Prologue
Fox
Six years earlier
* * *
As I stood watching proceedings unfold, I felt totally removed from what was happening. The fact was, I was detached from the whole thing. Not emotionally. Emotionally I was as invested as anyone could be. But physically, I couldn’t bring myself to be any closer, or take part in any way.
Stupidly, somewhere in my mind, it was as though I thought, or hoped, that if I didn’t take part, it wouldn’t be real. Or even if it was real, that if I didn’t take my place front and center of everything, I could somehow press the reset button and make this all go away.
Of course, in my heart of hearts, I knew that neither was true. What was done was done, and couldn’t be undone, and I’d have to live with that fact until I died. Still, the whole situation seemed like a surreal dream.
The only aspect that seemed true, or which provided some kind of anchor to reality, was the dull throb of pain from the fresh tattoo on my arm. Those angry red marks surrounding the thin, delicate lines that made up the minimalistic piece. Two numbers stacked on top of each other.
0408
0721
Reminders. In place of attending the funeral. I’d never been to one before, and damned if this was going to be the first. Instead, I’d made my own memorial on my body—a constant and permanent reminder. Which was dumb really, because I was never going to forget, tattoo or not. There wasn’t a day, hour or minute, asleep or awake, that I wouldn’t be tormented by what had happened. Not one.
0408
0721
Chapter 1
Kane
“Jesus Christ, Fox, for a staunch vegetarian, you seem overly obsessed with eating pussy.” He flipped me off, mainly because that was our first response to pretty-much everything, but also because he had a mouthful of said pussy, and answering me would have required him to pull away. As much of a confirmed “vaginatarian” as he was, I didn’t see that happening.
I stood rooted to the spot in the living area of our shared dorm suite, watching as Fox went to town as though the girl—who didn’t seem at all concerned to have an audience—was his last meal. The rumor about Fox’s golden tongue must have been true, if her reaction, and the fact that he had girls practically lining up around the block for it, was anything to go by.
I debated momentarily whether to carry on watching as my dick hardened in my pants, but in the end, I decided to grab a beer from the fridge and head for my room. I could think of better ways to use my growing hard-on.
“What’s up with you?”
“Goddamn! What the fuck are you trying to do, scare away my boner?” I swore to God, he was like a tiger, or a phantom, or some shit. Actually, he moved like a fucking fox. “I literally just heard her coming. How are you standing in my doorway thirty seconds later? Did you push her out the door with her panties still around her ankles?”
“Nah, man.” He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand before giving a satisfying smack of the lips. “But this is not a dental appointment, there’s no aftercare service. Once they get what they came for, or came for what they got—” He chuckled at the play on words. “I release them back into the world like a cat sending a mouse back on its way, dazed and confused, but so fucking glad to be alive.” His grin nearly split his face in two as he opened the bag of chips he was carrying, then shoved a handful into his mouth.
“Anyway, enough about me. You’re deflecting. What’s going on with you?”
“You mean apart from the fact that my best friend seems determined not to let me jerk off in peace? Nothing.”
He leaned against the door jamb, crossing his legs at the ankles and folding his arms across his chest. “Bullshit. And bullshit.” His eyes traveled to my hand gripping my dick as I continued to pump it up and down. “You’re still going to come. A few more minutes and you’ll be there. And something is pissing you off, but it’s not me watching you jerk off. You had that haunted look in your eyes when you walked through the door.”
“How the fuck would you know? You were eyebrows-deep in that chick’s bush at the time.”
He raised an aforementioned eyebrow, which conveyed the fact that I was asking a stupid question.
“Jesus.” I equally loathed and was in total awe of his ability to appraise a situation, especially when the situation in question was me. “Okay, Sherlock, let’s put a pin in this conversation while I take care of business. I promise to spill all when I’m done. No pun intended.”
He shrugged nonchalantly, as though he thought privacy while I whacked off was too much to ask for. Jesus, he was a piece of work, although, in his defense, privacy wasn’t really a thing between the two of us—so there was that. He padded away chomping loudly on the chips.
When I was done, I headed back out to the living area to find Fox sitting on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, still munching from the giant bag of Ruffles, and watching some kind of superhero show.
Though, technically, it was his living room area, we’d completely rearranged the way the rooms in our adjoining suites worked, so that we shared his living space for recreation, and used mine as a communal study area, meaning that we didn’t have to work in our rooms.
In actual fact, it meant that I didn’t have to work in my room, as, on the rare occasion when Fox even bothered, he was more the type to study wherever he “fell.” I was the one who needed to take hitting the books seriously, and to spend a decent amount of time at it. I did well, but it didn’t just fall in my lap like it did for him.
We each had our own bedroom, but we’d removed the door in the hall that joined the two dorms, so we came and went between them as we pleased. We never cooked, but we used Fox’s kitchenette to heat up shit like Pop Tarts, and to store our beer and chips.
“Dude, you might want to cool it on the blunts if you’re going to eat a family pack of chips afterwards every time, or else you’ll end up living in the gym.”
“Hmm... you make a valid point. One I will consider more fully at some other time. Right now, I want to know what’s eating you, and then I’ll worry about what I’m eating.”
I joined him on the couch, and let the mindless nonsense on-screen wash over me for a moment.
“I heard on the grapevine that they’re halving the Carrington Memorial Fellowship fund.” Fox’s hand paused in the chip bag, and he slowly drew it out, empty. “Well, not halving it, but dividing it.”
“Dividing?”
“Hmm... between you and another student.”
“Who?”
“That I don’t know. I’m not Xavier; I’m not the all-seeing eye, with the Dean in my pocket like he is. My contact on the inside is a small fish with limited access to information.”
“That was going to be my next question. So you’re still fucking that cute little TA?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘fucking.’ That makes it sound like way more of a formal thing than it is. ‘Occasionally fuck’ is a better summary of the situation, but yeah, she told me she’d heard whispers.”