You'll Never Guess

Dean's POV

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

I climbed the stairs and collapsed face-down on my bed. The vodka's effects had long worn off, but my temples and eye sockets still throbbed with a dull ache.

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

I lay there, one hand propping up my pillow, the other wrapping around my half-hard cock. It stirred awake in my palm.

My mind conjured Curtis's fingers in the car, the ones that had adjusted the heating vent toward me—long and articulated, with a faint bite mark at the base of his thumb from last time.

"Curtis..." I tightened my grip, my thumb brushing over the head, imagining it was his thumb pressing against my lower lip, forcing its way in to tangle with my tongue.

Hot cum spurted onto the hoodie's cuff in waves—wet, burning, mingling his scent with mine.

I lay gasping for a long time afterward, my nose still buried in the fabric, inhaling the mixture of us.

You're disgusting, Dean.

Stop smelling it.

But I took another breath anyway, like an addict getting a fix.

The morning after my hangover, I was ten minutes late. I sprinted from the dorm to the academic building, the pathways already nearly deserted.

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

What had Curtis been thinking during those few seconds in the car?

He'd sat there in the idling vehicle, his thumb scrolling across the screen twice, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper.

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

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

When the final whistle blew at afternoon hockey practice, players trickled out of The Rink in scattered groups, their skate blades clicking against the rubber mats.

I crouched near the blue line collecting cones, stacking the rubber markers one by one up my arm. My fingers ached, and my knee—the one I'd twisted last week—still throbbed.

After squatting for so long, I had to brace myself against the ice to stand.

I clutched the cones to my chest and hurried along the wall, hunched over. Rounding a corner, I collided head-on with three guys.

I stumbled backward. One of them grabbed my collar. When I looked up, I recognized the face—Ralph, who'd sat diagonally across from me at Curtis's frat party last night.

Curtis and Ralph were friends, I supposed, though their relationship probably wasn't as close as it seemed.

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

"Quite the VIP treatment last night," Ralph sauntered closer, his steps deliberately slow. "The captain personally drove you back to your dorm. Nice."

I kept quiet, hugging the cones and shuffling half a step sideways, but immediately regretted it. My first instinct had been to make way—just like I used to do at home.

Ralph followed, positioning himself directly in front of me. "He drove you right up to your building. How long did the car stay parked there?"

I clenched my jaw, forcing false bravado into my voice. "None of your business."

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

Ralph smirked and glanced at the two guys flanking him with an expression that promised nothing good. Then he lifted his foot and pressed his skate blade onto the cone. "Pick it up."

I crouched down and reached for it. Ralph's foot stayed planted on top.

"Look how obedient he is."

The Rink erupted with booming laughter that echoed off the walls like needles stabbing my eardrums.

I gripped the base of the cone and tried to pull it free. Ralph bent down, leaning close to me. "When you write your little stories, do you ever imagine Hunter's skate blade—"

He tapped the toe of his skate against a crack in the cone. "—slicing open his teammate's pants?"

My breathing nearly stopped. My hand trembled uncontrollably around the cone.

"Or maybe his stick?" Ralph straightened up and pressed the blade of his hockey stick against my shoulder. "Sticks are harder than you think. If you shoved one in—"

"Enough!"

A sharp, commanding shout cut through the air from behind me.

Ralph froze, lifting the stick off my shoulder.

Curtis strode toward us in his practice T-shirt, droplets of water still clinging to his blond hair. He stopped in front of Ralph. Neither spoke. The air turned suffocating.

Ralph's mouth twisted into a smirk. "I was just messing around with him."

Before Curtis could respond, Ralph pulled his foot back and shouldered past me, his voice dropping to a whisper beside my ear. "Do you know why Curtis is getting close to you?"

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

Behind me, laughter punctuated with the word "faggot" followed in broken bursts. The moment I heard it, I thought of my father—the way he'd screamed at me after smashing my computer: "You're a fucking faggot!"

The tone was identical to Ralph's lackeys'—casual, offhand, yet devastating enough to leave me half-dead.

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

The heat radiating off Curtis's body after his workout hit my face. Something tightened low in my abdomen.

He led me to the equipment room and tossed the cones onto their designated shelf. Then he bent down, pulled a paper bag from his gear duffel, and thrust it at 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 bag, I felt the residual warmth of his palm.

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

Ralph's words had set me on edge. I looked up cautiously. "Curtis... why do you care about me?"

Curtis looked down at me, his eyes a deep, unfathomable blue. He clicked his tongue as if I'd asked something idiotic. "If you pass out on The Rink, finding someone to mop up isn't easy."

I unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. The dry bread slowly softened in my mouth. As I chewed, my nose stung for a brief moment.

Curtis stood with his hands in his sweatpants pockets, leaning against the lockers, watching me eat. The weight of his gaze on top of my head felt strange—hot and prickling.

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

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

If he did know, then he'd been toying with me all along.

"Curtis." I bit into the sandwich, my voice muffled. "Do you ever use anonymous forums?"

Curtis dodged my question entirely. "Where's your phone?"

Was he deflecting? I hesitated, then pulled my phone from my pocket. Before I could unlock it, he'd already taken it from my hand.

Curtis tapped the screen a few times, then handed it back.

A new contact had been added to my list. The name was just a single letter: C.

"Save it."

"You're coming to the away game tomorrow to record footage. Still planning to get lost for half an hour?"

Curtis turned and headed for the door, adding, "Waste of time."

He'd entered his number into my phone. He'd just shielded me from Ralph's cruelty. The same 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 finished the sandwich, bite by bite.

Tears spilled from my eyes uncontrollably, dripping onto the bread—salty and bitter. I swallowed every drop.

That evening, I returned to the dorm.

My roommate was out. After showering, I sat on the edge of my bed in a T-shirt, toweling my hair dry.

I buried my face in the hoodie again, inhaling his scent. No matter whether he was toying with me, no matter what Ralph had implied about Curtis's motives for getting close to me—at least the smell on this hoodie was real. The warmth of his fingertips when he handed me the sandwich was real.

I scrolled to my chat history with Memory. She'd replied yesterday: "Found it. That ID's IP address is dynamic—it's changed a few times, but always within your campus network. Could be using campus Wi-Fi or public hotspots."

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

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

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

I stared at the ceiling. My phone buzzed beside my pillow. A new message: You think someone actually cares about you?Idiot.

I typed: Who are you?

The reply came instantly: You'll never guess.

The dorm's heating was on, but I couldn't stop shaking. He was hiding in the shadows. What clue could I possibly find to figure out who he was?