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“Jackson and I aren’t comfortable with you staying here on your own, Aspen. While there are unconfirmed sightings of a stalker, and considering everything that happened today, we’d feel better if you⁠—”

A thick, meaty knock sounds on the other side of the wood. Fucking timing! She excuses herself and jumps up to answer the door. The shape of her heart-shaped ass crammed into those pants as she walks away is a sight to behold, and Eli flashes me a look I understand all too well. He was just about to offer her a spare room at his house, one of the six fucking bedrooms of a house his ancestors built and his then-wife insisted on remodeling if she had to live “in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

Male voices inject more testosterone into the room. It’s bigger than average, but four dudes in here is the absolute limit.

“Professor! Doc? What brings you here to check on our girl?” Lukaz says, planting a sweet kiss on the top of her head. Fox follows behind, silent but ever alert. Our girl?

“Student welfare checks,” Eli deadpans. “A student died on campus today. We’re checking with the student body to ensure everyone is safe.”

“Aww, see, Prof, I’m here to check on my favorite student body, too! Now that Fox and I are here, you and the doc can continue to the other dorms. Terrible what happened, hey.”

For the third time in under two hours. Elijah Wyldan has leap-frogged furious and gone straight to apoplectic Armageddon. Thanks, fellas.

Chapter Twenty-One

Aspen

THIRSTY FOR SPRING WATER

“Fuck, I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m sorry. So fucking sorry, I panicked, and she was here to help me, and when you both were shouting, it all became too much, and I…”

“Tali. It’s okay. I’m fine, you’re fine. I’m not sorry for calling her out for being in my room, Tal. My fucking room!”

“I know. I told Ryan about it and he was one hundred percent with you on that. I stuffed up, I get it. She has been so kind to me, and I wanted to avoid any trouble.”

Her arms engulf my middle and squeeze like she’s expecting citrus juice. Merda’s death has been the topic of conversation, drawing obvious comparisons to Stacey Wheeler, and the theories are as whack as they are varied. Merda wasn’t the fit, sports-loving woman that Stacey was, yet her demise was similar. Maintenance even checked the boarding records to make sure they didn’t share the same room at some point, thinking a toxic mold may be the culprit. I suspect a toxin was the culprit, but my money isn’t on mold spores. Merda was kinda mean, but she didn’t deserve to collapse in front of that fountain and take her last breath watching a salmon be devoured by a bear. Dean Grundy has been waving theories around like dandelions, but we’re all sensing the same thing. This is too murky, too blisteringly efficient. Two college students is two too many. If some sick fuck is messing with the student body for his or her perverse satiation, then this is more fucked up than anyone realizes.

Had the Larcher in the mask snuck into her dorm room too? Maybe she fought back or identified him somehow, and he punished her for it? So many dandelion theories, so many unanswered questions, and so many coffee mugs on the counter.

“I know you have company.” Her smile is seductive and saccharine. “I saw Fox when I came home first thing. He was in the living room just chillin’. But when I peeked in on you on my way back, there was another head on a pillow. Anything you want to share with the group, Ms. Aldereyne?”

My cheeks heat. A little over thirty hours ago, she stood in the camp, claiming I had disrespected her guest. Now she wants the tea? I have every reason to hold back. This needs to be handled with care. I tiptoe through a presentable version to satisfy her curiosity.

“It’s Lukaz,” I cough out. “He and Fox came over last night so I wouldn’t be alone after everything that happened.”

“There are no pillows or blankets on the couch. Where did Fox sleep?”

“In with us. I slept in between them.”

“Well, that’s fucking cozy.”

Oh, girl, you have no idea. “We just cuddled. Nothing more. Remove your mind from the gutter, girl. Can you say the same about you and Rhino?”

Of course she can’t. Switching topics was a winning move. While not a narcissist, she is a chatterbox, and talking about herself is a topic she’ll never tire of. I hear how Bonner’s nickname for Ryan is apt in more ways than one because he’s a rhinoceros everywhere, if you know what I mean. Yes, girl, I’m bored, not basic.

“Once I suspected he was my Larcher, I straight out asked him. No stuffing around, just a ‘Hey, Ryan, was I your Ash? Did you gift me?’ The rules state they have to respond truthfully and without ambiguity, and girl, he bent down and kissed me. Smack! Straight on the lips, no preamble, nothing. Like he was thirsty, and I was his spring water. It’s so refreshing to be desired, Aspen. I’m new to all these kinds of feelings, and I want more.”

As the coffee drips, I hug my friend. Not out of obligation, but because she deserves happiness. If Ryan the Rhino can be the one to gift her that, I’m all for it, and them. Tali and I are paradoxes. She’s had schoolyard crushes and juvenile relationships. Now, in a college with a like-minded guy studying the same stream, she wants more. I barely coped in a schoolyard. When I wasn’t homeschooled and attended mainstream buildings with other kids and teachers, not through a computer screen, I was the salmon depicted in the fountain statue. Far too easy to pick off by a predator fifty times the size. Other kids didn’t understand me, and therefore treated the curious, geeky thing with distrust and skepticism. Teachers were confounded by me, often confusing my good marks with an interest in the shit they were forcing upon us. I discovered at an early age how adults thought, what made them proud, and how they punished troublemakers. My life was an adult world, so why not adapt what I understood? I’d be able to leave the classroom early and spend my free time as I wished. Instead of flying out to the parking lot, climbing into a car I didn’t own to speed home to more empty bottles and fresh vomit, I indulged my bibliosmia. The comfort from the chemical breakdown of organic compounds in paper, glue, and ink from an aged reference section in the library was my nirvana. Aging scents of earthy aromas and baked wheat were the olfactory equivalent of the yellowed pages and brattled spines. Everything I needed was here, the comforts cloaking me from students who hated me and teachers who feared me because my knowledge surpassed theirs.

“Are you even listening?” She laughs, and I shake my head.

“I think you kind of lost me in your feels, Tali,” I confess, swapping out one mug for another. “I don’t crave intimacy and an altered social media relationship status; I love sex. That’s it. No emotions, no tender touching afterward; as long as my body gets the release, that’s all there is. I don’t want sweet nothings; I don’t need dinner or jewelry I’ll never wear. Fuck, I almost left the Larch gifts in the woods, had I not been reminded to collect them and bring them back here. For me, the best part of that night was getting lost in the near silence of nocturnal woods, and the orgasms. Fuck the rest of it.”

Her eyes bounce nervously over my shoulder. “Morning, boys!”

“Good morning, Tali. And a wonderful morning to you, too. Nice speech, little derevo.”

Arms snake around my middle, the heat of a warm, naked torso pressed to my back. Fox leans on the opposite counter, already dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and pants. Come to think of it, he slept like that. Lukaz and I had stripped down to underwear while Fox remained almost fully clothed. He’d shucked his socks, and that was it. How did he not overheat with the combustion of two other bodies and the comforter? The answer; he did. That must’ve been why he was in the living room early; he needed a reprieve from the furnace.