Tousle Me (21 page)

“Ten, nine, eight…”

“You can do this, Rabies!”

“Come on, dipshit!”

“Five, four, three…”

“Just pretend it’s a juicy ass!”

“Two…”

And just like that—right in the nick of time—Rabies jerks out of the water with a low rumble of a grunt. A fat turducken hangs from his jaws. The applause is rapturous.

“Oh my God,” Archer says, looking shocked. “I really thought he’d lost it there.”

“Me too.” I watch as Rabies crawls back to the buffet table, drops the turducken on the surface, and then shakes off the water like a dog. “That was riveting stuff.”

“It’s all in the core,” Archer repeats, shaking his head. “All in the core.”

I pat the ridges of his abs through his shirt. “You shouldn’t have a problem, hmm?”

He beams at me, pulling me closer. “I do try.”

Archer sure is handsy tonight. I guess he just wants to comfort me, what with the Hunter situation and all. He’s such a hot friend. I mean, er, a good friend.

The games go on. Hentai Pete scores two birds in forty two seconds, causing the Hentai group to conga around the conservatory in celebration. Archer gives me an apologetic grimace and joins in. Next up is Captain Purity, who removes his cape just to show how much he means business.

Fifty two seconds in and he’s floundering around in the water.

“Still no turducken,” Archer hisses, squeezing his fists. “Come on, come on…”

“Time’s up!” yells Fat Frat Boy. He grips Captain Purity by the shoulders and heaves him back out. The poor captain gasps and chokes, his mouth stuffed with turkey and water.

“To be fair,” I muse, “I guess he doesn’t come across this kind of thing in the line of duty.”

“More like the line of booty,” Archer sniggers.

“And McKenzie Crook,” I say, puzzled. Sometimes, the things happening in my life make absolutely no sense. Is this just par for the course when being a heroine? Or should I, you know, be expecting better? An actual hero would be nice.

Behind the pool, the cupboards lie in wait. It seems as if the doors almost shudder every time the crowd stomps, and the darkness beckons me in. But I’ve already spent two days wallowing in post-Hunter depression—I didn’t even take a single selfie.

“You okay?” Archer stares down at me, concerned.

“I guess.” I swallow hard. “It’s just, the Hunter stuff…ah, I don’t know.”

“It will all work out, Cam-Cam. I promise. Anyway.” He reaches his arms up to stretch. “Wish me luck!”

“Good luck, fair knight!”

He leans down and points to his cheek. “Do I get a little kiss for extra lucksies?”

“Ah…since you asked so nicely.” As I stand on tiptoe to brush my lips to his skin, the room falls quiet. I don’t realize until I’m pulling away, but a tall and familiar figure fills the entrance of the conservatory.

And boy, is he
pissed
.

“Hunter,” I whisper, my hands still clasped to Archer’s chest.

Archer spins around and groans. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

Hunter, dressed in his usual suit and Converse, stalks toward us with the sharpest glower I’ve ever seen. Hair tousled right into his eyes, lips flushed and bitten; he doesn’t look like a guy who’s been languishing in his own misery for the past forty-eight hours. He doesn’t walk like a guy who had his cock smashed in a window, either. No, right now, Hunter looks like a formidable foe, and my pulse begins to throb in my ankles as he approaches.

When he stops, it’s just a foot from me and Archer. I take a tentative step between them; my spidey sense detects an incoming McMoment of the “someone dropped my McFlurry,” kind.

“Cammie,” Hunter says coldly.

“Hunter.”

He turns, a sly grin painting his face. “Archery Dick.”

Archer bristles in the quiet, crowded room. “Hunter von
Viles
.”

Hunter tries not to laugh, and instead snorts with a chortle that grows in volume. “Please tell me you can do better than that.”

Archer clears his throat, seemingly unchallenged. “Hunter’s Got Piles.”

“He doesn’t,” I hiss, probably a bit too loudly. “Take it from an English major—the rhyming potential here is hopeless.”

“She’s right,” calls a co-ed, brandishing her cell phone. “I googled. Give up now.”

Archer throws Hunter a scowl, and then sighs. “Can we help you? We’re kinda busy.”

Hunter looks from me to Archer. “Mmm. So I see.” He settles on me, his pained eyes softening. “I heard a beautiful voice above the racket, and it drew me down in search of…”

“In search of what?” I find myself saying, stepping ever-so-slightly closer to him.

“I forget,” he breathes. “But it was important.”

“Oh, Hunter.”

“Oh, Lord.” Archer swivels back to Fat Frat Boy. “Can I go yet, or what?”

“Get your ass up here, Riddick,” he calls back. “Mr von Styles, my friend—are you competing?”

Hunter doesn’t stop looking at me. “Competing in what?”

“We’re bobbing for turduckens. It’s fucking illegal,” I explain.

“I see.” He steps closer yet again, reaching out to run a single finger down my cheek. All. The. Feels. “Yeah, whatever.”

“We have a new contender!” bellows Fat Frat Boy.

A guy in a campus t-shirt goes to high-five Hunter, but Hunter’s still staring at me, so said guy goes careening to the floor behind us with a sad little squeal of pain.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Archer says through gritted teeth. “He hasn’t even trained!”

“I don’t need to train.”

“He doesn’t need to train,” I repeat, sighing to myself. He’s all up in my space and all I can think about is how much I want to—well, not
tear
his clothes off, seems a little overdramatic—but remove them in a hasty fashion.

Then I catch sight of the darkness in his pupils, and I remember his secret. The murder he committed all those…well…some years ago. God, why does life have to be so confusing? Why do the strangely alluring men always turn out to be bloodthirsty psychopaths? Why can’t one of Archer’s parents just die in a horrible accident so he can be broken enough to be
enough
? Life, seriously—throw me a curve ball!

“You haven’t forgiven me,” Hunter murmurs, his voice cracking.

I shake my head.

“I don’t have your trust,” he says. “But what I don’t have…I can take. Forcefully.”

I have no idea how one takes trust forcefully, but he looks so fucking tousled that my jelly bean demands I let him at least try.

“Hey Archery Dick,” Hunter calls, still staring at me. “Let’s do this together.”

Um…like do
me
together? What? Wait. Actually. Hellooo, sex flu. Pass me the tissues!

“You mean bob at the same time?” Archer asks. “Sure. Why the fuck not? I’ll obliterate you anyway.”

“That’s what you think.”

“It’s a bob off,” the assistant says, his voice warped with shock. Then he ramps up the volume. “It’s a bob off, motherfuckers!”

A low rumble of a stomp ripples throughout the crowd. This is unprecedented; this is big. This is my volatile ex-boyfriend and one of my lifelong friends going head to head, literally, in a bob to the turducken death. I sure hope Hunter keeps his unpredictably violent and possessive tendencies to himself because between the huge pool of water and the roast birds, it could get messy up in here. Nerves creep up on me and stifle my breath.

The cupboard’s looking pretty tempting, which to me, just does. Not. Happen.

Beside the buffet table, Rabies Maddox launches himself at his hard-won turducken with a chin plastered in drool.

“No, Rabies!” his wife scolds, trying to hold him back. “Bad Rabies!”

It’s no use—he puts his face in the bird and starts to munch the meat.

Hunter regards Archer with a gleeful expression as he stands on the left side of the pool. “You’re going to regret this. My turducken bobbing skills may be untested, but they are also seriously swaggy.”

Archer takes the right side of the pool, and bends forward slightly so the assistant can bind his hands. “Eat my shit.”

“Oh, I will,” Hunter snaps. “Even your shit will be shit, no doubt.”

“You’ll have to shit out my shit, and then my shit will be your shit. But it will still be the shit.”

Anyone still following this? Anyone?

With Hunter and Archer both stooped over opposite sides of the pool, we all shout along to the countdown. Even me.

“Three! Two! One….and gooooo!”

The boys throw their upper halves into the cloudy water, immediately recoiling and crooning in discomfort.

“You heathen!” Archer exclaims, his cheek turning purple. “You’re meant to bob the birds, not me!”

Hunter shakes the water off his mop of hair, takes a huge gulp of air, and dives back down. Archer follows, his upper lip curled in a grimace.

“This is going to be brutal,” someone mutters behind me.

“Turducken Tekken,” says another. “Unreal.”

I stuff my knuckles into my mouth, gnawing on them just to give myself something to focus on. I’ve never done it before but knuckle-biting is totally a thing in books and movies, so I figure I’ll give it a try. Mostly it just tastes of hand lotion and the Cheetos I had before I left the dorm, but as a romance heroine, I think it’s important to practice breathing around a big fist.

We’re thirty seconds in and neither boy has come up with the goods. Hunter’s deposited two mouthfuls of turkey on the conservatory floor with admirable trajectory, and Archer hasn’t actually come up for air yet. A bit of me contemplates that this might be a good example of how they’d suck my jelly bean; I don’t remember Hunter biting chunks out of me, but maybe it was metaphorical—everyone knows the metaphorical part of sex is better than the actual sex.

If Archer can go this long then I’m kinda worried about why he’s still single.

With fifteen seconds to go, Hunter hurls a massive turducken out by the leg and spits it to one side with a masculine grunt. A beat later, the audience cries out in shock and delight as Archer does the same. The two men, now soaked to the shoulders with sodden hair in their eyes, breathe deeply as they wait for the verdict.

I stop biting my knuckles at this point because it just fucking hurts.

“Now this is what I call a show!” Fat Frat Boy claps his hands joyfully as his assistant unties the boys. “Good job, dickwads. Let’s get these fat birds on the scales.”

We all crowd round as the turduckens are weighed. Archer drapes a towel around his shoulders and stalks back to me, holding me close again.

“You were great,” I tell him, patting his damp t-shirt and having a little feel for his abs. Just to make sure they’re okay, you understand.

“Thanks, Cam-Cam.” He looks exhausted.

Hunter stands near the scales, soaked in wavering shadows. I can feel his eyes on me—for real this time, not just bits of weasel. I know he’s watching the way Archer holds me, and I know Archer’s uncomfortably aware of his gaze. Captain Purity is sitting on a crate in a corner with a huge cocktail in one hand and his sketch book in the other; he regards them both with dubious amusement, a kind of
boys will be boys
face.

Hentai Pete brought up two turduckens, but their combined weight isn’t enough to save him—though he beats Rabies Maddox (who might have gone further if he hadn’t eaten half of his prize).

It’s time to weigh Hunter’s turducken. I close my eyes and cross my fingers. Then I quickly uncross them because two fingers entwined reminds me just how alone I am, how black my future is without Hunter, and how I never had his two fingers up my beaver like I wanted so badly. Stupid stock gestures. Stupid angst!

“Seventeen and a half pounds,” announces the assistant, much to the awe of the crowd.

“Ooh,” remarks a guy behind me. “Above average. Pretty freaking amazing for a first timer.”

Archer grumbles to himself under his breath. I don’t catch all of it, but there’s something about a knight’s code of conduct and ripping a scrotum clean open.

I give his arm a squeeze as they load his bird on to the scales. “Good luck.”

He smiles ruefully. “Thanks, babe.”

The scales creak, and the red measuring needle shudders back and forth. I have to squint to see when it stops.

“Well this is pretty damn weird,” Fat Frat Boy remarks, stroking his goatee. “Seventeen and a half pounds.”

Archer slaps a hand to his forehead in a mixture of relief and regret; Hunter stares right at me, raising one eyebrow with such controlled slow motion that it looks to be animated by Pixar. Which is strangely alluring. Be still, my beating clam.

I want him to march over and claim me because I’m still his gosling. He committed a terrible crime, but it doesn’t make him a murderer.

Oh, wait.

It does.

Still, a girl needs a little excitement in her life. I’ve seen
Dexter
—I’m all over this anti hero shit.

“Cam-Cam,” Archer says pointedly. “Stop grasping at straws.”

“Huh?”

“The straws.” He nods at the drink he’s just given me. “Stop groping them like they’re a boner.”

“I wasn’t,” I mutter.

“She wasn’t,” Hunter adds as he walks past. “I know exactly how Cammie gropes a boner, Archery Dick, and that wasn’t it.”

“Why, you—!”

I snatch at Archer’s shoulder, holding him back.

“Just leave it,” I plead.

“What, and let him disrespect you like that? Seriously? No way.” Archer squares up to Hunter with boxy shoulders, his chest puffed up robin style. “You have an apology to make.”

“I’m sorry you couldn’t beat me,” Hunter deadpans, rolling his eyes. I still love how he manages to make them both go in the same direction every time.

“Ha frickin’ ha.”

“What do you want me to say
, mein bruder
? If I have apologies to make…they sure as hell aren’t to you.” His glare softens as it settles on me. I shiver with the onset of sex flu.

Archer frowns. “Well yeah. I wasn’t asking you to apologise to
me
.”

“And now he backtracks.”

“Uh, no.” His eyes dart back and forth. “You’re kinda dumb, huh?”