Page 6 of High Achiever
“I know you think he’s hot,” Ash pressed. He really should leave it alone and not take his sudden turn of mood out on Ryder, but it was hard to resist when he knew that the worst Ryder would do was give him a glare.
People thought Ryder was the asshole of the two of them because he was quiet and he looked the way he did, and when he did speak, he didn’t exactly spare feelings. But underneathall that, Ryder was pretty unflappable.Ashwas the one with a temper.
“Everyone with eyes thinks he’s hot,” Ryder countered evenly.
Well, yeah. Spencer’s trail of brokenhearted one-night stands was evidence enough of that. He had bad-boy-in-a-wholesome-boy-band good looks. He was lean but tall and broad-shouldered, with the kind of defined muscles that belonged on some billboard selling men’s underwear. His messy dark hair was always falling in front of his blue eyes in a faux-careless, sexy way, and he had piercings that gave people … ideas.
Most people thought he was weirdly charming but kind of an asshole, which Ash could appreciate. People thought the same thing about him, except without the charming part.
And Spencer riled Ryder up, which was always a good sign. Everyone was so afraid of pissing Ryder off, but it was really his apathy they had to worry about. If Ryder didn’t like someone, they didn’t even register on his radar. He basically acted like they didn’t exist. So the fact that Spencer got to him sometimes …
Spencer had no idea how rare it was, that Ryder snarled at him the way he did. It tickled something in the back of Ash’s mind. Something he didn’t know how to categorize yet.
He was familiar with indefinable stuff though. Like, case in point, his whole fucking designation, still a mystery in his sophomore year. Just because something couldn’t be put in a neat box didn’t mean it wasn’t worthwhile.
So yeah. Spencer was hot as fuck. But that was nothing special in itself. Ash didn’t give a fuck about hot. He didn’t give a fuck about most people, really. What was interesting about Spencer was his irregularities.
Spencer was a fuckboy but not a sleaze. He loved sex but had zero interest in dating. He didn’t seem to have a preference foromegas, betas, or alphas. He also seemed to be equally in love with both of his best friends but didn’t begrudge either of them having found their forever partners. He had a tendency to say something charmingly asinine and then immediately follow it up with something completely devastating, and he was equally flippant about both. And despite being kind of self-centered and bro-ey, he wasn’t emotionally closed off. There was instead a certain … vulnerability there. One Spencer didn’t even try to hide. One that made Ash kind of want to?—
Ash didn’t know what, actually. Kiss his forehead? Kick him in the shin? Suck his cock?
It was a real conundrum, and it hadn’t gotten any clearer over the past few months.
Ash and Ryder had started hanging out with him more often kind of on accident at first, and then more and more on purpose. Neither of them could seem to stay away, and Spencer was so unselfconsciously pleased about it that it made it doubly hard to create any distance.
So yeah. A conundrum.
But Ash wasn’t in the right headspace to figure it out this exact second. Something was up. His head was foggy, his skin was all hot and too tight for his skin, and his reactions were all over the place.
Like when Spencer had opened the door. Holy shit.
Ash and Ryder had stopped by to return Noah’s car keys—failed fucking mission, by the way—and maybe stay for breakfast and grace Spencer with their presences for some gaming. But then Spencer had shown up at the door shirtless, in threadbare boxer briefs that left absolutely zero to the imagination, and Ash’s brain had kind of … broken.
Which made no fucking sense, because Ash had seen Spencer in various states of undress plenty of times. Soaking wet inthe pool. Bare-chested over a bowl of cereal. Fresh out of the shower, a towel barely hanging off his hips.
Ash swallowed at the memories, his throat dry and aching.
So Ash had frozen or whatever, his whole body burning up, and he’d felt the strangest moment of devastating loss. Over what, one might ask? Over the fact thathe couldn’t smell Spencer’s pheromones.
Like. What the fuck?
Ryder had already told Ash when he’d asked a while back that Spencer smelled like a hot cup of chai tea. And Ash could kind of … sense pheromones, on an unconscious level. He knew when Ryder had smothered him in them, because it was heavy and comforting, soothing Ash’s oft-ruffled feathers. But since Ash was unpresented, he’d never been able to scent them himself.
It had never bothered him before. Not really, other than a vague annoyance at missing out on something so common for the rest of the population.
Now he leaned back in the passenger seat, sighing his irritation. Ryder had banned him from driving for the foreseeable future after Ash had almost gotten them a speeding ticket last week.
Whatever. It wasn’t Ash’s fault the speed limits around here were so fucking arbitrary.
“I don’t feel so hot,” Ash mumbled.
“You coming down with something?”
A broad, calloused hand landed on Ash’s forehead. He sighed again, this time with pleasure. Despite the heat of the day, Ryder’s touch was cool. Soothing.
Ryder let out a low rumble. “You’re burning up.”
“Mm.”
