Dean's POV

The taillights turned out of the campus gate and disappeared into the night.

I climbed the stairs to my dorm and collapsed face-down on my bed. The vodka's aftereffects had long since faded, but my temples and eye sockets still throbbed with a dull ache that wouldn't let go.

Hunter—the Hunter I'd written seventeen chapters about, the Hunter I loved, the Hunter I'd jerked off to a dozen times—he was the same person as Curtis, the one who'd stepped in to save me tonight and driven me back to the dorm.

I lay there on my stomach, one hand propping up my pillow, the other wrapped around my half-hard cock, feeling it slowly wake up in my palm.

What I thought about were Curtis's fingers in the car, turning the heating vent toward me—long fingers with pronounced knuckles, a shallow bite mark at the base of his thumb from the last time I'd bitten him.

"Curtis..." I tightened my grip around my cock, my thumb grazing over the head, imagining it was Curtis's thumb pressing against my lower lip, pushing inside to tangle with my tongue.

Hot cum shot out in spurts onto the sleeve of the hoodie, wet and warm, mingling his scent with mine.

I was panting for a long time afterward, my nose still buried in the fabric of the hoodie, breathing in the mixture of him and me.

You're disgusting, Dean.

Stop smelling it.

But I took another breath, like I was chasing a high.

The morning after my hangover, I was ten minutes late, sprinting from the dorm to the academic building with hardly anyone left on the paths.

In physiology class, I sat in the back row, staring at my notebook without writing a single word, my pen tip scratching back and forth across the paper until it tore through.

What had Curtis been thinking during those few seconds in the car when he'd looked at me?

He'd sat there in the idling car, his thumb swiping across his phone screen once, then twice, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper.

What had he been looking at? Had he been reading my novel?

I wrote Curtis's name in the margin of my notebook, then immediately scribbled it out with my pen, tore off the page, crumpled it into a ball, and shoved it into my pocket.

When the whistle blew at the end of afternoon hockey practice, people trickled out of the rink in scattered groups, their skate blades clacking against the rubber mats.

I crouched by the blue line, collecting traffic cones and stacking the rubber cones one by one up my arm. My fingers were sore, and the knee I'd twisted last week was still aching.

After crouching for so long, I had to brace myself against the ice to barely stand up.

I clutched the cones to my chest and hurried along the wall with my back hunched. When I rounded the corner, I crashed straight into three people.

I staggered backward, and one of them grabbed my collar. I looked up—the face wasn't unfamiliar. Last night at Curtis's fraternity, Ralph had been sitting diagonally across from me.

Curtis and he were friends, supposedly, but their relationship couldn't have been as good as it seemed.

Ralph whistled at me. "Well, well, Curtis's little sidekick."

"Pretty impressive last night," Ralph said, walking over with slow, deliberate steps. "Captain personally drove you back to your dorm. Nice treatment."

I didn't say anything, just shifted half a step to the side while clutching the rubber cones, but the moment I moved, I regretted it—my first instinct had been to make way, just like I used to do at home.

Ralph followed that half-step and planted himself right in front of me. "Drove you all the way to your dorm building—how long did he stay parked there?"

I bit down hard, forcing myself to sound tough. "None of your business."

One of the cones on my arm wobbled and rolled to Ralph's feet.

Ralph let out a short laugh, tilted his head toward the two guys beside him with a look that didn't seem friendly, then lifted his foot and stepped on the cone with his skate blade. "Pick it up."

I crouched down and reached for the cone. Ralph's foot stayed on top of it, not moving.

"Look how obedient he is."

The rink erupted with booming laughter, like sharp needles piercing my eardrums from every direction.

I gripped the base of the cone and tried to pull it out. Ralph bent down, leaning in close to me. "When you were writing your little novel, did you ever think about having Hunter's skate blade—" He tapped the tip of his skate against the crack in the cone. "—slice open his teammate's pants?"

My breath caught in my throat, and my hand trembling uncontrollably around the cone.

"Or maybe with a stick?" Ralph straightened up and pressed the head of his stick against my shoulder. "Sticks are harder than you think. If you shoved it in—"

"Enough!"

A short, forceful shout came from behind me.

Ralph froze for a moment and lifted the stick off my shoulder.

Curtis walked over in his practice T-shirt, his blond hair still dripping with water he hadn't toweled off. He stopped in front of Ralph, and neither of them said a word—the air instantly thickened with tension.

Ralph's mouth curled up at the corner. "I was just messing with him."

Before Curtis could say anything, Ralph pulled his foot back and shoved past me, his voice dropping low and close to my ear. "You know why Curtis is getting close to you, right?"

"Take a guess." He raised an eyebrow at me and let out a short laugh.

Behind me, short bursts of mocking laughter followed, punctuated with the word "faggot." The moment I heard that word, I thought of my father—how he'd smashed my computer and pointed at me, screaming, "You're a fucking faggot!"

The tone was exactly the same as Ralph's lackeys, light and casual as it landed, yet heavy enough to crush me halfway to death.

My knees went weak, and Curtis grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him, taking the cones from my hands.

The heat from Curtis's body after his workout hit my face, and something tightened low in my stomach.

He led me to the equipment room and tossed the cones back onto the designated shelf before bending down to pull a paper bag out of his gear bag and shoving it toward me. "Eat."

Curtis's tone was commanding, like he was ordering a disobedient dog.

But I reached out and took it. When my fingers brushed the edge of the paper bag, I felt the warmth of his palm still lingering on it.

"You had four vodka-cranberries last night. You look like death. Eat first, then get back to work."

Ralph's words had put me on high alert. I looked up at him, carefully asking, "Curtis... why do you care about me?"

Curtis looked down at me, his deep blue eyes unfathomable, and clicked his tongue as if I'd asked a stupid question. "If you pass out on the rink, finding someone to mop the floor isn't easy."

I opened the sandwich and took a bite, the dry bread slowly softening in my mouth. As I chewed, my nose stung for a moment.

Curtis stood with his hands in his sweatpants pockets, leaning against the locker, watching me eat. The feeling of his gaze on top of my head was strange—hot and itchy.

It had been a long time since anyone had watched me eat a meal.

But Ralph's words still echoed in my ears—did Curtis know about my writing or not? If he didn't know, then his comment about me "writing pretty diligently" really had just been about analysis reports and training logs.

If he did know, then he'd been toying with me from the very beginning.

"Curtis." I took another bite of the sandwich, my voice muffled.

"Do you ever use anonymous forums?"

Curtis completely sidestepped my question and said, "Where's your phone?"

Was he trying to change the subject? I froze for a second, then pulled my phone out of my pocket. Before I could unlock it, he'd already taken it from my hand.

Curtis tapped on the screen a few times, then handed the phone back to me.

On the screen, a new contact had been added to my list. The name was just a single letter: C.

"Save it."

"Tomorrow you're coming with us to the away game to record footage. You want to get lost for half an hour again?"

Curtis turned and walked toward the door, adding, "Waste of time."

He'd entered his number into my phone. He'd just shielded me from Ralph and his crew's malice. The person who might have been playing me from the start had just shut Ralph up with a single sentence.

I crouched in the corner of the equipment room and ate the sandwich bite by bite.

Tears spilled uncontrollably from my eyes, dripping onto the bread, salty and bitter, and I swallowed them all down.

That night, I went back to my dorm.

My roommate wasn't there. I showered and sat on the edge of my bed in a T-shirt, drying my hair with a towel.

I buried my face in the hoodie and breathed in his scent again. Whether he was toying with me or not, whatever Ralph had said about Curtis's reasons for getting close to me—at least the smell on this hoodie was real. The warmth of his fingertips when he'd handed me the sandwich was real.

I scrolled to my chat with Memory. She'd replied to me yesterday: "Found it. That ID's IP address is dynamic—it's changed a few times, but they're all within your campus range. He's probably using the campus network, or maybe public WiFi."

Somewhere on the same campus. Could be in any building, in anyone's hands.

I typed: "Can you pinpoint the exact location?"

The typing indicator appeared, and after a long pause, she sent back a single word: "Hard."

I stared at the ceiling. My phone buzzed on the pillow beside me—a new message:

You think he actually cares about you? Don't be stupid.

The heating was on in the dorm, but I couldn't stop shaking.