Hunter stroked his chin, making a whole show of it. Sometimes I truly hated him, but most of the time I was indifferent to his theatrics.

“You.” He pointed at a girl named Alice, with pixie blonde hair and huge hazel eyes. He curled his index, indicating for her to come closer. She exchanged looks with her friends, breathless giggles bubbling from her ample chest.

One of the girls pushed her toward us, whisper-shouting, “Oh my God, Al. Just go!”

“Take pictures,” a brunette coughed into her fist.

Hunter jerked his chin to Vaughn. The latter ran his arctic pupils along the line, careful and methodic. He looked like he was searching for someone specific. Someone who obviously wasn’t there.

“You’re choosing a fuck buddy, not a mortgage. Hurry up.” Hunter rolled his eyes, throwing an arm over Alice’s shoulder. She bathed in the attention, smiling up at him with stars in her eyes.

Vaughn ignored Hunter, as he did ninety percent of the people who talked to him.

I examined the line, my eyes settling on a girl named Arabella. She had huge blue eyes and tan skin. A senior, too. She reminded me a bit of Luna—when she wasn’t talking. But that was the thing about high school girls, wasn’t it? They always fucking talked…other than the one whose words I wanted desperately.

No. That one never spoke a word to me.

“Arabella, baby.” I opened my arms in her direction.

She unglued herself from the wall to strut toward me in her high, hot pink heels and black mini dress.

Vaughn finally picked a girl, though he was grunting like a caveman about it. I’d have made a mental note to ask him why, but Vaughn never talked about girls.

Or feelings.

Or, you know, life in general.

I wanted to tell him if he didn’t feel like dipping his dick in someone tonight, no one was forcing him. But clearly, that would have been hypocritical. Not to mention false.

We confiscated the girls’ phones before they walked into the room and dumped them into a fruit bowl outside the door, to be guarded by a designated freshman who wanted to fit in with the cool crowd.

What happened in Vaughn’s entertainment room stayed there, too. We weren’t bad guys, despite what people might have thought. We never spoke about the ladies who entered here—not between ourselves, and definitely not to other people. If the girls wanted to brag, that was their prerogative. But there were never any pictures, any vicious rumors, any drama. The rules were simple: you got in, you had your fun, and on Monday morning, you acted like nothing happened.

Because nothing really had happened, as far as we were concerned.

In the entertainment room, Hunter was full-blown fucking Alice against a pool table from behind while having a civilized, flat-toned conversation with her about her summer. He’d tugged her mini dress up and gone at it, barely even bothering to slide her panties aside.

Turned out she’d lost her virginity a few weeks earlier to some tool at Christian camp and needed a redo.

“I just want to come,” she whined.

“Then you’re not getting out of here until you do.”

Her fingers were buried in the holes of the pool table, her half-bare tits dragging along the green, fuzzy surface. Hunter smoked a cigarette, his eyes drifting to Spaced, a British comedy, on the huge, flat-screen TV in front of us while fucking her.

And they say guys are not good at multitasking.

Vaughn, who was obsessed with Spaced, stood against the wall, letting some chick I didn’t know suck his dick. Arabella stood next to me, waiting for some action, but I just propped my shoulder against the wall, angled in front of Vaughn, ignoring the girl on her knees between us.

“Hope she’ll go out-of-state,” Vaughn said, verbose, one hand holding the ashy hair of the girl beneath him, the other scrolling through his phone.

He didn’t have any social media profiles and was soundly against trying to impress anyone on purpose, just like me. I’d once caught him checking some chick’s Instagram, though he’d locked his phone as soon as I noticed. I never got her name, and it was pointless to ask.

Anyway, Vaughn was talking about Luna now, so that was my cue to check out. I hated talking to him about her.

“Haven’t you wasted enough years on this shit?” he probed, tucking his phone into his back pocket.

This shit? Oh, screw you, Spencer.

“Haven’t you?” I clipped through a locked jaw. “You hate girls so much you won’t even fuck them. Blowies are as far as you can manage without being repulsed by human touch. At least I’m capable of feeling.”

“I’m capable of feeling.” He lifted a cocky eyebrow, yawning. “Hate. Jealousy. Disdain.” He looked down at the girl bobbing her head up and down, the apathy in his icicle eyes confirming no one was home behind them. “Besides, unreciprocated love is like a nice Jag—one you have to carry on your fucking back instead of driving. Nice and shiny on the outside, but such a drag to manage by yourself.”

“Drop dead.” I smiled cheerfully.

“Eventually, and at least I won’t die a virgin,” he said blandly, running his paint-smeared, rough hands through the girl’s silky, clean hair just to taint it.

I was about to knock his lights out mid-blowjob when Arabella dug her fingernails into my neck.

“You look a little tense. Let me help,” she purred. “I heard you were a kinky bastard, Knight Cole. Care to compromise me?”