Page 19 of Edged
Archie Davidson.
Archie.
He used to hate being called Archie. I was the only one he’d allowed to get away with it and now everyone got the courtesy that used to belong only to me? Jealousy rippled up my spine, and I glared at the teeth marks I’d left in the corner of the card.
I crumbled the cardstock in my hand and shoved it into my pocket, pushing up to my feet and getting the hell away from there before I did something I’d regret more than I already had.
CHAPTER5
ARCHIE
I scrubbed madlyat my hand with soap and scalding water, trying to wash away every drop of Owen’s cum that my greedy tongue had missed.
What the hell had I been thinking?
Stalking him out into the alley and backing him against a wall. Shoving my hand down his pants and talking to him like I was twenty again? I had no idea what came over me, and when Flynn appeared behind me and turned off the water, I wasn’t any closer to an answer.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I shook my head, tearing a paper towel off the roll and drying my hand. My fingers were red as a cherry, no doubt burned to some minor degree from the water and the scrubbing. “Nothing.”
“You’re a liar,” he said.
“It’s honestly nothing.” I used my hair to dry the rest of my hand, raking my way back and trying to push the strands into place.
“Are we just going to ignore the facts then?”
“What are the facts, asshole?” My hand was trembling, so I folded my arms in front of my chest and tucked it as far away from Flynn’s line of sight as I could manage.
“Val said you looked panicked.” He held up one finger and began to count my offenses off. “You disappeared without telling anyone where you were going, which is very unlike you. You have a raging erection that you’re ignoring, and I think if you had a hacksaw, you would have already amputated your right hand.”
“Are you done?”
He gave me a tired eye roll.
“For one, I’m an adult. I’m allowed to go outside without permission. This surely isn’t the first or the last time I’m going to get hard here, and three…” I sucked my tongue across the front of my teeth, my mouth getting too far ahead of my brain because I couldn’t speak to the state of my hand.
“It’s a good thing you don’t carry a pocket knife,” he said.
“I’m fine,” I assured him, uncrossing my arms and shaking them out at my sides, offering an attempt to appear casual and unaffected when I was anything but. The smell of Owen’s soap was still fresh in my nose, the taste of him salty and amazing on my tongue.
Flynn eyed up me up and down, clearly not believing a single thing I said.
“I’m fine,” I said again, giving him a shove toward the door. The bathroom was too small for my lies and I needed to get him distracted so he would quit the interrogation. Back on the outskirts of the dance floor, the music was loud enough to drown out whatever he said next, and I gestured at my ear to let him know I couldn’t hear.
Icouldhear him, though.
I just didn’t want to talk.
I hadn’t told any of my friends about Owen yet, and I surely wasn’t going to start now. It wasn’t that I’d intended to keep that part of my life a secret, but the more removed I found myself from what I’d done, the harder it became to face. Admitting that I’d walked out on my best friend after losing my virginity to him, that I’d been close enough to his older sister to entertain the idea of marriage…it was all marks of the boy I’d been, not the man I’d become.
Going to college in California was the best choice I’d ever made, even if Owen and Mandy were casualties of the decision. Because it was there I’d met Flynn, and there I’d met Rob, and then the rest of them. The trophy doms, as Rob’s boyfriend Grayson called us. And it was a joke and it was meant to be biting in the delivery, but it wasn’t far from the truth.
Outwardly, at least, I was as eligible as the rest of my friends.
But as much as I was a different man from the boy I’d been, there were still parts of him tucked inside of me. All of those memories laced with longing and regret, but not a desire to go back and change course. The decisions I’d made were the right ones—the execution was what had been wrong.
“Do you want another drink?” Flynn shouted in my ear.
