6. Cole

There’s a crashing sound coming from outside my room that pulls me from my sleep, the door thrown open, making me tense everywhere.

“Did you spill my fucking coffee?” Dad asks in a firm, angry tone.

I kick off my duvet and hurry to get under my bed like I always do when he’s mad. He’s scary when he’s drunk – and he’s always drunk.

Mom pulls his shoulder, trying to drag my dad away from coming for me. “I told you it wasn’t him! It’s only damn coffee, Malcolm! It’s three in the morning, go to bed!”

“Stop fucking lying for him!”

“I’m not! Please don’t hurt him. He’s only ten years old. Please, please don’t hurt him. It’s only coffee. You need to stop⁠—”

I cover my ears and press my face into the dust-infested carpet the second I hear the slap and my mom crying out. She falls to the floor, facing me with a trickle of blood coming from her nose. Her eyes are telling me to run, to remember what we talked about when he was like this a few days ago.

I’m scared. I love my dad, but sometimes, when he drinks too much beer, he changes. He shouts, breaks things, and when Mom tries to stop him, he hits her.

If I don’t hide on time, sometimes he hits me.

Dad grabs her by the hair and yanks her to her feet, and I take the opportunity to crawl from under the bed and run, just like my mom told me to do.

I want to help her, but she’d made me promise to get out of the house and go straight to the neighbor’s place before he gets more violent. If I try to help, I’ll only get hurt again. My arm is still sore from when he broke it nearly a year ago.

He told Mom I fell off the trampoline, but I didn’t. He lied. He always lies, and then blames everything on me.

My bare feet smack the ground as I run as fast as I can, reaching Mom’s phone, then rushing down the stairs, pausing when I hear a loud scream. I step forward and freeze, a tear slipping down my cheek before I turn and leave the house.

I bang my small fist on the neighbor’s front door, full-blown crying now, still hearing my mom’s cries for him to stop. The door flies open, and I gasp as my dad grabs my face and drags me into the darkness.

My entire body flinches as I jolt awake in a confused state.

I’m struggling to fill my lungs, a thick layer of sweat all over me.

Hair tickles my nose, and there’s a weight on my chest that stops me from sitting up. I’m weak, breathless, and everything hurts like I’ve been struck by a fucking car. My vision is still completely nonexistent, and I can smell sex everywhere.

There’s a bitter taste in my mouth, a mix of alcohol and something else.

I blink a few times, groaning when my head aches, and slip in and out of consciousness while battling with reality. I can’t fall back into that dream. I can’t. I’ll fucking lose my mind if I need to re-live that memory ever again.

Not that my dad was ever arrested for being an abusive asshole. He talked his way out of everything, since the only evidence was the word of a kid and a few bruises on my mom’s face that could have been self-inflicted. She was a nurse, after all, so she healed our wounds.

And my dad was a cop. Still is. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since I was a teenager.

There’s faint music. From behind my eyelids, I know the sun is beaming through the window. Is it the next day already? What the fuck happened last night? The brain fog is fucking me.

I try to tuck my cock into my pants, but my girlfriend hikes her leg over me, and I flinch as her knee skims across my dick. She hums, splays her hand on my chest, and falls back to sleep.

I know it’s Allie lying on me, going by the smell of her perfume and her perfect frame pressed against and over me, and the soft way she snores.

From the feel of her tits against my ribs and bare pussy on my leg, she’s naked. My jaw hurts, and my head feels like it’s about to explode when I try to sit up and fail again.

“Fucking hell,” I mutter, and my throat cracks like I’ve been screaming for hours. “Fuck.”

My phone dings from somewhere. The floor? I lift my head, screwing my eyes to faintly see it on the other side of the room.

Allie doesn’t stir as I slowly roll her off me, my eyes starting to adjust to my surroundings to see we’re in some sort of ancient, fancy room. And when I sit on the edge of the mattress, I look down and see a white-ish stain at the bottom of my shirt. I rub it between my fingers, whatever it is being half-dried.

Is it cum? Mine? Allie’s? I glance at the passed-out blonde beside me. How did she successfully get me to fuck her? And why don’t I remember it when I only had five beers?

The last I remember, I was sitting with my friends, trying not to jump on Samson and snap his neck for touching Blaise’s shoulder. And then I was watching them talk, laughing at something, and the way my friend kept looking at him when Blaise wasn’t aware of it.

The annoyance that ran through me could have been the fact my friends were mingling with him, and I hate him. Maybe it’s just the fact I hate hanging out with him. Or, it could be that I’m possessive of my friends and don’t want them anywhere near the piece of shit.

Blaise might think the masked man and unidentified messenger is Samson, though. Was that why he was so friendly with my guys last night? Was he trying to find out whose dick he sucked?

Surely, he’ll know Samson doesn’t have an evil bone in his body and does everything for a joke? He’s not serious enough to hide his identity and fuck a guy’s mouth before stalking the shit out of him.

Then there’s Jackson. He’s definitely the type. I already know from multiple drunken occasions that he thinks Blaise is a preppy guy he’d fuck. And since Blaise evidently likes cock, going by the way he hardened sucking mine, he might find him attractive.

I groan and rub my hands through my sweaty hair, grabbing my phone from the ground and going into the bathroom to wash my face with cold water and scrub the smell of sex from me. I feel dirty, not because of Allie, but it feels wrong. It had felt wrong being with her sexually before I cut off sex. And I’m still trying to figure out why it feels that way.

The cheating, maybe. The attitude transplant she’s in need of, possibly. The six-foot tank who sleeps in the room across from mine, fuck no.

Am I the problem? Is this all my issues getting in the way of me being happy with Allie? Are we a good match, and I’m just fucking it up?

I dip my head, needing the dizziness to ease off before I move from the front of the mirror. I gulp down water from the tap with cupped hands, then I check my phone.

Mom: Did you ask Allie if she wanted to come on the trip with us? I think Blaise asked Mia and she said yes! It’ll be wonderful if everyone came. Let me know and I can book a larger lodge so you don’t need to share with your brother and his girlfriend.

Blaise: Where did you fuck off to? Allie is looking for you and I’m not babysitting her drunk ass.

Mom: Can you call Blaise? Or are you with him? Gavin can’t get a hold of him and he’s worried. Please don’t get him drunk again, Cole.

Great. His dad can’t find him, so they assume I got him drunk.

A few hours ago in the group chat, Keith sent in a picture of them all, asking where the fuck I am in the caption. Samson has his arm over Blaise’s shoulder, the latter grinning like he’s having the time of his life, a beer to hand. Mia is on his other side and looking completely out of it. Allie is in the background, and she looks even worse than Mia.

I lean out of the bathroom and look over at her. “Allie? Are you feeling alright?”

She lightly snores, so I guess she’s not dead. At least she made it to bed with me and not someone else to take advantage of her.

Music plays downstairs in the main hall, and by the sound of it, there are a lot of fucking people drunk still. I can hear screams, cheers, chants, and it only gets louder as I open the room door and lean my body out to look down the corridor.

Strobe lights and colors flash in the distance.

I’m still really drunk somehow. My steps are uncoordinated and I’m swaying, and I keep shaking my head to realign my thoughts when I hear voices I know don’t exist.

But I’m not missing out on this. Samson will kill me if he thinks I bailed on his birthday party, regardless of the time.

Taking advantage of the fancy shower, much fancier than the one me and Blaise share, I wash the smell of sex and sweat from my body, grimacing as I pull the dirty clothes back on.

“Allie?” I call her name as I walk into the bedroom.

She groans when I tap her cheek and kiss her lips, her eyes opening slightly. “What?” she croaks.

“The party’s still going. Come on.”

“But I feel dead.”

“Be dead downstairs.”

She huffs and sits up, way easier than my attempt. “My head hurts.”

I grab her a glass of water from the bathroom, and she sips it slowly while I lean against the dresser and reply to some messages. I intentionally ignore my mom because the idea of spending a full week with Allie complaining about the snow during a ski trip makes my right eye twitch.

It takes her fifteen minutes to wash her face in the bathroom, removing her makeup altogether. I stay where I am, trying to remember what the fuck happened and why I’m still feeling so messed up. The longer she takes, the more ill and hungover I feel.

Which makes no fucking sense.

Did someone slip something into my drink?

“I don’t feel good at all,” Allie tells me as she leaves the bathroom looking like death warmed up. “I’m really dizzy.”

“Me neither.” I straighten and stagger, her body distorting through my vision. “We’ll go and see Samson and head to your dorm. I have classes tomorrow so there’s no point in me going home.”

She wraps her arms around my waist and smiles up at me. It’s like I’m looking through a kaleidoscope and all I can see is her face in the dozens. “I’m glad we finally did normal couple things. I’ve missed you.”

I huff a laugh. “You tricked me.” Sucking on my bottom lip, I feel the tender swelling from being nipped. “You bit me hard.”

Her head tilts, and then she pulls me down to kiss her.

Maybe she was the one who roofied me? Would she?

When she reaches down to my soft cock, I pull back. “I think you’ve had enough. Come on.”

She rolls her eyes and takes my hand, both of us looking like death. “We slept for, like, five hours. I have no idea how people are still going crazy down there.”

Uncoordinated, we manage to reach the stairs, and she holds on to me tightly as I get us down each step, bumping into the banister as we go. She huffs and stops, placing her hand on her hip. “I didn’t drink enough to be feeling this way.”

I run my sweaty hand down my face. “Me neither.”

“Do you think someone roofied us?”

I think she roofied me, in all honesty. It would make sense, and she could be putting on a show right now to make herself look innocent. She isn’t exactly the good girl, and she definitely has the fucked-up nonexistent morals to drug her own boyfriend so he’d fuck her.

If that is the case, then I hope I came and she didn’t get a chance to finish. Serves her fucking right.

Did I at least wear a condom? Fuck, I don’t know. She’s on the pill, but that doesn’t protect me from her fucking around with others and transmitting some shit to me.

I take her hand and pull her the rest of the way, stopping in the entrance of the doorway. My eyes instantly find Blaise passed out on the sofa, and Samson laughing and taking a picture of Blaise while trying to balance cups on his head.

Something inside me snaps. “What the fuck are you doing to him?”

My friends stand tall. “Cole’s alive! Where did you go, man?”

I ignore them and go to Blaise, crouching down through my dizzy haze and knocking all the shit off him. Grabbing his jaw, I pry one of his eyelids open. His pupils are fully blown, bloodshot, and when I shake him, he doesn’t show any response.

“He parties hard,” Keith tells me. “Mia left him here and went back to her dorm about an hour ago.”

Mom is going to fucking kill me if she finds out he’s in this state. Yeah, we’re not kids, but we aren’t exactly legally allowed to drink either. And if she found out? I’ll be shamed in front of everyone yet again and my stepdad will probably cut off all my funding for college.

I stuff my phone in my back pocket and turn to Allie. “We’ll take him back to your dorm. His dad will lose his shit if he sees him like this.”

My eyes lift to Jackson, who looks like he’s trying not to laugh at Blaise as I attempt to wake him again, but there’s something else there. Like he’s proud of how fucked he is. Why is he looking at him like that? I’ll carve his damn eyes out of their sockets and make him eat them.

Keith and Samson help me get Blaise to his feet while I pull his arm over my shoulder. I shake my head, because I’m still fucked up and it’s a struggle to focus. Allie calls for a ride, and Blaise groans as I drag his ass to the car when it sounds its horn outside.

Once we reach the dorm, Allie seems more alive while I feel like I’m about to smash right into death, at the same time as carrying my unconscious stepbrother to his bed.

Mia is sleeping on the sofa, so we leave her there. Allie vanishes into her room, and I hurry to get Blaise to Mia’s room before I drop him. He groans again, his hand flexing to a fist, and when I lower him to the side of the bed, he blinks his eyes open a little.

“C-Cole?”

Leaning down, I pull off his shoes and socks, and when I go to unbuckle his belt, my hands freeze over the leather, the metal clip pressing to my fingertips.

“This isn’t,” he starts, hiccupping, “how I saw my night en-ending.”

I roll my eyes and try to ignore the way my cock is reacting as I pull his belt off and drop it on the floor beside me. His body towers over mine as I stay on my knees, looking up at him. Will he let me undress him so he can sleep comfortably?

My cock pulses, and I want to punch it, because what the fuck?

“If you remember me helping you tomorrow, don’t you fucking dare let my mom and your dad give me shit for your condition if they find out.”

I flinch as his hand reaches to my hair, fisting it and making me pause. “I’m not Mia,” I tell him. “Get your fucking hand off me.”

Neither of us pulls away, even though I know I should.

“I’m not sorry,” he says, slurring each word and syllable.

He falls back on the bed, passed out before I can ask what the fuck he wouldn’t be sorry about. I sigh and drop back to my haunches, taking a minute to watch him before I roll him onto his side.

If he’s sick in his sleep, I’ll get the blame for him dying.

I leave a glass of water beside the bed and exit the room, my head doing overtime, trying to fight my own exhaustion.

Allie is half asleep when I get to the room. I climb in beside her, resisting the pull to go into the room across the hall.

She turns inside the duvet to face me. “Is your brother okay?”

I roll my eyes. “He’s not my brother.”

“I don’t understand why you hate him so much. What did he ever do to you?”

Gritting my teeth, I turn away from her, my fingers gripping the duvet so tight, I think I might rip the fabric.

Hands slide up my back. “Just try with him. You make no effort, and your mom is desperate for you both to get along.”

I shrug her off, rubbing my face, feeling the swollen side of my bottom lip from her obvious hard kisses earlier. It’s not even something I should be mad at – my girl wanting to be romantic with me. I was before, when we first started dating. I wanted to see her, speak to her, but the feelings were always…confusing for me. Now, everything feels forced to make others happy.

Then again, the look on Mom’s face when I brought Allie home pushes me to turn around and face her in the bed. I feel like I need to give her something more. I’m leading her on, and my mom will never forgive me if I fuck this up.

Giving my stepdad and Blaise ammunition against me isn’t something I’m seeking out. I’m trying to fucking prove that I’m not the asshole everyone thinks I am.

Well, I am, but not fully. I’m not my father.

Allie smiles when I drag her body closer. Her small frame fits perfectly against mine, but it isn’t right. It isn’t… I… Something isn’t right.

I kiss her, and she kisses me back with her fingers brushing through my hair, and I fight not to pull away. I press my mouth to hers harder, and when her hand drops between us, I snatch her wrist. “No.”

I’m giving myself whiplash at this point.

“But…” Her lips move, but no sound escapes. “Why?”

“I’m not in the mood.”

She averts her eyes, and I see a tear slipping free. “I promise, I’m not cheating anymore. I blocked my professor’s number, and I haven’t seen the others in weeks.”

My eye twitches. Is it bad that I don’t care? It’s a huge fucking sign I should end this. “Go to sleep,” I tell her. “We’re fine, I’m just tired.”

“Do you promise we’ll be okay? We’ll get back what we had?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

We both know that’s a lie, especially when she falls asleep and I check on Blaise four times before I manage to pass out.