Free Birthday Girl (The Student Union Series Book 1) by Chloe Butler Page B

of his cock with my other hand and let it spray against my palm.
    I smiled at him. “Do you always come like that?”
    “Sorry, I—”
    “Oh, come on. You think I didn’t know what was going to happen? Pass me a tissue.”
    He pulled a couple of Kleenex out of the box on my bedside table and helped wipe me clean, then rested his head between my breasts. “So how were things at home?” I asked.
    “Rough.”
    I ran my hand over the side of his face. “You want to talk about it?”
    “Not right now.”
    “You want to spend the night?”

16
    Before we went to sleep, I put on a nightshirt, but I skipped the panties. Zach told me he usually slept nude, and did that bother me?
    It didn’t.
    We tussled a little bit trying to find an appropriate position to sleep in. Well, maybe “appropriate” is the wrong word, since I ended up as the little spoon, with Zach’s arm thrown over me and his penis pressed against my bare ass.
    I didn’t sleep much. The dorm’s twin beds were barely big enough for one tall person, and sharing a bed with the luscious naked form of Zach Hutchison would have made it hard to doze off even in a California King.
    Zach, on the other hand, was snoring gently. I watched his bare chest rise and fall next to me and wondered: How, exactly, am I going to fuck this up?
    Intellectually, I knew that what happened with Evan wasn’t my fault. But even nearly a year later, it was impossible not to wonder whether I might have done just one or two things to lead him in that direction. Maybe I could have stopped asking him what was on his mind so often, or been better at sex, or...I know, toxic thinking. But sometimes, at 2 a.m., that’s the only kind you get.
    “You awake?” he whispered.
    “Yeah.” He kissed my chin. I put my hand on his chest and felt his heart beating hard. “What’s wrong?”
    I could tell he was winding up to say something. Finally, he sighed and said, “My aunt and I, we transferred my dad to a home this weekend.”
    “That must have been...god, Zach, I don’t even know what to say.”
    “It’s my fault.”
    “Of course it’s not. Believe me, I’ve blamed myself for every single one of my parents’ problems, and it took years of therapy to untangle that shit.”
    I felt him pull away from me, just an inch. “Yeah, well, if I wasn’t here, I’d be able to take care of him.”
    “You’re saying you don’t want to be here?”
    “No, I didn’t mean here with you, just…h ere at Cascade. ” He sat up and rubbed both hands across his face. “Brooke, I’ve made some big mistakes in my life. Like, if I told you, you’d never want to spend another minute with me.” He cleared his throat. “Which means I got you into bed under false pretenses. Which means I’m no better than my brother.”
    I reshuffled my body until I was sitting up behind him and put my arms around his chest. I kissed the back of his neck. “What, you killed a man?”
    He pulled my arms against him, hard. “Worse.”
    Luckily, I stifled my laugh before I realized he wasn’t joking.
    “Tell me,” I said.
    He shook his head. “You’re smart, beautiful, and a thousand times better than I deserve. I’d rather just get the hell out of here on my own than have you kick me out.”
    “Zach, that’s bullshit.” I got out of bed and turned on the light. He squinted at the sudden brightness. “I’ll be right back.” I put on some panties and took my hot water pot across the hall to the bathroom. When I got back, Zach had put his briefs and t-shirt on and was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Coffee or tea?” I asked. “You’d probably like the coffee. It’s Folger’s.”
    He laughed. “Tea, please.”
    I made two cups of English breakfast, and we sat across from each other on the bed. “People confess stuff to me at the Shark all the time. I’m cheating on my boyfriend, I think I’m gay, I’m a virgin and I’m afraid to tell him. The other day a woman asked me if it was a sin to