit dragged out my name as we breathed in the cool air and the sounds of the party faded behind us. I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t heard anything he’d had to say the last few minutes. “What are you thinking so hard about?” Kit cocked a dark eyebrow at me as we walked the few blocks between Ryan and Aaron’s place to ours. It was still relatively early and the fading of the sunset cast interesting shades of pink into the baby blue strands of hair that Kit had re-dyed recently. He was so vibrant compared to my own pale skin and hair—the only color in my face came from my brown eyes. My mom said I looked like a true winter baby, and she wasn’t wrong.

“I’m thinking I should dye my hair. Make it more interesting, like yours,” I said easily, not wanting to get into the topic of my abysmal dating prospects—especially because Kit might offer to set me up and that would bum me out even more.

He tugged on the end of my semi-long hair and I fought off a shiver. “More interesting? You’re kidding right?” I shrugged and he turned away so I couldn’t work out his expression as he continued, “I don’t think there’s a way to improve perfection. I’m an artist, I should know.”

I laughed and after a second he joined in, the sound warming me as we walked.

“Ryan is going to die when he sees these pics.” Kit grinned as he held up his phone to show me and I winced. The flash had perfectly captured the bedraggled state Aaron had been in when we’d found him, making the reds of his rolling eyes more pronounced and the white of the coke still on his face harsher against the gray-tinge of his skin.

“He looks like a corpse.”

“I know right,” Kit said gleefully, pocketing his phone after putting the photos into the group chat we shared with Ryan and Xander. “Hopefully that cheers Jamie up.”

Somehow, I doubted that a picture of her cheating ex off his face on drugs would make up for the fact that she’d been suspended from Radclyffe. The combination of academic probation thanks to a professor who had it out for her, and trumped up harassment charges from the best friend who’d been sleeping with Aaron, had pretty much only one outcome I had foreseen. Bryn, Kit’s sister, and I had tried to run through what Jamie could say in her defense at the meeting with the advisors, but I hadn’t been hopeful. Much like her brother, Bryn had been more optimistic about Jamie’s chances. But then Jamie had sent a screenshot of the suspension letter she’d received via email to the group chat shortly after our football game and nobody had seen her since.

“Maybe,” I murmured, and Kit sighed.

“You did everything you could to help her. It doesn’t reflect on your badass lawyer-y skills, okay?”

I blinked at him before raising an eyebrow. “My badass lawyer-y skills?”

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