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“I am not a conquest, you asshole,” she snaps. “Cole and I are dating.”
There it is. “Is this the point where I’m supposed to say that he can do better?”
“Fuck off, Drake.” She rolls her eyes hard enough to lose them if they weren’t so firmly attached. But her tone is a little milder. “I heard the fire started in the penthouse. Did you set it with your flaming ego?”
I give her a lopsided grin. “There wouldn’t be anything left if I did.”
“I can’t believe I was ever into you,” she grumbles. Then realizes what she just let slip and glares at me even harder. “Forget I said that.”
“Already forgotten,” I reply easily. “Every girl wants me. They can’t help it.”
“Not me,” Felicia pipes up.
“I’m devastated,” I reply drolly.
She hides her own smile when Anya glances back at her, but I still catch it. Hopefully, the joke will go completely over Anya’s head. Her focus needs to stay on me before she notices the undercurrent of irony.
“At least you had the decency not to keep your roommates up all night,” I tell Anya. “Maybe you set the fire to distract everyone while you snuck back to your own room.”
“Unlike you, there is absolutely no shame in my game.”
“For Cole’s sake I’m glad to hear it.”
“Have you always been this big of an asshole?”
I can’t help a rueful laugh. “I think you already know the answer to that.”
The elevator dings as we get to their floor. Anya motions for Felicia to go out first, but then blocks the door from closing as she turns back to me.
Her expression is more considering than angry as she surveys me. “People don’t give Olivia enough credit. There is a vulnerable person hiding under the surface, no matter how tough she acts. Just because she doesn’t show it, doesn’t mean that she isn’t hurting.”
“I know that—”
She cuts me off, eyes narrowing. “If you mess this up again, I’m coming after you with my dad’s shotgun.”
The threat represents at least a slight improvement, so I decide to let it go. “Fair enough.”
Following them to the room and crawling into bed with Gigi is incredibly tempting, if just for the reaction I’d get out of Anya. There is nothing like loud and vigorous sex in the morning to start your day. But Gigi is sharing a room with my sister and I’d rather not go there.
I distantly wonder what Anya will do if she ever figures out that Gigi has been lying to her from the very beginning.
The hotel is almost deathly quiet, considering how much chaos was going on here only an hour ago. I hear nothing but the creak of metal as the elevator slowly rises toward the penthouse floor.
Exhaustion slows my thoughts, my eyes drifting closed even while I’m still standing upright.
The Initiation is in only a handful of hours. Four years of work and I’m finally about to see it pay off. Worry about what the alumni might come off with is a distant consideration at this point. Whatever it is, I’ll get through it.
I creep into the suite without even a squeak of the door hinges and immediately head for bed. My head falling against the pillow is nicer than being hugged by baby Jesus.
Not enough time passes, definitely less than a few hours, before shouts wake me out of a perfectly sound sleep. Seconds later, my door slams open.
Vaughn glares at me from the doorway. The look on his face is like nothing I’ve ever seen on him before, angry and nearly crazed.
“We have a fucking problem.”
* * *
Nolan leans forward on the couch with his head in his hands and he hasn’t looked up since I came in. Cole stands in front of the sliding glass door that leads to the balcony, the set of his shoulders hunched and brooding.
