“Eyes on me, love,” he orders in a husky breath. I realize I’m staring at his cock. I look up to meet his gaze. It’s heady, intense, and fills me fuller than any other body part. I don’t break it.
Not now. Not ever.
{ 51 }
LILY CALLOWAY
“Oh my God! I found your porn!” I walk out of Ryke’s closest with a shoebox. I can only imagine it holds incriminating evidence, verifying that I’m not the only porn-lover of our friends. My glee is all too apparent.
Lo and Ryke glance up from the floor, spread out with bubble wrap and boxes. We’re packing up some things from his old room at his mother’s house. He’s moving from his flat in Philly to a new apartment—same city, just a place with more guest bedrooms and less paparazzi lurking outside.
Instead of buying all new things for the extra space, he’s trying to consolidate what he has here. Ryke planned the packing party during Sara Hale’s book club, so she’s not home. Lo doesn’t really want to meet her face-to-face, considering he’s the result of her failed marriage.
“Open it,” Ryke tells me, motioning towards the shoebox in my hands.
I flip the top and my spirits pop. Baseball cards. Hundreds of them. One of the guys looks kind of hunky…maybe…
I hold up a card with the hot young player. “You totally jerked off to this.”
Lo grins, even as he struggles wrapping an odd shaped lamp.
Ryke gives me a look. “You would,” he refutes. “And maybe I would too if I was attracted to men. But no, I traded those with kids from grade school, I didn’t jizz on them.” He turns to Lo. “Does she do this to you?”
“What?” he asks in amusement. “Try to find my porn?”
I freeze, eyes wide. “You have porn?” Oh my God, there may be porn at our house. Right now. I gasp. “Where?”
“At my dad’s place,” he explains. “From my teenage years.” Oh. That makes sense. He wouldn’t keep porn around me—even if I’ve done really well these past few weeks.
“So I’m the only one you like to embarrass?” Ryke asks me.
“You can’t get embarrassed,” I remind him, “and you told me to be comfortable talking about sex, so it’s your fault.” It’s true I’ve opened up around Ryke, and I think we can even call each other friends now.
“Fucking fantastic.” He grabs a roll of tape and tries to roll it over a box, but the dispenser shrieks in revolt. He grumbles a few curse words and throws it on the ground. “Lily, can you go find me another roll of tape? There should be one in the kitchen cabinet.”
“I’m on it.” I exit the bedroom and journey through the large house that has more unnecessary bedrooms than necessary ones. I find the kitchen and start opening as many cabinets as I can, avoiding the dishware and pots. A few drawers later, I find the miscellaneous area. I squat and discover tape behind a tub of bulbs.
Success.
I spin around, about to head back to Ryke’s room but something stops me. Something situated on the tea cart by the breakfast table. A small box is wedged in an overflowing basket of mail.
It’s brown, like any normal package, but this one is different. My heart lurches to my throat. Swallowing a lump, I approach the box, confirming my suspicion. Tiny X’s are typed all across the packaging.
My hands shake as I set the tape on the cart and inspect the label.
From: Kinkyme.net
It’s the same site that sent me the dildo, but I assumed the leak just mailed the package directly to my parent’s house. Wait. That’s not right. A note accompanied the sex toy, so the leak had to mail the box to their house first, place the message inside, and then send it to me.
This is Ryke’s house. We never come here. He knows this. He knows more about us than almost anyone. We let him in.
Lo was right from the beginning, wasn’t he?
Tears well. Ryke made this elaborate plot, infiltrating our lives, just to cause Lo more pain—to ruin his life because he destroyed his just by simply existing.
Why is it that the people you come to love are the ones that seem to hurt you the most?
I continue reading the box.
To: William Crane
A fake name to cover his tracks. I grip the box, hating everything and then nothing at all. A horrible pain shreds my chest. Lo won’t just be hurt by the news. He’ll be devastated. How can he handle another disappointment, another betrayal? Even imagining his reaction brings a flood of tears, dripping down my cheeks.
I have a sudden urge to rip open the box and see what’s inside. Before I search for a knife, the patter of shoes echoes, the sound growing towards me. And then the noise silences by the doorway—the kitchen doorway.