Chapter 1

1

Ash

L ast night was wild.

Like…Top Ten Nights of My Life wild.

After claiming victory at the TaskFrat Challenge, the Peach State frats met back at the Alpha Theta Mu house.

And we partied. Hard.

Which explains the headache.

How fucking tired I feel.

And why I'm struggling to open my eyes.

I finally manage to force them open, and I notice a bulge in the sheets beside me.

Someone's sleeping in my bed.

Last night steadily comes back to me. There was the friendly girl I met when the party started—the one with the smile and hot ass. Then later, there was the blond guy with the chiseled jaw and the impressive biceps. Friends with someone in Delta Phi, the guy was practically on my tail all night—and at one point, he grabbed my tail, but after that, I can only remember up until flip cup.

Maybe after, the blond hottie and I came up to my room. I'm naked, so it's possible we messed around, but with how drunk I got, I'm tempted to think we just passed the fuck out.

A pillow obstructs my view of that sexy jaw, but my dick's already getting nice and hard at the thought that the guy might wake soon so we can finish what we started.

A smile tugs at my lips, but then I notice a shirt on top of the sheet.

Wait a second…

That's not what he was wearing last night.

And this guy seems taller.

"You're up, aren't you?" a familiar voice says.

My heart sinks.

This isn't my blond hottie from last night!

I groan as Colin removes the pillow that's blocking his face.

My brother? Seriously?

"Hangover that bad?" he asks as all my excitement is sucked right out of me in a few cruel moments.

Colin's light-brown locks lie flat from the backward cap he wore all night, his eyes squinty, the way they get in the morning.

"I can't even convey how mad I am at you right now," I say, glaring at him.

Colin's eyes widen. " Me? "

"I thought you were a sexy man in my bed."

"I am a sexy man in your bed." He sports a cocky grin, but I'm so disappointed, it's hard to even be amused by that.

"It doesn't really work when the sexy man is your brother." I sit up and snatch the pillow at his side, pulling it close.

I know he's hot. Since our parents first got together, I've seen firsthand how guys and girls fawn over him. The way they glance at that sharp jawline and grab at his thick biceps and chest. But that's not gonna do me any good.

"Wait a second," Colin says as he sits up, eyeing me suspiciously. "Did you think I was that blond guy you spent half the night with?"

"His name was…" I say in as obnoxious a tone as I can manage, but—

Oh fuck, what was his name?

So much for my attempt at being a smart-ass.

"That guy was straight, though, right?" Colin asks.

I have to keep from rolling my eyes. I swear, sometimes Colin is so oblivious. "I'm pretty sure he wasn't feeling all that straight when he had his hand on my ass."

"Oh," he says, rolling his head back for a laugh. "I didn't pick up on that at all. But, I didn't with you either, so… "

"Yeah, I think I might have broken you as far as figuring out who's queer or not."

"Maybe you did. But don't be an Ash-hole this morning." Colin scoots close and throws his arms around me, pulling me in for a hug. He doesn't normally wind up in my bed with my naked ass, but considering how close we are, it's not really much of a thing for either of us.

"My bro's sad he didn't get some strange last night?"

"I feel like you're weaponizing the slang I taught you."

I nudge my shoulder against Colin, and as he backs off, I run my fingers through his bangs, messing them up in the front. That only makes him grin even more.

Even when Colin's trying to get under my skin, he's still the big, lovable Labrador he's always been. Playful. Loyal. And loves to catch a ball—namely, a football, but really, any ball will do.

"You are just living for this, aren't you?" I ask.

"Don't be like that. You slept with Peach State's star tight end. You know how many people would kill to wake up to this?" He casually flexes his admittedly bulky bicep, the way he might for a girl he's trying to impress. "And the first guy to manage it? That's bragging rights for the rest of your college career." He's got this wicked grin on his face, trying to get all his digs in while he can. "Seriously, though. I'm sorry you woke up thinking you were gonna get some dick, and it turned out to be your straight brother."

" Stepbrother, " I say, which I normally use only when he's teasing me like this.

Colin puts his hand to his chest. "Ooh, I felt that one." He winks, making me laugh.

"Okay, I have so many questions about last night," I say, "but I'm also fucking starving."

"Come on." He pats my thigh. "Let's get some breakfast. At least you can put something in that horny mouth of yours."

And again, he's got me laughing, despite the combination of hangover and sexual frustration I'm currently suffering.

Colin rolls out of bed in just his briefs, grabbing his clothes off the bed and floor before he starts to head out.

"Hey!" I call after him, snatching his cap from between the sheets and tossing it to him.

He catches it. "Thanks, bro."

I toss on some clothes and my glasses, working my way through the events of last night, trying to fill in the gaps, but some things just aren't coming back to me. That's what happens when you fuck with hippocampal circuitry.

I head down to the kitchen. Several of my housemates are eating in the adjoining dining area, while Lance—my buddy and Alpha Theta Mu president extraordinaire—sits at the kitchen island in a tank top, eating his usual Froot Loops, his gaze on the TV, playing some reality show I don't recognize. As I near him, he turns to me, and his eyes light up. "Alpha Theta Mu TaskFrat victors!" he exclaims.

A few of the guys holler from the dining area.

Lance and I are both regular players in the Peach State TaskFrat Challenges—a year-round task-based competition between all the frats—because I do enjoy a challenge. And Alpha Theta Mu totally kicked ass last night.

"How you feeling this morning, bruh?" Payton calls out from the dining area, snickering in that way that assures me he saw some wild shit.

I fist-bump Lance before retrieving the container of grits from the pantry. As I start fixing a bowl, I ask him, "So…exactly how bad was I last night?"

"Why don't you tell me what you do remember, and we'll go from there."

"Up to flip cup."

"Yeah, why did the resident genius think playing flip cup with vodka instead of beer was a good idea?"

"Because the only thing that rivals my brains is my competitive streak—I thought we were good enough friends that you knew that about me."

Lance chuckles. "That sounds about right. So you don't remember dancing on the media console? "

"No." I groan.

"There was definitely some of that…for a while. Marty kept trying to get you to come down, first by saying this is not the behavior of a future professor, then under threat of your security deposit, so you'll probably be hearing about that again."

"I'm sure I will." Our housemate Marty is all about rules, which really, don't you need someone like that to make sure everything doesn't descend into chaos?

I pop my grits into the microwave. "Do you remember the name of that blond guy I was hanging with?"

Lance glances around like he's scanning his mind for the answer. "Greg…or Bailey? Or did he say he liked Bailey's?"

"He was Jeff Martin's friend," I say, "so maybe I'll check Jeff's and his friends' profiles and search for him there."

"I can text Jeff and ask."

"I wanna look cool, so let me aggressively stalk to find him first, and if that doesn't work, then we can resort to texting him."

"Yeah, because aggressive social media stalking is so much cooler than just straight up asking."

"Your sarcasm is noted, but really grating on my hangover right now."

Lance laughs. "I'm sorry. You really should have slowed down because you had that girl fawning over you the first part of the night, and then that guy on your ass the rest of it. My bi boy had the world at his fingertips."

"At least I was making some moves," I say, glaring at him.

"I still have a wounded heart."

"You broke up with Shannon forever ago."

"A few months." At my look, Lance adds, "Okay, more like five. I can't just hook up like you or Colin, though. But I can enjoy living vicariously through your stories, and given you had two viable options last night, you should have woken up with someone in your bed."

If only he knew, and nearly as soon as I have the thought, I hear, "He did wake up with someone in his bed." Colin rounds the corner, in sweats, a backward cap, and crocs.

"Oh really?" Lance says, his voice full of interest and curiosity. "And who was the lucky someone?"

"I was." Colin shrugs as he opens the fridge, leaving it there long enough that Lance's jaw drops. Colin doesn't seem to be thinking much of the bomb he just set off as he digs through the fridge, nabbing a cup of yogurt.

"Um…" Lance drags out.

"We woke up in bed together," I explain. "That's all that happened."

"It's not like it's the first time we've ever shared a bed," Colin tells Lance. "I'm sure you've shared a bed with your brothers."

"Not after middle school," Lance says. "And how did you end up in his room last night?"

As Colin fishes through the drawer for a spoon, he says, "When I got him off the media console, he wanted a piggyback ride to his room. Since he wore his contacts for TaskFrat, he started stressing about falling asleep with his contacts in and dying from an eye infection, so he made me swing by the bathroom so he could take them out before we actually made it to his room. Then he seemed to think I'd taken him to my room, and that he was kicking me out, and no matter how much I insisted that wasn't the case, he demanded I stay."

"Based on what I know of you guys," Lance says, "this is all adding up, especially the piggyback ride."

I have been known to demand piggyback rides from Colin. It's just one of those things we do from when we were younger that clearly other people find weird.

"I really don't remember any of that," I say.

"I've got video." Colin pulls his phone out of his pocket, keys on it for a moment, then passes it to me. A video plays of me dancing on the console. "Don't bother asking if my volume is low," he says, "because that's you when the music stopped."

"Oh God," I say, witnessing the horror.

It's not like I'm just bobbing around. I've got my hands in the air, really cutting up; the camera shifts, and I see the blond hottie from last night glaring at me like I've lost my goddamn mind.

"Lance, look who it is," I say, flashing the video to him.

"That's the guy!"

"Guess we don't have to find out his name after all. Colin, we're staging our deaths and moving to Wyoming."

"Wyoming?" Lance asks, looking almost disgusted by the idea.

"Yeah, you have to come too," Colin says. "We can't risk you telling anyone the plan."

"He's right," I chime in. "It's too risky. We all have to stage our deaths together."

Lance bursts into a laugh. "You guys are so strange."

Admittedly, our senses of humor largely formed around each other since our parents got together, so we have a lot of inside jokes, like staging our deaths and moving to Wyoming when something bad or embarrassing happens. Really, it's a miracle anyone can understand what the hell we're talking about.

As I grab my grits from the microwave, Colin pops some yogurt into his mouth, and after swallowing, says, "Bro, you already humiliated yourself in TaskFrat last night. I don't know why you think the media-console thing is so embarrassing."

Lance chuckles. "Yeah, we were in a pair of Speedos, tossing dildos into a bin in some weird-ass version of basketball just a few hours before that. That's the video my parents are gonna see on TikTok and call me about."

"Hope you're not too worried." I set my bowl on the counter. "'Cause they're probably gonna get that from my TikTok account. We looked hot in those Speedos, so I obviously posted it."

If only Lance knew, the kind of video he would find embarrassing not only doesn't bother me, it excites me.

More than he or any of the guys in the house could know.

Or even Colin, which for me, is fucking huge.

"It's more the acting like a fool afterward in front of the guy I was interested in that bothers me," I explain.

"And you were definitely acting like a fool," Colin says, shooting me a look, smirking, and I don't even try to fight my smile before his attention shifts.

"Troy, Troy, Troy," he calls out, breezing past me and tackling his buddy. He and Troy have been besties since they were on the same football team in high school.

After a friendly greeting, Troy asks, "Did your brother get with Bryan Crainers last night?"

"Bryan! That was it!" Lance says.

"Greg or Bailey?" I ask.

Lance shrugs. "I was drinking too."

"A few minutes too late for that," I say, glancing back at the video .

Troy pulls a face. "What is all this about?"

"Ash thought he went to bed with this hottie from last night," Lance says, "but when he woke up it was just Colin."

"No one has ever told me they have woken up with just Colin," Colin says.

Troy rolls his head back for a laugh. "Oh, wow. That's great. You are never living this one down, Ash Ketchum."

Troy's using the nickname I've earned around the house because of how many times I've cosplayed as the Pokémon Trainer during Alpha Theta Mu's themed parties.

What can I say? It's a simple costume to throw on, and every time I've worn it, I've gotten some action.

"To be fair," Colin tells Troy, "considering you're in a relationship with your stepbrother, do you really think anyone's gonna take that seriously coming from you?"

"Yeah, how is your brother's dick, by the way?" I tease.

Troy's eyes widen. " Step dick!" he insists. "Stop it! Fucking truce!"

We all share a laugh.

Troy and his stepbro, Atlas, are out and proud about their relationship, so really, he's the last person to judge our innocent morning.

"Did Atlas stay over last night?" I ask.

"Yeah, my A's tired, so I was gonna grab him some doughnuts and a coffee."

"Aww, that's sweet," Lance says. "Now all the stepbrothers in the house are sleeping together."

Our housemate Marty's just rounding the corner, his eyes widening as he spins around, starting back into the hall, since I'm assuming he thought Lance meant all the stepbros in the house were banging.

"Don't be such a prude, Marty," Colin says. "Get back in here!"