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“Darius the Second.”

“No.” I shook my head, and he grinned.

“Florence.”

“FUCK NO, Alvy.”

“Fine. Sprigey 2.0: Out for Vengeance.”

I sighed. “That’s… the worst one yet.”

“I think it’s perfect.” Alvin shrugged. He glanced towards me, his eyes going soft in a way that had my gut making unnatural movements. “You really did all this for me?”

“Yeah, I really did all this for you, asswipe.”

He reached for my hand. I let him. “I’m sorry I thought it was you,” he said.

“I’m sorry I gave you a reason to.”

He leaned his shoulder against mine. “You know, for someone who’s so emotionally constipated all the time, you’re surprisingly romantic.”

“I am not romantic.”

“Okay, DeeDee. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

I looked at the spider as it climbed onto the bark, then quickly scurried back under the little plastic skull. Bracing myself when I felt Alvin grin against my shoulder.

“I think he likes you…”

“Yeah, well, that little fucker can like me all he wants. Right where he is. Inside that container. In this rec room. And far away from where I sleep every night, Alvin.”

My former best friend didn’t even pretend to hear me, as he swiped the container off the table and sprinted towards the door.

I rushed after him in the direction of our cabin. “That thing is not staying in our room, Alvin. I’m serious!” I called out.

He grinned at me over a shoulder but he didn’t stop running. Goddamn it…

CHAPTER 30

The stupid spider was sleeping in our cabin. That meant I wasn’t sleeping. At all. Not with almost a dozen blinking eyes staring at me from across the room.

I’d tried everything. Covering it with a blanket, which only made me paranoid it would escape and crawl across my face in the dark. Turning to face the wall, which somehow made it worse, like I could feel those eyes on the back of my neck. Even going to the bathroom at two in the morning just to give myself something to do besides lie there and contemplate all the ways a spider could kill me in my sleep.

Alvin, of course, had passed the fuck out within five minutes of the thing being in our room. Sprawled across his bunk like he didn’t have a care in the world, one arm hanging off the side, his breathing deep and even.

I wanted to punch him in his perfect face. I also wanted to fuck him, apparently, because that was becoming my new favorite coping mechanism for pretending like the outside world didn’t exist. And that it didn’t have a million more creepy spiders crawling around where I couldn’t see them.

When word had gotten around that the camp nurse took a two-hour lunch break every single day—a fact we’d discovered when we were lucky enough not to have her walk in on us mid-thrust—I’d known immediately what we were going to do with that information. And yeah, maybe I was an idiot for even considering it. Maybe I was asking for trouble. But after a week or more of catching bugs in the dark and dealing with Alvin’s persistent shit-eating grin every time he looked at me, I needed the distraction.

The infirmary was quiet when we slipped inside around 12:15, checking over our shoulders like we were planning a bank heist instead of just... being a couple of horny twenty-somethings.

Alvin locked the door behind us, and I felt that familiar spike of adrenaline mixed with fear mixed with lust mixed with the blissful ignorance I was trying to wear like a coat of armor, instead of my usual foul mood.

“Think she’ll notice if we break the exam table?” Alvin asked, already pulling his shirt over his head.

“Don’t care,” I told him, and I didn’t. Not really. Not when he was standing there like that, all tattoos and abs while looking at me as if I was the only thing worth seeing in the entire world and he had every intention of fucking me until I saw myself that way too.

We didn’t waste time on foreplay. This wasn’t about tenderness. It hadn’t been since that first time in here when we’d been too angry and resentful to bother with anything soft, gentle… or remotely good for our mental health. Now it was just friction and desperation, his hands rough on my skin and my mouth on his neck, tasting salt and sunscreen and something that was just uniquely Alvin Carter.