The Hunter: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Boston Belles Book 1)

Mood song: “Zombie” by Jamie T.

The next week sucked worse than the previous two.

My life had seemed to shift from a theme park of orgasms, designer clothes, and eternal sunshine to an ongoing, cloudy, celibate catastrophe.

First, I had to explain why I looked like my face had been chewed by severely diseased pit bulls at the office. Luckily—and I use that term very fucking loosely—Captain Save-a-Bro, AKA Sailor, promised she wouldn’t snitch on my ass in her weekly report to Da, which made me feel like a teacher’s pet, sans the fun part, where I got rewarded with a blowie (or was that only in porn?).

Sailor and I had agreed to give Da an altered version of how things went down at the pub. Basically, we confessed that I did get into a fistfight, but only because the guy grabbed her. That story was received with icy skepticism by Da and Cillian, and warm endorsement by Syllie, who’d sat in Da’s office when I told them about it.

Ultimately, nobody complained about how I looked like a jacked-up Thirteen Reasons Why character—all cut, bruised, and limping. If someone harassed a woman in front of them, they’d do the same. I was just being a goddamn gentleman.

Then there was the Syllie problem. Da had shut me down and Cillian considered watching me squirm an orgasmic occasion, so I had to do my own digging. I shadowed Syllie’s ass at work when he wasn’t paying attention. He was still basically the only motherfucker to be remotely civilized with me, but I knew what I’d heard, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. Problem was, I’d had zero luck and even less opportunity thus far.

Syllie wasn’t taking any private calls in the emergency stairway, and I needed to up my game. In the five days that followed the pub brawl, I surprised myself with the effortless commitment I put into tailing his ass. I experienced a soul-crushing, gut-burning urgency to know what he was up to.

Then there was the final, last problem: Sailor.

I hadn’t discussed what happened in the pub with her, but I imagined she was freaked out about being called fugly and having no man among the hundred or so in the pub dispute that assessment.

Let the record show that I, personally, would pork the hell out of her.

Like, yeah, she wasn’t fuck-hot in an obvious kind of way. She didn’t have big tits, curves for miles, lips that looked like a neatly shaved vagina, and glossy hair. But she was the kind of girl who, the more you looked at her, the more her beauty crept up on you. She was unusually attractive, but still attractive. Kind of like Lily Cole. (It took me three times until I finally managed to jerk off to a Lily Cole picture. But once I found my rhythm, she was one of my favorite models to nut to.)

There was something whimsical about Sailor’s red hair and pale skin and sage eyes. She looked like a fairy from an Irish folklore, one where a lot of strange, magical shit happened.

Call me a hopeless romantic, but if I were, say, to plow into Sailor Brennan one day, you could bet your ass I’d be looking at her face and whispering sweet nothings into her ear. (Profanity about what I wanted to do to her uterus was considered sweet, right?)

However much I found my roommate delectable, I couldn’t tell her flat out, because she already suspected I wanted into her pants (guilty) and also because we’d both acted weird since the pub brawl (also guilty).

What I couldn’t explain to her was this: I’d always been the idiot. The fool. The fuckup. I blurted shit I thought would make people laugh, because I was never expected to say anything meaningful or deep. Mildly entertaining was all anyone had ever expected from me. I was so committed to being a careless idiot, that the idea of not being one intimidated me.

With Sailor, I couldn’t be an idiot. She constantly threw me out of my comfort zone, and I kept scrambling back to it.

After we’d wolfed down our McMeals and stunk up her car, we got back home and she’d tended to my wounds in the bathroom wordlessly.

In the morning, I’d walked in to find her in the kitchen. It was seven-thirty, far too late for her to still be home. I’d watched as she shoved two Advils into her mouth, washed them down with a bottle of Evian, and dragged herself back to bed. I went to work, and when I got back, she was out, probably training.

The next time we spoke, it had been about how Nora’s food was so spicy our rectums were about to sue our mouths, and how we should let her go and just DoorDash everything. Sailor confirmed that finding good food spots was her talent. Which, side note, made her marriage material, if I was into monogamy.

The next-next time, I’d helped her find something on Netflix.

The next-next-next time, she’d told me she’d fixed Nora up with a job at one of her mom’s restaurants, which made Nora super grateful for her wallet and us super grateful for our health.

In short: we were basically avoiding each other. Again.

The first few days, I’d been adamant that Sailor could do whatever the fuck she wanted with her time. As long as the weekly snitch-a-thon established I was as clean as a whistle, I didn’t have to make her a friend. Never mind that I was lonelier than a functioning brain cell in Brody Jenner’s head. Obviously, I had my pride (okay, I called Vaughn and Knight so often they legit changed their numbers, but that was purely in the name of comedy).

Today, the fifth day of our cold-war bullshit, I got home at nine, strolled into the hallway, too tired to check what Sailor had ordered for us, and headed straight to bed.

“Ohhh,” I heard a soft moan from the door leading to the main bathroom. My dick stood up alertly.

Hold the goddamn press.

“Hmm,” Sailor’s little voice sighed once again.

Even though a small part of me said I was being a grade-A creeper, a bigger part told the small part to STFU, duct taping its mouth and throwing it into some strange dude’s trunk. The devil on my shoulder chided me to take a peek through the door crack. In my defense, it was ajar. She knew what time I was coming home and was perfectly capable of locking the bathroom door, as she’d done dozens of times a day.

“Ahhh,” came her voice again, and my dick roared with blood, so hard I could feel the friction from my briefs against the ridge. I wanted to rub myself against myself. That was a level of horny even I wasn’t accustomed to.

Sailor was masturbating, and suddenly, the day—despite containing ten hours of work, bickering with Da and Cillian, following Syllie secretly like some strung-out puppy, and going to evening classes—looked a lot better.

Taking a step forward, I glanced through the sliver of space between the door and its frame. Sailor sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi, butt naked, staring at the water inside through squinted eyes. Weird orgasm face, but I wasn’t judging.

She lurched forward, her body folding in two.

I realized she wasn’t pleasuring herself, much to my dismay. She was wincing and massaging her right shoulder, which was swollen. And by swollen, I meant her deltoid was the size of a tennis ball.

Sailor tried to swing her legs into the Jacuzzi, still clutching her right shoulder, but ended up falling flat on her ass on the marble floor. The sound of her tailbone against the surface reverberated in the room. She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking silently with pain. I was about to take a step back and let her have her moment—Sailor would kill me if I burst in to save the day—when I noticed silent tears running down her cheeks.

Turn around and walk away. Not your problem, said the devil on my shoulder, same asshole that had wanted me to rub one out in the hallway to the sight of her masturbating.

The angel somehow managed to pull the duct tape from his mouth and said, You can’t be that much of a dick. Besides, it’s Sailor.

He was right. It was Sailor, and in my world, Sailor deserved better.

Annoyed, I shoved the door open, tromping in.

“Hunter! Jesus! What are you doing?” She went from sad to outraged in a second, trying to cover her tits with her arms, but she had zero movement in her right shoulder. I hooked my hands under her armpits from behind and brought her back to a sitting position on the edge of the Jacuzzi, ripping a bathrobe from its hook and wrapping it around her shoulders. Her hands still lay protectively over her chest, and her teeth were chattering. I didn’t know how to break it to her politely that I’d already seen her tits (and they were way nicer than I’d imagined, and of course I imagined them on the reg).

Also, if I were to defend my virtue in her position, I’d probably start by crossing my legs, because she had a nice, delicate fluff of red hair nestled between her thighs that I couldn’t unsee. It wasn’t a raging, curly bush that screamed neglect and lice. Just a few, soft hairs I wanted to brush away softly as I ate her pussy like In-N-Out after a night of partying.

Redirect that thought, asswipe.

“Just got home. What happened to your shoulder?” I squatted down, feeling the strain of my pants’ fabric against my knees and dick. At this moment I missed living in Thom Browne sweatpants.

“You had no right to burst in here!” Her eyes flared wildly. She clutched the edges of the robe, trying to cover more of herself. I helped her by wrapping it around her and taking a step back, looking sideways at some decorative wooden log sitting on the edge of the champagne-hued Jacuzzi.

“Wasn’t planning on it. Then I heard you moaning in pain when I went to look.”

“You shouldn’t have looked!” she shrieked.

“The door was goddamn open, aingeal dian,” I snapped, turning my gaze back to her.

We stared at each other, panting. I didn’t know why I called her what I did, but it made me want to punch everything in the room, starting with my own face. I realized, as I stared at her really annoying face (which never failed to get my ass into trouble), that I’d missed being in the same room with her.

“You were crying. And, no offense, but that buff linebacker’s shoulder doesn’t fit the rest of your body. We’re taking you to urgent care.” I made a move toward her, and she raised her leg jerkily, kicking me in the boys. I groaned, folded in two, and held my nuts, nearly foaming at the mouth with pain.

“What the fuck!” I yelled.

“Shit.” She gasped, raising her hands in apology. “I didn’t mean to. I thought you’d take a step back if I kicked the air.”

“That wasn’t air!”

“Sorry. I miscalculated.”

“Aiming is literally all you need to be good at. You’re a fucking Olympic archer!”

“Technically not yet, and you have a lot of balls.”

“Well, you have not-much tits.”

“My breasts are fine.”

“I don’t believe you. Let me have a taste.”

I looked up from my offended nuts, noticing that she was full-blown smiling, and that I was full-blown fucked.

How did I not realize Sailor Brennan had the most amazing goddamn smile in the entire goddamn world? She radiated. Her face glowed like candlelight, her eyes gleamed, and that mouth…her lips weren’t thin or boring at all. They were full and pink and had a dusting of orange freckles that I wanted to devour. Violently.

Dusting of orange freckles. Listen to yourself, fucker. I was cheesing so hard all I needed was wine and some crackers to create the perfect picnic scenario.

The trouble with Sailor was she had the one thing I wanted—and not an ass that had seen a surgeon and a hundred squats a day, in case you were wondering. But talent, real and raw and tended to. Her excellence burst from her fingertips. She was sharp, laser-focused, fully bloomed. Unstoppable.

Or was she…

Sailor’s situation suddenly came into sharp relief.

Advils every morning.

Missing gym time.

Developing a Vin Diesel shoulder overnight.

Yeah, bitch wasn’t going to get out of this one.

“Oh…uh, what’s up, Hunt? I’m sorry I kicked you in the nuts, but to be fair, you walked in on me completely naked. I swear I don’t need urgent care. I—”

Without a word, I tackled her, hoisted her up on my shoulder, and wrapped my arm around her lower ass, carrying her out of the bathroom. She sucked in a breath, too sore to claw at my back in protest. I was surprised to find her skin silky everywhere. The backs of her thighs were like pressed velvet, so soft I wanted to sink my teeth into her calf and nibble my way up to her pussy. She objected the entire time I marched to her room and placed her on her bed. Next thing I did was open her closet and rip out an Anti Social Social Club hoodie and a pair of baggy pants. I turned around and started dressing her.

“What are you doing?” She wheezed when I put her leg through her pants. She was kicking the air again, frantic.

“You’re going to urgent care,” I clipped.

“I’m fine. It’s just a little swollen.”

She tried to worm out of her pants. I couldn’t believe I was now actively keeping a girl in her clothes. This was hell. I was sure of it.

“Sorry, doll.” I tsked, finishing with the pants and moving on to putting a hoodie on those surprisingly terrific titties. “Either you need something for that shoulder or you’re going to turn into a mutant monster. I’ve watched enough horror flicks to know you’d turn at the stroke of midnight, and I don’t want to be here in the morning when you make me your breakfast. Although, let it be known, I’d be happy to eat you out whenever you please.”

She yelped in agony. She couldn’t even laugh she was in so much pain. Jesus.

I found her car keys, shoved her into the passenger seat, and buckled her up like she was a kid. The entire time, Sailor threatened to kill me in numerous ways, some of them very creative and extremely painful. I answered calmly with all the ways I’d wanted to kill her when we first moved in together, including the sunset-in-the-Bahamas stabbing and hurling her from the Eiffel Tower. It was beyond me how someone would be so obsessed with something—getting to the Olympics, in her case—that they’d put their health at risk.

After we were done fantasizing about killing each other, she refused to shut up about how this could set her back with her training. Turning on the radio didn’t work, so I decided to change the topic.

“You know at first, I looked through the door because I thought you were flicking the bean.”

She shot me a look in my periphery, her eyes full of fire and wrath.

“You can tell a lot about a person by their masturbation choice.” I shrugged, driving the empty streets of Boston. They were becoming familiar. “Rubbing one off in the ho-boiler bodes well for your conservative personality, you know? You seemed like the type to do it with a bowl of chocolate-dipped strawberries by your side, reading a nice Danielle Steel hardcover.”

“I don’t masturbate,” she said, staring me down defiantly, daring me to challenge that.

I believed her. She seemed like the type of chick to be too busy to explore sex, for all its wonders.

I rubbed my stubbled jaw. “Because you don’t know how, or because you don’t care about getting off?”

“Both,” she surprised me by admitting.

“I can help with the former.” I cleared my throat.

“So nice of you to offer.”

“That wasn’t a no,” I pointed out.

“It wasn’t a yes, either. I’m just trying to take my mind off the fact that I’m about to get a lecture about not treating this inflammation earlier. I hope the steroid shot will help. I have an early practice tomorrow.”

Bitch was still planning to train in a few hours. Unbelievable.

“It’s just fucking archery,” I hissed. “You shoot nothing. It’s not even a real Olympic sport. It’s the shit people watch to fall asleep. Perspective.”

“I’m truly sorry you’ve never found something you care about, Hunter, but you don’t get to judge me.”

“I just did.”

“Shut up.” She scowled.

“Make me.”

“How?”

I wiggled my brows, and she dropped her head to the headrest behind her. “Ugh. Your mind is dirtier than a junkyard.”

I kept my mouth shut the entire time we were in urgent care. Sailor got a steroid shot, painkillers, and had her shoulder scanned and checked. The stern doctor who saw us told her she needed to start physical therapy, real physical therapy, once the swelling was under control. He gave her at least two weeks off training. She duly agreed and acted like the goody two-shoes I’d thought she was before we moved in together.

But as we walked back to the car, she said, “Can you believe it? He actually thought I could take two weeks off.”

“Because you are,” I replied, not missing a beat.

Why did I care? Why? Why? Why?

“Absolutely not.”

“I should be the one sending your parents a weekly report,” I muttered.

She laughed, and then clutched her shoulder.

Seeing her like that made me violent.

At home, I put her to bed and watched as she crashed. The painkiller whooped her ass good. She was down in two seconds.

Her last words were, “Hunt, it’s kind of creepy that you’re staring at me like this.”

I high-key agreed, but I couldn’t help it. She called me Hunt and told my da I was awesome and always knew what I felt like eating when she ordered DoorDash, even if we hadn’t spoken all day.

She had so much passion, and I had none. Yet I jerked off three times a day, and she didn’t even need to get dicked regularly.

Sailor Brennan confused me.

I fell asleep on her carpeted bedroom floor, like a goddamn tweaker.

The next morning, Sailor came out of her room wearing her rags training clothes. I was standing behind the kitchen island, sipping a cup of coffee in designer track pants and a hoodie.

I dragged a steaming cup of coffee her way as a pre-peace offering, before I unleashed hell on her. Sailor smiled gratefully, taking a sip and hoisting her archery equipment over her injured, slightly-less-swollen shoulder. Total demon. If I were a king going to war, I’d want her to lead my army. Bitch would destroy anything in her path to get what she wanted.

“Thanks again for yesterday. I owe you a huge one. And I’m going to start by telling your dad I think he should loosen the leash on you. You really are pretty rad.”

Her green eyes widened when she talked, like a kid telling a story.

“Take a mental picture of this moment, aingeal dian, because it’s about to take a sharp turn for the worse.” I grabbed my phone from the marble counter and tossed it into her hands. I jerked my chin toward it.

“It’s unlocked. Check my call log.”

Sailor hit the green button and looked at my last call.

“That’s Junsu’s number.” Her eyes flared. Her entire face twisted. First in confusion, followed closely by shock, realization, and finally, rage.

“I called to let him know what was up with your shoulder. Texted him a picture of the doctor’s orders. You’re out two weeks. Sorry, baby girl.”

There was silence.

A disproportionally good amount of it.

The uncomfortable, I’m-about-to-fuck-you-up kind of silence.

If I had the privilege of famous last words, they’d be, Sailor’s tits are a ten. I know they don’t look it in oversized hoodies and DriFit shirts, but it’s true.

Just then, the woman from the morning show on the flat TV screen behind us blurted from the living room, “And now I have a special guest. With us today is the gorgeous, talented, young—did I mention gorgeous? Ha-ha-ha—archer, Lana Alder!”

The camera zoomed out, and I saw that the woman, who sported more plastic than The Container Store, was sitting in front of a chick who looked to be my age, maybe slightly older, and wore a green mini dress. Real talk? She was bangin’. Think Margot Robbie with a mean-ass rack and legs to rival Sofia Vergara’s.

The two started chatting about Lana’s upcoming movie, which honestly sounded like a hot mess, and exciting love life, which—also honestly—sounded anything but exciting. They were five minutes in before there was any mention of archery. Sailor was so mesmerized by the TV, she seemed to forget she was about to gut me with one of her arrows.

The host said, “I hear that, other than the two veteran women archers representing the US, Joanna Dingham and Mary Turner, it’s a tight competition between you and Boston-based Sailor Brennan. That means you might represent us in the Olympics in Tallinn next year—as well as being an accomplished actress and model, and owning your own online clothing store!”

The hostess’ cloying sweetness gave me sugar poisoning. I wondered if she puked rainbows. Also, this Lana chick had more business ventures than Richard Branson. No wonder Sailor was bitter about her.

Lana giggled in a voice high enough to break a window, showing a mouth full of capped teeth. “Oh, I promise you, I will be there next year. Unfortunately, Miss Brennan lacks the focus and charisma to rise to this occasion, at least in my humble opinion. I’m going to make the US proud, and I’m going to do it wearing my new line of jumpsuits, so look out for it!”

I took the remote and turned the TV off. Without warning, Sailor picked up her shit and darted to the door. I was faster. I pounced, blocking her way out with my body.

“Two weeks,” I repeated. “Get your ass back in bed. Pronto.”

Rather than answering me with actual words, Sailor took a step back, grabbed her bow, and plucked out an arrow, her face void of emotion. She was vivid, loose-limbed. Also, completely deranged. But I saw the huntress within her.

She was a daring little thing, and that made me want to fuck her even more.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I said dryly. I was bailing on work for her, and if she was going to shoot me—literally goddamn shoot me—we were going to have a problem.

She raised the bow, using her injured side, and drew the arrow in a perfectly smooth motion, squeezing one eye shut as she zeroed in on me. The string pressed against her mouth.

“Sailor.”

“Three seconds to move from the door, Hunter. Three.”

“Sorry, aingeal dian, but I think you just met the one motherfucker who is dumb enough not to be scared of you or your family.”

“Two.”

“Meh. You don’t have it in you.” But was I convincing her or myself?

“One.”

She released the arrow.

I repeat: Bitch. Released. The. Arrow.

I watched, paralyzed from the neck down, as it spun toward me. I could swear it was going to nail my throat to the door. It missed by an inch, spearing the door right above my shoulder. Swallowing, I glanced to my left, realizing the arrow had caught some of my hoodie’s fabric and was physically nailing me to the door.

She drew another arrow, nonchalant as all fucks.

“You missed.” I narrowed my eyes, staring her dead in the eye.

“Fool.” She smiled back. “I never miss.”

“I’d rather be the one nailing you against the door.” I flashed her a Joker-style psychotic smirk, my rage toward my pint-sized, stubborn roommate spiraling into a pool of more unidentified feelings.

Thrill. Curiosity. Horniness. (Fine, there was always horniness. Sue me.)

She popped her healthy shoulder up. “Should’ve thought of that before you called me Carrot Top.”

“You little sh—”

Pluck.

She released the second arrow, this time getting the right side of my hoodie. I was now pinned from both sides. She lowered her bow, striding toward me with her chin up, a queen observing a traitor thrown at her feet. My dick was about to slip out of my sweatpants and curl around her ankle like an eager puppy. A weird image, but the sentiment was clear.

Sailor stopped with her mouth close to mine, and I couldn’t deny the attraction. It was there—alive, swelling, roaring its three-headed, monstrous crown, cutting me open and bleeding me dry. I was on the brink of goddamn madness, caused by the most unassuming, innocent, dorky girl on the planet.

Fuck. My. Life.

“I’ll release you if you promise to step away from the door.” Her mouth moved against mine.

I don’t think she realized just how close we were to kissing territory. How I could demolish her. Effortlessly, I flexed my shoulders, causing her arrows to drop to the floor with a yielding clink. My expression dead, I grabbed her waist, turned her around, and slammed her back against the door, getting in her face now.

“Better.” I brushed my lips down her nose, pausing half an inch from her mouth. “Much, much better.”

I grabbed her wrists, bunching them together and pinning them above her head. She winced at the full motion of her shoulder. I wanted to punch myself for forgetting, but honestly, I wasn’t even sure of my birthdate at the moment.

“Just so we’re clear, you may be my babysitter, but you don’t call the shots. You do not boss me around, you do not make stupid-ass decisions with your body. Finally, you do not fucking hunt me. I’m the hunter here, sweetheart. And you? The goddamn prey.”

Her eyes blazed with fire, her jaw locked. I wanted to step into her pupils and let them kill me. She was a war prisoner accepting her fate to die a hero, without betraying one national secret.

“Your name may be Hunter, but make no mistakes—you’ll never catch me.”

I smirked, trailing my index finger from her jaw down to her neck. She writhed against my body, the space between us shrinking, and not just because of me.

“Already did, aingeal dian. Want to know something else? I will domesticate you, too.”

“Let go of me.” Her lips thinned, her voice dancing with barely controlled temper. “I have to go. You heard Lana Alder. She wants my spot. I’m not going down without a fight.”

“You’re going all the way down to retirement if you fuck your shoulder up.”

“It’s not for you to decide.”

“The doctor decided.”

“You don’t understand!” She stomped, her cheeks pinking.

I figured there was a story behind her and the Alder chick, but now wasn’t the time to delve into it. Sailor’s breathing became labored. She balled her hands into fists and jerked around, trying to break free from my grasp.

“Sailor?”

“What?”

“Now,” I enunciated.

“Now what?” She bared her teeth, trying to kick me.

The need to tame her made my blood boil. I wanted to fight her to the ground and devour her, ending her and ending me.

Whoa. What?

“I’d like to cash in on that kiss now.”

“What?” Sailor’s eyes were the biggest, greenest, funkiest things I’d ever seen. “What are you talking about?”

She hadn’t forgotten the kiss. I knew because, in the rare times we were in the same room, I sometimes caught her staring at my lips and wondering. I wondered, too. We both wondered all the fucking time.

“You’re a terrible actress. Granted, probably still better than Lana Alder, but dreadful nonetheless.” I leaned into her. Our breaths mingled. Minty toothpaste from her, coffee and cinnamon gum from me.

“We…we can’t kiss.” Sailor squirmed, her tits accidentally brushing against my torso through our respective clothes. Her nipples were puckered. “We’re fighting!”

“All the better. Pissing you off is my only source of entertainment here in Boston, and this kiss is my out-of-jail card. My insurance.”

“Your monthly payment will go up if you use your insurance, you know.” She quirked one ginger eyebrow. “The next one will be harder to get.”

“Guess I’ll have to take my fucking chances.” I erased the two inches left between us, crashing my mouth on hers.

She gasped into our kiss, and I let go of her wrists, knowing damn well she wasn’t going anywhere.

Sailor let her arms dangle beside her body. I grabbed the side of her face, prying her lips open with my tongue, groaning in pent-up frustration that had been building for weeks, wrestling my tongue deeper into her mouth. I was met with no objection. Sailor’s body went limp, compliant. She was surprisingly submissive. The prey accepted its fate for now. She opened up for me like a flower—mouth, chest, legs spreading apart, blooming, begging for sunrays, meeting my tongue with hers stroke for stroke, thrust for thrust. She pulled at my lower lip with her teeth, hungry, and I ran my hands up and down her neck and face. She tasted sweet, restless.

She was so drunk on our kiss, I knew she was a second away from falling flat on her ass. I grabbed the backs of her thighs roughly, hoisting her legs up and wrapping them around my waist, pressing her against the door.

She moaned a soft protest at the same time her warm pussy met my raging cock through our clothes, grinding against me.

We kissed for ten minutes straight before Sailor realized she was grinding against my hard-on like an ambitious night-shift stripper paying her way through grad school. I could practically feel her pussy lips clutching my shaft through our clothes. She pulled away and buried her face in my neck, shaking like a leaf. Our hearts slammed against each other, and maybe it was because I hadn’t had any action in over a month, but the kiss made me black out a little. It was a euphoric kind of dizziness, like I’d just taken a benzo and was unsure whether it had kicked in or not. I wanted to kiss her again, but I didn’t want to overwhelm her. I usually got a good feel of what chicks wanted from me, but Sailor was impossible to read.

Knowing she could spend the next couple months with her face in my hoodie—Death by Mortification: Girl, 18, Dies in Hot Roommate’s Arms—I kissed her neck, the only part of her reachable from that angle.

“Junsu is going to kill me.” Her words melted into my hoodie, muffled by it. Was it just me, or were our heartbeats freakishly loud?

“Why? You banging the old sport?”

No comment.

Now that I was putting my three working brain cells to use, Sailor and her trainer were kind of tight. I would expect it from people who had Olympic ambitions together, and it wasn’t the first time she’d made it sound like he didn’t want her hanging out with dudes.

Sailor pushed me away, keeping her head down. She picked up her shit and flung herself back to her room, probably to check on the internet if she could get pregnant from dry-humping. I wondered what was wrong with me that I was obsessing over her goddamn shoulder when Da wanted to make confetti out of my skin, Cillian wanted to spread said confetti in the harbor, and Syllie possibly wanted to mince all of us into meatballs.

Not to mention, I still wasn’t taking any calls from Mom. Some subconscious, petty-as-fuck part of me wasn’t cool with her dumping my ass in random corners of the world, making me other people’s responsibility—especially knowing what I did about where I came from.

“I still need to talk to him in person,” she yelled from her room.

“I’ll come with you to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.” I arranged my package in my sweatpants, fishing for my phone and checking it.

Four unanswered calls from Da.

Two from Cillian.

Six text messages.

Athair: I knew you couldn’t be trusted.

Athair: Where the hell are you?

Athair: If the answer is in a ditch after an orgy, just know I won’t be bailing you out this time around.

Athair: I’m done with you, Hunter. DONE.

Cillian: You take dumb and pretty to an Olympic level.

Cillian: Legally Boned.