It’s Thursday and the girls decide to stay on campus for lunch again, but they opt to eat outside in the cool air instead.

Southern California can be a lot like Florida when it comes to weather. The sun shines most of the time, even through fall and winter, though we do have chilly nights almost all year long. For the most part, living here is a mix of long-sleeved shirts with exposed legs or vice versa. We’re sweating at eighty-five but freezing at sixty.

It’s nearly mid-October and while the gossip magazines are covered with flannels and turtlenecks, we’re still in open-toed heels and swimwear on the weekends.

Speaking of weekends, there’s only a few more until my eighteenth birthday as my mother felt the need to remind me in her text this morning while asking what I wanted her to arrange in celebration.

She wasn’t too keen on my single-word response.

I finish off my smoothie, looking at the sticky strawberry mess on my palm from the cup, and turn to Cali. “Watch my bag?”

She nods, going back to her conversation with Jules, and I head for the girls’ powder room, but I don’t make it a step through the door before I’m pushed farther inside.

My eyes flash to the mirror, just in time to catch a glimpse of Ransom’s face, hardly registering the others behind him, when the lights go out.

My stomach flips, and my head is tipped to the side, warm, greedy lips lighting my neck on fire as not a second is wasted.

I grab the countertop, wobbling slightly as my legs are nudged wider, the rough texture of thick jeans scratching against my upper thighs.

“What, have you been waiting for me to slip in here?” My voice is hoarse and cracking.

“No,” Ransom whispers in my ear. “Waiting until I could slip in here.”

I gasp when his fingers, skillfully and without direction, dive past my underwear and drive inside me. I moan, clenching around him, but when I tip my head, searching for his lips in the dark, he pulls back, lowering his forehead to the nape of my neck.

His fingers inside me swirl with every pull back, his breathing burning me through my cashmere long sleeve, growing deeper each time he pushes back in. He’s slow and deliberate. Reveling.

My whimpers grow louder, and he begins to shake.

I feel his muscles lock behind me and his hand swiftly pulls back, but then the heat of another’s finds my thighs, gripping on to Ransom’s wrist between them.

Slowly, his muscles ease, and then there’s another figure, now at my right.

I’m surrounded, barricaded.

My hands are gently pulled from the counter and crossed, my fingers wrapping around the biceps caging me in.

I squeeze, opening up more, and the fingers between my legs move once again.