Chapter 1

Friday, August 30th

Finn

The buzz of a busy New York City pounds against my back as I push through the doors of Graham Hall, my home for the foreseeable future.

It’s move-in day at Dickson University, and I, one of the university’s newest freshmen, have officially entered the next phase of my life.

In a sense, I feel free. My last “phase of life” was shittier than ideal. Still, there’s a whole other element to the excitement of college when you’re me, and the burn in my chest glows hotter and hotter every day.

The strap of my oversized black duffel digs into my shoulder. It’s heavy, filled with everything I own—which, admittedly, seems like hardly anything at all as I weave through the dormitory hallway teeming with wealthy pricks and their parents.

Sofas, mini refrigerators, computer monitors, and TVs the size of my childhood basement battle for space in the hallway of the tiny, male-only building located at the far northwestern corner of the entire campus.

I’m alone, as normal, and that draws more than a few stares on the way to my room. Deep navy-blue doors spaced twenty feet apart line the gold-painted halls. No doubt, the color choice is a nod to the university’s colors.

Dickson is one of New York City’s most prestigious universities. A fucked-up guy like me shouldn’t belong here, but I fought to make it happen anyway. I maintained a perfect GPA for the last two years of high school, despite everything going on at home, and wrote a personal statement that took a month and a half to finish to earn an acceptance letter and enough financial aid to cover the basics.

Everything depends on this.

“Hey,” one guy wearing a Yankees baseball cap says, giving me a jerk of his chin as I scoot past him and an older man I’m assuming is his father as they try to cram a couch through his dorm room door.

I give the head nod back, but I don’t need to bother with anything else—he’s already back to what he’s doing before I’m finished with the simple motion.

Two doors down, I find my name on the wall beside a wide-open threshold.

Finnley Hayes

On a sigh, I take the black Sharpie marker I got in my welcome packet out of my jeans pocket and scratch out the l-e-y until the sign reads Finn Hayes.

Underneath is a second name—Ace Kelly—belonging to my university-random-generated roommate. I might be more nervous about sharing the space with someone if I weren’t one of five rambunctious kids. I’m used to having people on top of me all the time, and I’m used to not having a choice about it.

One roommate is child’s play, compared to what I dealt with growing up.

The room looks empty at first, save several boxes and suitcases and a shitload of electronics on one of the desks, but when I step inside, a voice proves my assumption false. I turn around just as one of the hottest middle-aged ladies I’ve ever seen pops out from behind the door. “Hey,” she says casually, her dark brown hair and vibrant blue eyes standing out immediately. “Are you Finnley?”

“Finn,” I correct, loathing the sound of my full name coming from such a hot mouth, even if she is old.

“Ah, Finn.” She nods, and her mouth curves up into a smile that only makes her lips look fuller. “Yeah, that’s way more fuckable.”

My eyebrows shoot up. My mom would never dream of saying something like that to a college kid she didn’t know. But she probably wouldn’t have her tits halfway out of her shirt either.

She holds out a hand. “I’m Cassie Kelly, your roommate Ace’s mom.”

I take her hand and shake it, careful to keep my eyes on hers. In my peripheral vision, I know her tits are bouncing up and down with the movement. “Nice to meet you.”

With as polite of a smile as I can manage, I turn away from her and head for the other side of the room where my empty, bare-mattress bed is waiting. I toss my duffel on top and start unloading the essentials. A set of sheets and a blanket, the laptop computer I spent the last two years saving for, and my seven sets of jeans and shirts. I leave the underwear and socks at the bottom of the bag and shove it under the bed.

When I turn around, Cassie Kelly is watching me surreptitiously. She’s only bashful for half a second before owning her nosiness. “Where are your parents?”

“Busy,” I say simply, though fuck knows the truth is a lot more complicated than that.

She frowns but nods. A loud curse sounds outside the door, followed by two of the tallest people I’ve ever seen coming through it, carrying some kind of futon. I’m six one, but these dudes have several inches on me.

“Ace, for the love of everything, could you stop dropping this fucker?” the older man says as they finally make it inside the room.

“It’d be easier if you weren’t running me over the whole time,” my roommate responds. With the same black hair, brown eyes, muscular build, and towering height, they’re clearly father and son. A sprinkle of gray hair mars the black at the older man’s temples, but other than that, they’re practically twins.

When they reach Ace’s side of the room, they drop the black futon unceremoniously onto the cream vinyl tile floor of our dorm with a thud. It takes a few scoots, but they manage to stuff it into the only available corner near his bed.

“I fucking told you we should’ve hired movers,” Ace says, swiping sweat off his brow.

“Aw, poor Ace,” his dad says through a laugh. “His wittle baby muscles hurt.”

Ace rolls his eyes. “Says the old man who is going to spend the rest of his night in his fucking hot tub crying to Mom about how old he’s getting. Probably going to lube up your decrepit muscles with Aspercreme too.”

“Lubing up with Aspercreme? Have I taught you anything, Acer?” his dad retorts. My eyes bounce back and forth like ping-pong balls. “That’s the most dangerous game any man can play.”

“You talking from experience?” Ace counters. “Tell me you’ve lubed your balls with Aspercreme, and I’ll never let you live it down. All I have to do is make one phone call to Gunnar. You and I both know his response will cause long-lasting pain.”

“You tell your crazy-ass brother I lube up my balls with Aspercreme, and I swear I’ll—”

“Thatch.” Cassie cuts off their ongoing verbal judo with a hard shove to his shoulder. I stopped watching her the moment they came in, but I have a feeling she’s had at least one blue eye pegged on me the whole time. “Stop fighting with your spawn and say hello to his roommate.”

Thatch, evidently, turns toward me and smiles. “I’m just going to apologize in advance for you being stuck in a dorm with this shithead.”

“Shut up.” Cassie hits Thatch in the shoulder again and turns her attention to her son. “Ace, this is Finn.”

Ace’s response is a jovial grin I’ve never had the pleasure of sporting, especially not in the middle of a family bicker session. It’s a grin only someone with a glamorous life can have.

“Hey, Finn. Nice to meet you.”

I jerk my chin up in return.

He looks behind me at my somewhat lacking display of belongings, but I’ll give him credit; he doesn’t make a big thing of it. “Don’t mind us moving all this shit. We should be done soon, and my parents will get the fuck out of here.”

“I spent my whole pregnancy and the first ten years of your life not dropping f-bombs, and yet, somehow, it’s the only thing that comes out of your mouth.” Cassie slaps her son on the back of the head, but he laughs. It’s an obvious affection.

“No offense, Mom,” Ace says and wraps her up in a big hug. “I’m just saying you can’t stay forever.”

“Watch me,” she fires back, and I have to smother a smile. Cassie Kelly is very obviously a woman who does what she wants, when she wants.

“We won’t be here long,” the big man named Thatch assures both Ace and me. “You can use your dicks to explore Dickson U all you want in just a couple of hours.”

“With condoms!” Cassie exclaims, shifting her smacking over to her husband again. “Good grief, Thatch. Have some decency.”

“The kid chose this college because it has the word ‘dick’ in it, and you think he’s thinking with anything else?” He snorts. “Get real.”

“Excuse me! He did what?” Cassie’s eyes go wide as she turns her attention back to Ace. “You did what?”

“Mom, relax. Dickson is a great university. Does it really matter why I chose it?”

The three of them start bickering again, so I take out my headphones and put them on. Nine Inch Nails seethes in my ears as I do too, all the things that have added up to this moment running through my mind.

My rich, ridiculous roommate may have chosen this college on a whim, but I came to my decision a little differently.

Almost two years ago, on the day before my seventeenth birthday, while my dad was gone on a bender, I stumbled upon his journal from several decades prior. I thought it was just a place he used to scribble his shit music notes at first, but a couple of pages in, the contents changed entirely. Instead of writing songs, he detailed all the ways he’d screwed it up—how he’d abandoned his young family, changed his last name, and run away to start over. After years of fucking around completely, drinking, doing drugs, and committing any manner of crimes, he finally decided to settle down…with my mom.

In the span of five years, they had my older brother Reece, then me, then the twins, Jack and Travis, and last but not least, our baby sister Willow. And that was that. He never looked back.

Jeff Hayes moved on, but the world Jeff Winslow had created prior to me and my siblings didn’t. He has a whole other set of kids—ironically, four sons and a daughter, too—who are an entire generation older than us, and one of them is a professor here. In fact, he’s the head of the English Department, and my first class on Thursday is with him.

Professor Ty Winslow is in for the surprise of his life, and as much as my dad is the asshole in this scenario, I can’t wait to give it to him.

I guess I’m an asshole too.