Who Breaks First (Clearwater University)

“What do you mean?” She shakes her head, breathing a little harder.

“When I asked you out. Remember? We went to see a movie in San Diego, and then you and I left West and Trent behind for a while and walked on the beach. I asked you to go out with me.”

“Yeah, I remember.” Emma licks her lips, looking almost terrified.

Maybe I shouldn’t be pushing her, but I need an answer. It’s driven me crazy for years, wondering what the hell was going on in her head that day.

“Why did you say no?” I press. “You wanted me. I could see it in your eyes. So why did you turn me down?”

Emma’s body is shaking. I can feel the vibrations in mine from everywhere we’re touching or almost touching. Her pulse beats wildly in her neck, and my own heartbeat matches it as my dick grows even harder. Everything about her invades my senses, and when I cup her chin between my thumb and knuckle and tilt her head up, it looks like she has to fight to keep her eyelids from drooping.

The chemistry between us crackles like lightning, and I lower my head, my mouth drawn toward hers by what feels like a magnetic force.

“You’re wrong. I never wanted you,” she finally whispers, her breath brushing against my lips. Then she pulls away and grabs blindly for her backpack before running from the room.

I’m left standing there by myself, with just the echo of her lie to keep me company.

And it was a lie.

If she doesn’t want me, why did I just feel her body literally melting next to mine? Why is it that when I touched her, Emma looked like she was about to come on the fucking spot?

I put my hands on my hips and look around the room, remembering as I do that it’s got two walls that are entirely made of glass. People probably saw what went down, but I don’t really care. Emma might be embarrassed about it, but I’m sure as fuck not. I know there’s something she isn’t telling me, something that explains this crazy electricity between us that won’t go away.

As thoughts of what just happened flicker through my head, I realize my heart is pounding in my chest and my dick is as hard as a rock.

Jesus fucking Christ. Get it together, Reese. I’m not a sex-crazed kid anymore. I’m a man.

And now I’ve gotta go back to my room and jerk off like a child.

9

Emma

Things aren’t going as planned.

As more weeks pass, I find that my concentration in class is waning. I do my best to focus, taking as many notes as I can before going back to the dorm and drowning myself in homework, but none of it is working.

Not only are the guys under my skin, they’re also invading my dreams at night. My dreams about all of them turn sexual at one point or another, but I also have different thoughts about each of them. When Trent comes into a dream, I’m always confronting him to find out the truth of what happened between us in high school. When Reese comes into a dream, he’s always sweet and comforting—until he turns on me.

There’s no talking when West is in a dream. Just hard, angry sex.

I’m not proud of any of this, but I can’t stop it. I’m sure the guys are only too happy to see me unraveling. They don’t care how they break me, they just want to break me. I can tell Leslie notices the change that’s come over me. We’re still super close, and I really like hanging out with her, but I’ve been so erratic and lost in my thoughts lately that I know she sees it. When she tries to ask me about it, I just say I’ve been PMSing… for several weeks.

I can’t control what happens in my dreams, but in my waking hours, I indulge in a lot of fantasies about making the guys suffer like they made me suffer.

It probably makes me just as sick and twisted as they are, but I think maybe it would make me feel better in some way to make them pay for what they did to me.

I try to walk around campus with Peter whenever I can, because I know how much it pisses the guys off. But it has to go deeper than that. I want to sabotage them in the way they’re sabotaging me—to wreck college for them, to ruin them. Sometimes, when I’m supposed to be taking notes in class, I just jot down ways in which I can exact my revenge.

There are some things on that list that are so fucked up, I’d probably never have the guts to do them, but it feels good to write them down.

I often think about the resolution I made on my first day, when I was riding my bike to Clearwater U in the warm fall sunshine. I promised myself I would start again and create new opportunities for myself. That I would avoid trouble, keep my head down, and graduate with good grades. And I held strong to that plan for so long. So why have things taken a turn for the worse?

“So… I have to admit something,” Leslie says, lying on her back in bed. Midterms are only a week away, and we just finished a marathon study session.

“What?” I crane my neck to look at her. I’m lying in my bed in much the same way.

“I started dating someone.”