Page 1 of Trust Me

Chapter 1

Oliver

The need to belong was intrinsic to humans. It awoke as soon as we were born, and until the day we died, we would search for acceptance. Kinship. Family.

Since it was ingrained in every one of us, it should’ve been simple.

It wasn’t.

Our formative years shaped us, helped decide the outcome of our entire lives. If our needs weren’t met as children, all sorts of things could go wrong. The question was: Could we make up for all of the things we were denied, or were we doomed to be mere products of our circumstances?

Hopefully, the first one. Realistically, probably a mixture of both. Nature, nurture, and all that jazz.

Maybe that was why I studied psychology. Maybe it was why I watched people the way I did, not necessarily with the desire to understand them, but with the desire to be them. Maybe it explained how being an adult was really damn hard for me, and all the basic functions that seemed to come easily to other people felt like alien algorithms to me.

Hell, maybe it was why I’d been staring at Dean freaking Kennedy for the past few minutes while our classmates engaged in a not-so-subtle flirt battle.

We’d been in Tilian’s dorm for a while now, working on a project for sociology. Everything was great, then Brooks went and asked us all what our kinks were. As an icebreaker, I guess. It was the usual—choking from Tilian, choking from Brooks, marking from me. And Dean said . . . breeding.

What the actual hell? No, ‘what the actual hell?’ was directed at me because why did my stomach fall through my goddamn asshole? And why was I unable to take my eyes off of him now?

He was attractive, sure—ashy brown hair cut short, deep brown eyes, a soft bronze to his skin, a jaw so square it was basically a right angle, and the perfect body for his position as linebacker—but I didn’t know him well enough to really be intrigued. Now that my interest had been piqued, I couldn’t shake the mounting curiosity about what else was in that head of his.

If I was lucky, there was just a cymbal-banging monkey in there, clap-clap-clapping away.

“We should go,” I whispered, painting on an easygoing smile when Dean looked over at me. “I don’t want to stay for the show.”

“Relax,” Brooks said. It was incredibly casual, although I could see the way he flexed his fingers.

The dude was an absolute mystery to most and nearly impossible to read, but I thought I had him pegged pretty well. A classic case of obsessive control over his life, high expectations, and intense, self-inflicted loneliness.

“We’re not gonna fuck,” he went on. “I’m on a strict strangers-only diet for an indeterminate amount of time.”

“Why?” Tilian asked. Immediately, he bit his lip as he dropped his gaze to the comforter. It made his hair fall into his face a little, and Brooks’ dark eyes intensified.

They were gonna bone, for sure.

Brooks’ curly hair was in a bun, but he reached up to touch it briefly, as if on instinct. “Why not?”

Tilian rolled his eyes. “What a shit response.”

“Okay, you lovely little thing. Strangers don’t catch feelings.”

“What’s wrong with feelings?” I decided to throw out there, just to nudge things along. Call me matchmaker or meddler; both were probably accurate.

“There have been a lot of questions aimed at me. I think I’m gonna need a lawyer present before we proceed.”

I smirked at the deflection. “Sounds like something you’d say if you were guilty.”

“What would I even be guilty of?”

“Being afraid of commitment, obviously.”

Brooks scoffed. “Uninterested is vastly different from afraid.”

I wanted to laugh, but I was acutely aware of Dean next to me, so I leaned over to him and positioned my lips close to his ear. He tensed, which was kind of entertaining. Getting any sort of reaction out of him felt satisfying now that he’d caught my attention.

That made it my turn to catch his.