I pushed him. I told him he wasn’t giving me enough. He never said a single word about what happened to him.
Oh my god.
“Mike.” I can hear them all talking, Zara saying something to me, Damon’s girlfriend saying she figured we knew—
He was shaking so hard, and I assumed it was some sort of hot blonde guy that should be straight complex he had, and he would get over it once he felt my dick inside him.
He got on that fucking bed because I asked him to. He trusted me, and I let him down.
He thought I was going to hurt him.
“Yo.” Damon’s voice comes from directly in front of me, but I don’t even see him. “Mike. Hey. You alright, man?”
Trent is still leaning against the wall by the window with his beer, watching me with a bored expression, and I feel a simmering rage building in my body that I have no control over whatsoever.
All you are is a hole to him.
You wanna fuck somebody who’s not gonna ask questions, you go to Mike.
Trent has half a second to register that I’m moving before my fist connects with his face, the rings on my right hand landing on his nose with a crack as the half-empty bottle hits the floor, beer going everywhere.
“What the fuck?!” He shouts, holding his nose, spilling blood.
I grab him by the shirt and shove him against the wall. He’s bigger than me and should be able to fight me off, but I’m running on pure rage. All I see is red, and his fucking face that I want to—
“Mike!”
“You did this! You said that shit about him and—”
I hit him again.
Trent gets his hands up this time, punching me across the jaw. I barely feel it. My knuckles connect with his face again, and I can’t stop, I can’t, it’s his fucking fault—
Damon’s arms come around me from behind, both of them locked across my chest, hauling me backward with his full weight, and I fight it for a second, pushing his arms and kickingmy legs, before they stop working right and I realize that tears are streaming down my face.
“I got you,” Damon says, against my ear. “Everything’s okay.”
I don’t know when I started crying, but I am. I haven’t cried like this since my parents died, but now that I have, I can’t stop. Damon keeps his arms around me, pulling both of us down to the floor, holding me against him while he tries to soothe me, but it makes it worse.
Trent is across the room with his hand to his face, blood everywhere, while Zara moves toward him with a dish towel from the kitchen, that he smacks away.
“I didn’t know,” I hear myself say, through ragged breaths. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know—”
“None of us did,” Damon says, rubbing my back.
“He never said anything. Why didn’t he say anything?”
His answer doesn’t matter because the fact is, Alex never told me a thing. He let me believe he was fine until he wasn’t, and I hurt him.
And now he’s gone.
Chapter 22
“Thanks for letting me crash here,” I say, walking into Ryan’s dorm.
I didn’t want to have to do this.
It’s the whole reason I moved in with Mike to begin with. There’s about three feet of space between the extra bed and Ryan’s, and the window looks out onto the side of another building. The whole room smells like Ryan’s too-strong cologne. Not to mention the RA that would have our asses if he found out.
