Living at the Frat House - A College Romance

I jump back from the door as Malcolm comes through it. His face is still stormy. He takes me by the arm and we walk upstairs together, the grip he has on me not as gentle as when he first found me with Jack. He doesn’t say anything until he’s pulling me into his room, not mine.

He closes the door, and locks it, sighing. “What the hell were you thinking, Juno?”

My jaw drops. “What the hell was I thinking?”

“Why did you put on that dress? Did you want them to touch you? What made you think to play along with that? Why bother to instigate them at all? Are you crazy?”

He’s managed to keep his voice low enough even though it’s clear he would be yelling if he could. I don’t have the same restraint. “Are you fucking kidding me? He told me it was your idea.”

Malcolm goes deadly still. “What?”

I tear the dress off and throw it at him, not caring that I’m only wearing my underwear now. “Jack said that it was a housewarming present from you. That it was your way of initiating me into the house, and that if I didn’t do it I couldn’t live here, or worse, that my enrollment in school was at risk.”

He looks shocked. “Why would you think I would do that?”

“Why wouldn’t I think that I had to? This arrangement we have? I have to do what you say. How was I supposed to know this wasn’t what you wanted? Jack lives—lived—here, and he said it was what you told him. No one contradicted him. This isn’t my fault. And if you think that I would risk wearing a stupid costume over my enrollment and going after my goals, you don’t know me very well.

“So I thought I would get through it. I’m sure everyone else had to do something embarrassing for their initiation, so I just decided to take it. It was going fine, until Jack suggested the rest of the initiation was my providing everyone with sexual favors. That’s when I hit him.”

Malcolm looks absolutely pale. “We don’t do initiations here.”

“Yeah, well, I would have done it if I needed to. The things I want to do matter to me. I’ll do whatever I need to to get to my goals.”

He’s quiet, “I’m sorry, Juno. I didn’t realize.”

“How could you?” I ask. “You don’t know me. I don’t know you. We’re practically strangers who have been fucking.”

For a second, I think he’s going to comment on it, but he doesn’t, and the moment passes so quickly that I think that I imagined it. Fine. I’ll go unpack and let him think about it. I brush past him, and he stops me. “Wait.”

He strips off his shirt and hands it to me.

“I’m just going across the hall, Malcolm,” I say.

“I know,” he says quietly. His hands reach for me and stop, like he doesn’t know if he should touch me or not. “But we’re not the only people on this floor, and they’ve seen enough of you.”

“Malcolm—”

“You have no idea how beautiful you are, Juno,” he says, cutting me off but looking away. “You should only ever share that with who you want to.”

The admission startles me. He hasn’t called me beautiful before, and the emotion that I hear in his voice is completely unexpected. I don’t think anyone is going to be venturing up here for a while, but I don’t want to hurt him further. So I slip the shirt over my head, still warm from his body and smelling like the cologne that I can’t get enough of.

He’s still looking away when I slip out of the door.

13

Malcolm

I’m an idiot.

Rage is still simmering under my skin and I feel like I can’t quite get it under control. Jack is an asshole, and I knew he was pissed, but I didn’t think that he would pull something like this.

And what he tried with Juno…that’s not pulling anything, and I’m sick to my stomach knowing that someone like that ever shared space with me. How many times have I hammered consent into the people in this house? It’s one of the only three rules that we have here that there’s absolutely zero tolerance for. Keep your grades up, be a good representative of Granite House, and honor consent always.

If I see him again I’m going to end up in jail.

I’m unbelievably proud that Juno took him on. She’s a badass, and I know that she can handle herself, but I still feel ill that something could have happened to her. The urge to protect her is fierce and deep and pulling on my insides.

Right then, I was going to tell her that I knew a little about her—that I had seen her before. But it really didn’t feel like the timing was right. I do want to tell her, and I want to beg forgiveness over again. She didn’t storm out of the house, so I can only hope that she’ll give me a chance to make it up to her.