Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 80643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
I don’t know what I expected.
Cuddling and pillow talk from him?
After the day he followed me around, just because we touched each other’s cocks a little last week?
I wouldn’t want pillow talk time with Torin anyway, but it’s like my body is hardwired to crave something after being intimate with another person. I keep opening the picture he sent me and staring at it for minutes at a time. I’ve almost deleted it a few times, but for some reason I can’t.
Fuckin’ sue me for wanting a little more than this.
With women, I was praised for it. Girls would tell me all the time that they loved how cuddly I was after sex, and that I communicated better than anyone else.
So fucking what if I like touch?
Contact?
Some fucking sign of life?
Torin would rather drive an iron spike through himself than ever do something affectionate, for sure, but would it kill him to send a single text?
The days start to melt away, and time moves simultaneously too fast and too slow.
I begin to feel like I’m gradually losing my mind.
The heat breaks 80 for the first time this season, then it breaks 90 the following day, as summer becomes more and more like a pressure cooker. The heat wave is brutal, and when I come back from my class on Thursday I find myself downstairs in Onyx House alone for a short period of time.
I throw off my tank top and shorts and dive into the pool out back, completely naked.
The rush of water hits my skin and it’s the best feeling I’ve had all week.
As I come up for air, the cicadas are almost deafening in the backyard, and I squint up into the blinding sun.
And I’m still looking for him.
I float in the pool for an hour, then two, and my skin is pruny and waterlogged by the time I hop out and beeline for a pool towel. Some of the other guys have returned and are hanging in the kitchen by now, but I don’t feel like socializing.
I head upstairs, rinse off the chlorine, and put on a pair of shorts. My room is just as flooded with afternoon light as the yard is, and dust motes float in the air as I shut the door to my room.
Everything is too warm.
Too stifling.
When my back hits my mattress it feels like there’s a boulder resting on my chest, holding me down and weighing on me.
“Fuck you,” I say out loud.
And I break.
I reach for my phone, doing the thing I’ve been resisting like a sickness for the past three days.
I navigate to my texts with Torin and tap one out quickly, before I have time to think.
You really are the type to ditch people like they’re trash after hooking up with them, aren’t you?
I press send.
Way too fast.
The weight in my chest moves lower until I start to feel nausea clutching at my stomach.
I read the text over and over, regretting it the moment it sends.
I hate that I wrote that.
I want to strangle myself for referring to it as a hookup.
But that’s what it was.
Add it to the long list of mistakes I’ve made… but hooking up with my stepbrother has to take the prize for being the worst one.
I slap my phone face down on my nightstand and try to forget about it. I restlessly check the screen a few more times, every half hour, and find no response. Eventually I pass out, and I dream of being at the edge of a cliff, looking over the precipice over and over, almost diving into clear blue waters below. But I’m too chickenshit to ever really jump.
I spring out of bed the next morning.
I check my phone and when there’s still no response, I leave my room and take the stairs down fast.
Now I’m pissed.
“Yo, early bird,” Rayne tells me as I walk into the kitchen where he’s working on a protein shake.
Hunter is at the long dining table, sipping coffee. He nods at me.
“Has anyone seen Torin this week?” I ask, probably a little too intensely, running my hands through my hair that’s still fucked up from sleep.
“Good morning to you, too, dude,” Rayne says, pressing the button on the blender and blitzing frozen strawberries into this smoothie.
“Sorry,” I say after the room goes quiet again. “I just haven’t seen him in days, and I need to know he isn’t fucking dead, or something.”
The moment I say it, my chest goes tight.
The guys from the loading docks.
How could I be so fucking stupid?
Torin might literally, actually be dead and I’m—
“He left,” Rayne says casually as he pours out his drink.
The tension in my chest deflates, just a little. “What do you mean left?”
Hunter peers up at me. “He had to go on some trip, I think. He mentioned something about it to me beforehand.”