Chapter 6
Show of Hands
Edge
“I don’t care how you do it, Mac, just fucking make it happen.” I pointed a finger at the maniacal redhead and watched with a hefty dose of apprehension as Mac’s green eyes glowed with unholy delight.
“We aren’t exactly besties, Edge. It’s not like he’s going to come with me just because I ask him. I’m going to have to work for it, and that means you’re going to owe me. Big.” Mac blinked his long eyelashes at me, and I could practically see the evil wheels in his head grinding together.
I sighed and rubbed my hands over my face. I could feel Cutter watching me with a scowl on his face. It was never a good idea to owe a guy like Mac a favor, but he was the only person who could help me get Bash where I wanted him. “I don’t make deals with the devil, Mac. He usually makes them with me. I’ll owe you one, but it has to be reasonable. No sexual blackmail or anything that’s going to land anyone in prison. I get veto power because we both know you can’t be trusted with something as powerful as a favor from me.”
Mac scoffed and put a hand on his chest like he was deeply offended. He batted his rust-colored eyelashes at me and practically purred, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Master Darby. I have nothing but the best intentions for my fellow man.”
Cutter let out a snort and rolled his eyes. “We all know what your intentions toward any and every man are, Mac. Just get the punk to the house tonight. You know your dramatic ass isn’t about to pass up the opportunity to be part of this. You know everyone and their brother is going to be talking about this party for weeks to come.”
Mac narrowed his eyes at my friend and crossed his arms over his chest, making him look like a disgruntled elf. He really was adorable. It was a shame he was also off his rocker and slightly terrifying.
“Well, there is no party if the pretty punk rocker doesn’t show, so I think I should leverage this for more than one favor. It isn’t every day Rutledge Darby asks for help.”
He was playing me. We both knew it, and I let him see he was the only one enjoying the game.
“Don’t push it, O’Shea.” When I was pushed, I pushed back… hard. Inevitably, the other person didn’t simply fall over, they fell so hard there was no getting back up. Just like Rodgers. He was out on his ass, no longer welcome at this school and no longer the star athlete with a secured future in the pros. Nope, now he was in a very rough, inner-city public school, battling bullies of his own thanks to the persistent rumors floating around that he was involved with the KKK and neo-Nazi movement. It was easy enough to take everything away from someone who didn’t appreciate anything they had. Life wasn’t good for Rodgers, and I couldn’t find an ounce of sympathy for the guy. All he had to do was mind his own business.
Mac sighed dramatically and waved a hand in front of him. “Fine. One reasonable favor I get to hold onto for however long I need to. That’s my stipulation, there is no expiration date. I may want to use it down the road after we graduate. You never know what kind of trouble is waiting.”
I nodded, and Cutter let out another snort as Mac all but skipped away from us. He was more than a handful, and I didn’t envy the guy who decided to try and hold onto him permanently.
I looked over at my best friend and asked quietly, “This isn’t a terrible idea, right?”
Bash had never had a birthday party. He was turning eighteen tonight, and he was getting a damn party if I had to kidnap him and ambush him with one. My dad owned a ski chalet on one of the nearby mountains. It sat empty most of the year, but he kept it fully staffed because he could afford to. Occasionally, Cutter and I would use the property to get away from school, or when everyone else went home for the holidays except us. Every now and then, I opened the doors to my classmates and let everyone rage in the opulent, massive space, but this was the first time I was hosting a get-together for someone else.
“If I was into dudes, I would date you after pulling this together. He better appreciate the gesture.” Cutter gave me a steady, unflinching look as he asked, “Why him, Edge? Why are you playing his hero and going out of your way to do anything for him? You don’t know him… you don’t even know if he wants something like this. Maybe he likes being invisible.”
Deep down, I knew he didn’t like it. He accepted it, and he was doing everything he could to silently fight back against it. He wanted to be seen as exactly who and what he was, and that, I understood at a soul-deep level.
“I recognize his loneliness. It feels familiar, and something about it calls to me. I like the way he looks and the way he looks at me, like he sees me, not my name and not my reputation. He doesn’t bore me. I’m not sure I like him very much, but there is something about him that I’m stuck on and I can’t seem to shake loose. Everybody I’m surrounded by wants something from me. Sebastian Lowell might be the only person I’ve encountered who actually needs something from me.” No one else was stepping up to throw the difficult boy a birthday party, or to defend him… or to take care of him.
Cutter muttered something under his breath and pushed off the wall he was leaning against. He gave his dark head a shake and told me, “I used to wonder if you had a heart. You’ve always been so cold, so removed from everything and everyone around you. Now, I’m wondering what I’m going to do with you when that ball of ice in the center of your chest gets broken into a million pieces by some careless shithead. I don’t know that either of us is going to survive the fallout of you getting a broken heart, Edge. The world is going to fall into another ice age when it shatters.”
I narrowed my eyes at him while nodding at a couple of guys who shouted they couldn’t wait for the party tonight. Bash didn’t seem enamored with any of his classmates, but I wanted the majority of them there tonight to make a point. He was off limits. Regardless of what happened between the two of us, no one at this school was going to see him as a victim or as an easy target again.
“Who said anything about my heart being involved? The part of me that’s most interested in him is much lower on my body than that.” Though my brain seemed to have a lot to do with my current fascination.
“I’m just saying, you’ve never been in a position where someone could hurt you before. You need to brace yourself for that impact because it’s no fun.”
Cutter sounded like he was speaking from experience, which was surprising. He went through girls at the same speed I went through cute boys. He’d never seemed particularly attached to any one person, other than me.
“And how exactly do you know about that kind of pain, Cutter? Since when did you experience all of this love and loss you’re going on and on about?” He picked up the pace, so he was walking ahead of me a few steps. His spine was straight as an arrow, and I could see tension pulling across his wide shoulders. Sometimes my best friend seemed like he was carrying the entire world on his shoulders, and I realized, belatedly, I’d never asked him what his particular burdens were. He was a much better friend than I was.
Cutter laced his fingers together and put them on top of his head. The motion pulled the ends of his shirt out of the top of his pants revealing a strip of tanned and toned skin. He was a truly beautiful man, inside and out. If things were different, if he wasn’t the only person I needed… I would probably already know all about being so caught up in another person I forgot all about myself.
“I’m not saying I’ve loved and lost, but I do know what it’s like to look at someone and see something, but when they are looking back at you they see something else. Just keep your eyes open and your expectations reasonable. That’s all I’m saying.” He turned around so he was walking backward, managing to force a grin. It didn’t get anywhere close to his eyes, but I didn’t say anything. “Aside from worrying about your virgin heart, I’m ready to throw back a few drinks and get laid. You did invite some girls to this thing tonight, didn’t you?”
I nodded absently as a flash of red caught my attention. Mac was across the hall, and he had his arm looped through Bash’s. That white-blond head with the dark roots was bent down to hear whatever Mac was excitedly yammering about. I could see a tattoo of some kind of bird inked on the side of his neck. I wanted to put my lips on it. I wanted to feel his pulse flutter as I licked up and down his neck.
I bit back a groan and shifted to adjust the front of my pants as his head lifted and our eyes met. It was like getting sucked into midnight, the darkness of his gaze was so deep and infinitely black that it was easy to get lost within.
He watched me as I watched him. It was what I’d been doing ever since our showdown in the dining hall. I was a good predator. I could be patient and bide my time while I learned everything there was to know about my prey. Rodgers had pushed my timeline up when he tried that shit with Bash. I couldn’t stand for it. The only person allowed to get their teeth anywhere near him was me. I’d also been distracted by the arrival of an old friend. Harden Thomas was another lifer at Castle Pines. The son of actual royals, Hardy was the only other person I considered a friend aside from Cutter. We were thick as thieves, and since I was practically American royalty, we related on world watching, and what it was like to be weighed down by so many expectations it felt impossible to move.
Bash was familiar with those expectations also. Like any good hunter, I’d spent a fair amount of time digging up everything I could on my quarry. Bash’s dad was a world-renowned filmmaker. I’d actually dragged Cutter with me to see his new release right before the start of school. The man was always in the papers, consequently thrusting his family in the middle of a media maelstrom. Bash’s mom was famous as well, but what she was most well-known for was being a homewrecker and a gold digger. His parents’ marriage played out like a soap opera in the tabloids and without fail, one or both of them dragged their son in front of the cameras and waved him around as proof of their happy and successful union. Every time there was a rumor of infidelity or rumblings of an impending split, Bash was paraded around in front of the media like a juicy steak. It didn’t matter where they were in the world, they both used their son as a smokescreen to deflect the attention away from them being terrible people. No wonder he was happy being locked away at this school.
Bash blinked and broke the intense connection. He looked down at Mac, who was tugging insistently at his arm, but the redhead refused to let go. For once, I was glad he was so persistent and stubborn.
Turning back to Cutter, I gave him a more distinct nod, snapping out of my thoughts. “I did. I told everyone to get the word out about the party to the public high school in town.”
Aspen was affluent any way you looked at it. Even the public school kids here came from means and had a wealth of opportunity at their doorstep. “There will be plenty of opportunities for you to get your dick wet.”
He grinned at me and dipped his chin in acknowledgment. I didn’t mention that he never seemed either satisfied or very happy after any of his hookups. I wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs after any of mine either, so I figured it wasn’t my place to judge.
“Now that Hardy is back, I have an actual wingman. You suck at it.” He gave me a pointed look, reminding me again that he was much better for me than I was for him. I didn’t have the patience to chat up girls, or pretend I was interested in anything they were displaying. Cutter, however, never hesitated to go to the gay clubs with me and put in the effort required to make me seem like more of a catch than I already was. I made a mental note to myself to step up my friend game.
“Hardy only makes a good wingman for you if he decides he’s walking on the straight side of the street that week.” The handsome Brit tended to walk right down the middle and never hurt for attractive company of either gender. Cutter grunted in response, as I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Here’s to making the most of the weekend. Hopefully, we both get a little bit of what we’re after.”
I didn’t want a little bit, I wanted the whole thing, but I was willing to work my way up to that depending on how difficult it was to crack the iron shell Bash seemed to have wrapped around himself. He wasn’t letting anyone inside that fortress. Luckily, I’d never been denied entrance to any exclusive place.
I thought Cutter muttered, “You have no idea what you want,” under his breath, but when I asked him about it, he just smiled and told me I must’ve been mistaken.
We both knew I was rarely wrong about anything. Sooner rather than later, I was going to have to figure out what was going on with him, but for now, all my attention and focus was on getting Bash Lowell to look at me the same way I was looking at him.