Kiera’s eyes met mine and then, without any prompting on my part, she dropped to her knees beside Sofia.
Hayes grunted out a laugh.
It took a lot of effort to drag my eyes off what Kiera was doing to me and look at him.
He grunted another laugh. “Not a bad way to spend senior year, right?”
Not a bad way at all, I remember thinking. Still think it now, which is sick.
But I knew it was sick back then too. Didn’t care.
Minutes later we were all naked. Me, Kiera, Sofia, Hayes, Bennett, Camille—haphazardly strewn about Camille’s king-size bed, fucking, and sucking, and licking, and kissing, and…
“You know it’s never going to work,” Hayes says.
I snap out of the past and look at him. He’s already sitting down in the same chair he occupied earlier, one ankle propped on one knee. Same old casual attitude of the über-rich I’ve come to expect from Hayes. I join him, sitting as far away as I can get, in the chair opposite him.
We stare at each other. “Why are you so concerned with what I do?”
“Because she’s half mine and you know it.”
I laugh. Almost guffaw, but catch myself in time. “No.”
Hayes shrugs and takes a sip of his drink. “Maybe we should read the next few chapters in the book while the ladies are pretending to sleep? Hmm?”
I look at the book sitting innocently on the side table next to him. “Go ahead. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“No. I don’t suppose you do. But Kiera certainly does.”
“Just fucking spit it out, Hayes. You’ve been hinting around all night that the two of you had a thing. And why you tried covering for her at dinner with that stupid murder tale—”
“That happened,” Hayes says, sitting forward in his chair, suddenly serious. “Someone died that night.”
“How did you kill him?” I laugh. “Bored him to death with your monotonous conversation? Because you certainly didn’t shoot him. The whole tale is stupid beyond recognition.”
“Louise had a weapon.”
“Did she? Fucking Louise. The surprise of the night, I’d say. So how is it that Louise is suddenly this all-knowing superpower when she didn’t have anything to do with us that whole year? She never went to the parties.”
Hayes looks confused for a moment. “Parties?”
“All those fucking parties we went to. Camille’s at Christmas. Sofia’s old-lady birthday party. Bennett’s brother’s graduation. She never went to any of them. And I invited her personally to my parents’ anniversary, so it’s not that she wasn’t invited.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The fucking parties! You know, where you slithered your way into my good thing.”
He laughs. Loud. And I can’t help it, I laugh too. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”
“I mean… yeah. That’s what you’re doing tonight, isn’t it? Trying to make sure you’re in on whatever we have going?”
“What do you have going, Connor?”
“Fuck if I know. I mean, hell. Yesterday morning I woke up and Kiera Bonnaire was the last person on my mind. Now here we are. Me. Her. Sofia. You. I mean, what are you fucking thinking about?”
“Oh,” he says, trying to hide a smile. “I’m following now. The sex.”
“Yeah, the fucking sex. God, what are you? Two? I have to explain things in little baby words? We fucked them all. At the same time. Like… what the hell were we thinking?”
“And now you’re wondering if we’re gonna do it again?”
“Uh, yeah, dude. I’m wondering.”
Hayes tries to hide a smile in his glass as he takes another sip.
“Fucking say something!”
“Hearing you say ‘dude’ just kinda makes me happy.”
I laugh. “Shut up.”
“‘We have here the future senator from New York. Mr. Arlington, what can you tell us today?’” He fakes the motion of a reporter holding out a mic for a statement. “‘Uh, yeah, dude. I got big news. Better listen up.’”
“Don’t be an asshole. I’m fucking serious. And I don’t give a shit that you think I’m not. I am.”
“Well, that makes all the sense.” He sighs, rolling his eyes. “Look, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you can’t be with Kiera. Senators don’t marry erotica authors. And she doesn’t even hide it. She uses her real name, for fuck’s sake.”
“So maybe I won’t be a senator? How about that? Satisfactory outcome for you, Hayes? Do I pass your sudden fake big-brother persona now?”
“Good start. So how would Connor Arlington begin to untangle himself from those kind of expectations? Hmm?”
I open my mouth to say something obvious like, Drop out of the race. But I’m not even officially running yet. So the next logical answer is, of course, Don’t run. But I’m not even the one coordinating this whole Senate run, my father is.
Hayes waits, patient as I figure it all out.
“I don’t know,” I finally admit. “But I will. I don’t even fucking want to be a senator. Sounds like a long, dismal life of bullshit if you ask me.”