Page 130 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 3

“Yeah, but I don’t know where you live. What am I supposed to tell the hit man?” I threw my arm over his shoulders, and we sauntered out with relative freedom. It only lasted until the doorstep, and then he shrugged my arm off. Even on our campus, he couldn’t be sure there weren’t people who knew Nick.

That was okay with me. I didn’t want to pull that lion’s tail, even if he was toothless. “You’d rather walk back alone, eh?”

He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “If you don’t mind.”

“Not a bit,” I said, stepping out. I pointed to the left. “This is my way.”

“Say thanks to Dev,” Seth said.

“See you around?” I called back as Seth walked away.

He turned around to look at me, a grin on his face, hands in his pockets, walking backward out of the pool of light. “You’ll regret crossing paths with me, Pierce,” he threatened.

“You’ll regret it harder,” I shouted back.

His head shook, smile still brightening his face. “Don’t I know it.”

He turned around, satisfaction radiating from his figure, and disappeared into the shadows.

Chapter Four

SETH

The door creaked open, waking me from deep sleep. I didn’t know what I’d been dreaming about, but waking up felt like a splash of cold water that washed all the color out of the world. Then I remembered last night. I remembered where all the color had been used.

I’d heard that some drugs made you feel so good they drained you of any sense of joy for hours or days after. Damon was that drug to me.

The figure that dragged itself into the room in tatters wasn’t an intruder from some nightmare, but my roommate, disheveled and lifeless.

“Silas?” I murmured, groggy from sleep. Daylight made him look worse. “Are you okay? What happened?”

He took a deep breath and looked at me. “Last night…” He shook his head, lost somewhere between a dreamy lover and someone who’d looked into the bowels of hell and had never forgotten what lay there. “Girl, I saw God last night. And he told me to call my mother.”

“That bad, huh?” I asked, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

“Good, bad, depends on how you look at it,” he said and dropped into the chair by his desk. “Those guys have magical cocks, I’ll tell you that. I think they cured me of every mistake my parents ever made in raising me.”

“A hookup so good it healed all that’s broken. First time I’ve heard of it,” I said, sitting up. Dev’s hoodie was on the floor next to my pants. By the time I’d come back, the run had done its job, and I’d passed out without another thought, Damon playing before my closed eyes.

“What about you and that famous hockey guy?” Silas asked. “Did you do it?”

“Damon’s an old…” What was he? A friend? “We used to know each other.”

“Don’t keep me hanging,” Silas said, chuckling. “Did you get reacquainted or not?”

I looked at him, trying to seem serious and mysterious, but I couldn’t do anything about this stupid smile on my face.

“You did!” Silas said, then immediately grabbed his aching head. “Shush. Hurts. But it was worth it. Also, I’m disgusted by myself. Basically, it’s a regular Sunday morning.”

“You do this a lot,” I said.

He shrugged. “We’re young, we’re hot, and none of us has the slightest idea of what we’re doing. Not the best time to go around falling in love.” He inhaled a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “But it is the best time for a nap.”

It was just after seven, and I couldn’t go back to sleep if I wanted to. His words played over in my head, oddly profound. Maybe those guys’ dicks really did have some prophetic abilities.

None of us knew anything. How were we supposed to fall in love and make it work? There wasn’t a way. Not that I knew of, at least. “I think I’ll explore a bit, get familiar with the place.”

“You do that,” Silas said, peeling off the tattered tank top to reveal the whole three square inches it had successfully covered last night, then relocated himself from the chair to the bed by toppling into it.