“Why is that so hard for you to accept?” he asks as he crawls onto the bed and pauses above me on all fours. His brown eyes are so deep that I feel like I could fall into them and tumble forever. “You’re worthy of my love and then some. Sometimes I wonder if the universe is trying to teach me a lesson by giving you so many goddamn boyfriends. I’m not enough. You deserve it all.”

“Zack.” I put my hands on either side of his face, and he leans down to kiss, tasting my mouth with slow, easy motions, carefully settling himself on top of me, so that our bodies are melded together. His fingers push up my dress the same way he did in the car, but this time, there’s nobody around to see.

He finds my panties and then draws back, separating from my mouth with a groan.

“You taste so damn good,” Zack whispers, pulling the pink heart-patterned panties all the way off and chucking them onto the floor. Gently, carefully, he pushes my knees apart, and my heart thunders. It was dark when Creed and I had sex. It’s definitely not dark in here. At first, the thought of Zack looking at me freaks me out. “You’re beautiful, Marnye. Every single part of you.”

I’m trembling as Zack moves forward, settling himself between my thighs and tasting me in a wholly and completely different way from before.

My eyes water and I fling my head back into the pillows, breathing like I’m running a marathon and letting the sensations of Zack’s mouth and tongue settle over me. It feels so good that I end up burying my fingers in his chocolate colored hair and gripping on for dear life. He grunts, but he doesn’t stop until I’m shaking and shivering, my body rebelling against the waves of pleasure.

Zack seems to sense it’s time, and slides two fingers into me, giving me a climax that rocks my body so hard that I’m still trembling and shaking when he rises back up and looks down at me like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Do I have to take the jacket off?” he whispers, grinning as I shake my head. I’m having trouble remembering my own name right now, let alone how to make words. Zack kisses me again, caressing my body with his hands, kneading my breasts through the fabric of the dress. I let my hands explore his muscular body, pausing to tease his nipples. He seemed to like it before, at the B&B, so …

Nothing’s changed since then, and soon I’ve got him moaning against me, rocking his denim-clad body against the bareness of my core.

The sun finally sinks beneath the horizon, but the moon’s full enough to see by, and we’re in no hurry to get up and turn the lights on.

After a while, Zack undoes his jeans and then stands up, shucking both his pants and boxers to the floor. He climbs back onto the bed with me and guides my hand to his body, showing me how to stroke and tease him until he’s moving against my palm, panting heavily.

“Now,” I whisper when my skin starts to feel hot and achy, like it’s trapping my spirit inside.

“Of course,” he murmurs, biting my lower lip and reaching over to open the drawer on his bedside table. He has a box of unopened condoms in there. Good. For a second there, I was about to freak out. I’d just sort of assumed he hadn’t slept with anyone since transferring to Burberry Prep … Then again, I don’t want to know. Either way, I do not want to know. “I don’t know how you and Creed—” He stops himself because he’s grinding his teeth so damn hard. “But if there’s a different position you want to try …”

“Oh. Um.”

My heart thunders, and I feel myself flush as I prop myself up on my elbows, and then … you know, turn over.

Zack chuckles, and the sound vibrates through me, taking over my entire body, right down to my blood and bones. He fits the condom on, and then touches his big hands to my hips. He positions himself against me, and I curl my fingers into the sheets. He isn’t quite as slow as Creed when he enters me, but I like it anyway, and a small sound escapes me.

Our bodies connect fully and I see starbursts.

“I’ve got you, Marnye,” he whispers as he begins to move, and before the night is over, I’ve shuddered, climaxed, and fallen apart in his arms more than once.

I fall asleep wrapped in the safety of his big, broad arms, his jacket still on my shoulders, his heart beating against my cheek.

There are no etiquette guides online for how to tell four of your boyfriends that you slept with number five. It just doesn’t exist.

“Were they pissed?” Miranda whispers, eyes wide as I sit on the couch in her and Creed’s apartment, wondering when he’s going to come back so I can see him before I head back to my own room.

“I just … I don’t understand how it works,” Lizzie says, grimacing slightly, her bouncy curls swept up into a high pony. She’s on the floor, twirling a spoon around in a container of ice cream. “I’m the jealous type I guess. I could never share.”

“Me neither,” I say with a guilty shrug of my shoulders. I curl my knees up on the couch and put my arms around them. “But I don’t have to. They’re not allowed to date anyone else, that’s how our arrangement works. I told them it was their punishment for all the things they’d done to me. For once in their spoiled, privileged little lives, they can’t have everything exactly when and how they want it.”

“I happen to think you’ve changed Creed for the better,” Miranda declares, and there’s a softness in her gaze that’s getting easier over time. The more time she spends with Jessie, the less she looks at me like that. Not that I mind. I just … unrequited love sucks.

I look over at Lizzie without meaning to and her amber eyes lock on mine.

Maybe Tristan’s love is requited? I have no idea. We don’t talk about Lizzie much.

“So,” Miranda begins and my head snaps up as I sense a bout of crassness ready to spill from her pretty lips, “did you and Tristan ever sleep together?”

“Mandy,” I grind out, but she waves me away. She’s just eaten one of the pot chocolates I got from Zayd during first year. I have yet to try any, but Miranda found them in my stuff and ate one about … forty-five minutes ago. Pretty sure the effects of the THC are kicking in now.

“It’s fine, we’re all girlfriends,” she says, and Andrew glances up from his phone screen. “What? You could be a girlfriend, too, if you’d stop sucking up to your dad and just tell him you want to bang Gary Jacobs.”

“Not ready for that, but ‘kay, thanks,” Andrew says, rolling his eyes and then giving Lizzie a look. “You don’t have to answer her question, you know.”

“I know,” Lizzie whispers, glancing back at me. “But it’s fine, I don’t mind. No, Tristan and I never had sex. We kissed, but … that’s pretty much it.” My heart soars, even though I feel like an asshole, and I do my best to clamp down on the emotion. Whether they did it together or not has nothing to do with my feelings toward Tristan.

I don’t know why I’m harping on this. I just went over it with Zack.

The past doesn’t matter except as a history lesson, a series of mistakes to be learned from. It’s the present that defines us, and the future we look toward with hope. Waxing poetic, again. I looked it up online, you know, spontaneous word vomit in the brain, and the number one symptom that kept coming up was love. Over and over and over again.

I chucked my phone against the wall in frustration and nearly broke it.

“So, they weren’t pissed?” Miranda asks, bringing us full circle back to the start of the conversation.

“Jealous, maybe,” I say, thinking of Zayd’s clenched jaw. “But not pissed at me. At each other, more like.”

“I wish I had a harem of girls fighting over me,” Lizzie says with a wistful sigh, just before the door opens and Creed walks in. He sees me sitting there, and slips out of his red academy jacket, giving that cavalier smirk that I used to hate but now crave with a frenzy I can’t explain.

“Did you come over to fuck me?” he asks with a saucy little wink, sauntering over and unfolding his long, boneless princely body on the couch between me and Lizzie.

“No. Did you wake up deciding to be asshole today?” I ask, but all I get are a pair of heavy-lidded blue bedroom eyes, and a racing heart. “We were just discussing what happened between me and Zack.” Creed scowls, but he doesn’t say anything. How could he? He went out of his way to flaunt girls in front of me last year, just to make me feel sad and lonely and jealous.

And I’m not doing any of this to make him feel bad.

Although … I’m starting to.

How long can I date all of these guys without hurting them?

How can I pick one without destroying the others?

That is not a question I’m eager to find the answer to.

Spring break gives me another chance to talk to Charlie about my new boyfriends. I’m planning on it, but when I get home, the first thing he does is tell me he’s transferred his care from Harper’s family’s medical center to … somewhere else.

The first person I call in a panic is Windsor, hiding in the corner of my room near the closet and hoping Dad can’t hear me talking on the phone.

“Wind, he move treatment centers,” I choke out before the prince even has a chance to say hello. There’s a long pause, and the slow easy chuckle of a man who knows he owns the world.

“Yes, I know. I was going to talk to you about that when I stopped by.”