Page 11 of High Achiever
Ryder pointed a finger. “Don’t.”
Ash only gave him an evil grin. For someone who’d been sleeping like it was his new job, Ash’s golden eyes were bright. Too bright. Almost glassy. Did he have a fucking fever again?
Ryder’s stomach sank. He turned away, pouring himself a cup of coffee and dumping the rest. Something was off with Ash, and that … wasn’t allowed.
It was like that story of the fish asking about the ocean, only to find out he’d been swimming in it all along. Ash was Ryder’s ocean. If something happened to him, Ryder went belly-up.
That probably wasn’t the moral of that fish story, but whatever.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
Ryder sipped his coffee, still facing toward the counter. “I’m not even looking at you.”
“Exactly.”
Ryder rolled his eyes. He rummaged in the paper bag he’d dropped on the counter before saving Ash from himself and turned, slapping a foil-clad burrito into Ash’s chest. “Eat your breakfast.”
Ash eagerly started ripping away the foil. At least his appetite was still the same—ferocious. “We taking Noah’s car?”
“Sure.”
The two of them had their first class of the day together. Without discussing it, they’d saved a gen ed class or two for every semester, so they could have at least one together. Otherwise, even if they tried to match the general shape of their schedule, Ash was in engineering land and Ryder was off hunting for symbolism in pretentious books.
They weregoodbooks, mostly. But still. Pretentious.
Ash took a savage bite out of his burrito. “If you stare at me like I’m dying during class,” he said, mumbling the words around his mouthful, “I’ll punch you in the dick.”
Ryder smirked at him. “Then what would you squeeze like a stress ball every night, bright eyes?”
“It’s not every night,” Ash grumbled.
But it had been—every single night since he’d first gotten sick last week—and it wasn’t like Ash at all.
Ryder gritted his teeth as he herded Ash out the door.
Something was definitely off.
Ash spottedhim first because of course he did.
Spencer was across the quad from them in front of the stairs to the econ building. Finance major, he’d told Ryder and Ash once. Fucking typical.
Ash planted in place before Ryder could get them in the door of their own building, shamelessly gawking. By all appearances, Spencer was getting chewed out by another student, who looked to be maybe a female alpha or beta.
“What do you think he did?” Ash asked quietly.
“What doyouthink he did?”
“Noah says he hasn’t been sleeping around as much.”
Ryder had heard the same. And come to think of it, Ryder thought he’d seen Spencer with that same girl at a party around this time last year. Spencer wasn’t usually a repeat offender, so maybe she was just holding on to old grudges. Or maybe he’d rammed her car in the parking lot and Ryder and Ash were making shitty assumptions.
“You think it’s because he’s in love with Noah?”
Ash meant the lack of sleeping around. Ryder grunted noncommittally.
He didn’t think it was exactly that. He’d originally come to the same conclusion, that Spencer was in love with Ash’s brother in a real way. That was until Noah and Eli had gone public and Spencer had reacted to Eli with the same amount of enthusiasm he gave a good protein shake—entirely too fucking much.
Unless Spencer was in love with both EliandNoah (and pretty boy Chase, for that matter), it was something else.
