How did I know? Guys with small cocks just had this certain look about them.Overcompensatingwas too vague a word to describe it. More like they carried themselves… smaller. That and the outline of their tighty-whities in their too-tight pants usually gave them away.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Miss,” the bartender whispered from behind me. I had to lean my head back farther to hear him.
“Yeah, and why’s that?” I asked. When he didn’t answer me, I peered over a shoulder again.
The bartender didn’t look up. Instead, he continued wiping down the same glass that was clean thirty seconds ago. “No reason. Ain’t none of my business.” He shrugged.
“You’re right. It’s not.” I nodded. “Now how about that drink?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CASPER
“Wake up, dipshit,” I mumbled to the figure on the bed.
Bugs didn’t sleep much. He was usually up until all hours of the night, gaming or DMing with some chat box he’d insist was his girlfriend. Didn’t have the heart to tell the guy thatshewas probably ahe.
Okay, that’s not entirely the truth. I did have the heart to tell him. It was just more fun not to.
I smirked when my eyes bounced from the empty chip bag on the floor over to the squished Lubriderm bottle that had rolled to the other side of his mattress.
Do you know how many dudes probably spend most of their time jerking off to some other dude behind the screen? My guess was a lot more than would ever admit to it.
“Get up.” I kicked at the frame, and Bugs Frankensteined off his nest of bedsheets and cracked his forehead on the top bunk.
“What the fuck?” he grunted as he dug his palms against his eyes. My guess? He passed out about thirty minutes ago after being up for twenty-four hours or longer.Sucked to be him.
I grabbed on to one of the rails, pushed off the floor, and flipped myself onto the top mattress—thecleanmattress. Then I leaned my neck over the edge and peered at him upside down. “I need a favor.”
“Go find someone who owes you one.” He rubbed at his forehead and grumbled something under his breath.
He was right. He didn’t owe me shit anymore. I’d cashed in most of those IOUs within the first year of inching up to him at that cafeteria room table. It was hard not to. Tech was the only thing more valuable than drugs at Briarwood.
“How 'bout a trade?” I flicked the red spot on his head with the tip of my finger.
He swatted my hand away and grumbled something else. But I could tell I had him curious. “What you got?”
“What do you want?”
“Nope. Not the way it works.” He rolled off the bed, brushing some of the chip crumbs from his pants before standing to his full height. “Besides, you wouldn’t come in here if you didn’t already have something to offer me.”
I jumped up, careful not to crack my head on the ceiling (done that more than once over the years) and plopped back down on the edge of the mattress, letting my legs dangle over the side. “You’re right. I wouldn’t. Just trying to figure out if you know what it is or not.”
He narrowed his glare at me but he knew I wasn’t gonna crack. Not until I really wanted to. When my eyes flicked to my watch, he grinned and crossed his arms over his chest. Standing a little bit taller now. “You’re on a time crunch.”
I grinned back at him. “Maybe I am.”
There was no point in lying. He was gonna give me what I wanted either way, and he knew I was gonna do the same.
He held out a palm and I pulled the little stuffed rabbit from behind my back and dropped it on his hand. Bugs looked down at it, and then back up to me. “It’s the same one?”
“Missing the ear and everything.”
He nodded once and tucked the rabbit into his hoodie pocket. There wasn’t much you could offer a tech genius. Cash, blackmail, nudes. Mostly everything you could think of he could get himself. But not this. And it wasn’t even for him. It was for Donnie.
That was why I would always have one leg up on them. There was no one I cared enough about for them to use against me.
He didn’t say anything else before he was propped up behind that computer again, his fingers clanking on the keyboard and his face glowing with the light of the screen. When he was done logging into whatever super security system he had set up so people like me couldn’t just go snooping, he swiveled his chair around.
