Chapter 1: The Beer Pong Bet
The air in the frat house was thick enough to chew. It tasted like cheap beer and sweat, layered over the phantom sweetness of spilled vodka sodas. Neon glow sticks cast ghoulish shadows across faces I’d known for years. My back was against a wall, literally, the textured plaster digging through my thin tank top as I watched the circus unfold.
At the warped beer pong table, Harry and Liam were a unit. Shirtsleeves pushed up, focused. Harry’s chestnut curls were damp at his temples, clinging to his skin. He lined up a shot, his tongue peeking out between his lips in that way he had when he was zeroing in. The plastic ball sailed in a lazy arc, kissed the rim of a red cup, and dropped with a final plunk.
The crowd around the table erupted. Liam whooped, clapping Harry on the shoulder. But Harry’s eyes never left the cup. They tracked upward, across the tangled mass of bodies, and found mine. A slow, familiar smirk spread across his face, smug and knowing. “That was for you, Nikki,” he called out, his voice cutting through the bass-heavy music.
A ripple of laughter, a few whistles. My friends beside me shifted. Spencer rolled her eyes so hard I heard it. Hanna muttered, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” My cheeks burned, a traitorous heat I hated. It wasn’t the claim—it was the dizzying, private truth behind it. A truth only the two of us, and maybe Liam, really knew.
“He’s quite the charmer, isn’t he?”
The voice was honey-sweet, too close to my ear. Maya materialized at my side, a sleek blonde phantom in a silk cami. She smelled like expensive perfume and ambition. “Too bad he’s not yours,” she sighed, as if sharing a profound sadness.
I kept my eyes on Harry, who was now accepting a shot from a brother, his throat working as he swallowed. “He’s not anyone’s,” I said, forcing my voice flat. The lie was ash in my mouth.
Maya just hummed, a sound that implied she knew better. She drifted away, a shark circling the chum. The doubt she’d planted writhed in my gut. I felt exposed, as if everyone could see the secret history written on my skin in the dim light.
The party pulsed around me for another hour. A blur of faces, shouted conversations over the music, the sticky floor beneath my boots. I was on my third drink, a lukewarm beer, just for something to hold. Harry was a constant in my periphery. A hand on a guy’s shoulder, a deep laugh that carried, his green eyes flicking to me, holding, releasing. It was a game. It had always been a game.
He found me when I was grabbing my jacket from the piled chaos on the sagging couch. His hand wrapped around my wrist, his thumb pressing into my pulse point. His touch was electric, infuriating. “Leaving?” he murmured into my hair. His breath was warm, smelled of whiskey and mint.
“It’s late.”
“It’s early.” He turned me, just slightly, so my back was to the room. We were in a shadowed pocket by the stairs. “Come upstairs.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, low and rough. The command in it, the sheer assumption, should have made me shove him away. It always should have. Instead, a familiar, heavy warmth pooled low in my belly. This was our dance. The one where the music was just for us.
“You’re arrogant,” I breathed, but I was already turning toward the staircase.
He followed, a step behind. The noise of the party faded into a dull roar as we climbed to the second floor, then the third. His room was in the attic, a converted space that was always too hot, the air smelling of old wood and his cologne. He shut the door behind us and the world sealed off.
No pretenses left. He pushed me against the door, his body hard against mine. His mouth crashed down on mine, hungry and insistent. This wasn’t the charming guy from downstairs. This was raw, all sharp teeth and dominating tongue. I kissed him back just as fiercely, my hands fisting in his curls, pulling just to hear his low groan.
“Missed this,” he growled against my lips, his hands sliding under my top, calloused palms scraping over my ribs. “Missed you.”
“Bullshit,” I gasped, arching into his touch. “You saw me three days ago.”
“Too long.” He yanked the top over my head, his eyes dark as they raked over me. He backed me toward the bed, a chaotic mess of sheets and soccer jerseys. We fell onto it in a tangle of limbs.
There was no tenderness here. This was a collision. He kissed a burning trail down my throat, over my collarbone, taking a nipple into his mouth through the lace of my bra. He sucked, hard, and I cried out, my back bowing off the bed. He unclasped the bra with practiced ease, his mouth moving to the other breast, his hand skimming down my stomach, slipping under the waistband of my jeans.
“Fuck, Harry,” I panted, my hips rolling against his hand.
“I plan to,” he said, his voice thick. He made quick work of my jeans and panties, shoving them down my legs. I kicked them off, naked now except for my boots. He stood to strip, his eyes never leaving me. The green was almost black with want. He was all lean muscle and golden skin, already hard for me. He fumbled in his nightstand, pulled out a condom, sheathed himself without breaking eye contact.
He didn’t ask. He just moved over me, settling between my thighs. The blunt head of his cock pressed against me, and I was so wet, so ready for him. He nudged, once, twice, and then shoved himself inside me in one deep, brutal stroke.
I screamed. It was a sound ripped from my chest, part pleasure, part pain, all overwhelming feeling. He filled me completely, stretching me, claiming me. He stilled for a second, buried to the hilt, his forehead damp against mine. “Christ, Nikki,” he breathed, his body trembling.
Then he moved. It was a punishing rhythm, each thrust grinding my hips into the mattress. The bedframe slammed against the wall in a steady, rhythmic bang. He fucked me like he was trying to exorcise something, or maybe prove something. My legs hooked around his waist, heels digging into his ass, pulling him deeper.
“You like that?” he grunted, his pace erratic, desperate. “You like me fucking you like this? In my bed, where everyone knows you are?”
His words were filthy, designed to humiliate and arouse, and they did both. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. “Yes,” I hissed, the admission tearing itself from me. “God, yes.”
He shifted, pulling one of my legs over his shoulder, angling himself deeper. The new position hit a spot that made me see white. I shattered, my orgasm roaring through me like a freight train, my walls clamping down on him in violent pulses. He cursed, his rhythm breaking, and with three more ragged thrusts, he followed, his own release shuddering through him. He collapsed on top of me, a dead weight, both of us slick with sweat and gasping for air.
The silence after was always the worst part. The animal noise faded, and the reality seeped back in. We were just two bodies in a messy bed, stuck in a pattern we couldn’t break. He rolled off me, disposing of the condom, then flopped onto his back. The distance between us on the mattress felt like a canyon.
My skin cooled. The high receded, leaving a familiar, hollow ache. I sat up, gathering my clothes. The party sounds were distant ghosts now.
“Stay,” he said, not looking at me. His arm was flung over his eyes.
His arm was flung over his eyes.
The word hung in the thick air between us. It wasn’t soft. It was gravel, tossed at my feet. An order wrapped in the ghost of an invitation.
I didn’t look at him. I focused on pulling my jeans over my hips, the denim cold and abrasive against my sensitized skin. The room smelled like sex and his stupid sandalwood cologne. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” His arm didn’t move. He was a statue of spent passion, already retreating.
“I just can’t.” I found my bra, the lace damp. I put it on anyway, the hooks a frustrating puzzle for my fingers. “Spencer’s waiting. We’re going for pancakes.”
We’re going for pancakes.”
I stood, boots in hand, and turned for the door. The floorboards were cold under my socks. Each step was a decision, a silent fuck you to the heat of the bed, to the imprint of his body still humming on my skin.
I didn’t make it two steps.
His hand shot out, fingers wrapping around my wrist with a force that wasn’t playful. It was an anchor. A yank that sent me stumbling backward, off-balance, until I fell against the edge of the mattress. He was up on one elbow now, all traces of languid post-sex haze gone from his face. His green eyes were sharp, almost wild.
“Don’t,” he said. Just the one word. It wasn’t a request. It was a fracture in his usual cool.
My heart was a trapped bird against my ribs. “Don’t what? Don’t leave? That’s the deal, Harry. That’s always been the deal. No strings. No sleepovers.”
“Fuck the deal.” He pulled again, and I fell sideways, my shoulder hitting his chest. He maneuvered us with a rough, desperate efficiency, rolling so he was half on top of me again, one heavy thigh pinning my legs. The sheets were tangled around us, a damp prison. He wasn’t hard anymore, but his body was tense, vibrating with something that felt alarmingly like panic. “Just… stay. For an hour. Just… be here.”
I stopped fighting. The resistance leaked out of me, leaving a hollow, weary ache. His forehead pressed against my temple. His breath was hot and ragged in my hair. I could feel the frantic drum of his heartbeat where his skin met mine.
This was new. This terrifying, raw need. It was more intimate than anything his body had just done to mine.
I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say anything. But my body went slack beneath his. A surrender. He let out a shaky breath, his arms tightening around me, binding me to him in the messy dark.
And I stayed.
The hour bled into two. He didn’t let go. We drifted in and out of a tense, shallow sleep, my body curled into the furnace of his, my mind screaming the entire time. This was a violation of our own unspoken rules. Staying meant something. Letting someone see you in the vulnerable, morning-after wreckage meant everything.
The first grey light of dawn was cutting through the grimy attic window when I finally slipped from his grasp. He made a sound, a low grunt of protest, but didn’t wake. I dressed in the half-light, watching him. The sheet was tangled low around his hips, exposing the sharp cut of his waist, the smooth plane of his back. He looked younger in sleep, the smirk gone, the charm stripped away. Just a boy. It made my chest hurt.
I left without a sound.
The world outside the frat house was cold and silent, the pavement glittering with dew. I texted Spencer one word: Now. Her car pulled up ten minutes later, idling at the curb. I climbed in, the smell of fresh coffee and her vanilla perfume a welcome assault.
“Well?” she asked, handing me a to-go cup. Her eyes scanned my face, my wrinkled clothes, the mark I knew was blooming on my neck.
“Don’t,” I said, sipping the coffee. It burned my tongue. “Just drive.”
She did. We didn’t go for pancakes. We drove to the overlook, the one that showed the whole sleepy campus sprawled out in the valley. We sat in silence for a long time.
“He asked me to stay,” I finally said, the words tearing out of me like glass.
Spencer didn’t gasp. She just stared straight ahead, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” I traced a meaningless pattern in the condensation on my window. “I stayed. For two hours. He… he held on like he was drowning.”
“Fuck.” The word was a bullet in the quiet car. She finally turned to look at me, her sharp eyes seeing everything. “Nik, that changes things. That’s not just fucking anymore.”
“It doesn’t change anything,” I snapped, the lie brittle and automatic. “It was a moment. He was half-asleep. It doesn’t mean shit.”
But it hung between us, this new, fragile, dangerous thing. It meant everything.
The following week was a study in forced normalcy. Classes, coffee runs, late-night library sessions with the girls where we pretended to study but mostly dissected every look, every text. Harry’s messages were the same as always—flirty, direct, suggesting times to meet. But now, every “my room, 10 pm” felt loaded with the ghost of his whispered “stay.”
I avoided being alone with him. I blamed essays, headaches, a mysterious commitment to actually attending my 8 a.m. lecture. The distance was a necessary bandage on a wound I refused to acknowledge.
Which is how I found myself at the Sigma Chi tailgate on Saturday, surrounded by a sea of red and black, the air thick with the smell of charcoal and spilled beer. It was a mandatory social event for our orbit. The whole crew was there, a fortress of familiarity.
Liam and Harry were at the center of a roaring crowd by the keg, reliving some play from last week’s game. Harry was in his element, a faded soccer jersey stretched across his shoulders, a backwards cap hiding his curls. He was laughing, but his eyes kept scanning, searching. They landed on me, across the lawn, and the smile on his face didn’t change, but something in his gaze intensified. It was a look that felt like a physical touch.
I turned away, grabbing a cold beer from the cooler. Niall appeared, slinging a sweaty arm around my shoulders. “There’s my favorite bad influence! You’ve been a ghost. Missed your cynical commentary.” His Irish lilt was warm, comforting.
“Just busy being a scholarly icon, Horan. Try it sometime.”
He grinned, stealing a sip of my beer before Hanna pulled him away toward the cornhole boards. I was left leaning against a picnic table, trying to look casually absorbed in my phone.
“You’re avoiding me.” The voice was low, right behind me. Harry’s scent—that sandalwood and clean sweat—enveloped me before I even turned.
“I’m socializing,” I said, not looking up from the blinding screen. “It’s a tailgate. That’s the point.”
His hand closed over mine, pushing the phone down. His skin was hot. “Bullshit. Look at me.”
I did. Up close, I could see the faint shadows under his eyes. He looked tired. “What do you want, Harry?”
“You. In my room. Tonight.” His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist, a maddening, gentle rhythm. “No games tonight, Nikki. Just you and me.”
The raw need in his voice was a siren song, pulling at the ache deep in my core. It terrified me. “I can’t.”
“Why?” His other hand came up, his fingers brushing a strand of my blue-and-purple hair behind my ear. The public intimacy of it was shocking. “Tell me why.”
Before I could fabricate an excuse, Maya slithered into view. She was dressed in a sleek, expensive-looking track jacket, her blonde hair a perfect ponytail. “Harry! Liam’s looking for you, something about the lineup.” She smiled, all sweet concern, before turning the smile on me. It didn’t reach her cold blue eyes. “Nikki, you look… tired. That 8 a.m. must be brutal.”
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice tighter than I wanted.
“Good.” She linked her arm through Harry’s, a proprietary move that made my stomach clench. “Come on, team captain. Duties call.”
He let her pull him away, but his eyes stayed locked on mine until the crowd swallowed him. The message in them was clear: This isn’t over.
The party raged around me, a blur of noise and color. I felt sick. Spencer materialized, handing me a fresh beer. “I saw that. She’s a snake in Lululemons.”
“He went with her.”
“He’s an idiot,” she said, her gaze following them across the lawn. “But he’s your idiot. Unfortunately.”
Hours blurred. The soccer game started, the crowd migrating toward the stadium. I stayed behind with a few others, claiming I needed air. The truth was a knot of jealousy and desire so sharp it felt like a physical wound. I wandered back toward the now-quiet frat house, the back patio deserted. I just needed a minute to breathe.
The sliding glass door to the basement game room was slightly open. The low thump of a bassline drifted out. I pushed it open, stepping into the cool, dark room lit only by the glow of a massive TV playing silent highlights.
And then I froze.
On the large, leather sectional, half-hidden in shadow, two bodies were intertwined. Harry’s jersey was on the floor. Maya’s perfect ponytail was coming undone, her head thrown back as Harry’s mouth moved down her throat. His hands were under her top, pushing it up, revealing the lace of her bra.
“God, yes, Harry,” she moaned, her fingers clawing into his hair. “Right here. Fuck me right here.”
He didn’t speak. His movements were efficient, hungry. He unbuttoned her jeans, yanked them down her hips along with her panties. She helped him, kicking them off. He fumbled with his own shorts, freeing himself. There was no condom in sight. No pause.
He pushed her legs apart and drove into her in one rough thrust. The sound she made was obscene, a sharp cry of triumph. He set a brutal, relentless pace, the old leather couch creaking in protest with every slam of his hips. Her legs locked around his back, her heels digging in.
I'm so much better than her,” Maya gasped, her voice dripping with venomous pleasure. “So much fucking better.”
He didn’t deny it. He just fucked her harder, his face buried in her neck. The scene was raw, visceral, a grotesque parody of what we had done. The same desperate energy, the same rough need, but given to her. While I stood there, hollowed out, just feet away.
I must have made a sound. A choked breath. Because Harry’s head snapped up. His eyes, glazed with lust, found me in the doorway.
Time stopped. His thrusts faltered. His face went through a violent transformation—shock, horror, a dawning, catastrophic shame. Maya, sensing the shift, turned her head. When she saw me, a slow, vicious smile spread across her kiss-swollen lips. She didn’t stop moving her hips.
I turned and walked out. My legs carried me, numb and mechanical, back across the lawn, through the straggling crowds. The noise of the distant stadium was a muffled roar. I made it to the parking lot, to Spencer’s car. I leaned against the hot hood, the metal searing through my clothes, and I didn’t cry. I just stared at the asphalt, the image of his body moving over hers burning itself into the back of my eyelids.
I didn’t know how long I stood there before I heard the frantic footsteps on the gravel.
“Nikki! Fuck, Nikki, wait!”
Harry stumbled to a stop in front of me. His shirt was on inside out, his hair wild. He smelled like her perfume and sex. “It’s not… it didn’t mean anything. She came onto me, I was drunk, I—”
“Don’t.” The word was flat, final. “Just don’t speak to me.”
“Please,” he begged, his voice cracking. He reached for me.
I flinched back as if burned. “Don’t you fucking touch me.” The heat finally broke through the ice in my veins. “You asked me to stay. You held me. And then you fucked her in a basement like I was nothing. I saw you.”
The raw agony on his face was real. It was the most genuine thing I’d ever seen from him. But it was too late. It was a mural of his betrayal, painted in the sweat on his skin and the stink of her on his clothes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words pathetic, useless.
“Sorry?” A laugh, brittle and sharp, escaped me.im nothing. You’re just a hole to fill. That’s all I'm ever been. And guess what? I'm empty.”
I turned, digging for my keys. My hands were shaking.
“Nikki, I love you.”
The world went silent. The parking lot, the distant cheers, the ringing in my ears—all of it vanished. I turned back slowly. He was crying, silent tears cutting through the grime on his cheeks. He looked destroyed.
And in that moment, I knew the most devastating truth of all. He probably meant it. And it didn’t change a single, goddamn thing.
“No, you don’t,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “You just hate that I finally see you.”
I got in the car. I started the engine. I drove away, leaving him standing there, smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, until he disappeared completely.