The Caretaker - 1. Chapter 1

What the hell are you still doing here?

My inner voice was right on the money. What was I doing here? I only came to the party because my best friend Grant begged me to.

“Come on, Hudson,” he’d said. “It'll be a blast. We’ll get dressed up, have some drinks and chill. You'll meet lots of guys...”

Agreeing to come was arguably my second major mistake of the night. The first was, hands down, letting Grant pick my costume. Being so last minute, I didn’t have one lined up, but Grant said he had a caveman costume that would be perfect for me. I should have followed that up with additional questions. I looked damn ridiculous.

Despite what Grant said, the costume’s orange color did not look fabulous against my skin and dirty blond hair. The shortness of the “dress” only accentuated my chicken legs—it did not make my calves look hot. And the blue necktie did not make my eyes pop.

Standing against the wall dressed like a tragic-yet-slutty Fred Flintstone, I nursed the same cup of beer Grant handed to me right after we’d gotten here. Grant was nowhere to be found, naturally having ditched me mere minutes after arrival for his flavor of the month.

Tramp.

As much as Grant annoyed me, I never could stay mad at him. I’d known him since I was a kid, when his family moved in next door. Being a latch key kid raised by a single mom, I spent a lot of time at Grant’s house, with his family. Grant was like a brother to me.

The party was hot and it was crowded. There was barely enough room to breathe. The house was packed with bodies, jumping and gyrating to the auto-tuned wailing of some pop princess. If I hadn’t ridden here with Grant, I would’ve left by now. But there was no way I was walking home by myself—not at night. Certainly not wearing this costume. It felt like my ass was hanging out the back, and I found myself constantly tugging at the flimsy garment’s raggedy hem.

Hell, it was only last week a guy from one of my classes disappeared and was later found dead, a bloody mess not far off the trail that was a shortcut to off-campus housing. This stupid blow-up club Grant gave me wouldn’t do me any good if I was attacked walking across campus.

I shuddered just thinking about the number of times I’d walked that trail.

Out of habit, I reached for my hip before I realized I didn’t have any pockets. Like a dumb ass, I left my phone back at my apartment so I wouldn’t lose track of it. I regretted that. I could be checking my email, or Twitter… or requesting an Uber.

With a sigh, I took a sip of my beer and looked around.

Across the room, standing a head taller than the dozens of drunkards, I spied Chris Huntington. Like Grant, I’d known Chris pretty much all my life. He was related to Grant somehow—something somewho once removed on his mother’s side. Everyone just said he was Grant’s older cousin to keep it simple. Even though he’d moved here from Scotland when he was a kid, he still had a bit of an accent that was really sexy.

Speaking of sexy… the sight of him in those Jedi robes holding a lightsaber had the inner nerd in me wanting to go all hand solo in the bathroom.

Not that he wasn’t a hot Obi-Wan Kenobi, but knowing what was hidden under those long, flowing robes, Chris would have made a better Thor. That costume would have shown off his massive physique. And there was the one time I spent the night at Grant’s house and saw that hammer of his live and in person. A string of drool might even had fallen from my mouth. I knew then and there that Chris Huntington was going to be my first.

Whew, it’s hot in here.

My hot flash cooled damn quick when Chris caught my eye, scowled, and promptly turned his back to me.

I should have been used to the cold shoulder by now, but it still hurt. As much as I tried, I would never forget the ultimate in humiliation when I tried to tell Chris I liked him. I could still feel his hand on my breastplate pushing me away, with a look of pure horror on his face. “Hudson. That is never going to happen.”

God, I was a stupid kid. Kid? That was so like a year ago.

Okay, now I was really ready to go. I turned to go look for Grant, and a slutty Captain America bumped directly into me, sloshing my beer all over my hand.

“Oh my god!” I cried as the cold liquid hit my skin.

“Fuck, man,” Captain slurred. The remainder of my beer sloshed across his chest, and the white star began to smear, dripping down into the stripes painted on his bare stomach. “My cosh-tume!”

I wanted to tell him that wearing a speedo and painting his body red, white, and blue wasn’t really a costume, but that would’ve fallen on deaf, drunken ears.

“Sorry,” I said with a shrug. I wasn’t sorry.

He belched in response.

The stench of stale beer slapped me in the face and I turned away before I got sick all over the man’s rapidly melting “costume.”

I needed fresh air. Wading through the crowd, I pushed through the back door.